Posted on 12/09/2007 10:13:25 AM PST by AuntB
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Gunmen shot a crime reporter 45 times in a Mexican town plagued by drug violence on Saturday after a high-speed chase as he tried to escape on his motorcycle.
Cut off by a vehicle in Uruapan, in the state of Michoacan, Gerardo Garcia fled on his motorcycle as far as his home, where his pursuers killed him, police and a source at the newspaper where he worked told Reuters.
Mexico's drug cartels are battling for control of regions key to trafficking South American cocaine and other drugs into the United States. Mexican journalists are targets of threats and attacks, especially when they cover the drug gangs
Press freedom group Reporters Without Borders says nine journalists were killed in Mexico in 2006 for reporting on drug trafficking or violent unrest, making it the world's most dangerous place for reporters after Iraq.
The area around Uruapan is the scene of frequent violence and was one of the first places targeted by President Felipe Calderon in a crackdown on drug gangs that began last year.
More than 25,000 soldiers, marines and federal police have been deployed to Michoacan and other violent regions to disrupt narcotics smuggling and hunt gang members.
In July, a drug gang threatened to kill foreign journalists who report on the violence between rival cartels and security forces along the U.S.-Mexico border.
In response, two Texas-based newspapers pulled their reporters from the area.
(Reporting by Noel Randewich; Editing by John O'Callaghan)
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Thank-you President Bush for protecting our borders to insure this most violent of organized crime and it’s market driven supply of drugs doesn’t spill over into the US.
Is this the same country that Bush wants to give $1.5 billion for the war on drugs. That $1.5 billion will just wind up in the hands of the drug lords.
“Gunmen shot a crime reporter 45 times”
What irony?!
We are eventually going to have to legalize drugs. Then build big prisons for the drug addicts who rob and murder to support their habit.
Jorge Bush and the governments (Fed, State, Local) have never been serious about the war on drugs.
So, let’s legalize drugs. Let Bayer, Merck and other drug companies process and distribute the drugs. Then, with their enormous profits, they can lower the price of expensive diabetes medication.
So many of our problems are the result of government failure. Legalize and take government out of the picture.
These are the people both parties want to give our country to.
Maybe legalized drug addiction will kill off most of the people that would use such things in their bodies. easy availability=easy overdose in my book.
“Is this the same country that Bush wants to give $1.5 billion for the war on drugs. That $1.5 billion will just wind up in the hands of the drug lords.”
Yep! You can’t make this stuff up.
45 times. Wonderful.
Can't help but wonder how many of our representatives have been threatened to keep their hands off.
You can’t legalize drugs because then they will go after your children and you won’t be able to throw them in jail.
They will also steal most of the $1.5 billion.
Ping!
If you want on, or off this S. Texas/Mexico ping list, please FReepMail me.
I do not support legalizing drugs, but I agree that the war on drugs is being badly fought, perhaps deliberately so.
No question that clinton ran the DEA in such a way that they arrested the smaller dealers but helped expedite the work of the big cartels, who paid clinton off with a percentage.
I don’t think Bush is being paid off, at least not directly. But a lot of people are. So they tend to go after the little guys and let the big dealers go free.
You do have to wonder if that was the reason why Bush let Ramos and Compean be unjustly prosecuted, while the smuggler they arrested was freed. I don’t think Bush was paid to do it, but the President of Mexico is among those who profit from the drug trade, and he seems to have requested the favor. And Bush is always eager to do whatever the Mexican government asks.
Murdering pesky reporters: coming soon to an Amexican barrio near you.
Call Dan Rather, there’s a job opening in Mexico.
“When you stick your nose into trouble, you wind up dead. Journalists aren’t all that big on self preservation. “
It sounds like he was a very brave man.
Hopefully his country is a better place because of the work that he did.
If we legalize drugs the price will come down considerably. They wont have to rob and murder for them anymore than one has to rob and murder to support a booze habit. Drugs are not expensive per se, getting them to the market and the risk premium involved for those that choose to sell them is.
If America actually had any 'pesky' reporters.
Good sir, do you not realize they are already after out children? There are two solutions to the drug problem.
1. Legalize it and take the money out of it. They will not go after our children if they can not make money doing it. At the same time a great number of the drug users will overdose and kill themselves. This is good. A certain number of them will continue to use. However, they will not have to commit crimes against me and my family to obtain the money for drugs. A small percentage will actually want to quit the drugs. We should help them quit. The number that desire to quit will be no greater than today.
2. The second solution is the "Singapore Solution." If you use drugs you will go to jail for a short but extremely unpleasant stay. If you sell drugs you will be hung. Hanging has a 100% track record on stopping recidivism.
Either solution will work. However, what we have today are laws that drive up the price of a very cheap product. In effect our laws make the market for the drug cartels to exploit. THAT SIR IS MADNESS!!!!!
already after “out” children
should read as
already after our children
Now Bush wants us to give money to Mexico. What most don’t realize is this.
http://www.treas.gov/tic/mfh.txt
Mexico holds $32 billion in US treasury securities. They are way down from Japan and China but with us “giving” them billions they will soon catch up with China and Japan.
