Mexico Signals It's Had Enough of America's Stupid War on Drugs

solitaryman

solitaryman

Active member




Mexico Signals It's Had Enough of America's Stupid War on Drugs





/ icon and title message Hey, if you guys have some time to read it, it's worth it. Pretty scary stuff.

Even on his most homicidal of days, Al Pacino's character in Scarface

couldn't even approach the level of drug trafficking-related brutality

bleeding down Mexico's streets. It is no longer unusual for the Mexican

news media to report on yet another, freshly decapitated head stuck

atop a fencepost or a metal spike, or a garbage bag filled with body

parts, usually with a hand-scrawled note or placard attached. That

amounts to a cartel's calling card, and it's usually delivered in the

form of a warning to a rival cartel, or for the Mexican authorities to

stay away and stop seizing their drugs. Other times, it's just a

chilling placard intended to strike terror into the hearts of the

people who come across the gory scene and the text: "Ha Ha Ha." To be

sure that their message is heard, cartels are known to send regular

text messages to newspaper reporters, place newspaper advertisements,

or to even upload their own killing videos (sometimes accompanied by

narco-corridos as background music) to YouTube.

Mexican drug cartels are, rather effectively, fighting the government's

War on Drugs with their own War of Terror, often swelling their ranks

(and combat/terror tactics) with former members of law enforcement. The

Zetas, for instance, are members of former Mexican counter-narcotics

squads (some with U.S.-assisted training under their belts), who have

become the self-proclaimed and much-feared hit men of the Gulf cartel.

So far this year, roughly 3,500 murders have been directly attributed

to the drug war in Mexico, surpassing last year's estimate of 2,500.

(These numbers include the murders of at least 500 soldiers, cops,

judges, politicians -- and their family members -- in nearly two years.

The drug war rages across Mexico's urban and (mostly) rural terrain,

and murders are usually targeted toward pronounced rivals, but

increasing numbers of victims are innocent bystanders, including women

and children who were previously considered off-limits where acts of

drug war-related retaliation were concerned.

Reports of attacks are rolling in daily, sometimes several times a day.

This Sunday, unidentified gunmen shot up the United States consulate in

the northern Mexican city of Monterrey. While no injuries were reported

there because the consulate was closed, six young adults attending a

private celebration were killed on Saturday in the

violence-and-drug-plagued Mexican border state of Chihuahua, in Ciudad

Juárez. Those murders, as yet unsolved, followed on the heels of 11

homicides in a Chihuahua bar, when a gunman opened fire on unsuspecting

patrons, including a prominent journalist who may or may not have been

a specific target.

It should be of note that much of the worst drug war violence is

happening right at the border: Tijuana, adjacent to San Diego, saw

nearly 40 people murdered in the last week of September alone, in

addition to nearly 25 deaths of male and female prisoners the previous

week due to two major riots at the vastly overcrowded Tijuana State

Prison. (Prisoners alleged frequent incidents of torture and sexual

violence, sometimes leading to death, at the hands of guards.)

American newspapers located in border cities and states tend to report

some of the more gruesome events and mass killings, but the rest of

this country seems remarkably in the dark about what's happening to our

Mexican neighbors, much less the fact that the violence has increased

dramatically since U.S. drug war dollars have increased in the form of

support for Mexican President Felipe Calderón's militarily-minded

crackdown on trafficking, with the goal of dismantling the cartels'

leadership apparatus, as well as breaking apart close alliances between

local authorities, cops, and drug traffickers. (Corruption in Mexican

law enforcement and military is epidemic; consider that many police

officers in Mexico make no more than $5,000 per year.)

Since President Calderón took office in December 2006, he has

authorized large-scale troop deployments (roughly 30,000 troops), in an

attempt to diminish the power lorded over Mexico and its citizens by

rival Gulf and Sinaloa cartels, as well as affiliates like La Familia,

which has earned a reputation for particularly memorable and gruesome

acts, including the night that five decapitated heads were thrown onto

a dance floor packed with people.

