Mexican Newspaper Shuts Down, Saying It Is Too Dangerous to Continue
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
To be fair with Mexico, those issues don't affect the whole country. Mexico City is pretty safe for example.
If you want to travel to Mexico, here is a list of states and cities to avoid: https://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/alertswarnings...
I'm not really sure how safe Mexico City really is, once you get out of the ex-pat bubble.
Mexico is a case study of how gun control can lead to an increase in danger for the population. Gun control can be nice in "civilized" places, but in Mexico, even the police are on the take. Justice in Mexico consists of avoiding the "Justice System" at all costs.
I lived a year in Chapala and even there we had cartel shootouts where police were among the bad guys. If you are a potential victim of violence, the police are the last people you'd usually call. It's often every man for himself -- so that results in nearly every house having high walls, razor wire fences, bars on every window, "alarm dogs" on rooftops.
My wife if from Guadalajara and we spend a lot of time there but it isn't Texas. In Texas, a home invasion is often met by a bullet from the homeowner, in Mexico you just better hope your wall is harder to climb than your neighbor's.
That being said, Mexico IS a great place -- but it's great because of the culture and people -- the government on the other hand, is a disgrace. The odds of it every changing are slim to none because part of Hispanic culture is a sense of fatalism and "it's God's will" kind of thinking. Mexican Catholism bears a huge blame -- there's a conditioned helplessness. Not to mention the cartels are among the Church's biggest benefactors! This isn't the thinking necessarily among the more cosmopolitan Mexicans, but that represents a minuscule minority. However, even among the educated, there a overriding sense of pessimism -- starting a business in Mexico is quixotic -- as soon as you get some income, everyone starts chipping away at it trying to get their share.
i'd like to hear more about this. this story does not receive a lot of coverage in the US.
For example in Sinaloa, El Chapo's home state, he's regarded by many as a "Robin Hood" figure because he's built schools, churches, hospitals and more in impoverished mountain villages that receive little to no aid from the state. In return, he was for years able to move freely and conduct his business with impunity from Sinaloa, without having to worry about locals betraying him.
You're 20 times more likely to get killed by a gun in the US or Mexico.
Note that in the whole of Holland there are 50 gun homicides per year, so you were actually pretty unlucky to experience that. Your experience is exceptional and not a common occurrence, especially as I assume most Holland murders are not widely reported spouse killings, etc.
Mexico had 18,398 gun homicides in 2011, for comparison, Holland, 60, US, 11,068.
The US has roughly 110 guns per 100,000 people and 4.5 gun homicides per 100,000 people.
Mexico has over 20 gun homicides per 100,000 people and about 18 guns per 100,000 people.
Canada has 2 gun murders per 100,000 people and 31 guns per 100,000 people.
Mexico: each gun is responsible for 1.11 murders
US: each gun is responsible for .04 murders
Canada: each gun is responsible for .07 murders.
Interestingly, the Bahamas has 30 gun murders per 100,000 and about 4 guns per 100,000. That's 7.5 murders per gun.
France has 2.8 gun murders per 100k and 31 guns per 100,000. Which makes each gun responsible for .09 murders -- slightly higher than both the US and Canada, despite far stricter laws.
The U.K. Has .23 gun murders and 6.6 guns -- so .35 murders per gun.
Sweden has 1.47 murders per 100k with 31.6 guns for a rate of .047 murders per gun.
Nicaragua has 4.68 murders with 7.7 guns -- each gun is part of 1.65 murders.
Jamaica: 31 murders/8 guns.
Denmark: 1.28/12 guns
Israel: 2.09/7.3 guns
Brazil: 21.2/8 guns
Australia: .93/21.7 guns
My point: gun ownership does not correlate to gun murder rates -- in fact one could make a case that increased gun ownership could actually reduce gun murder rates.
Despite having more guns per capita than most countries, the overall US murder rate ranks 108 out of 218, with Honduras topping the list (incidentally Honduras has 67 murders and 6.2 guns per 100,000)
This is very misleading because this audience is primarily middle class/rich white/asians employed in the tech industry.
There are 2 primary factors in homicide rates. Be poor or be a certain race. If you are not either of those things, your chances of being murdered in the US is very low.
*edit 3 factors -- men. Women don't get murdered often.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r... http://projects.oregonlive.com/ucc-shooting/gun-deaths
Here you can see the gun death rate in The Netherlands per 100k inhabitants is 0.58, but there's some areas in the US where the rate is quite comparable.
What really sets things apart is the suicide rate, most deaths by guns in the US are by suicide, but there's counties in the US where there's easy access to guns and the overall death rate is lower than the Dutch gun violence + non-gun suicides.
So in a lot of cases it's not that just having guns makes everything hyper-violent. It's just that if people feel like killing themselves they'll use the best available instrument available to them.
Conflating that with general gun safety as it pertains to you feeling safe walking around Amsterdam, but not in a comparable town in the US, is silly.
mayhaps it was a husband who was caught doing bad things by his wife, due to the spy equipment the guy sold to his wife?
http://nltimes.nl/2015/09/10/police-huizen-murder-gangland-a...
A search on his name brings up Dutch results that badly Google translate into English, but it seems (from what I can decipher from a translation) police suspect he may have been shot after being suspected of passing on info related to another criminal investigation.
You can never be 100% safe. That's impossible.
Breaking law with legally held weapon is a rare thing (who would like lo lose it, right?). If someone breaks law with the gun, it will be illegal one.
[1] Except Britain. They can legally have only long guns, without cartridges. Basically only for hunting.
Only the people who get attacked don't have any guns, and they get fucked up.
Speaking for the western part: no they don't. No even close to the majority of criminals have guns (I don't dispute that they have easy access, though). You'll be hard pressed to find street robberies at gun point in Germany, France and the northern countries.