Just think, we have to borrow from our children’s and grandchildren’s future to give to Mexico and the drug lords.
With a steady and reliable supply chain, and without any consumption controls, deaths from OD would increase for sure (which is a good thing...for the rest of us). On the other hand, suppliers with legal exposure would in theory dispense drugs with less contamination (the cause of many drug deaths).
So I don't know which way would lead to a cleaner gene pool, but as far as the WOD drugs goes, IMO the focus should be shifted to executing drug addicts and distributors (etc) who steal, kill, and commit other real crimes in the pursuit of the drug business.
This current policy of collectively punishing/monitoring everyone in the hopes of "preventing" or "catching" drug use - predicated on the observation that drug use is correlated with violent crime and property crime - is less an attempt to deal with said real crimes, than it is a bandaid to compensate for the failure (rather, the lack of testicular fortitude and moral clarity) to properly deal with real crimes in the first place. /rant
Legalizing pot would allow a huge chunk of law enforcement resources to be re-directed at crack, meth and X which are far more insidious poisons and would reduce taxpayer burden in the judicial expense of prosecuting and jailing pot offenders that clog the courts/jails.
Pot is here, it’s in your neighborhood, it’s in your schools, your kids know kids who have tried it and odds are about even that at some point your kids may have tried it or will try it. Virtually every convenience store in America sell rolling papers but not loose tobacco. As a percentage of smokers how many people in this country roll their own cigarettes? It’s been that way for 30 years. Pot is the #1 cash crop in Kentucky—bigger than corn, soybeans or tobacco. It’s not going anywhere.
It’s time for LE to focus on the drugs that are killing this nation crime wise, instead of persecuting the citizenry for a recreational vice that is passive and more benign that alcohol which is addictive and kills tens of thousands of people each year including innocent DWI victims.
To do this will require Law Enforcement to give up the cash cow of property seizures. When is the last time anyone ever heard of government agency voluntarily agreeing to give up a revenue source?
This is not true. They will NOT go after the children because legalizing drugs will take the money, hence the crime, out of drug dealilng. If you can get it legally you can get it cheaper. Legalizing alcohol had this effect and legalizing drugs would do the same. This country used to have legalized drugs and there were no more addicts per population that we have now. People who are going to do drugs will do them regardless if it is legal or not.
Not only that the law would read much the same as alcohol laws do today, no drugs to people under 21, so yes, you could go after them if they tried to go after the "children", which they do now in numbers. Laws such as we have now do not work and never will work.
“Mexico holds $32 billion in US treasury securities. They are way down from Japan and China but with us “giving” them billions they will soon catch up with China and Japan.”
Yikes. Add to that the billions sent out of the country to Mexico by their ‘immigrants’.
Yep, Mexico is thriving off the American taxpayer. How sad.
I remeber. This was just before or after NAFTA. Benston was Secretary of Treasury and he resigned during this fiasco. He is from Mission, Texas and that was a big deal.
Unfortunately, as soon as you move the line, the dealers will simply adjust to it.
If you legalize pot, the pot dealers will turn to crack cocaine or ecstasy or some other way of making money. And the more “adventurous” kids will want to try those things.
Right now, many of them use pot and alcohol. Pretty soon the same kids would be using pot, alcohol, and ecstasy.
I do agree that law enforcement somehow needs to be redirected away from minor users and amateur dealers and go after the big guys. There should be ways of making that more attractive to them by adjusting the rules or the laws or the rules for promotion.
If you legalize pot, the pot dealers will turn to crack cocaine or ecstasy or some other way of making money. And the more “adventurous” kids will want to try those things.
How? All that would do is drive the price down and take the profit out of it for anyone in that business. Plus it’s much harder to procure these products at wholesale than pot. The market is flooded now and it’s already cheap.
“Right now, many of them use pot and alcohol. Pretty soon the same kids would be using pot, alcohol, and ecstasy.”
Nonsense. X is readily available, as are crack and Meth. There will be kids making deals in the public high schools tomorrow morning, and the higher income private schools are rife with drug activity too.
Well...I for one am outraged! I suggest we send all available MSM reporters down to ol mexico to get the whole story! Maybe we can get all the UN delegates to accompany them!
Try this page: It is a good read but long. It will take you back. LOL!
Dear miss, how’s that working out for OxyContin?
Tokin' Resistance
By Howard Stansfield, 12/12/96
Soros, who declined to comment for this story, writes that “the drug problem as primarily a criminal problem is a misconception” and that “eradicating the drug problem is a false idea.”http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/1996-12-12/news/tokin-resistance/full“A drug-free America is simply not possible. You can discourage the use of drugs, you can forbid the use of drugs, you can treat people who are addicted to drugs, but you cannot eradicate drugs.”
So what would he do?
“I would establish a strictly controlled distribution network through which I would make most drugs, excluding the most dangerous ones like crack, legally available,” he writes. “Initially, I would keep the prices low enough to destroy the drug trade. Once that objective was obtained, I would keep raising the prices, very much like an excise duty on cigarettes, but I would make an exception for registered addicts in order to discourage crime.”
Thanks for the URL.