Seizures of illicit drugs, particularly cocaine, have indeed increased.

But so has the bloodshed and the level of fear: a national poll

published on October 4th indicated that more than 40% of Mexicans felt

less secure since Calderón's drug war offensive began. Another poll

published by the Mexico City daily, Reforma, showed that more than half

of Mexicans believed that the cartels, not the government, were winning

the drug war.

Still, as one would imagine, the Bush Administration has responded

favorably to Calderón's crackdown on drug cartels, ushering in the

three-year "Merida Initiative" to support counter-narcotics efforts in

Mexico and Central America: "The Merida Initiative complements U.S.

domestic efforts to reduce drug demand, stop the flow of arms and

weapons, and confront gangs and criminal organizations," as the State

Department explained in April 2008.

This past June, Bush struck a deal with Calderón to approve $400

million toward additional drug war assistance (representing a 20%

increase in the Mexican anti-narcotics budget) -- for still more

helicopters, military training, ion scanners, canine units, and

surveillance technology.

Considering their close ties, President Calderón's announcement earlier

this month must have come as a bit of an unwanted surprise to the Bush

Administration. On October 2, Calderón proposed legislation that would

decriminalize drug possession, ostensibly for personal use. Not just

for marijuana, as one might have expected in a country where pot smoke

has not been demonized to the same degree as in the U.S., but for

cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin, as well.

To be more specific, Calderón's proposed legislation, supported by the

Mexican attorney general's office, is intended to address a different

kind of drug crisis on Mexican soil: a growing number of addicts.

Cocaine once solely destined from Colombia and other Andean nations

toward the U.S. is still flowing in such great supply that it has ended

up attracting more users -- and abusers. In addition, meth lab

crackdowns in the U.S. have allowed narco-cartels to step in and fill

the void, so that speed is now more readily available in Mexico, as

well. The impact has been dramatic: according to the government's own

statistics, the number of drug addicts in Mexico is estimated to have

doubled in just six years to 307,000, while the number of people who

have tried drugs at some point rose from 3.5 million to 4.5 million.

If passed, Calderón's legislation would decriminalize up to 2 grams of

marijuana, 500 milligrams of cocaine, 40 milligrams of meth, and 50

milligrams of heroin. To qualify, any individual arrested with those

drugs would have to agree to a drug treatment program to address

admitted addiction or enter a prevention program designed for

recreational users. Those who refused to attend one of these kinds of

programs would be subject to a fine.

This proposal isn't the first of its kind in Mexican political history.

In fact, former President Vicente Fox also supported limited

decriminalization just over two years ago, but his efforts were quashed

in the wake of unrelenting pressure from the White House and the Office

of National Drug Control Policy. It's a safe bet that pressure of this

kind has already started up where Calderón's proposal is concerned.

"President Calderón's proposal to decriminalize personal possession of

illicit drugs is consistent with the broader trend throughout Western

Europe, Canada, and other parts of Latin America to stop treating drug

use and possession as a criminal problem," says Ethan Nadelmann,

executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a national drug policy

reform organization. But it contrasts sharply with [the approach taken

in] the United States [the U.S. government] should think twice before

criticizing a foreign government for its drug policy, much less holding

out the U.S. as a model. Looking to the U.S. as a role model for drug

control is like looking to apartheid South Africa for how to deal with

race."

Or, for that matter, looking toward U.S. intervention in Colombia as a

model for how to deal with Mexican drug cartels. In effect, the U.S.

government waded into a long-running civil war when it started to throw

money toward anti-narcotics military training, aviation training,

weaponry, surveillance technology, and the availability of Monsanto's

coca-killing herbicide, Round-Up. Ostensibly, all of this assistance

was for the "good guys." American taxpayers, as always, were expected

to overlook the death squad part of the equation, the part about the

right-wing paramilitary leaders who took their U.S.-supplied training

and weapons and turned them into family and local economy-displacing

attacks akin to, or worse, than that of their sworn enemies, the

Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

The end result: Colombia's cities, towns, jungles, and streets were

turned into even more militarized, more deadly versions of themselves.