If you fail to take regular firearm training, combat training or to acquire the necessary mindset for a gunfight under live threat, then you are even more fucked if you try to use that gun you are carrying to make you feel safer...
There's a spectrum of danger that a lot of us have had the privilege to not experience. I could imagine getting mugged in some places in Europe, but not really imagine dying in the "mugging gone wrong => someone is dead" scenario you hear about in the US.
And of course the idea that I might get killed in a traffic stop is something I have the privilege to not experience.
A minimum of 95% of the US population live in areas with murder rates comparable to Canada (around 1.5 to 2 per 100,000 depending on the year). More than 200 million Americans live in areas with murder rates under 2. That's not impressive compared to the nicest parts of Europe, but it is very impressive compared to Latin America and Europe's largest country, Russia.
"Better than Russia!" isn't much to brag about when it comes to social niceties. Given that the US starts out at half Russia's homicide rate even before you filter out anything, it seems like you're intentionally selecting a very bad comparator to make it look good.
And given that 17 of the top 20 homicide-rate countries are in Latin America, that's an even worse comparator. Indeed, the top 4 countries that are around double #5 and below, they're all in Latin America. You couldn't ask for a worse comparator - being better than the most extreme outliers isn't "very impressive" in the slightest.
Likewise, if you're pulling the trick of "oh, don't include the bits where the crime really happens", you need to do the same to the other countries you're comparing against. They have crime centers as well, and it's not an apples-to-apples comparison if you don't treat them similarly.
Now, if you're either of those, much less both...
I lived in the UAE for ~14 years, so I can give you some idea of how safe Dubai is.
- You can leave your car in a parking lot for hours, unlocked, with expensive devices clearly visible. Nobody would even come close to it.
- There is no need to lock your house when you leave. People usually do though, because it just make sense to do so.
- You can walk virtually anywhere in Dubai at any time of night, completely alone. Nobody will bother you.
- The UAE has some of the friendliest police I've ever seen. Oh, and they are extremely professional and responsive, and are insanely good at what they do [1].
In my 14 years living there, I have never once been robbed, have never even witnessed a crime or robbery, nor have I ever heard of someone (e.g., friends) falling victim to one. The only incident was a break-in at the home of a family we knew. That's it.
And I hear that Doha is even safer than Dubai!
[1]: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Assassination_of_Mahmoud_Al-Mabh...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/may/27/dubai-...
What do you mean by "tourists"? Did you miss the part where I say that I lived in the UAE for 14 years?
The Bronx is not a terribly safe place either.
Sure, downtown/midtown Manhattan are very safe, but Manhattan is a minority of the overall area of NYC.
Also... in which parts of Queens did you feel unsafe? Queens is actually quite safe.
Not all nor even a majority of homeless people developed countries are aggressive or unpredictable, but the risk is higher. Around here most of them are quite tame and humble, at least most of the time, and I'd much rather use the word "weak" than "bad", though.
But yes, homeless people can be scary. Being a stranger in SF, I was somewhat alarmed when driving in the city and finding myself in a central neighbourhood where I wouldn't want to stop at the red light.
It was perfectly fine in the end.
The thing is if you are showing bling in some form or simply being unaware, you are at risk _anywere_ in a city. Hell I got cash-robbed inside a Times Square restaurant when I was 18, thinking I was getting a good deal on a Sony ultra slim CD player with 30 seconds skip buffer.
Which European city are you referring to? The major European cities (e.g., Paris, London, and Berlin) don't fit this description either.
Or for another city center, I go downtown inner harbor/fells point/federal hill Baltimore at night plenty. Most city centers in America are perfectly safe any time of day.
Also: Munich, it's unbelievable safe, more boring than berlin, but safer.
I've never once felt not safe, or seen violence.
I see the news and I really wonder if I'm living in a different country.
She realises that there are bad things in Mexico, but sometimes she actually feels more scared here in Europe due to the terrorist events that have happened lately. Though there has been only one in my country, she really hates going to Brussels.
As she tells me, it is worse with terrorism because it involves civilians minding their own business, whilst most of the terrible news from Mexico actually happens due to narcos and not to random civilians on the street.
As I have not lived in Mexico, I can't really compare the two. But by the sounds of her and her family, it's not as bad as the news would have you believe. (Or, alternatively, they happen to live in a good part of Monterrey / Mexico).
The places you listed are all the safe states, which effectively is a different country.
It's not super complex, the states near the Gulf/Yucatan are generally the safe ones.
http://www.geocurrents.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Mexic...
FWIW, Baja California Sur, though not near Gulf/Yucatan is pretty low on the list too.
Baja California and Sonora have significantly lower rates than Chihuahua, but all three border the US.
I now live in Guanajuato, and the only crime I've heard of first or second hand in the years in mx was a worker taking some cash which was laying around, and some gringo's stealing from each other.
On the other hand I lost three friends in hurricane Odile, so I guess don't forget nature can be a much bigger threat if not given enough respect.
Didn't expect to find someone on HN living in El Bajío. :)
I think a good first step would be changing attitudes towards drug use. We should treat users as patients instead of criminals. And waging a 'war' against dealers and smugglers has only made them more violent and dangerous, while driving up prices and making those who survive even wealthier. There needs to be smarter policies.
Garry Webb and Michael Rupert were two amazing reporters that brought to light the reality of the CIA funded cocaine trade from South and Central America, and most people today have either never heard of them or dismiss them as crazy. The reality is the CIA still funds itself with cocaine and still causes violence south of our border for the industries that would benefit. United Fruit, Bay of Pigs, the 1973 Coupe of Chile, School of the Americas... the list is as long as you want to make it.