Below was from my thread several years ago.
The title is “Looters of Mexico”
Mexico has never been a friend of our United States.
Based on old pesos!
The looters of Mexico want to have the freedom to loot
America.
After spending several years starting oil exploration
crews for Pemex, I think I have The reason Mexico has
become so bad.
I like the Mexican people in the fly over parts of Mexico.
The mid level and workers of Pemex are good.
It is the government and the high up in Pemex that are the
vultures and looters.
The peso was about 8 cents (12.5 to a dollar).
When Pemex found the sito grande, a very large oil pool
that covers parts of the states of Chiapas and Tabasco
also a long ways into the Gulf of Mexico.
Pemex borrowed billions to produce this great oil find.
The looters (government) stole most of the money and
what they did buy was junk oil rigs and drill pipe, etc.
1,000 pesos which was worth about $80 now will not buy
a coke (old pesos).
This was due to the looters stealing billions from the
Mexican people.
Instead of overthrowing the looters the Mexican people
had an out, they had no weapons and they could cross
into America and have a much safer life.
This hurts both Mexico and America as Mexico lost some
of it’s hardest workers.
The gangbangers and welfare frauds also came over from
Mexico as they could rape and pillage at will.
The government of Mexico is propped up by the billions
sent back by the illegals and by our government having
borders that are too open.
The only chance I see to help America and Mexico is to
seal the border, deport the people who are not here
legally.
We also need to arm the Mexican people so they can have
a chance against the looters with their armies.
While I appreciate and know what you are saying is true about Mexico, I really think the Mexican peso crisis was due to NAFTA.
The problem at the time was that so many American banks got caught much like the mortgage crisis today. Bad banking decisions and a bailout from the American taxpayer.
At the time we entered the NAFTA agreement we had a trade surplus with Mexico. In order for the agreement to work, as the US needed slave labor, we had to somehow devalue the peso. Without the devaluation of the peso, NAFTA would have been much more a failure than it appears now. With the peso devaluation Mexico could compete. Now they have the surplus.
I have talked to Americans who have factories and business in Mexico. Their profit margin is not that great and this is the reason they have gone to China.
I don’t keep up with the peso now but I am not so sure it is not pegged to the dollar much like China. I recall when 911 happened, the Mexican economy almost went down the tubes.
One thing for sure is that Mexico has never been a friend of the US. Calderone is not our friend. Actually, I was hoping that Obrador would have been elected. At least he would have forced us to look at the situation and borders. However, too many people backed the communist, Calderone who is Yale or Harvard educated. Now he is demanding $1.4 billion of American taxpayer money.
We're still allowed to shoot rattlesnakes are we not?
Anyone trying to get my kids hooked on the stuff would/will suffer the same fate.
Signed,
Investigateworld
Veteran,
Drug Wars
Not if it's legalized. The only reason it is profitable is that the price is kept artificially high by its illegality.
This was before NAFTA.
LOL! I can think of a few media knot heads I’d like to send down there. They mostly think Mexico is such a wonderful place, but you sure don’t see them heading on down there.
At one point in time, every time there was a presidential election, there was peso devaluation. If you will look back in the history of Mexico, you will see that each president stole from the country at the end of their terms (6 year terms).
The only people who didn’t expect the peso devaluation in the 1990’s was the big American banks who had invested in Mexico. People on the border expected the devaluation talked and laughed about it. All the past presidents have done this.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-3957292.html
I think Mexico lost control of their currency to the US banks at this time. From what I understand, when we bailed them out the money didn’t leave New York.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C00E6DA163BF936A15751C1A962958260
Mexico had a history or devaluation about every 6 years. However, I haven’t seen that since NAFTA. They have to keep the peso lower than the dollar for NAFTA.
At one point in time, every time there was a presidential election, there was peso devaluation. If you will look back in the history of Mexico, you will see that each president stole from the country at the end of their terms (6 year terms).
The only people who didn’t expect the peso devaluation in the 1990’s was the big American banks who had invested in Mexico. People on the border expected the devaluation talked and laughed about it. All the past presidents have done this.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-3957292.html
I think Mexico lost control of their currency to the US banks at this time. From what I understand, when we bailed them out the money didn’t leave New York.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C00E6DA163BF936A15751C1A962958260
Mexico had a history or devaluation about every 6 years. However, I haven’t seen that since NAFTA. They have to keep the peso lower than the dollar for NAFTA.
Now there’s a recipe for chaos and the downfall of society.
Well if we really wanted to stop drug crime in this country there are two choices. The draconian Singapore solution that someone mentioned earlier on this thread or legalization. There is simply too much money involved for anything else to be effective in my opinion. I have a lot of gratitude for those that are putting their lives on the line on a daily basis in the war on drugs. I just don’t think that our current strategy is working. The death penalty for the second conviction of selling hard drugs would be very effective. I don’t think that we as a country could stomach that course of action. I don’t think that going after and imprisoning people that have amounts for personal consumption makes sense either unless the goal is just to make an example out of them. I don’t think that is an effective deterrent to use because such a small fraction of users get caught unless they are just dumb. What would you do differently in the war on drugs to make it more effective?
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