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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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 Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 8:19 pm Post subject: Mexico thread |
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| Come on North Americans. These guys are your neighbours. Shouldn't your interests in current affairs be heavily slanted to this region? If not, why not? |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 11:12 pm Post subject: |
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| mises started a thread about the drug war in Mexico a week or two ago. |
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Jandar
Joined: 11 Jun 2008
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| Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 1:55 am Post subject: |
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| We spend tons of vacation money there. |
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Guri Guy
Joined: 07 Sep 2003
Location: Bamboo Island
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| Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 5:57 am Post subject: |
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| Mexican food is excellent. ^^ |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 6:18 am Post subject: |
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| A man who works for the same company as I is originally from Columbia. He works in Mexico (DF) where we sent him. He has requested to be transferred to Columbia because he feels unsafe in the DF. He said he never figured he'd miss the safety of Bogota, but Mexico... |
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ManintheMiddle
Joined: 20 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 7:50 am Post subject: |
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Big Bird chirped into an El Nino wind:
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| Come on North Americans. These guys are your neighbours. Shouldn't your interests in current affairs be heavily slanted to this region? If not, why not? |
If you bothered to watch my extended segment tonight on The Factor (but I know you wouldn't deign to have your world view rattled by FoxNews), you'd know that much is being done, so I reject your premise out-of-hand.
Calderon has done more than any of his predecessors to combat the drug war that is raging in his country. Vicente Fox turned a blind eye to most of this mess. The American government is spending tens of millions on border enforcement but there's only so much you can do when you've got some on our side of the border who are here illegally helping to smuggle money and weapons to the drug cartels (sort of like Gaza, minus the drugs).
The police are corrupt and many are bought off or even go to work for the cartels. Only the Mexican military has a real chance to rid us of this problem but they are outnumbered as are the sheriffs in the bordering American counties of the Southwest.
The conservatives in Congress have been trying to get money for a permanent military border patrol but so far Nancy Pelosi and friends are more concerned about funding for their pet projects like STD prevention.
I know Brits on this board love to assume they know as much as Americans do about their own country, but it's a crock of Shi[ite. We don't presume to pass judgment on your going-ons, so what gives, big feathers? |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 8:19 am Post subject: |
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| ManintheMiddle wrote: |
Big Bird chirped into an El Nino wind:
| Quote: |
| Come on North Americans. These guys are your neighbours. Shouldn't your interests in current affairs be heavily slanted to this region? If not, why not? |
If you bothered to watch my extended segment tonight on The Factor (but I know you wouldn't deign to have your world view rattled by FoxNews), you'd know that much is being done, so I reject your premise out-of-hand.
Calderon has done more than any of his predecessors to combat the drug war that is raging in his country. Vicente Fox turned a blind eye to most of this mess. The American government is spending tens of millions on border enforcement but there's only so much you can do when you've got some on our side of the border who are here illegally helping to smuggle money and weapons to the drug cartels (sort of like Gaza, minus the drugs).
The police are corrupt and many are bought off or even go to work for the cartels. Only the Mexican military has a real chance to rid us of this problem but they are outnumbered as are the sheriffs in the bordering American counties of the Southwest.
The conservatives in Congress have been trying to get money for a permanent military border patrol but so far Nancy Pelosi and friends are more concerned about funding for their pet projects like STD prevention.
I know Brits on this board love to assume they know as much as Americans do about their own country, but it's a crock of Shi[ite. We don't presume to pass judgment on your going-ons, so what gives, big feathers? |
I think she was referencing a comment I made on the Gaza thread.
However, the North American media does not cover Mexico to a large extent. It is falling apart.