The U.S. government still declared victory when the leadership of the

cocaine-producing Medellín Cartel was dismantled (or killed) from the

1980s to the early 1990s.

That particular cartel was brought down, and city streets are safer

today than they were in the 80s and 90s, but Colombia's problems have

hardly gone away. Blood still flows as a result of territorial battles

between FARC and right-wing militias, often over the control over land

suitable for growing plentiful coca crops. At this very moment, there

are some 300,000 displaced Colombians, meaning the country has the

second-worst internal refugee crisis in the world, right behind Sudan.

Since 2000, in fact, the U.S. has continued to pour huge sums of money

into Colombia: over $5 billion since 2000, making it the biggest

recipient of drug war funding (from the U.S. to a foreign country) in

the 21st century. Has it paid off? Consider that in June, the United

Nations released data indicated that coca cultivation actually

increased nearly 30% in 2007 to 244,634 acres.

Colombia not only remains the world's largest coca producer, but its

farmers have apparently succeeded in creating herbicide-resistant

hybrid coca plants that defy Monsanto's poisons. Ninety percent of the

cocaine consumed by Americans (half the cocaine consumed in the world

goes up American noses) is now flowing this way from Colombia. And much

of that cocaine is, indeed, passing through Mexico. (It is estimated

that 80% of methamphetamine reaching the U.S. is coming from Mexico

directly.)

Last week, the two-day security meeting of the Organization of American

States kicked off with the frank admission that Mexico's narco-cartels

are primarily buying their cocaine from FARC and right-wing

paramilitary groups.

So, too, are Mexican cartels using what were once considered to be

Colombian narco-terror tactics, including the use of "Colombian

neckties" and the killing of innocent civilians. In fact, the drug war

in Mexico is beginning to look, feel, and sound like the worst of the

drug war in Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s. In late August, eleven

headless, shirtless bodies were found handcuffed together in the Mérida

suburb of Chichi Suarez, in Yucatan State. The nature of the

as-yet-unsolved crime is considered to be one drug cartel's "warning

sign" to a rival group.

Mexican civilians have even become the recent victims of explosives

detonated in public spaces, something that had not previously been a

concern. The use of larger-scale explosives as a method of terrorist

attack started just two months after Calderón took office, leading up

to last month's terrifying explosion in a crowded plaza in Morelia, the

capital city of Michoacán. The attack in broad daylight was timed to

coincide with Mexican Independence Day festivities: over 100 people,

primarily working-class men and women who had gathered for the free

celebration, were wounded in the attack. Eight people were killed,

including a 13-year-old.

As was the case in Colombia, journalists are being increasingly

targeted for exposing narco-cartels (or links with officials and law

anforcement, as the case may be). The Chihuahua bar shooting last

Thursday claimed the life of David Garcia Monroy, a well-respected

columnist at the daily newspaper, El Diario de Chihuahua. That same

day, the editor of La Noticia de Michoacán, Miguel Angel Villagomez,

was kidnapped as he left work in the port city of Lazaro Cardenas. And,

on September 23, a popular Mexican radio host, Alejandro Zenn Fonseca

Estrada, was shot to death with AR-15 rifles, at close range, in

Villahermosa, the capital of Tabasco. According to witnesses, a van

pulled up alongside Fonseca as he was hanging anti-violence posters on

a major street. (According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, one

of the posters read, "No to Kidnappings"). The murder remains unsolved.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Mexico ranks

10th on CPJ's "Impunity Index," a list of countries where journalists

are attacked or slain on a regular basis and those crimes consistently

remain unsolved.

