30 Tons and a Tunnel

[maxibiogreen]

government must be extremely limited and regulate only very specifically delineated areas of our lives. There is a direct correlation between government power and oppression of human rights.


And I agree with you on this point but WE gave these governements we are talking about far too much power and now i really do not see a possible option to change that.
Overgrowing would resolve one problem and one problem only. On top of this i do not believe this would be possible either knowing that doing this (overgrowing) would logically lower cartel benefits wich will lower rotten politicians benefits witch finally means that people doing this will end up in jails or worse.
And if you look at it it s exaclty the way things al ready are....

 

[_Dude]

"Calmer than you dude."

How many Afghanis have you sponsored over to the US to avoid a worse fate?

Wave the flag all you want and throw stones, but I don't see your "crock of shit" analysis leading to anything.

I doubt someone's sanity when they say America's just as corrupt as Mexico. That's got to be the product of insanity, or extreme suburbs induced stupidity. You offer a cop a bribe after he pulls you over here, you're likely to wind up in jail. In Mahico it's standard practice. It's just lunacy to compare the two.

And just as dangerous? You've got to be kidding me. There are gangs of thugs cutting peoples heads off and getting into block wars with the cops with automatic weapons and grenades and shit. How many drug-related murders have there been in el Paradiso Mahico since the cartel wars started?

Oh, and the other guy says America's the most dangerous place in the world. I just wonder why he hasn't tried some of the more choice real estate in Russia or its former territories, Colombia, the horn of Africa...something nice, you know?

I think some of these people need to start smoking new strains, ASAP.

 

[_Dude]

Overgrowing the world IS the SOLUTION.

REPEALING IMMORAL PROHIBITIONS IS THE SOLUTION.

Mexico was a pretty cool and peaceful place until the 2006 GOVERNMENT EXPANSION of the WAR on DRUGS.

So Mexicans aren't responsible for all the shooting, beheading, exploding and whatnot...the American government is. I see. So Mexicans really aren't fully human and in control of their actions. The American government controls them from afar using the mystical power of American legislation.

American foreign policy turned Mexicans into monsters. Wow, you don't think much of Mexicans, do you?

Proof is here you just have to look at the thread. Noone here is trying to find a way to improve innocent mexican people lives but is here to defend their own opinion as they would defend their investment or position if they were occupying responsabilities in politics for example.

Why is it my job to improve the lives of Mexicans? Do they take responsibility for improving my life? Fuck no. So why is it my job to improve their lives?

I admit that American foreign policy is wrong in the sense that it's not our business to interfere in Mexico's affairs just because we want to eradicate drugs. But by the same token, it's immoral to blame Mexico's problems with the drug war on internal American policy, and it's immoral to say we should legalize drugs just so Mexicans will stop killing each other. We have every right to set our own internal policies, and if Mexico can't deal with that, it's their problem.

 

[vta]

NORTHERN MEXICO'S STATE OF ANARCHY

Residents Abandon a Border Town as Vicious Drug Cartels Go to War

Ciudad Mier, a picturesque colonial village on the Texas border, was a sleepy tourist attraction until February, when two rival drug cartels turned it into a slaughterhouse.

Caravans of armored SUVs crammed with gunmen firing automatic rifles prowled the streets. Parents pulled terrified children from schools. The town of 6,000 went dark every time the combatants shot out the transformers. In May, a man was hung alive from a tree in the central plaza and dismembered while town folk heard the screaming from behind shuttered doors.

Then last week, after a new offensive by the Zetas, one of the two groups that have turned the town into a no-man's land, hundreds of residents packed what they could into their cars and fled, leaving eerily empty streets with burned out shells of cars and bullet-pocked walls.

"It's like we're in the Wild West," says Santos Moreno Perez, a Pentecostal minister who is among the refugees here in neighboring Miguel Aleman. "We have no mayor, no police, no transit system. We have been left to fend for ourselves."

Two years ago, the U.S. military warned that the Mexican government was "weak and failing" and could lose control of the country to drug traffickers. Mexican officials quickly rejected the assertion, and in truth the most dire predictions now seem overblown. Mexico's economy is rebounding from the aftershocks of the U.S. recession, with gross domestic product growth expected to top 4% this year. Foreign companies not only haven't fled, they continue to make some investments along the country's northern manufacturing belt where much of the drug war is playing out. Mexico City and large parts of south so far have escaped the mayhem, and the country as a whole remains stable.

Still, some parts of Mexico are caught in the grip of violence so profound that government seems almost beside the point. This is especially true in northern places like Ciudad Mier and surrounding Tamaulipas state-a narrow, cleaver-shaped province that snakes along the Texas border and hugs Mexico's Gulf Coast.