Today I almost spit out my morning coffee on my FT when I read this:
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| President Barack Obama faces protectionist pressures. These are not just from the labour lobbies that have led Joe Biden, US vice-president, to chide �pure free traders� and to ask for �fair trade�; and which, astonishingly, have also led the US president to use his first meeting with President Felipe Calder�n of Mexico � overwhelmed by the brutal fight against drug cartels caused by the US failure to legalise drugs � to urge on him tougher labour standards, a protectionist demand that is clearly aimed at raising Mexican costs of production. The pressures come also from the lobbies pushing for a Detroit bail-out that is inconsistent with the World Trade Organisation. |
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3efdc764-f2ca-11dd-abe6-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1
Jagdish Bhagwati (who wrote the above) is on the CFR and very respected. I hope that others with similar influence are starting to discuss the "root cause" of all this crime and instability. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 11:59 am Post subject: |
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| ManintheMiddle wrote: |
Big Bird chirped into an El Nino wind:
| Quote: |
| Come on North Americans. These guys are your neighbours. Shouldn't your interests in current affairs be heavily slanted to this region? If not, why not? |
If you bothered to watch my extended segment tonight on The Factor (but I know you wouldn't deign to have your world view rattled by FoxNews), you'd know that much is being done, so I reject your premise out-of-hand.
Calderon has done more than any of his predecessors to combat the drug war that is raging in his country. Vicente Fox turned a blind eye to most of this mess. The American government is spending tens of millions on border enforcement but there's only so much you can do when you've got some on our side of the border who are here illegally helping to smuggle money and weapons to the drug cartels (sort of like Gaza, minus the drugs).
The police are corrupt and many are bought off or even go to work for the cartels. Only the Mexican military has a real chance to rid us of this problem but they are outnumbered as are the sheriffs in the bordering American counties of the Southwest.
The conservatives in Congress have been trying to get money for a permanent military border patrol but so far Nancy Pelosi and friends are more concerned about funding for their pet projects like STD prevention.
I know Brits on this board love to assume they know as much as Americans do about their own country, but it's a crock of Shi[ite. We don't presume to pass judgment on your going-ons, so what gives, big feathers? |
solution: decriminalize drugs. End the "war on drugs." Eliminates the need for all that law enforcement and the opportunities for corruption with it.
The mexican military isn't corrupt simply because it hasn't been involved in the drug war long enough. Give it another couple years and it won't be any better than the cops. |
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lifeinkorea
Joined: 24 Jan 2009
Location: somewhere in China
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| Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 12:02 pm Post subject: |
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| taco bell |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 12:39 pm Post subject: Re: Mexico thread |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
| Come on North Americans. These guys are your neighbours. Shouldn't your interests in current affairs be heavily slanted to this region? If not, why not? |
Educate me. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 2:59 pm Post subject: Re: Mexico thread |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| Big_Bird wrote: |
| Come on North Americans. These guys are your neighbours. Shouldn't your interests in current affairs be heavily slanted to this region? If not, why not? |
Educate me. |
As mises pointed out, this thread is a facetious response to himself and a complaint by Joo. |
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some waygug-in
Joined: 25 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 11:23 pm Post subject: |
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I never bought thread in Mexico, but I imagine it is readily available in most fabric shops there.  |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2009 9:37 am Post subject: |
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-missing9-2009feb09,0,2537684.story
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MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
Families want answers from man who says he dissolved 300 people
Santiago Meza Lopez, known as El Pozolero (the Stew Maker), says he stuffed bodies into barrels of lye for drug cartels. He may be a good source of information about missing loved ones.
Reporting from Tijuana � Fernando Ocegueda hasn't seen his son since gunmen dragged the college student from the family's house three years ago. Alma Diaz wonders what happened to her son, Eric, a Mexicali police officer who left a party in 1995 and never returned.
Arturo Davila still pounds on police doors looking for answers 11 years after his daughter and a girlfriend were kidnapped in downtown Ensenada.
For the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of families of people who have vanished amid Baja California's drug wars, the search for justice has been lonely and fruitless. But their hopes have been buoyed recently by the Jan. 22 arrest of a man Mexican authorities believe is behind the gruesome disposal of bodies in vats of industrial chemicals.
