Drugs, Murder and Mexico

xpost I believe Merida is about 4 hours from Cancun, for reference. So it's pretty far from the coast/beach stuff.

Some U.S. arrests in the consulate-employee assassination:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/22/us-crime-usa-mexico-idUSTRE78L7JF20110922

dont know why anyone is doing coke when adderall is so plentiful, easy to get, more or less legal and not murdering mexicans

ppl who 'do' adderall are nerds, is the thing

lawl

just want 2 thank omar little for his contributions to this thread & the other linked one, I think its a v important point & one that i think is v on point

like jess im more of a drinker fwiw

(subtext of that being, not a teetotaler either but i think it entirely makes sense to recognize the horrible consequences of supporting this industry)

well duh (re: consequences of supporting this industry)
who doesn't know that? does this mean that the tide has finally turned against the "it's a party" people?

i was just clarifying why i bothered mentioning i drink lol

dont know why anyone is doing coke when adderall is so plentiful, easy to get, more or less legal and not murdering mexicans

― max, Monday, September 26, 2011 6:22 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ppl who 'do' adderall are nerds, is the thing

― this display name must in some way reference laurel halo (Lamp), Monday, September 26, 2011 7:07 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^ yeah why not just do nodoze and stay up all night watching monty python

or Mountain Dew and Family Guy?

if everyone who paid attention to this kinda news + considered themselves a 'kinda ethical consumer' stopped doing coke, would that be enough to change the market dynamic in any meaningful way? I'm gonna say probably not but I don't know how you'd even attempt to measure something like that.

this is like recycling your bottles or making sure you don't waste electricity or whatever - all things I endorse but I don't pretend like they're really 'making a difference'...real change can only come via national policy. but I mean, if you are someone who bothers to recycle your bottles, turn off the lights etc. and you still do drugs w/o really considering where they come from...well, that seems like a weird way to go through life.

― iatee, Sunday, September 25, 2011 12:55 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah must say that im always a little suspicious of peoples motivations in these situations re recycling or not doing coke or w/e - they often seem to have more of an appetite for condemning the actions of others than attempting to grapple w/the complexity of the situation or like acknowledge moral failings in their own lives

exactly where are the safe parts right now?

i lived in toluca from january to july and apart from one incident with a friend of mine getting shaken down by cops; i had no hassle. i travelled to oaxaca, queretaro, guadalajara, guanajuato and puerto escondido and had no hassle there either.

and im a lil surprised everyones all 'omg when will this violence ever end prob never' i mean its a direct result of a government thats more democratic and prosperous than its been before attempting to root out the endemic corruption and influence of the drug gangs - like whats happening is awful but if mexico is gonna continue to grow you cant have basically quasi governmental drug organizations playing such a prominent role in the country - and you know theres no way theyre going to go quietly - when you have huge malevolent forces in a country their reckoning is often v painful see like slavery and the civil war or w/e - of course the u.s. could just legalize coke and everything would be cool lol

yeah ive heard the violence is only really bad in like 5 of 30 or however many states xp

it should be noted that however bad violence in mexico is now it still pales in comparison to many central american and caribbean countries

im sure these stats are quite unreliable but fwiw http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

well, the cartels are arguably more powerful than the government is at this point, as the Mexican political process is so ridiculously corrupt that they're steeped in everywhere. plus the cartels aren't really afraid of civilian casulties. if you go down there practically everyone is against a "war on drugs" as that's whats getting innocents blown up

btw I know the violence is only "bad" in a few states but it's starting to spread, which is the real problem. I can only really speak for the Yucatan where so far nothing horrible has happened but things definitely look different now than they did 3 years ago

im sure these stats are quite unreliable but fwiw http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

I can't believe Canada even places on that list! What reason is there to murder someone up there!?

because real life has no 'suggest ban' option

I see Trinidad has moved past South Africa and has Colombia in its sights.

It's overspill from the same issue - T&T is one of the prime routes into the US / Europe for drugs from South America.

Didn't know things were that bad in Belize.

