Drugs, Murder and Mexico

now the gaga thing i quoted last night is kind of the attitude north of the border towards the problems south of it in microcosm, meaning people don't seem to care nor do they really even think about it.

not everyone mind you, obviously not.

good thread. 2666 was an incredible book & i definitely recommend it to anyone thinking through this

curious where financial resources towards alleviating this could even be directed

some problems u cant throw money at?

to answer harbl's q, i imagine casual, semi-regular, or recreational cocaine use makes up most of the use in this country, more than the use by addicts?

i imagine its similar to the liquor industry where a small % of habitual users account for a large % of sales. (iirc its something like ~5/40% w/booze)

"people just need to stop doing drugs" seems like a p retarded way to approach this. theres a good bbc documentary on the cartels & shorty guzman/sinaloa in particular that details how in certain parts of the country the cartels essentially are the state. w/o a change in u.s. drug policy you're still funding both sides in a civil war - since criminalization is what makes drugs so profitable to traffic - & the larger/systematic rationale for conflict between the cartels & the state still exists. demand reduction would weaken the cartels but drugs aren't their only source of income & they're deeply entrenched in mexican life.

their are plenty of non-drug related things that directly contribute to the violence as well. the arms industry/the nra have spent how much money derailing any attempts to control the flow of u.s. weapons into mexico? & the maquiladoras would still exist w/o the drug trade, as would human trafficking. u.s. trade & immigration policy is just as complicit in creating the current situation imo

oh btw thread title change sucks

also that charles bowden book is really good

yeah we really should have more shitty joke threads about situations involving widespread mass murder

people will ~never~ stop doing drugs, so it will continue until the governments of the world collectively decide to legalize (lol), which will also never happen in our lifetimes.

ftr I think the only "joke" in either thread title was Tom making fun of vahid and me claiming naming rights for the conversation and neither one of us was actually making light of what is happening in Mexico so try not taking out understandable anger at the situation on ppl who aren't mocking it or contributing to it

"people just need to stop doing drugs" seems like a p retarded way to approach this.

Strawman. No one is saying this is a solution, let alone a solution unto itself.

suggest banned, danny dyer

Strawman. No one is saying this is a solution, let alone a solution unto itself.

current u.s. policy does?????

Well, current US policy is not just that people should stop doing drugs, it's that massive quasi-military operations should be undertaken and/or supported against drug cartels. Obviously a failure, but more than just-say-no.

there are some halfhearted efforts at eradication and interdiction, but not much

also that certification bs -- what a load of horseshit that is. do we still certify/decertify countries based on their cooperation with our "war on drugs"?

from a may article:

http://msnbcmedia3.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/ArtAndPhoto-Fronts/AP_GRAPHICS/AP-DRUG-SPENDING.grid-6x2.gif

headline says it all

U.S. drug war has met none of its goals
After 40 years and $1 trillion, drug use is rampant and violence pervasive

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37134751/

suggest banned, danny dyer

meh

I mean deflect all you want but keeping stupid jokes in the thread title is pretty disrespectful considering the turn the thread has taken.

that gaga quote is revolting
i wonder if she would agree with the guy who works double shifts at the perdue plant who does meth so that he can work double shifts
"i'm not just doing drugs, i'm doing drugs that help my work!"

what a dipshit

there are some halfhearted efforts at eradication and interdiction, but not much

― The Great Jumanji, (La Lechera), Monday, August 30, 2010 2:45 PM Bookmark

Hundreds of millions of dollars a year in military aid to Colombia alone is "not much"? You can call it failed, futile, etc. but we spend a little too much money to call it"half-hearted"

imo: someone should make a meme image transposing gaga quote w/ newspaper headlines on teh violence. harness gaga hate for something more productive

I really didn't think I'd get back to feel "Poker Face" levels of contempt for Lady Gaga but there you go.

Oddly enough I picked up Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo just a couple of days ago...(nothing to do with drug wars it gives the impression of a suffocation of a people/landscape)

we may be throwing money at it, but what we're doing with that money seems pretty halfhearted to me. i have mixed feelings about funding the military in colombia. if we expect the existing structures to know what to do with the money, or to handle it ethically, i would say that's a weak halfhearted attempt.

not that i have any better ideas, mind you, but i would hardly call what we're doing to eradicate/interdict the actual drug shipments a fully invested holistic approach at this problem that is deeply embedded in the global economy.

this is a problem that folks that lady gaga can easily ignore b/c it happens to a class of people who are not on their radar

I don't think there's really such a thing as an adequate plan to eradicate cocaine worldwide. It's just too easy to grow, transport, hide, move, etc. The best thing you can do is de-criminalize to lower the price and minimize the incentive for violence.

cocaine is not easy to grow because it does not grow; coca is easy to grow, but the processing coca --> cocaine is actually pretty complicated iirc

it's way cheaper than it was 20-25 years ago and it's, not surprisingly, all over the place
the violence persists as well

i suppose you can't stop everyone from doing cocaine but perhaps people can have the decency not to brag about it as if it's a badge of honor or a rite of passage, considering the high human cost of the trade.

people? have decency? sadly, this is unlikely.