Across Tamaulipas, gunmen run their own checkpoints on highways. The cartels have forced Mexico's national oil company to abandon several gas fields. Many farmers have given up on tons of soybeans and sorghum in fields controlled by criminals. Leading families, fleeing extortion and threats of kidnapping, have escaped to Texas-as have the mayors of the state's three largest cities.

Most of the brutality that takes place along this vast arid landscape goes unrecorded. Newspapers as well as television broadcasters have been silenced. Rumors have taken the place of news and circulate on social networks like Twitter, which people check regularly to make sure that no shootouts are taking place on the routes they take to work or school.

"Public space has been taken over by criminals, and Tamaulipas society is at their mercy," says Carlos Flores, a visiting professor at the University of Connecticut who studies the state's crime groups.

As goes Tamaulipas also go a small but growing number of Mexico's 31 states, including Chihuahua and Michoacan-places where rival organized crime groups either exert political and territorial control or are in the midst of bloody battles to impose their hegemony. In these states, despite four years of intense effort, the Mexican government and its institutions hold little sway.

The failure of Tamaulipas carries consequences for the U.S. The state shares roughly 230 miles of border with Texas and handles nearly 50% of the merchandise moving between the U.S. and Mexico. Only a river separates it from the U.S. cities of Laredo, McAllen and Brownsville.

Last month, an American riding a jet ski on Falcon Reservoir, a border lake not far from Ciudad Mier, was shot dead by suspected cartel gunmen, his body never recovered. Days later, the severed head of the lead Mexican investigator on the case was dumped in a suitcase in front of a Mexican army barracks.

In the state capital of Ciudad Victoria, the man poised to win the state governor's election was ambushed and shot dead in broad daylight this summer, along with his four bodyguards. Two months later, Mexican marines arrived at a secluded ranch and found a grotesque sight-the bodies of 72 would-be immigrants to the U.S who had been lined up and executed. Authorities blamed the Zetas. The investigator in the case was murdered two days later.

Despite such gruesome milestones, Alejandro Poire, President Felipe Calderon's spokesman on security matters, disputes the notion that Tamaulipas is falling into anarchy. "Tamaulipas is not a failed state," he says. "Organized crime is being fought with strength and determination." He says that Tamaulipas continues to provide public services, collect taxes and organize elections. He notes that violence is concentrated in eight out of the state's 43 municipalities, and that authorities have scored a number of successes against drug lords.

Outgoing governor Eugenio Hernandez also said the state's troubles have been exaggerated. "We are far from being a failed state," Mr. Hernandez said in an interview in the capital city of Ciudad Victoria. "We are working. We have order. There are some eye-catching events, but most people have no problems."

Days after the interview, the governor struck a less optimistic note, telling journalists that "municipal and state forces, on their own, can't do very much [against organized crime], which is why it's urgent that the federal government send reinforcements to the border region."

The troubles in Tamaulipas stems from a turf war which broke out early this year between the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas, two former allies in drugs and organized crime, now fighting for control of the state. More than 90% of Tamaulipas is in the hands of the crime groups, says a newsman there.

The fighting has caused more than 1,300 deaths so far this year in the state, or one in six drug-war killings nationwide, mostly members of rival gangs, according to the federal government. Since President Calderon took office in December 2006 and declared war on traffickers, about 31,000 people have died.

For Mexico's armed forces, Tamaulipas and next-door Nuevo Leon, where the fight between the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel has spilled over, are Mexico's most dangerous states. So far this year, the army has been attacked 128 times across Mexico; 91 of those attacks have taken place in Tamaulipas and in Nuevo Leon, up from only three the previous year.

On a recent day, unknown assailants threw a grenade at an army base in the border city of Matamoros, just across from Brownsville, while cartel gunmen fought in broad daylight in Reynosa, the state's biggest city.

The armed forces have scored some successes. Earlier this month, about 660 Mexican Navy special forces fought a 10-hour battle in the streets of Matamoros with some 300 gunmen from the Gulf Cartel. Fearing stray bullets, the University of Texas at Brownsville on the other side of the Rio Grande suspended classes. The battle ended with the death of one of the cartel's top leaders, Ezequiel Cardenas Guillen, known as Tony Tormenta.

Ciudad Mier, Tamaulipas's abandoned town, could offer a glimpse of where Mexico may head if the conflict remains unchecked. In 2007, the government declared it a "Pueblo Magico," or Magic Village, a special designation to attract tourists to the cobblestone streets and artisan markets.

"This was a town where we had outdoor dances, art fairs," recalls a 20-year-old school teacher who fled Ciudad Mier and declined to give his name. People gathered freely for family baptisms or quincenera celebrations, when girls turn 15. "You walked around at night in Ciudad Mier," he says.