Surprised Iraq and Zimbabwe aren't on that list, but maybe it's the lack of stats.

if you go down there practically everyone is against a "war on drugs" as that's whats getting innocents blown up

― frogbs, Wednesday, September 28, 2011 10:00 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

eh i dont think this entirely accurate, in the polls ve seen people are in favor of fighting the cartels, they just dont think the government is doing a v good job of it

i mean having a more peaceful situation where drug gangs run shit isnt really such a great situation either, and the level of violence now is proof that the gangs have been destabilized, whether thats going to lead to a good outcome i have no idea

not a great situation but they're not going to just destroy the cartels in a few years, which I've heard is what the current president is trying to do. they're waay too integrated at this point. granted people's opinions change on this subject once they've had a family member threatened or kidnapped. obviously everyone wants them out but declaring a full-scale war on drugs that's putting tanks on the street and guns in the hands of potentially corrupt officers at nightclubs is not the solution

im curious to know what is the solution

I have no idea, dealing with such an omnipresent force that's not afraid to kill innocents and especially politicans is not going to be solved overnight. I would imagine it would have to start from the bottom up, first they can fix their political process to actually get intelligent people in office (believe me when I say their election process is a joke and half the people in office are in no way qualified), start paying the police more so they aren't forced to go corrupt to make ends meet, and weed out all their high-ranking politicians who are publicly connected to the cartels. Everyone in America was outraged that Cheney had a big connection to Exxon Mobil, imagine that on a much larger and worse scale and that's what's happening there.

yeah well its easy to say 'this is not the solution' but p much if youre going to try to root out these powerful well financed murderous gangs theyre going to end up killing a lot of people - im sure it could be done more skillfully than the mexican government has - but i doubt theres any sort of easy way to go about it - and of course mexico has tons other problems

anyway drugs need to be legal in the usa then we can relate to our own problems

Exactly - there are probably like 4-5 "real" solutions and so far legalizing drugs is the only one that makes any sense whatsoever

unfortunately mexico cant legalize drugs in the usa

I'm not talking in regards to what Mexico can do, I just mean a solution in general. Like I think a U.S. invasion could solve a lot of things but obviously that's not going to happen. As I mentioned I don't think Mexico can do anything that will show results anytime soon.

i mean having a more peaceful situation where drug gangs run shit isnt really such a great situation either

That was one of the interesting parts of the New Yorker article from earlier this year (linked somewhere here, though I think it's subscriber-only). It described a peaceful region, with rehab clinics run by the cartels, schools provided for, etc.--the Mafia template.

just do what they say and everythings cool

yeah must say that im always a little suspicious of peoples motivations in these situations re recycling or not doing coke or w/e - they often seem to have more of an appetite for condemning the actions of others than attempting to grapple w/the complexity of the situation or like acknowledge moral failings in their own lives

― ice cr?m, Wednesday, September 28, 2011 8:42 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

is anyone here really 'unwilling to grapple with the complexity of the situation'? idk i think its perfectly legit to judge ppl at some level for using something casually that is obviously harmful to lots of people!

like, obv i have failings, i try to be honest about those too, but it doesnt mean im not going to condemn someone for making a decision that seems u know WRONG

like hopefully none of my failings happen to fund the murder of innocents (obv just being an american makes this impossible but i dont have many alternatives to paying my taxes unfortunately)

i feel like this exact conversation has happened on another thread

thread(s)

i am sympathetic to iatee's view, but i also know that because everyone can't stop doing coke, we have a national policy (drug war) that unfairly targets minorities and the poor.

maybe you can have a drug war that doesn't, idk

i feel like this exact conversation has happened on another thread

― Art Arfons (La Lechera), Wednesday, September 28, 2011 1:50 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

possible yeah i guess nothing that im saying is new in this convo, i guess i was taken aback by ice craem's argument but maybe hes just saving this one for the 'learning how to troll' thread

he has used that argument before - i think on me, in fact! it just seemed like deja vu.

D-40 totally and 100% otm.

whatever makes you guys feel better about yourselves, I guess

it feels just great to think about all the children dying in mexico, thats why i do it

well if we're gonna start talking the impotence of recycling we can just segue straight into "is anybof this shit reaaaaaaaaally gonna matter when the environment starts getting especially 'interesting' in 50 to 75 years?" (a: no.)

50-75 years? we're already there

not quite at the americans shanking each other for drinking water stage yet, but as always i welcome the apocalypse to get here as soon as possible.

recycling is a valuable activity

so is saving energy

doing coke, not so much