I really hope I don't derail this thread, but I have a couple of questions:

1) are the Ciudad Juarez murders--which, in my understanding, remain unsolve--counted in the "28000-since-2006" statistics? I thought that those had been happening since the mid-90s and seem to be an important facet of this issue while at the same time being its own phenomenon...?

2) from what I've heard Southern Texas is also being terrorized by gang- and drug-violence, particularly from the MS 13 gang...there has to be some kind of connection between what's going on down there and what's happening in Mexico, right?

i think they do count but they are there own phenomenon. i tend to think the take in 2666 is probably pretty grimly accurate. from everything i have read, it's not like in the u.s. where being snatched off the streets--even in a major city--is so unlikely that you'll likely never meet someone who ends up with that fate. there i think it's a matter of how many women you know have been killed or something. i feel like that was a quote i heard somewhere at some point. when you consider that in a city of 1.5 million, some residents suggest thousands of women have been killed in recent years, that's just its own issue. but i imagine there is considerable overlap with cartel violence. any group who is willing to toss grenades into crowds or kill rehab patients to make a point is quite likely to give in to their worst impulses in other areas, especially in a city where the police are increasingly powerless.

everybody here is strictly-and-only fair trade chocolate right? no "I couldn't resist a snickers" and shit? because child slavery is as bad as anything the cocaine cartels are up to imo

Right. I wasn't trying to say that the situation in Texas was nearly as bad, just that it was bad, and that badness was due to what I figured was cartel violence...but really I know next to nothing about the drug and gang situation in southern Texas...as far as Ciudad Juarez, I was under the strong impression that the cartels were probably esponsible for that as well, but again, that's been going on since I think the mid-90s, so that would kind of clash against statistics that have anything to do with Calderon's rise to power & his subsequent military initiatives...

i don't know if there's been a dramatic increase in the murder of women in juarez during that period or anything, but maybe the open war street violence has been the cause of the rise in the homicide rate and the other murders have remained the same as they ever were?

everybody here is strictly-and-only fair trade chocolate right? no "I couldn't resist a snickers" and shit? because child slavery is as bad as anything the cocaine cartels are up to imo

I generally avoid chocolate because I like other sweets more; I try to be "fair trade" about everything I buy but I don't control all of the shopping.

i don't really eat much chocolate but i usually end up with fair trade chocolate, i don't even have to double check. same goes for coffee as well. i had a milky way bar a few years ago, i guess.

actually haerosmith I think if anything is counterproductive it's the idea that buying "Good" products will keep your hands clean; that's why I am kind of nonplussed about the Gaga-baiting around her...I don't have a problem about coke-bragging turning La Lechera's or omar's stomach, but at the same time, "buying local weed" seems like negative altruism at best; it keeps one's conscience clean, but does fuck all for anyone else. I doubt it truly troubles in the afterlife any of those 72 migrant workers whether or not either Lady Gaga or an unemployed gas station attendant from Homer, Michigan directly contributed to the wealth of the druglords who ordered their deaths.

That being said I might stop eating chocolate. I don't really eat it too much anyways.

all we can do in our lives is try our best not to do things that directly fuck up the lives of people, even if they're people we don't see, interact with, or are thousands of miles away. i'm sure we all do that somehow, the connections between nations and corporations are too complex for that not to occur all over the place. but the least we can do is call it where we blatantly see it happening and stop contributing to it.

^^^ exactly

They don't use kids to make Cheetos, do they?

nah, pretty sure it's like heavily-processed corn and some chemicals

Oh shit, they do contain pork enzymes though. Fuck.

all we can do in our lives is try our best not to do things that directly fuck up the lives of people, even if they're people we don't see, interact with, or are thousands of miles away. i'm sure we all do that somehow, the connections between nations and corporations are too complex for that not to occur all over the place. but the least we can do is call it where we blatantly see it happening and stop contributing to it.

― ('_') (omar little), Tuesday, August 31, 2010 11:38 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah but see if we're going to concern ourselves with this kind of thing then I think there comes a point where not doing cocaine can only be seen as a good first step.

yes

unfortunately all my ideas involve the U.S. annexing northern Mexico, which:

1) is the worst idea ever.
2) is less likely than gettin eveyone in the world to either stop using cocaine or to legalize it.
3) begs the question whether or not the US are really that much more well-equipped to deal with something like this. (again, southern Texas, though one also only needs to look at Iraq)
4) is an impossibly imperialistic way of approaching the problem.
5) does nothing at all for the rest of the atrocities committed worldwide due to the systematic corruption of capitalism and our country's unreasonable demand for creature comforts.
6) ignores the fact that our country has enough problems of its own.

so yeah sorry I got nothing so far.

it's all baby steps which may lead nowhere, especially since a major decrease in drug violence in mexico and colombia might be reliant upon decriminalization of drugs by not just the u.s. but many other countries.