This comic sums it up: http://imgur.com/a/Wtt6H
This is occasionally obfuscated, but it is utterly true. There are basically two kinds of guns (of the kind you can use to enforce this "war") in the world stage: AK-like (Russian, eastern European, and Chinese included) and AR-like (MXX(X) and modified civilian, from dealers and left over from military/agency operations). The AR-like guns are extremely common in Mexico, and they obviously are all American made. There are also a lot of AK-like weapons, which are... also all American. Bare minimum, they are legally bought in the US and smuggled into Mexico.
These facts are often overlooked by claims that you can't be sure where the guns come from- 87% of the 4000 guns we can track come from the US, but that only represents 12% of the 30,000 guns seized. The real fact is the Mexican military has seized over 300,000 guns[1], and very few of those AK-like guns come from Russia or China. The overwhelming majority of those weapons had to have been built or sold in America.
In the US there's a huge amount of disbelief that we can actually be the source of these guns. I honestly think that comes from a mistaken belief that guns actually exist everywhere... America is a giant gun store, the biggest on the block, saying they need to keep selling guns because of all these guns everybody keeps buying.
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20090703011254/http://www.sfgate...
As an unrelated thing, I find it mind boggling that immigration is still an explicitly national issue in America. Refugees and immigrants would be much better handled if they were done on a per-state basis. If California wants to let in a ton of Mexicans and issue them state-only green cards, why should Texas be able to vote to stop them? Likewise if Texas wants to exclude immigrants, why should California force Texas to give them jobs?
State-only green card programs would allow immigrants to be carefully tracked (national green card holders face deportation if their residence is not on file), gives them incentive to go from states where they aren't wanted to those where they are, and allows national money and patrol efforts to be focused where they are wanted. Immigrants can't steal Texan jobs if they live in California.
This has very little negative changes- since many/most illegal immigrants are here on overstayed visas (anecdotally, every one of the illegal immigrants I know), and because travelling from a state into inner states is so easy, it doesn't make enforcement particularly harder. Since immigrants have a readily available alternative in the states that want them, stricter enforcement of illegal immigration is much more justifiable.
All this system requires is that the federal government maintains and checks on a list of expanded green card holders (ie non-citizens) that are restricted to certain states. This system is already in place for normal green card holders. If you aren't where you're supposed to be, the feds start looking with you, with the added advantage of having a last known location, picture, description, identifiers, and information about your family and friends. It would be much easier to track people who entered legally, and justifies much stronger controls over illegal entry.
Hypothetical situation: California says "okay we'll take 30,000 Syrian refugees annually". The Feds screen, admit, and register 30,000 Syrians and tell them "Okay, you are not citizens- you can't leave California without a visa, you can't vote, and you might never become citizens. You may live and work in California as long as you pay state and federal taxes, and you can use public education and medicaid (after ten years). You will be tried for a felony if you leave California. We will check with your landlord, check on where you pay taxes, and stop by every 3-6 months to verify where you are". In return the refugees provide everything a normal green card holder does- name, identification, family, location, occupation etc.
Edit: the best argument I've heard against this is the deontological one. Essentially that the feds should be the only ones who control who enters the union, and that since they are the feds they can't contain people in one state. This argument completely disregards the possibility of the feds making deals with states.
If somehow guns stopped flowing across the border, and cartels still wanted them, they'd be up and running in no time. I'd be surprised if they aren't already doing it, because they have other operations that require much more sophistication.
Preface: I know guns, I like guns, I am a competent machinist and I know all about lowers, gun laws, and the shovel AK. It is not easy to make guns. You need huge factories and while the cartels are theoretically capable of such things, its incomparable to US-based gun manufacture. Mexican factories can be shut down. Mexico can do nothing about guns that come from the US. They can do far less to stop it than we can do to stop drugs from coming into America, and we have been able to do practically nothing.
Manufacturing AKs requires can be done by a blacksmith, but you can't hire ten thousand blacksmiths to produce a gun each every day. You need stamping presses, metal casting, etc. and you will never make a gun as good as a factory. That's just ignorant thinking- the steel, the manufacture, the precision all matter.
>If somehow guns stopped flowing across the border, and cartels still wanted them, they'd be up and running in no time.
That's nonsense. People can make cars from scratch in their garages, but if you stop selling cars to a country they will very quickly not have any more cars. Guns are not that complicated but they aren't that simple. Zip guns have never and will never be a problem in countries with even a partially functional government.
This whole "we can't stop them from getting guns" is emblematic of the magical thinking I was referring to. The scale of the number of guns coming from the US is just way, way beyond what is practical or even possible in other countries. There are plenty of reasons we shouldn't stop guns from flowing into Mexico, but it is a real problem that would no longer exist if we didn't let US guns go to Mexico. There's just no way they would be able to get even a fraction as many guns, anywhere close to the same quality. The US is unique in the entire world for how many (and how many kinds of) guns it has[1]. It's not possible to just go to Russia or China- of the countries that have the most guns the only ones who don't buy them all from the US are Switzerland (where my family immigrated from, incidentally) and France, and they certainly aren't selling to Mexicans.
[1]: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/small-arms-survey-countries-wit...
There are some surprisingly primitive yet successful gun factories in the third world.
[1] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/the-cartel-gunsmi...
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/town-ak-47-sells-les...
I was there a while ago - it's a fun place and for a few dollars you can take an AK out behind the shack and let rip. Usually the tourists use Russian ones and they are less likely to explode on you than the local copies.
That was straight out of Nixon's aide's mouth. Openly admitting that the white conservative establishment sought ways to oppress and commit genocide on "racially inferior" demographic.
It's now Mexicans and Muslims turn. They are the new "Japs". It seems like hatred and segregation is constant driving force at unifying this country.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richa...
I find it completely plausible and it's very much in line with my political leanings to believe it, but still.
I've been making a point in recent months to make particular note of things that confirm my own biases, as the last six months have suggested that everything I know is wrong, at least as far as people are concerned...