But trouble was brewing here and in the rest of the state. Since the 1980s, Tamaulipas had been home to the Gulf Cartel, which began as an outfit that smuggled electric appliances into Mexico's closed economy and turned into one of the country's largest drug-trafficking groups as trade opened to the U.S. The Gulf Cartel's leader, Osiel Cardenas Guillen, the younger brother of Ezequiel, planted the seeds for the present bloodletting when he persuaded 31 highly trained Mexican army special forces soldiers, called the Zetas, to defect and work as enforcers for the cartel in the early 1990s, analysts and government officials say.

Mr. Cardenas Guillen was arrested in 2003 and extradited to the U.S. in 2007. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison this February in a Texas court, although court transcripts say he is cooperating with authorities, which could lead to a sentence reduction. Mr. Cardenas Guillen's lawyer, Chip B. Lewis of Houston, declined to comment on his client's purported cooperation.

As Mr. Cardenas Guillen's case was coming to a close, his former allies the Zetas broke from the Gulf Cartel. Now believed to number in the low thousands, they declared a war to grab control of illegal markets, which spread throughout the state.

Though peaceful, Ciudad Mier, a short drive from Roma, Texas, was ripe for conflict. The town and surrounding area had long been a Zeta stronghold. This year, analysts say, the Gulf Cartel tried to oust the Zetas.

On Feb. 23, the city was plunged into chaos after several dozen SUVs arrived at the municipal police station, sacked the facility and took officers hostage. No one has seen them since. Not long afterward, residents found a group of decapitated heads from unknown victims on the outskirts of town.

Ciudad Mier began to collapse. After an attack on the water-treatment facility this year, the town had no drinkable water as workers were too frightened to begin repairs, residents say. For a week this fall, parts of the city had no water at all. Electrical outages became frequent after attacks on transformers. Finding gas became impossible when the city's one gas station was shot up. Residents say they headed to neighboring Miguel Aleman to fill up their cars.

While schools remained in session, parents often refused to send their children, deeming it unsafe. "Every child I taught was thinking: 'I'm next to be killed,'" says a town teacher, who recalled that a theater class he taught suddenly sank from 20 students to just four.

Medical services were scant. "The pharmacies were closing down or weren't open," recalls an 87-year-old man who fled the town last week. Manuel Alejandro Pena, a general practitioner who heads a branch of the state's health office in the village, recalled that he was unable to get penicillin for two months this summer when drivers couldn't safely make the journey from the city of Nuevo Laredo, fearing they'd be attacked on the highway.

"We watched our medicine reserves begin to vanish," Dr. Pena recalled.

By last week, the city was ravaged again. Emboldened by the death of Mr. Cardenas Guillen, the Gulf Cartel leader known as Tony Tormenta, Zetas staged a counterattack, townspeople say. Signs leading into the town were pocked with hundreds of bullet holes, along with nearly every major building in town.

Except for a few holdouts, nearly all the former residents have fled. Some moved in with family members elsewhere in Mexico or the U.S. About 300 refugees now bunk on cots at a local Lion's Club in nearby Miguel Aleman, a larger city down the road which is thought to be less violent. On a recent day, an older deaf woman sat in a wheelchair by herself as a dozen children watched morning cartoons.

Yet even this place offers limited sanctuary. During a visit by a reporter, automatic-rifle shots broke out as drug gunmen and army troops confronted each other a short distance from the shelter. The refugees screamed and took cover on the floor.

"Don't worry, nothing will happen to us," a mother said to her crying son.

A short time later, the mayor's sister arrived. "Everything is all right," she told the anxious crowd. "They wouldn't have sent me if I were going to get killed here."

Outside experts and residents say the state is unable to defend itself now partly because it failed to confront the cartels earlier. Indeed, they say the Tamaulipas government kept close ties to the Gulf Cartel, an arrangement that worked well until the Zetas violently took on both the cartel and the state.

"The Gulf Cartel managed to co-exist with the state government for decades," says George W. Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary. "But the presence of the Zetas has thrown an electric eel in a barrel of fish."

The governor says there has never been collusion between the Tamaulipas government and drug traffickers. But like many other Tamaulipas residents, he seems nostalgic for past days when drug dealers in Mexico stuck to ferrying drugs to the U.S. and didn't kidnap, extort and kill fellow Mexicans.

"There was no agreement, but they [the Gulf Cartel] stuck to their business," he says. "They behaved differently. They didn't interfere with normal citizens. There were no extortions or kidnappings."

Some local residents blame the federal government for provoking the drug traffickers. "This is a war that was declared by the federal government," says Oscar Luebbert, the outgoing mayor of Reynosa, the state's biggest city and busiest border crossing. Mr. Luebbert objected to military deployments by President Calderon, who belongs to the rival National Action Party. "I don't want to live in a country in war."

