Drugs, Murder and Mexico

I know plenty of people who go on about the evils of coke but still bump lots of coke-rap.

out of sight, out of mind seems to be the mantra of the day

:(

A couple of questions I've been thinking about, dunno if they are worth asking but here goes-

1. I can understand that Portugal's problem was mostly heroin abuse and legal use is done in a doctors office, supervised, and not able to take any away or enough to od. But unlike heroin, cocaine is a party drug - if it was legalised, how would it be sold? No-one would care for a similar way to what i've read about this legal heroin use. Would you be able to go to a pharmacy to buy yr dose?

Ok just noticed the time and so its less a couple of questions more like one and run.

Considering how differently different states treat alcohol sales, I would imagine it would be done differently depending on where one lives. We still have dry counties in the US! I grew up in Ohio thinking that every state had drive-thru liquor stores. Whoops.

i wonder if there is an underground alcohol trade in those counties? it seems kind of pointless either way, you could drive one county over for your fix.

i think that's what most people do but who knows -- maybe there are still moonshiners?

or they drive to ohio and use a handy-dandy drive thru liquor store and then drive home

a guy i know made moonshine and shot cans in the woods with a handgun (that was what he did all the time.) i think he was being ironic but eventually ended up all too sincere.

I know plenty of people who go on about the evils of coke but still bump lots of coke-rap.

― Hubert Lolz (lpz), Thursday, 2 September 2010 17:30 (4 hours ago) Permalink

do you

I was in a speakeasy in Kentucky a couple weeks ago.

I know plenty of people who go on about the evils of coke but still bump lots of coke-rap.

― Hubert Lolz (lpz), Thursday, 2 September 2010 17:30 (4 hours ago) Permalink

do you

― the embrace of waka flocka is v pertinent (deej), Thursday, September 2, 2010 9:49 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Yeah.

not to blow ur mind or anything but i know some ppl who go on abt the evils of religion but still bump a love supreme

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/17/Saint_John_Will-I-Am_Coltrane.jpg/535px-Saint_John_Will-I-Am_Coltrane.jpg

fuck will.i.am

I was genuinely shocked when I read a recent news article saying that the current war on drogs in Mexico has led to some 30,000 deaths.

It's pretty fucking crazy. Murdering mayors, chiefs of police, army generals...

It's like a war, on drugs!

lol

itsafuckingdisgrace.gif

i know some ppl who go on about teh evils of drugs & watch the wire -- crazy!!

its almost as if ... being aware of the underground drug trade makes u MORE aware of the huge cost

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129752424

4 min npr story about arrest of "la barbie" (edgar valdez villareal of the beltran leyva cartel) -- apparently he made a videotaped statement during which he "squirmed" and called the zetas "filth"

Valdez says there was a meeting in Cuernavaca in 2007 where the top leadership of some the country’s most powerful traffickers agreed to a nonaggression pact. But Valdez says Guzman broke the deal in 2008 when he tried to take over the Juarez cartel’s base across the border from El Paso, Texas.

Valdez’s lawyer in Houston says all of the videotaped declarations by Valdez are from a script that Mexican federal police stuck in front of his client.

Has anyone else started reading the Bowden book yet? I've been reading it since Friday. I would put a choice quote in here, but there are too many. Highly recommended, but extremely and deeply depressing.

Oh, and I just heard the mayor of Juarez on the radio saying that they're not having a big group gathering for Mexico's 200th birthday celebration, but they are having fireworks shot from 6 different places in the city so that people won't have to leave their homes to see them.

The story also said that 6,000 people have been killed in Juarez alone in the last 3 years.