Well that sounds interesting. Mind expounding on that? :)
Possibly someone downvoted it because they fall under the same establishment or an offspring of that 'Murica generation.
edit: I don't understand the downvotes. This comment contains instructions on how to find the desired source of my original comment which was actually published and publicized in printed media. If you have trouble with Googling, I suggest restarting your computer. Otherwise, trying to deny the track record of systematic racial oppression evident long after the end of racial segregation through downvoting, you are going against history of USA.
Then why is it so hard to include it yourself? It's poor form to make statements from sources and omit those sources. Unless you typed that from memory, you had one of those sources handy when you made the comment, so you could have included it easily, rather than make every person that read it have to determine whether they believed it as even worth researching to see if it is real or something you made up.
> I don't understand the downvotes.
> Possibly someone downvoted it because they fall under the same establishment or an offspring of that 'Murica generation.
> If you have trouble with Googling, I suggest restarting your computer.
People aren't denying anything. Perhaps your attitude is the cause of the downvotes. Regardless of why you were originally downvoted, imagining it might be because they aren't acting in good faith or are incapable of assessing your comment on its merit isn't exactly a useful way to move forward.
For myself, usually I remember someone said something in a vague way that I think it relevant (often a prior HN submission of some sort), and I start using google and hn.algolia.com to start looking stuff up until I find the article. comment or submission I thought I remembered or I give up. My quotes are generally less quotes and more notes about what I think are interesting references to the discussion at hand. I imagine if even only one out of fifty people reading do that for the whole submission, it still might add up rather quickly.
Of the things I do reference, I generally find I'm likely to use them multiple times over a few months. As things are in recent memory, I see more connections. Sort of like after you learn a new concept you see places to use it all over. It feels like it's just topical all of a sudden, but I suspect it's mostly just that prior to learning it those times weren't strong enough to leave an impression in memory, making it feel like you didn't hear about it before when actually you did.
:Q find-relevant-Hacker-News-quote <URL>
It then fetches the Hacker News URL, analyzes the text and finds a relevant quote that contrasts the average sentiment of the comments and then posts it.
The plugin will even post this text.
:Q post-explaination <URL>
:)
If someone is so concerned about sources, they can include it in the reply after the parent.
Nobody likes people who complain but won't do anything about it.
If the lack of citation bothers you so much, maybe you should include it yourself. Nobody else gives a shit in case you haven't noticed.
The original comment had no citation yet it received upvotes, contrary to your view of HN. Everyone is intimate with Google and they can follow the instructions in this thread to find the appropriate sources. If you want citation in the format you find in academic papers, that is on you, not the original commentator.
I can't help you any further but there are plenty of comments being posted as we speak that lack citations, you better get on that quick!
No, it's a forum where the norm is that if you are going to make factual assertions where you aren't the source, you should include the source.
> If someone is so concerned about sources, they can include it in the reply after the parent.
Which is just making everyone else do your work for you. It's fine, if you want to make assertions and not include sources, you'll either be ignored by some number of people, or depending on how different the assertion is to their worldview, possibly downvoted.
If you're interested in having a discussion, sources help. If you're just interested in putting your mark down and saying something because you have the urge, then they don't really matter.
The norm that the person making claim bears the burden of persuasion in supporting that claim with appropriate evidence and/or reasoning (citations being a means of referencing pre-existing examples of the former) existed for centuries before Wikipedia.
German firearms are also used in the middle east conflict despite of the "strict weapon export regulations".
Nothing new in politics since 2000 years: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_rule
But then the US clamped down on the Caribbean route. And now cocaine was moving through Mexico. Now most illegal marijuana comes from Canada. So Mexican gangs are mainly moving cocaine (and heroin).
So yes, it's the US drug problem, and the War on Drugs, that's fucked over Mexico.
https://qz.com/874497/mexico-is-moving-toward-medical-mariju... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/18/former-preside...
Legalization implies regulation of some sort (e.g. like alcohol). You could also have a government-run monopoly.
The point is to remove the billions of dollars in black-market profits which give rise to criminal organizations who cannot depend on the law to resolve their disputes and must therefore "make their own law".
Tom Wainwright, former Mexico correspondent of The Economist, has an insightful and entertaining book on this, Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel.
D.F. is an alias for Mexico City. From Wikipedia:
On January 29, 2016, [Mexico City] ceased to be called the Federal District (Spanish: Distrito Federal or D.F.) and is now in transition to become the country's 32nd federal entity, giving it a level of autonomy comparable to that of a state.
I am curious why you grouped political and social conservatism with poverty.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/mexicos-presidential-el...
It also means a lower rate of literacy which correlates the world over with social and religious conservatism. Quoting Harvard: ".. economic downturns have contributed to periods of increased social conservatism that have brought right-wing political parties to prominence"
How much of this terror is coming from "war on drugs"?
It is essentially funding terror and when you see the billions being made in only a few states such as Colorado with 1+ billion in 2016 [1]. Large amounts of wealth, probably 50-100+ billion going to cartels in the south annually to fund very bad things.
Prohibition always creates a criminal black market that becomes uncontrollable when there is a large demand for a product that is illegal. Better to make it legal, remove the revenue for cartels and use some for taxes and lots of jobs in the US. Colorado already has 20k jobs from ending prohibition on marijuana, that could be a 200k nationwide job creator. Legal markets, education, rehabilitation and safe use could also provide many jobs.
Legal marijuana markets in the US are already at such high growth rates that they rival the dot com boom growth [2]. It makes pro-business and safety sense to legalize and make it a health issue not a criminal one, because the criminalization of it is creating very bad blow back and funding terror essentially, destroying privacy and lives along the way. The punishment of non-violent drug users, enforcement and resulting black market criminals are way worse than the act and it is cruel and unusual punishment on individuals and people now on a massive scale worldwide.
[1] http://www.marketwatch.com/story/marijuana-tax-revenue-hit-2...
[2] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-04/legal-marijuana-sales-...