While Ciudad Mier remains the only city to have emptied out so far, the rule of law is breaking down elsewhere. In Reynosa, a taco stand a short walk from the main plaza offers a typical encounter with criminals who have no fear of authorities. Days ago, the owners say, a group of men descended from sport-utility vehicles, AK-47 machine guns slung to their belts. "They came for lunch. They didn't pay," says an employee at the stand.

To fend off the Zetas, the Gulf Cartel is tightening its grip on the city's institutions-particularly news outlets. Reporters interviewed said that many colleagues receive checks from the cartel for favorable coverage. One referred to a "spokesman" for a drug cartel who went to crime scenes after shootouts to dictate angles for news.

The Gulf Cartel even appears to be getting involved in quasi-legitimate activities, such as the sale of alcohol. In a cantina off one of the city's main thoroughfares, a restaurant employee showed a reporter a whiskey bottle with a three-letter stamp that he said is the mark of the Gulf Cartel, which has been selling imports. "There's no choice but to buy from them now," he said. The Zetas, meanwhile, have their own merchandise brands such as bootleg CDs in areas they control.

In Tampico, a port city that bears a passing resemblance to a faded New Orleans, the most important society dance was cancelled this year for the first time in 70 years, says a cattle rancher. Kidnappings have surged. Among the victims: two of the city's former mayors. "Most owners of businesses have left and run their companies by telephone from Texas," says a local resident.

The outgoing mayor, Oscar Perez, is rarely seen in town. Residents believe he lives in Garland, Texas. The incoming mayor, former schoolteacher Magdalena Peraza, says she plans to mobilize the citizenry, awaken civic pride and create jobs when she takes office in December.

Ms. Peraza's sister urged her not to take the high profile job. Ms. Peraza replied that God would protect her, but her sister urged her again to reconsider, saying that God was very busy.

"I'm worried," says the mayor elect. "But I have faith."

 

[vta]

A BORDER FACT OF LIFE: HIGH-SPEED CHASES

On a quiet November morning, Trooper Johnny Hernandez patrolled the dusty back roads along the Rio Grande in Hidalgo County. In the back seat, his M4 rifle sat within arm's reach. In the trunk, he stored a bulletproof vest.

Trooper Hernandez, a 15-year veteran of the Department of Public Safety, has been in so many high-speed pursuits that he cannot remember the first one, and he doesn't know which has been the scariest.

There is so much going on, he said, "your thoughts are going 100 miles per hour."

Often, so is his car.

According to department pursuit reports analyzed by The Texas Tribune and The San Antonio Express-News, officers like Trooper Hernandez on the United States-Mexico border were involved in far more high-speed chases from January 2005 to July 2010 than were officers in other regions of Texas. Statewide, troopers were involved in nearly 5,000 pursuits in that period. About 13 percent of those, 656, were in Hidalgo County. Of the 10 counties with the most chases, 5 were along the border.

Data confirms what troopers on the border say is their daily reality: smugglers are becoming more active and brazen, taking more desperate measures to evade capture. But troopers also often use aggressive pursuit tactics -- including firing guns and setting up roadblocks -- that many other law enforcement agencies prohibit.

One expert, Prof. Geoffrey P. Alpert at the University of South Carolina, said the policies at the Texas Department of Public Safety allowed troopers to take too many risks, jeopardizing the lives of officers and citizens. "They're crazy," said Dr. Alpert, who has studied pursuits at police departments across the country.

Statewide, chases by the department resulted in 1,300 accidents, 780 injuries to officers, pursued drivers and bystanders, 28 deaths and an estimated $8.4 million in property damage in the last five years. In Hidalgo County, the chases caused 71 injuries, two deaths and more than $440,000 in property damage.

Trooper Hernandez and others who patrol the Interstates, highways and meandering caliche roads that connect the United States and Mexico, said the primary reason they see the most chases is simple: location.

"We're the first line of defense out here," Trooper Hernandez said. "We're going to have pursuits."

There is also more of a Department of Public Safety presence, with an additional 160 troopers assigned to the border since 2006. About a decade ago, just 20 highway patrolmen worked in Hidalgo County, said Lt. Armando Garza, who supervises troopers there, but today there are 60.

Lieutenant Garza recently moved back to the border after working for 12 years in Corpus Christi, where, he said, troopers had one or two chases every three or four months. In Hidalgo County, it is practically a daily occurrence. The peak, he said, was earlier this year when there were six in two days, including one that ended when the driver escaped from his car but was pinned under a train that severed his arm.

The only thing to do, Lieutenant Garza said, is to remind troopers not to take unwarranted risks.