Santiago Meza Lopez, a stocky 45-year-old taken into custody after a raid near Ensenada, was identified as the pozolero who liquefied the bodies of victims for lieutenants of the Arellano Felix drug cartel. Authorities say he laid claim to stuffing 300 bodies into barrels of lye, then dumping some of the liquefied remains in a pit in a hillside compound in eastern Tijuana.
His capture riveted Mexico with sickening details behind drug violence that has left more than 8,000 dead in two years. For the families of the disappeared, however, it was a chance to revive cases that seemed long forgotten.
A day after Meza's arrest, Ocegueda and 40 other people showed up at the federal attorney general's office in Tijuana, with family snapshots in hand, demanding that authorities query Meza about whether he recalled dissolving their missing loved ones.
In the following days, dozens more people came forward with tales of disappearances. "Please help me find out what happened to him," wrote one woman on a photograph of a young man smiling in a car. "He was my husband."
Victim rights groups estimate that there are more than 1,000 people missing in Baja California, including students, businessmen, merchants and cops. Their cases have been ignored, bungled or blocked by law enforcement officials, activists say.
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I like that the LA Times is using the "Mexico under siege" tag. Here are some others:
http://search.latimes.com/search?q=%22MEXICO+UNDER+SIEGE%22&entqr=3&entsp=0&sort=date%3AD%3AS%3Ad1&output=xml_no_dtd&client=latimes&ud=1&oe=UTF-8&ie=UTF-8&proxystylesheet=latimes&site=default_collection&getfields=thumbnail_small.author.pubdate
When does it become a civil war? |
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dmbfan
Joined: 09 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 4:19 am Post subject: |
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If you bothered to watch my extended segment tonight on The Factor (but I know you wouldn't deign to have your world view rattled by FoxNews), you'd know that much is being done, so I reject your premise out-of-hand.
Calderon has done more than any of his predecessors to combat the drug war that is raging in his country. Vicente Fox turned a blind eye to most of this mess. The American government is spending tens of millions on border enforcement but there's only so much you can do when you've got some on our side of the border who are here illegally helping to smuggle money and weapons to the drug cartels (sort of like Gaza, minus the drugs).
The police are corrupt and many are bought off or even go to work for the cartels. Only the Mexican military has a real chance to rid us of this problem but they are outnumbered as are the sheriffs in the bordering American counties of the Southwest.
The conservatives in Congress have been trying to get money for a permanent military border patrol but so far Nancy Pelosi and friends are more concerned about funding for their pet projects like STD prevention.
I know Brits on this board love to assume they know as much as Americans do about their own country, but it's a crock of Shi[ite. We don't presume to pass judgment on your going-ons, so what gives, big feathers? |
Great stuff.
By the way, I really enjoyed your new book.
dmbfan |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 10:41 am Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
...
When does it become a civil war? |
Maybe soon?
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/02/12/new_rebel_group_issues_warning_in_northern_mexico
| Quote: |
A group calling itself the Armed Movement of the North has apparently begun issuing communiqu�s threatening subversive action against the Mexican government and foreign-owned companies in drug violence-wracked Northern Mexico:
In the communiqu�s, issued Jan. 1 and 24, the group claims to have members in five northern states: Durango, Sonora, Baja California, Chihuahua and Coahuila. The latter two border Texas....
The communiqu� added that the group is made up of students, professionals and workers, mostly from urban areas, with the goal of "defending the sovereignty of the Mexican people over the aggressions of foreign capital, imperialism and the abuse and injustices of the current government."
The communiqu� said that the group will not launch an armed uprising against the government but instead will focus on forming small independent "cell groups" that would be "infiltrated into the institutions of the state."
Mexican authorities are downplaying the risk saying that the groups claims about itself are unverifiable. Given what Mexico has on its plate right now, let's hope it stays that way. |
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/mexico/stories/DN-armedgroup_12int.ART.State.Edition1.4bfa87c.html |
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