"The Nixon campaign in 1968 and the Nixon White House after that had two enemies: the antiwar Left and black people... We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black. But by getting the public to associate hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily"[1]
So taking into account things like cultural prejudice. Those things are unlikely to be fixed just with good will and altruism.
Except for that pesky sovereignty thing.
It's odd reason given that narcotics are/were supposedly one of the principal sources of the Taliban’s financing.
Even in iraq the oil reserves are managed by the iraqi ministry and went mostly to chinese companies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Iraq_relations#R... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/world/middleeast/china-rea...
If, through inaction, violent warlords displace thousands or millions of people, are the destination countries not adversely affected? The US has millions of economic and war-affected Mexican refugees.
Same with Syria... should Germany, Turkey, Greece, etc. say "Syria is sovereign, nothing we can do" when their countries are being overrun?
The US should look to improve life in Mexico and reduce cartel power first through economic and peaceful political means, and then, PERHAPS and after much thought, bombing the shit out of every cartel leader on the same night, Godfather style. I'm only half kidding.
This is false. According to the DHS, less than 1400 refugees have been granted asylum between fiscal years 2013 to 2015 (inclusive) [1].
> Same with Syria... should Germany, Turkey, Greece, etc. say "Syria is sovereign, nothing we can do" when their countries are being overrun?
Why not?
> The US should look to improve life in Mexico and reduce cartel power first through economic and peaceful political means, and then, PERHAPS and after much thought, bombing the shit out of every cartel leader on the same night, Godfather style. I'm only half kidding.
Doesn't seem like what the current administration is doing, though.
[1] https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2015/tab...
And "Why not"? Because of my point: Syrian war is having a very real, direct impact on the other countries, and is violating the Non-Aggression Principle. So even if someone is a Libertarian or non-absolute Pacifist, it could be argued those countries most affected by refugees have the right to self-defense against Syrian combatants.
Narconomics is a good read on the various measures that have been tried. Going after poor South American farmers these days means the cartels just means the cartels don't pay them as much.
Far too much policy making around narcotics is done by knee-jerk reactions, on both sides.
But they are the only people who can.
Says who?
What we are doing now is broken, has been broken, and everyone knows it's broken. There are hidden motives here, no doubt. Corruption is a very real thing and there are a lot of people with a lot at stake regarding drug policy.
The most important thing to successful drug prohibition and treatment is a semi-controllable grey market.
How do you explain nearly all of Latin America having wild murder rates? All of the most dangerous non-war zone countries on earth are in Latin America. And yet that same murder & violent crime problem isn't represented in Canada. What could possibly explain that consistency across ~15 different Latin American nations, except that it's a cultural and institutional problem? Colombia for example has seen dramatic improvements, despite the US demand for drugs increasing in the last 15 years. Or take Venezuela, one of the most dangerous nations, with a truly shocking murder rate, and it has very little to do with the US drug demand. Or take Brazil, a nation of 200 million with a murder rate 7 to 10 times that of the US (with up to half of all murders unreported in official stats), which also doesn't derive its huge murder problems from the US drug demand.
It's far too simplistic to just blame the US for everything.
Stop it in Colombia and it shifts to Mexico. Stop the routes along all of Mexico and the Caribbean and who knows - no reason to be so sure it absolutely couldn't happen in Canada.
[0] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/latin_america-jan-june11... [1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/guatemalas-...
Nowadays it doesn't matter as much since a significant amount of production can be done in greenhouses and there are other more synthetic products with market share, but the damage is already done to those poorer countries, and the cartels already wield too much influence.
American and Canadian institutions are stronger. They have been able to stand.
Prohibition transforms capital spent by drug users into income for drug cartels. Under full legalization, drug users would have as little incentive to buy their drugs from street vendors as alcoholics would want to buy their liquor from some guy standing on a street corner.
The great news is that we are entirely responsible for this mess ourselves, so we can fix it if we want to.
Maybe legalization for only people who are proven addicts, but are probably the bulk of the cartel revenue would give a more favorable result ?
In general, lack of availability is not a strong limiting factor even in countries with full criminalization; illegal drugs can be bought by anyone willing, there exists a market in any population center.
On the other hand, drugs being available in a controlled environment makes it easier to recover from addiction, and also limits the proliferation of various highly addictive chemicals which wouldn't be preferred or used by anyone if e.g. simpler opiates were available.
Saying that full legalization will cause a huge increase in drug addiction sounds plausible, but what evidence we have (e.g. Portugal decriminalization) shows that it doesn't really cause any disaster.
That's already an acceptable risk with cigarettes and alcohol, and marijuana in some places, why should it not be acceptable for everything else?
1. We have the option as a consumer of not buying illegal drugs?
2. Cartels have the option of not doing horrific things?
Of course, in 2017 it's easier to set up a clandestine press organization using the internet, but I'm certain that there are many valuable lessons to learn from WW2.
I far prefer www.borderlandbeat.com
Very committed group working with material to translate into English to spread knowledge about the goings on in the large scope of the country. Many different regions / players. Just a suggestion.
I'm curious, what risk(s) do you mean? If you mean NSFW and disturbing violence, you're right, and I apologize to anyone who didn't get that - I assumed given the topic it would be self evident.
Also I second your endorsement of Borderland Beat, that's what I actually read as a non-Spanish speaker.
That's the main concern of why I don't visit, but in a secondary category is I've seen several instances where the Borderland Beat crew fact-check and note that BDN has recycled old material / videos under the guise of new information. I don't see that as helpful so I keep that under advisement.
Might not be a surprise but Breitbart apparently is staffing a Cartel / Mexico Crime crew to a decent extent and I have given them a look here and there. Viable sources are viable, and that's a dangerous as all get out sector to be in, so if they can get facts reported, I'll check them out / cross-reference with Borderland Beat.