The risks do not always result in the fleeing driver in handcuffs. In about 40 percent of the chases in Hidalgo County, the drivers escaped on foot -- or swam across the Rio Grande to Mexico. Statewide, more than 30 percent of the department's chases ended with the driver escaping on foot. Fewer than a quarter of all drivers, both statewide and in Hidalgo County, stopped and surrendered.

To avoid arrest, and to get the drugs or the humans they are hauling into Texas, drivers are getting creative, troopers said. In the last year, the smugglers started using bags of homemade spikes --nails welded together in a triangular shape -- to blow out the tires on patrol vehicles. They also take advantage of dirt roads in rural areas to kick up dust, reduce visibility and elude officers.

The pursued drivers seem to have little regard even for their own lives. Last April, Trooper Edwardo Ruiz was blazing down back roads in Hidalgo County, with siren blaring and lights flashing, in pursuit of a reckless driver in a black pickup. Suddenly the truck's red taillights disappeared. Trooper Ruiz, filmed on his car's dashboard camera, stopped where the road came to a dead end.

"It looks like they grew wings and flew or something," Trooper Ruiz said to another officer on his cellphone, as he peered into dark, empty fields.

Thirty minutes later, officers found the truck smashed into a canal on the other side of the dead end. The 18-year-old driver was dead. His blood-alcohol content was 0.22, nearly three times the legal limit in Texas.

Department policies allow troopers to engage in riskier chase tactics than large Texas police and sheriff's departments. Troopers can set up rolling and stationary roadblocks to end a chase, a strategy they used 68 times from 2005 to 2010. They can also shoot out a vehicle's tires if other methods, like deploying spike strips, fail to stop the pursuit. They fired their guns during chases nearly 90 times over the last five years, including 14 times in urban areas.

By contrast, the San Antonio, Austin and Fort Worth Police Departments and the Harris County Sheriff's Office prohibit officers from using their firearms during a pursuit except in self-defense, and they are not allowed to set up roadblocks to stop a chase.

Trooper Hernandez said that if a driver began to flee, he would almost certainly give chase, but that he would disengage if it put the lives of other officers or of the public at risk. Yet only 142 of the department's nearly 5,000 chases analyzed by The Tribune and The Express-News -- less than 3 percent -- were terminated voluntarily by the trooper or a supervisor.

Dr. Alpert said most state highway patrol departments had "very aggressive, loose policies." In 2007, the Texas department acknowledged that it needed to do a better job of giving officers hands-on training after crashes involving troopers rose 30 percent.

"We fall short in providing the necessary practical driver training to our officers," stated a February 2007 newsletter by the department's public information office.

At the time, troopers practiced their driving skills at a parking lot around a football field in Austin. Since then, the department has built a modern training course, where more than 880 officers have trained since June 2009.

Department officials and troopers on the border said their training had improved in recent years and that safety was their top priority.

"We've got families, too," Trooper Hernandez said, "and we want to go home to them."

Troopers, particularly those on the border, quickly acquire real-world experience in driving safety and remaining calm, Trooper Hernandez said.

Standing on the banks of the Rio Grande, between a neighborhood of mobile homes and a colorful waterfront bar, he recalled when the river was full of boaters, and locals cooked food on the banks and enjoyed the breeze. Now the revelers are gone, and he and other troopers regularly stand guard while workers pull vehicles loaded with drugs from the muddy river.

"They all run," he said. "It's easy money for them, and they don't want to get caught."

This article was produced by The Texas Tribune in partnership with the San Antonio Express-News.

 

[vta]

The WAR On Drugs is fueling the Police State.



DPS Bid for 'Big Brother' Eyes Breaches Civil Liberties


Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Author: James C. Harrington
Note: Harrington is director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, a
nonprofit foundation that promotes racial, social and economic
justice through education and litigation.



Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw recently asked state lawmakers to install license-plate-reader cameras on Texas roadways and to allow stationery roadblocks to stop motorists so DPS could see their drivers' licenses and proof of insurance.

McCraw wrapped these intrusive proposals in a generalized assertion of growing drug trafficking and violence during a state Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee meeting. He wants license-plate readers mounted on highway signs and in DPS cars, claiming they would help track stolen vehicles, which gangs and drug cartels often use to smuggle drugs. He told senators that drug cartels take billions of dollars worth of U.S. drug sales back to Mexico, and DPS must expand its focus beyond the border to "crime corridors."

This all sounds good at first blush, of course; but what is the price to our civil liberties? The government already has gathered enough information on its computers about us, without having to know where we are going to and coming from on the state's roads. This is a startling proposal in light of Gov. Rick Perry's high-profile campaign to keep government out of the lives of Texans and off our backs.