Calderón's call for decriminalization won't put a direct dent in this

kind of violence, but former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper, author

of Breaking Rank: A Top Cop's Exposé of the Dark Side of American

Policing, says that it's a step in the right direction toward

alleviating the overflow of non-violent drug offenders in Mexican

courtrooms, jails, and prisons -- something that's beginning to

resemble the criminal justice landscape of the United States. Stamper,

an active member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), says

that those comparisons need to be drawn. "Our drug policy, predicated

on the prohibition model, has caused far more harm than good, locally

and globally, " he says. "The results? The same as Mexico's: higher

potency drugs, more readily available, and at cheaper prices than ever."

Statements like these, particularly coming from prominent members of

law enforcement, would have been almost unheard of in the

not-too-distant past. But these days, American public is sending strong

signs that they, too, are ready for a truly different approach to drug

and sentencing policies, as well as strategies on mental illness and/or

substance abuse treatment. According to a nationwide Zogby poll

released on October 2, three out of four U.S. voters believe that the

war on drugs is failing, while over one-quarter agree that legalizing

at least some drugs is the best alternative to the current strategy.

While Stamper supports Calderón's call for decriminalization, fellow

LEAP activist and board member Terry Nelson says that he doesn't

believe in "incremental steps," explaining that nothing short of

complete legalization will bring an end to the profit-driven violence

associated with the global drug trade, valued at around $500 billion

per year. "To use a drug is not to abuse a drug," says Nelson.

"Calderón is just trying to take some pressure off the court system

with legalization, [most] of the actual crime and violence would be

taken away, almost overnight."

A 32-year veteran of the military and various branches of law

enforcement, Nelson's career took him on narco-traffic interdiction

training and surveillance missions across Mexico, Central and South

America. Nelson admits that he was involved in the Mexican Aviation

Training Initiative, "designed to improve our counterparts in Mexico's

professionalism in enforcing Mexican drug laws."

Some of the people Nelson helped to train ended up as Zetas, as he later found out.

Now retired and living in Fort Worth, Texas, Nelson served for five

years as the Field Director of Surveillance Support Branch East (SSB

East). During that time, he says, SSB East successfully seized of over

230,000 pounds of cocaine throughout Latin America. Nelson's biggest,

personal drug trafficking bust happened off the coast of Ecuador,

resulting in the seizure of 30,000 pounds of cocaine.

Much to his dismay, even such a large-scale bust yielded absolutely

nothing by way of a drop in street supply -- or an increase in price.

"If that big a bust doesn't affect the street trade," he muses, "what

chances do you have doing it a gram or a kilo at a time?"

To put it another way, he asks, "if we hadn't called it a war to begin with, could we admit that we're not winning?"
 
Hey dude. nobody is going to read that whole thing. i bet maybe 1/10 people who click on this thread will read even half of that., summarize it. oh btw, nobody cares about mexico, its a shithole. i hope we neuc them. oh wait, we wont ever use our weapons withthe new gayass bitch president we will have. and by we, i mean the U.S.
 
hey, shut the fuck up
but yeah no ones gonna read iti read like 4 paragraphs then realized how long it wasfuck that yoo
 
First off, fuck you

Second, I did read the whole thing, and amazingly enough, some people do have their heads far enough out of their asses to realize that just because it's in mexico doesn't mean it wont affect you. It's people like you that give America a bad name, shit, I'm not even American( Im canadian) and I embarassed to say i speak the same language as someone as ignorant as you. And really, neuc? you have to be kdding me, I dont know whether to be more astounded at the fact that you can't even spell your alledged solution to all problems, or the fact that nuking Mexico would be probably the worst desicion in the history of the world. It would turn the entire rest of the world against you, probably effect the southern states and would render the land Mexico sits on completely uninhabitable for ages, something we really dont need when the world as it is is already becoming overpopulated.