Everyone needs to be free to speak their minds. Freedom of speech is for everyone.
No. There is no place in the world for antisemitism, homophobia or other right-extremist views. These "opinions" are direct threats to people. And when the state, as it often does, fails to protect the marginalized, then in my opinion nearly anything is acceptable to stop these "opinions" from being expressed.
We in Germany already have seen what happens when you let Nazis speak out and act in free, and the same goes for Stalinist ideologies - and also in America we see what happens. Evil to the core, all of it.
I think the issue comes to honesty and truth. Generally, far right anti semitic articles are untrue.... Unless they are about Israel. The problem isn't the facts (Israeli missile strike takes out 3 Palestinian citizens or whatever), it's the analysis after (alt-right paper: "it's the Jew's fault," ISIS paper: "it's America's fault," Israeli paper: "three terrorist sympathizers killed in heroic military action"). That's a narrative, and that's nearly impossible to contro sanely, if you are perfectly honest with yourself. Would you strip away a Unions right to push a pro worker narrative? Would you strip Apple's rights to push a pro-corporate narrative? Would you strip a black man's rights to claim he is experiencing racism? What about a white man's rights to claim that racism isn't as big of an issue as the black man says?
There are viewpoints that to you seem so wrong you firmly believe it's be safe to just make them illegal, but that mindset is just an outright dangerous precedent to set because of how fluid human morality and language is.
I'm curious to hear how you feel about this, it is an interesting (and very, very old) debate.
I mean, the U.S. already has one of those, the whole "fighting words" exception, other countries have a few of their own. It is not entirely clear to me that banning say "open calls to organized violence or coordinated reprisals against members of an ethnic or religious group, on the basis of membership into such group" would be to the detriment of political discourse.
Don't get me wrong, as I said, I am more often on the corner of extreme free speech than its opposite, but saying that the only other alternative is broad censorship is a bit of a strawman. Even with things like eugenics, which I do find instinctively abhorrent, you can easily craft a clear line where things like "I believe group A is better at X than group B, here is my social science study about it and supporting evidence" are perfectly valid speech (and people can engage with that if they so wish and counter speech with speech until the truth emerges), but where continuing with "therefore we must get rid of all B" is considered axiomatically unacceptable. One is a question of facts, the other is a matter of societal ethics.
As for Mexico, by the way, since I am from there, let me point out that the issue with the safety of journalists in the country now a days (vs say in the sixties) has very little to do with whether we have freedom of speech as a value (we do, both legally and as a society, maybe not to the extreme of the U.S. but to a higher degree than many countries where this is not as big of a problem). The issue is the weakness and capture of the state, where no matter what the people want or the laws say, the state is not able to protect people or enforce laws (in part because it is materially incapable, in part because it is corrupt and colluded).
For example, antisemitism and homophobia are two concepts that the parent thinks should be banned. But that right away leads to contradictions. If I ask you a question, “Should orthodox rabbis marry gay couples?” your answer could be deemed as either antisemitic (“yes”), or homophobic(“no”). Your best bet is to stay silent on that question!
So, I do understand not wanting to allow directly threatening speech on a specific group. It’s just such a tricky thing to codify such a ban without inadvertently stifling freedom of thought and opinion. What you really do is hone the dog-whistling capabilities of those who would organize to commit violence.
This isn't an exception to free speech protections.
'In 1942 the Supreme Court held that the government could prohibit "fighting words" — "those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace." The Supreme Court has been retreating from that pronouncement ever since. [...] the only remaining focus is on whether the speech will provoke immediate face-to-face violence. '
Quoted from https://www.popehat.com/2015/05/19/how-to-spot-and-critique-...
For what its worth, there are not small groups of people running around with Hakenkreuz flags and SS uniforms in the US. A dishonor to all the victims of the Third Reich. Please do not tell me you find this acceptable in any way.
I absolutely find it acceptable. It's proof that the 1st Amendment is alive and well. Consider these groups as the canaries in a coal mine. As soon as they're shut down, based solely on the content of their ideas, the whole point of free speech is doomed.
You may think that only certain categories of ideas should be protected speech, and strive to enact that into law. But when the political winds change and your ideas become unacceptable, you'll have nothing to stand on when your speech is criminalized.
How 'not small', particularly in relation to a nation of over 300 million people?
>Please do not tell me you find this acceptable in any way.
I do not find such content acceptable in any way. But freedom of assembly and speech is baked into the United States' DNA, and rightfully so. Take a look at the Skokie case[0] - offensive stuff, but the ACLU stuck up for them anyways, and it ended up setting a legal precedent in the Supreme Court.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union...
Simple, explicit, appealing and emotional arguments and messages beat out complex, tacit, unattractive, and logical ones.
Messages with massive organisation and resources behind them can dominate disorganised or uncentralised attempts to counter them.
Attempting to reput or fact-check specific claims operates relatively poorly.
The consequence has been that many regimes, and philosophers, including those who generally promote free speech, such as John Stuart Mill himself in "On Liberty", put conditions and limitations on the concept:
It is a piece of idle sentimentality that truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power denied to error, of prevailing against the dungeon and the stake. Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for error, and a sufficient application of legal or even of social penalties will generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either. The real advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it, until some one of its reappearances falls on a time when from favourable circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made such head as to withstand all subsequent attempts to suppress it.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything...
But freedoms have always been dangerous. I think they are worth the risk.
In Chechenya, only two days ago homophobes murdered at the very least three homosexual people, arrested over a hundred - and credible activists fear for much worse numbers.
Fascist and reactionary ideologies always lead to death.
There's no evidence that type of control really does anything to help.
EDIT: as always, am I being downvoted because I said something disagreeable, or because I said something wrong? If I am saying wrong things, please tell me so I don't continue to do so.
Free speech and evil are not causal links.