Every time the government wants to do something that gives it more power over us, it tells us it's for our safety or to protect us from terrorism and crime. We too often just go along, without considering the loss to our civil liberty and privacy.

We should be able to travel to visit friends and relatives without the government knowing it or maybe even suspecting that we are doing something wrong because we are making an unusually long holiday or vacation trip.

And, if a DPS officer suspects something, then we're pulled over for questioning. This raises the prospect of illegal profiling, but covered up by reliance on roadblocks or a car license as a pretext to stop someone. There are already enough complaints about DPS profiling motorists as it is without making the situation worse.

We need to ask DPS the hard question of really proving necessity before we allow it, or any police agency, to trump our personal freedom and privacy. How many times since 9/11 have we heard government say it needs more power to fight terrorism and crime? The truth of the matter is that government has plenty of power without aggrandizing more. We must hold government accountable when it yells "wolf" and demand proof. We have to keep in mind Ben Franklin's wise counsel, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

DPS is doing a good job now of enforcing the law; and, absent some real emergency, not a hypothetical one, there is absolutely no need for it to become more intrusive and invade the privacy and constitutional rights of the people of Texas.

This also is an absurd time to talk about a huge outlay of public funds for DPS' surveillance scheme. Texas has an enormous budget deficit crisis. This, in the face of a near-the-bottom educational system and woefully underpaid teachers, a safety net of social services barely held together by frayed rope and a shameful medical delivery system.

We don't need and cannot afford DPS' "Big Brother" eyes watching our every move on the state's roads.

 

[binaryfission]

Houston recently voted to eliminate red light cameras. (they take video as well)

Well the mayor said, they have a four year contract for the cameras and so therefore they will stay up.

Nice reporting vta.

 

[maxibiogreen]

So Mexicans aren't responsible for all the shooting, beheading, exploding and whatnot...the American government is. I see. So Mexicans really aren't fully human and in control of their actions. The American government controls them from afar using the mystical power of American legislation.

American foreign policy turned Mexicans into monsters. Wow, you don't think much of Mexicans, do you?

Why is it my job to improve the lives of Mexicans? Do they take responsibility for improving my life? Fuck no. So why is it my job to improve their lives?

I admit that American foreign policy is wrong in the sense that it's not our business to interfere in Mexico's affairs just because we want to eradicate drugs. But by the same token, it's immoral to blame Mexico's problems with the drug war on internal American policy, and it's immoral to say we should legalize drugs just so Mexicans will stop killing each other. We have every right to set our own internal policies, and if Mexico can't deal with that, it's their problem.

DO NOT WORRY NOONE IS ASKING FOR YOUR HELP, GO BACK TO WHERE YOU WERE BEFORE AND STAY THERE.
FORGET ABOUT MEXICANS.

PS: DID YOU HAVE ISSUES WITH MEXICANS DUDE?

 

[_Dude]

Maxi, I'm not the one acting like American foreign policy is mind control forcing the Mexicans to wear tin foil hats or go around hacking one another's heads off. I'm not the one saying Mexican violence is our fault because we won't legalize drugs. I'm also not the one saying America's more dangerous or corrupt than Mexico.

Your question is a moral inversion. It's like if a guy went around saying his unit was the biggest in the world, then people laugh when they see it because it's five inches long, then he gets mad and says "what's your problem with me?" He asked for it by saying his unit was the biggest.

I notice you don't give a shit that someone called America the world's most dangerous place, and someone else said America's more corrupt and dangerous than Mexico. You didn't ask if they had "issues" with Americans.

Kinda shows where your priorities are at, doesn't it.

MEXICANS are to blame for Mexico's violence. Period. Full stop. You guys want to blame someone for the violence (that's beginning to spill over onto our side of the border)? Blame the ones pulling the triggers.

 

[vta]

Source: Austin American-Statesman (TX)
Author: Harmish McKenzie
Note: McKenzie is an Austin-based journalist from New Zealand with an interest in drug policy and border issues.


HOW TO WAGE A SUCCESSFUL WAR ON DRUGS

As he demonstrated when he visited Austin recently, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico has a deft understanding of Mexico's complicated challenges but he continues to overlook what would be a killer blow to the wrenching violence in the country.

In a recent speech at the LBJ Library, Carlos Pascual identified drug cartels as Mexico's chief source of insecurity. While presenting suggestions for limiting their power -- including a reduction in U.S. demand for illegal drugs -- he failed to mention the best way of combating the cartels: take their business away.

After his speech, I asked Pascual a question: How seriously are the Obama administration and the Calderon administration in Mexico taking former Mexican President Vicente Fox's idea for more discussion of drug legalization? Legalization would take the massive drug industry out of the hands of the cartels and allow governments to control, regulate and tax the production, distribution and use of drugs.