:(

If you can read Spanish, this is a really beautiful statement from the founder of the (first and only) juarez women's shelter
http://www.casa-amiga.org.mx/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=94&Itemid=114

She died in 2009 and I was disappointed to find that she has no wikipedia entry. Googling for her yielded the casa amiga website and a bunch of really disturbing beheading photos.

btw happy mexican independence day, everyone

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/09/17/mexico.journalist.killed/index.html?hpt=T2

journalists killed. possibility discussed: the gunman did not actually intend to kill them -- "sorry dudes we actually intended to kill a human-rights activist!"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20101020/wl_yblog_upshot/college-student-named-police-chief-in-violence-plagued-mexican-town-after-no-one-else-would-apply

^^^ that is so goddamn sad. came here to post that.

not to mention: the epic insanity regarding that jet skiing couple along the border who got shot up

i really hope this police chief manages to survive her term

theres a long article in this week's newyoker about the army office who became police chief in tijuana. it was depressing because it a) made clear that any 'gains' against the cartels are coming at horrific cost in lives and civil liberties and b) how much money the u.s. govt is spending on helping the mexican army to torture its own citizens in the war on drugs

murder city was easily one of the most depressing books i have ever read, and i have read A LOT of depressing books about latin america and depressing books about crime.

I don't think I can even keep up with the news on this anymore, it's just so fucking depressing.

murder city is incredible & like 2666 really manages to provide some small sense of the mundanity of the horror, of how commonplace and numbing it is through sheer aggregation

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/10/27/2010-10-27_entire_police_force_in_los_ramones_mexico_quits_after_gunmen_attack_headquarters.html

El Blog del Narco

que horror

Did you guys/gals read this?

(it's the article Lamp mentioned above)

Normally, in Mexico, narco-traffickers don’t tolerate aggressive law enforcement—least of all from city police, who lack the formal power to investigate serious crimes (state police do that), let alone combat drug trafficking (that’s for the federal police). Local police chiefs who annoy them are simply killed. It happened to the Tijuana police chief in 2000. It happened to the chief in Tecate, the next border town to the east, in 2007—he was murdered in bed, while lying next to his wife, with fifty shots to the face and chest. It happened to the deputy police chief in Tijuana in January, 2008, when a large contingent of gunmen surrounded his house and killed him and his wife and two daughters.

dang

15 people shot dead at a car wash

jesus

'Saint of Death' religion probed

Chandler detectives are investigating whether Mexican drug-cartel members who pray to the "Saint of Death" are responsible for the stabbing and decapitation of a man earlier this month.

"Certainly they are looking at the role that Santa Muerte (Saint of Death) played in this as that is a religion that drug cartels follow because they believe it will protect them from law enforcement," Chandler Detective David Ramer said Tuesday.

The three suspects and victim had been visiting from Mexico, according to police reports.

Candles and an Ouija (spirit) board were found in the central-city apartment. Beheadings have been known to be used as part of the Santa Muerta religion, police said.

Additionally, neighbors reported the four visitors and a neighbor of the apartment in the 300 block of West Fairview Street spoke drunkenly of the religion as they talked until the early hours of Oct. 10.

"While inside (the five men) were all talking drunk about Santa Muerte, which means the Saint of Death in Spanish, and were acting so strangely that (a resident) felt uncomfortable enough to leave the apartment a few minutes later," a police report reads.

The report released Tuesday describes the last minutes of a man who was stabbed, decapitated and left in a pool of blood. It also provides details about the four men who had been drinking with him, as well as claims by neighbors that the men practiced Santa Muerte.

The murder victim has been identified as Martin Alejandro Cota-Monroy, 38.

Police have arrested one suspect, a neighbor who was renting a bed for $100 a month in the apartment across the way. They are searching for three suspects they alternately describe as being from Mexico and California in a case they say is drug related.

"Was this guy killed as part of the religion? They are looking that this might be drug-cartel related, and we know that drug cartels practice this religion," Ramer said of Santa Muerte.

story continues at link

that New Yorker article is wild...it's as if the false dichotomoy that Bush & friends presented to us (torture & suspended habeas corpus for public safety) became a frightening reality

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/11/03/mexico.us.students.killed/index.html

(CNN) -- Two students from the University of Texas at El Paso were shot and killed Tuesday night in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Chihuahua state investigators said late Wednesday.

The students, identified as Manuel Acosta Villalobos, 25, and Eder Diaz Sotero, 23, were gunned down in a hail of more than 30 bullets while driving a Nissan Sentra with Texas plates, Chihuahua State police spokesman Arturo Sandoval said.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/11/05/photographers.journey.below.border/index.html?hpt=C1

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11703663

how long can this war burn this hot?

I don't know why I keep on clicking this thread