Third, guess who voted in "the new gayass bitch president"? The american people! IE you! I know, its wierd how that works, people actually get a say in who is president, be glad u dont live in some military dictatorship country where everything you read/hear/see is censored and you can't even leave the country.

And finally, fuck you.
 
i read the whole thing,pretty interesting article. the US is starting to move slowly but surely in that directions with things like decriminalization of marijuana most recently in mass but also in 12 other states. But a conservative mindset has been entrenched so firmly in American thought that i think it will take a couple more generations before legalization of drugs ever happens. look at how much oposition there is to weed, which has basically been proven to have no real severe drawbacks. sucks about all the violence in mexico tho thats pretty intense
 
I live for this.

Seeing this makes my day! People hate on spelling mistakes, then make one right after! YES!
 
You are the reason the world hates America. And I don't mean people like you, I mean you specifically.
 
stupid america and the idea that weed will end the world, when pretty much everyone here is an alcoholic

and 30,000lbs of cocaine in one bust...jesus
 
my threads for later,

I haven't read it yet, but I hope you all realize the reason that drug trafficking is so lucrative in Mexico is because the border is so easy to cross.
 
so your sad that you arent gonna have a president anymore who blows up countries? bush got you into the fucking war that has killed so many americans, and now your angry that the new "gayass" president isnt gonna use any nuclear bombs...
 
technically a typo, but still made me laugh. Fuck, i even checked to make sure i didnt do that...Anywho, it doesnt make this message i got any less pathetic:
hey canadaian dickhead. GO EAT A DICK. and yeah i spelled canaidaian wrong. OH MY GOD! so go suck on some more cocks. bitchass faggot

Are golden wheelchairs still being given out?
 
seriously stfu

and everyone lets be a bit more mature...

You say, oh that sucks, mmm thats a lot of drugs...oh no mexico...

Where to fuck do you think its headed?! right into the states! Theres no way they would sell that much down there...why not take it to the rich fat lazy americans...step up people, and realize whats going on...you say fuck the police, but these officers are the ones that keep this shit on the DL, so we wont turn into another mexico, a mexico filled with whites...yea i know there are a lot of asshole police, ive gotten in physical fights with them...but think what they have to go through everyday, the bodies they see, families torn apart...the last thing they need is some punk ass kid...

and dont tell me this doesnt happen where you are...you just dont hear about it, cause they dont want a mass panic
 
WowYourFuckingGay.jpg

 
You swine. You vulgar little maggot. Don't you know that you are pathetic?

You worthless bag of filth. As we say in Texas, I'll bet you couldn't pour

piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel. You are a canker. A sore

that won't go away. I would rather kiss a lawyer than be seen with you.

You are a fiend and a coward, and you have bad breath. You are degenerate,

noxious and depraved. I feel debased just for knowing you exist. I despise

everything about you. You are a bloody nardless newbie twit protohominid

chromosomally aberrant caricature of a coprophagic cloacal parasitic pond scum

and I wish you would go away.

You're a putrescence mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little worm

deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk, a cad, a

weasel. Your life is a monument to stupidity. You are a stench, a revulsion, a

big suck on a sour lemon.

You are a bleating fool, a curdled staggering mutant dwarf smeared richly

with the effluvia and offal accompanying your alleged birth into this world.

An insensate, blinking calf, meaningful to nobody, abandoned by the

puke-drooling, giggling beasts who sired you and then killed themselves in

recognition of what they had done.

I will never get over the embarrassment of belonging to the same species as

you. You are a monster, an ogre, a malformity. I barf at the very thought of

you. You have all the appeal of a paper cut. Lepers avoid you. You are vile,

worthless, less than nothing. You are a weed, a fungus, the dregs of this

earth. And did I mention you smell?

If you aren't an idiot, you made a world-class effort at simulating one.

Try to edit your writing of unnecessary material before attempting to impress

us with your insight. The evidence that you are a nincompoop will still be

available to readers, but they will be able to access it more rapidly.