Pascual's response was simultaneously weak-willed and encouraging. There are some important advocates in both countries for legalization, he said, but Presidents Barack Obama and Felipe Calderon have voiced opposition. Nonetheless, Pascual urged debate. Let's get serious policy discussion on the table and explore possible consequences, he said.

However, the issue at hand is the violence in Mexico, which threatens to spill across U.S. borders and is fueled by drug consumption here.

Mexico, as Pascual noted, is experiencing a surge of violence perpetrated by the cartels and Calderon's crackdown against drug criminals. In the last four years, more than 28,000 people have lost their lives. Some commentators have compared the unrest to an insurgency, but that's not correct -- it is, Pascual rightly pointed out, more akin to the violence seen in the U.S. in the 1920s.

Though he didn't elaborate, he was presumably referring to the days of Prohbition when organized gangsters fought to control trafficking in alcohol. As a Cato Institute paper put it, "Alcohol became more dangerous to consume; crime increased and became 'organized'; the court and prison systems were stretched to the breaking point; and corruption of public officials was rampant." The murder rate also spiked. Sound familiar?

In his presentation, Pascual listed three drivers of violence. The first was youth -- cartels in Mexico recruit a lot of young drug addicts, who can be paid in drugs. Sadly, many have proven willing to kill to protect these businesses.

A second driver, Pascual said, was a change in the routes and control for drug trafficking. While many Colombian drug kingpins languish in U.S. jails, Mexican drug lords have stepped into the vacuum. To assert their authority in various regions, they kill.

Third, drug violence is escalating because of increasing pressures on the drug market. For various reasons, there is reduced demand for cocaine in the U.S.; Calderon has confronted the cartels with force; and there has been an increased crackdown on cartels as a result of U.S. interdiction and the Merida Initiative. None of this, so far, has done anything except increase conflict, especially on the U.S.-Mexico border, where Mexican media face cartel threats to censor their reporting on drug violence. The cost of disobedience? You already know.

The Obama and Calderon administrations can choose to continue their militaristic approach against the cartels, but it will only mean more deaths, more insecurity and more immigration and economic problems. At the same time, their goal to reduce demand for drugs is laudable but futile. As with alcohol, tobacco and sex, there will always be a market for drugs. The only way to neuter the cartels and mitigate Mexico's security troubles is to hit them where it really hurts: the wallet. Without the highly profitable black market for drugs, the cartels have no power. They can't recruit the young; they can't finance their wars; and they can't hold two entire nations to ransom.

Pascual is right: Mexico is not experiencing an insurgency; it is merely experiencing the predictable effects of prohibition. Now is the time to end that folly.

 

[Hydrosun]

Houston recently voted to eliminate red light cameras. (they take video as well)

Well the mayor said, they have a four year contract for the cameras and so therefore they will stay up.

Nice reporting vta.

What the fuck? Let them pay the money to the camera company and take them down. Elected officials that thwart the will of the people should be eradicated, just make sure the shot isn't caught on camera.

 

[Hydrosun]

I doubt someone's sanity when they say America's just as corrupt as Mexico. That's got to be the product of insanity, or extreme suburbs induced stupidity.

I am very happy to have my sanity questioned by an individual that cannot see the connection between the AMERICAN lead war on drugs and death all over the globe.

If these deaths aren't a result of the AMERICAN war on drugs, please point me to the historical evidence of crazy murders in Mexico and Columbia BEFORE the AMERICAN GOVERNMENT started the WAR on drugs.

America may not be the most dangerous place in the world to live but it is with out a date the most dangerous nation in the world because it SPONSORS the WAR all over the world.

 

[maxibiogreen]

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Maxi, I'm not the one acting like American foreign policy is mind control forcing the Mexicans to wear tin foil hats or go around hacking one another's heads off. I'm not the one saying Mexican violence is our fault because we won't legalize drugs. I'm also not the one saying America's more dangerous or corrupt than Mexico.

Your question is a moral inversion. It's like if a guy went around saying his unit was the biggest in the world, then people laugh when they see it because it's five inches long, then he gets mad and says "what's your problem with me?" He asked for it by saying his unit was the biggest.

I notice you don't give a shit that someone called America the world's most dangerous place, and someone else said America's more corrupt and dangerous than Mexico.You didn't ask if they had "issues" with Americans.
It s true I did not ask if american people had issues.
Looking at your post in this thread I m wondering if you really know what you are doing here Dude.



Kinda shows where your priorities are at, doesn't it.

Yes of course my prioritie will go to mexican people for sure without hesitation

MEXICANS are to blame for Mexico's violence. Period. Full stop.
No this isn t true some mexicans are but very few.