This is your major fallacy. You're trying to imply that the Holocaust was possible because Germany had free speech for all, which is completely wrong--it was possible because the Nazis were successful in denying free speech to their opponents.
I am totally willing to accept the theory that Germany did not suppress Nazism enough, but I'm worried that's not actually the answer.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Germany#West_Ger...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/03/29/felony...
Indeed it doesn't, which is why fraud has been illegal since the foundation of the country.
Is "disinformation" the same as fraud? Who shall decide what constitutes "intentional disinformation" and what doesn't, and at what point it rises to fraudulence? We already have laws that address these questions -- how do you suggest modifying them?
If we're using the election as a meter of the impact of this "disinformation", and, obviously we are, since the moral panic over "fake news" was a propaganda campaign to respond to Clinton's loss, it would seem that the country is pretty split over whose information is credible, and which side is perpetrating a fraud.
Let people decide and listen to the sources that they find credible. Why is the market not good enough? Is it because you don't like the decisions people make when they're free to select their own sources of truth?
How long until I should expect to see you at church, pulling the minister away from the pulpit to correct his "disinformation"? Wait -- don't answer that.
How can we have any freedom once we go down this road? It goes right back to the old ways of "might makes right". Whomever has the most power at the time will be able to decree some speech "fraud" and "disinformation" and punish people for speaking ideas that are too dangerous to entrust to the hoi polloi.
You know that in restrictive regimes, they don't go around saying "It's great living in a non-free country." They go around saying "We are free here, we just don't allow evil men to defraud the people with lies".
Ultimately, I guess it's in the eye of the beholder. Just gotta watch it to make sure nothing you believe ever shifts out from under you and becomes "hate speech", "disinformation", or, plainly, "fraud" without your realizing it.
Yes, and in a free speech society, whomever has the most power and/or money at the time will be able to take advantage of free speech to conduct widespread and targeted disinformation and harassment campaigns - under a false flag of "angry citizens" - that can change (and have changed) the course of history.
It cuts both ways, sadly.
Assuming you mean the Mexican constitution, it's kind of vague:
Article 6 . The expression of ideas shall not be subject to any judicial or administrative investigation, unless it offends good morals, infringes the rights of others, incites to crime, or disturbs the public order.
"Offends good morals" is not defined anywhere, so it's up to interpretation whether that includes fraud. "Infringes the rights of others" is defined in various places, but in similarly vague terms.
Fraud usually has to do with commercial statute (in the U.S., the UCC), where misrepresenting goods is grounds for a civil dispute.
And yes you are correct in saying that this should in no way should prevent or limit people from speaking their minds and stating their opinions publicly.
You have the right to publish anything you like without fear of retribution from the government or anybody else. This, along with the freedom to assemble, allows minority opinions to flourish through peaceful persuasion. It also allows sunlight into actions of criminals and the government.
The crime against humanity here is that these folks do not feel safe to publish. Not that there are journalists being threatened. That's just the current method being used to shut the presses down. There are plenty of other methods that outside organizations use to shut down publishing -- burning buildings, violence against readers, blackmailing editors, having the government buy the presses, and so on. For every Mexico, there are several other countries where the presses have effectively been shut down -- only not so dramatically as this. That's actually a much worse situation.
In the US, 1st amendment freedoms only protect against government retribution. There is nothing stopping someone from misinterpreting a tweet and getting you fired, nor is there anything to prevent someone digging up what causes you support outside of work and using that as cause to harass your employer into firing you.
For example, it is illegal to murder an convicted felon serving time in prison, even though such a person doesn't have the same guarantee of freedom of speech.
Tortious interference needs to come back in a big way while Trump is in office. Maybe put some harsh jailtime for it.
https://www.rcfp.org/browse-media-law-resources/digital-jour...
Then, the "real journalist" could be just a matter of having capability, devotion and determination, not a class of people with special status.
Unfortunately too much of "journalism" is nowadays just activism, using their position to try to influence others (end even shut down the voice of other people because they think this is even more effective influencing).
Also I was distracted by trying to figure out whether that was a really small mustache or some sort of birthmark.
Don't forget about JournoList: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList .
The facebook rant about it: https://www.facebook.com/sugeyry/posts/10154385439001931?pnr...
Keep in mind that this is a journalist talking about a decision made the by owner of the paper a while ago, the original decision haves nothing to do with the death of Miroslava Breach or with some pressure of drug gangs. This paper was under the payroll of the late government now followed for corruption and money laundry (Cesar Duarte former governor is hidden at El Paso at this moment). And the "it is too dangerous to continue" is more a political cry out than any other thing.
Yes: times are still hard at Juarez, journalism is still a high risk job. But this is not a statement.
I cannot imagine living in a country where posting something online, like a silly blog post, risks my life.
JK Rowling got them for writing about child wizards. Planned Parenthood supporters get them. Trump electors have gotten them. Kim Kardashian (ugh) got them for a tweet supporting Israel.
It's easy to find lists of Americans that have received death threats, but much harder to find Americans actually killed because of their silly posts. Would love to read more about it.
can you name one?
Why do people have such a hard time accepting refugees of such violence?
This isn't directed at the parent commenter, of course.
To clarify a little bit, the newspaper is from a northern state. And yes, things in the northern states are rather violent and dangerous. But to be honest the really bad state is the one close to the capital, Estado de México which has many violent crime, crime against women, etc. We even joke that is like Mad Max fury road. Yes that bad.
Yet people go to work, to school and carry on.
As everything there are many sides and conflicting interests. Yet violence and crime are just one more bad thing to worry, being traffic and low income being other stuff you have to take into consideration.
As tourists you could always go to many other places instead of Ciudad Juárez or Tijuana since those two have become cities for degenerate people from other countries to abuse and commit atrocities and get away with it for the only reason that they have the dollars.
Not even close.