You snail-skulled little rabbit. Would that a hawk pick you up, drive its

beak into your brain, and upon finding it rancid set you loose to fly briefly

before spattering the ocean rocks with the frothy pink shame of your ignoble

blood. May you choke on the queasy, convulsing nausea of your own trite,

foolish beliefs.

You are weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. You are grimy, squalid, nasty

and profane. You are foul and disgusting. You're a fool, an ignoramus. Monkeys

look down on you. Even sheep won't have sex with you. You are unreservedly

pathetic, starved for attention, and lost in a land that reality forgot.

And what meaning do you expect your delusionally self-important statements

of unknowing, inexperienced opinion to have with us? What fantasy do you hold

that you would believe that your tiny-fisted tantrums would have more weight

than that of a leprous desert rat, spinning rabidly in a circle, waiting for

the bite of the snake?

You are a waste of flesh. You have no rhythm. You are ridiculous and

obnoxious. You are the moral equivalent of a leech. You are a living

emptiness, a meaningless void. You are sour and senile. You are a disease, you

puerile one-handed slack-jawed drooling meatslapper.

On a good day you're a half-wit. You remind me of drool. You are deficient

in all that lends character. You have the personality of wallpaper. You are

dank and filthy. You are asinine and benighted. You are the source of all

unpleasantness. You spread misery and sorrow wherever you go.

I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid.

Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid so stupid that it goes way beyond the

stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. You are

trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid collapsed on itself so far that even

the neutrons have collapsed. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect

can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. You

emit more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar

stupid. Your writing has to be a troll. Nothing in our universe can really be

this stupid. Perhaps this is some primordial fragment from the original big

bang of stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything

else as to be beyond the laws of physics that we know. I'm sorry. I can't go

on. This is an epiphany of stupid for me. After this, you may not hear from me

again for a while. I don't have enough strength left to deride your ignorant

questions and half baked comments about unimportant trivia, or any of the rest

of this drivel. Duh.

The only thing worse than your logic is your manners. I have snipped away

most of what you wrote, because, well... it didn't really say anything. Your

attempt at constructing a creative flame was pitiful. I mean, really,

stringing together a bunch of insults among a load of babbling was hardly

effective... Maybe later in life, after you have learned to read, write,

spell, and count, you will have more success. True, these are rudimentary

skills that many of us "normal" people take for granted that everyone has an

easy time of mastering. But we sometimes forget that there are "challenged"

persons in this world who find these things more difficult. If I had known,

that this was your case then I would have never read your post. It just

wouldn't have been "right". Sort of like parking in a handicap space. I wish

you the best of luck in the emotional, and social struggles that seem to be

placing such a demand on you.

P.S.: You are hypocritical, greedy, violent, malevolent, vengeful,

cowardly, deadly, mendacious, meretricious, loathsome, despicable,

belligerent, opportunistic, barratrous, contemptible, criminal, fascistic,

bigoted, racist, sexist, avaricious, tasteless, idiotic, brain-damaged,

imbecilic, insane, arrogant, deceitful, demented, lame, self-righteous,

Byzantine, conspiratorial, satanic, fraudulent, libelous, bilious, splenetic,

spastic, ignorant, clueless, illegitimate, harmful, destructive, dumb,

evasive, double-talking, devious, revisionist, narrow, manipulative,

paternalistic, fundamentalist, dogmatic, idolatrous, unethical, cultic,

diseased, suppressive, controlling, restrictive, malignant, deceptive, dim,

crazy, weird, dystopic, stifling, uncaring, plantigrade, grim, unsympathetic,

jargon-spouting, censorious, secretive, aggressive, mind-numbing, abrasive,

poisonous, flagrant, self-destructive, abusive, socially-retarded, puerile,

clueless, and generally Not Good.

Courtesy of "The Ultimate Flame" (www.ultimateflame.com)

 
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