You guys want to blame someone for the violence (that's beginning to spill over onto our side of the border)? Blame the ones pulling the triggers.
The point here isn t to blaim people but to spread the info about the way people leave there and hopefuly find a solution (even if I do not believe there is one )
Now Dude think differently and look at the problem like you were living on the other side of the border. You would be happy to know that people are taking your issues in consideration.

all the best and make peace with mexicans.

 

[_Dude]

I am very happy to have my sanity questioned by an individual that cannot see the connection between the AMERICAN lead war on drugs and death all over the globe.

I see the connection perfectly. You weren't talking about connections, you were laying the blame right on America. Now you're backtracking to "connections." "Connections" aren't the same thing as blame. If I fire a guy, and he robs a store to feed his family, and kills someone in the process, I'm "connected." I'm not to blame. I didn't pull the trigger.

If these deaths aren't a result of the AMERICAN war on drugs, please point me to the historical evidence of crazy murders in Mexico and Columbia BEFORE the AMERICAN GOVERNMENT started the WAR on drugs.

That's like saying "please show me where anyone robbed you before you flashed all that money." It's totally morally clueless.

America may not be the most dangerous place in the world to live but it is with out a date the most dangerous nation in the world because it SPONSORS the WAR all over the world.

American foreign policy sucks, no argument there. Maybe next time people will be more careful with their words, though.

 

[_Dude]

It s true I did not ask if american people had issues.

There's just no arguing with someone who can twist the argument that far out of shape, lol. He asks if I have issues with Mexicans, I ask why he didn't ask the America bashers if they have issues with Americans to point out his bias, and he comes back with "I did not ask if Americans have issues." For crying out loud.

Hey Maxi, what's 2+2?

 

[maxibiogreen]

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There's just no arguing with someone who can twist the argument that far out of shape, lol. He asks if I have issues with Mexicans, I ask why he didn't ask the America bashers if they have issues with Americans to point out his bias, and he comes back with "I did not ask if Americans have issues." For crying out loud.

Hey Maxi, what's 2+2?

Make me happy. Go through this site entirely, learn how to grow MJ then do it ... Once it s done (if you manage to achieve this task, wich isnt sure by the way but let s hope) you roll a big one and smoke it. If by chance it s some good stuff then i wont hear from you for some time. That would be great.

 

[Hydrosun]

I see the connection perfectly. You weren't talking about connections, you were laying the blame right on America. Now you're backtracking to "connections." "Connections" aren't the same thing as blame. If I fire a guy, and he robs a store to feed his family, and kills someone in the process, I'm "connected." I'm not to blame. I didn't pull the trigger.

It is AMERICA that is to blame for the DEATHS. AMERICA pays for the guns and bullets and then tell the guy which stores to rob and who to shoot.

The reaction from opposing forces killing in response to AMERICAS immoral aggression is also AMERICAS fault, full blame.

The connections you see are the tip of the iceberg. The fact that you can't point to NARCO DEATHS prior to the AMERICAN WAR on drugs is a glaring act of omission in your argument.

The individual that hires a hit man is just as guilty of murder as the guy who pulls the trigger; and if you don't think the American government is sponsoring death all over the globe then this discussion is really a waste of time.

 

[_Dude]

It is AMERICA that is to blame for the DEATHS. AMERICA pays for the guns and bullets and then tell the guy which stores to rob and who to shoot.

Hey, at least you're honest about where you stand, I'll give you that. If I sell guns and buy drugs, I'm "responsible" if you buy a gun from me and kill someone and come back and sell me drugs.

Like I said, you think Mexicans are incapable of being responsible for their own actions. They see a gun for sale, they HAVE to buy it. They HAVE to kill someone for it. They know I'll buy drugs, they HAVE to sell them to me.

What makes Americans so superior to Mexicans, can you tell me that? Where we're more responsible for them pulling triggers and murdering one another than the ones actually pulling the triggers?

Mexicans are the ones killing one another. YOU may take responsibility for that if you wish, but leave me and the rest of the American population out of it.

The connections you see are the tip of the iceberg. The fact that you can't point to NARCO DEATHS prior to the AMERICAN WAR on drugs is a glaring act of omission in your argument.

Slow learner? I already demolished that argument.

The individual that hires a hit man is just as guilty of murder as the guy who pulls the trigger

1. No, he's not. He didn't commit murder, he provided a motive.
2. Contracting a murder is a looooooooooong way from selling guns and buying drugs.

if you don't think the American government is sponsoring death all over the globe then this discussion is really a waste of time.

I think any discussion with you is probably a waste of time.

 

[LIFEISGOOD]

Y'all should argue about religion instead instead of this, it might take it down a notch.

 

[Fo20Blazerrr]

there are a lot more tunnels out there, it will take them some time to find them all ..

FO20.