A couple of years ago on a SINGLE year there were some 5 or 6 narco-blockades in Guadalajara for example (that's one every few months and we are talking 25 to 35 buses lit on fire in the middle of the day, across major streets that prevent people from entering or leaving the city for several hours, on each blockade event, all around the city at the same time, which btw shows how coordinated these criminal groups are). Have you personally been there? It's really not a nice sight and it's frightening as shit. Especially when they happen so frequently that at some point you just have to ignore it to be able to carry on with your life?
Have you been to Xalapa, the capital of Veracruz? where armed people dressed as Federal Forces kidnap people with impunity? Have you had to move around in the city in daylight and watch how military convoys armed to the teeth go around patrolling the streets instead of the Police (mind you this is a town that has a population of less than 1M, i.e. it's more of a town than a big city so people are not used to military presence)?
Have you been to Veracruz city where the Navy had to literally disarm the local police and take control of police duties for a few months? how about getting stopped by a military checkpoint in the middle of the city? especially after watching in the news how many times military personnel at those same checkpoints fired upon (and killed) entire families because they felt threatened?
Have you ever talked to someone that got arrested AND tortured by the police because they thought (incorrectly) that the guy was a member of the cartel? and then seeing this person suffer permanent hearing loss on one side because of how many times his captors slammed his ear against the wall repeatedly for hours at a time?
I've personally lived all these things and let me tell you, "the really bad state is the one close to the capital" is not true at all. Not sure if it's the news not reporting these things, or maybe there's so much shit going on in EdoMex (which I know it's not really a peaceful place) that there's simply no more room for bad news from other parts of the country, but you can definitely find much worse in other states.
Let's not even talk about Guerrero, where I have friends that witnessed headless bodies being dumped on the road... and then having some shady car follow them to their home because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time.
I'm sorry for being so crude... Mexico is a wonderful country full of great things and I love it. But crazy, crazy shit does happen outside of the capital and EdoMex, and while it's definitely not something that happens everyday, it's always a constant fear in the back of your head... "what if they kidnap MY family because their business was successful enough to stand up?", "what if my girlfriend goes out tonight to some bar that happens to have fucking military-grade grenades thrown at because some random cartel dude wanted to celebrate that same night at that same place?"
http://www.insightcrime.org/news-briefs/mexico-impunity-leve...
http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/europe/russias-99-convi...
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/05/world/americas/mexico-sup...
Decriminalization is better than nothing but actually misses out on most of the benefits.
Basically people in towns ravaged by narcos got fed up with it and started defending themselves because they couldn't trust the local/federal authorities to defend them anymore. A very brave thing to do if you ask me.
However... the sad part is that, on the one hand, fighting an armed group with so much man- and fire-power as the different cartel groups have, it's very hard. Especially because a lot of these narco armed forces have actual military training and even when not, they are so ruthless and savage that it's hard to fight back. The sheer amount of terror these groups can inflict is staggering.
Some of these towns that chose to defend themselves were some time later attacked by huge convoys of 100+ attackers armed with grenade launchers, automatic weapons, frigging M60s and even heavier ones (some groups have anti-air guns strapped to the back of their trucks)... and most importantly, these attackers were ready to kill on sight, whereas the townspeople were armed with hunting rifles and some handguns and definitely not with the same blood lust and ability (or even the nerve) to kill people.
Lots of these towns are now deserted because people had to fled to the surrounding areas after such violent payback attacks.
And to top it all off, if you at least had the government NOT intervene either way... well, you could maybe stand your ground for some time. The problem is that in most of these places the government authorities where actually against having armed civilian forces (and in some cases even in cohoots with the narcos), so they would have to fight both against armed forces AND against government propaganda ("these are not self-defense forces, they are just another narco group taking hold of the town") plastered all over the country in major newspapers and tv stations (which de-legitimizes those self-defense forces that are actually trying to, you know, defend themselves), while at the same time local and federal forces trying to dis-arm them.
It's a really complicated problem for which I definitely have no idea how to solve.
Just imagine having to stand up and defend your town against a military force that, by some estimations, could reach upwards of 15,000 armed men... in one cartel alone. What can a town with a total population of...what... 3,000? 10,000 people? do against a heavily armed and trained para-military force?
And to be clear, those people that did try to defend themselves have my utmost respect. I can't even begin to imagine the amount of desperation you need to be in to try to fight back to such a powerful and horrific group of people.
But in the end it's heartbreaking to see them defend themselves to just later have them be wiped out or threatened with so much torture and terror that it boggles the mind.
A lot of these self-defense forces held up for maybe 2 or 3 years and are now either bought and influenced by some competing narco group or just terrorized out of their towns forever (at least that's what little info I could gather over the years of reading different news sources, both official and otherwise. Not really sure how much of that is real or not since I don't live in any of these towns).
It just doesn't seem... feasible. Maybe I'm a defeatist saying these things... but holy shit, you just have to listen to what someone like Dr. Mireles [1] had to say to get a tiny part of the terrible picture here.
The problem is much much bigger than people can imagine... and I'm not even in the front line here. I'm just some city dude "far" away (as much as "far away" can one be while living here in this country) from these realities.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Manuel_Mireles_Valve...
Cartels would just lower their prices and keep pushing to existing addicts and creating addicts. Once the price is driven down, how are 'legal' drug manufacturers expected to compete on price with taxes, licensing, overhead?
Legalizing won't stop blackmarket drugs, it will only increase it like in Colorado. http://kdvr.com/2017/03/03/black-market-marijuana-business-b...
Peruvian and Mexican metals kept them viable for a while, but that ran out long ago. Coke has barely filled the void, thanks to US prohibition.
Not even ten years ago, Venezuela was the darling of the NY Times, among others, under Chavez. Of course, gasoline was close to $4 a gallon then.
Reading up on the various canal schemes in different regions of that era and the French and then American efforts to build the Canal is very interesting.