the Mexican Drug War

Yep, and before that it says "We're the Cartel del Golfo and we're here to protect you".

BTW apparently bus travel between cities is where most of the victims for those narcofosas come from. A friend told me they stopped her in a bus about a year or two ago, robbed everyone and took a couple of guys hostage with them. I imagine that was the beginning of this new thing. The sad thing is they let the buses go but the drivers wouldn't report anything.

Mex wrote:

Yep, and before that it says "We're the Cartel del Golfo and we're here to protect you".

BTW apparently bus travel between cities is where most of the victims for those narcofosas come from. A friend told me they stopped her in a bus about a year or two ago, robbed everyone and took a couple of guys hostage with them. I imagine that was the beginning of this new thing. The sad thing is they let the buses go but the drivers wouldn't report anything.

So is inter-city travel in mexico now more akin to Robin Hood era Europe? Do people need some sort of Knights Templar style system so they don't risk carrying valuables between cities? yeesh.

Seth wrote:

So is inter-city travel in mexico now more akin to Robin Hood era Europe? Do people need some sort of Knights Templar style system so they don't risk carrying valuables between cities? yeesh.

Haa, I dunno about that, but it's not exactly safe now. It's happening on Tamaulipas and all around that area, I would avoid traveling there if I could.

Still, other states are looking dangerous, and I've noticed a lot less travel now. It's a pretty sh*tty situation. My family has been affected by this due to less commerce between cities.

I don't know if you guys get any of this but it talks about the whole thing, women from the buses are raped and killed, etc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0NGs...

The next step is collecting taxes and providing services - if that hasn't started already. It's sometimes tough to pinpoint exactly when things move from protection money to taxes, so it's often easier to identify the services when they crop up.

Oh, speaking of Templars, there's apparently a group that's calling themselves that (Caballeros Templarios - Knights Templar):

IMAGE(http://noticias.starmedia.com/UpImages/3626/caballerostemplariosg_bdc11e9c2d3849a9f2f0da27f.jpg)

Kind of long winded but basically says they're working with the Family, "at the service of society", to keep order, stop thievery, and something else that is cut off.

It's a little harder lately to find info about this stuff in legit newspapers because they signed some agreement to stop reporting news with too much detail.

It's a little harder lately to find info about this stuff in legit newspapers because they signed some agreement to stop reporting news with too much detail.

And that's probably where the war was lost, right there. As soon as you can't trust the newspapers to tell the truth, and ALL of the truth, legitimate authority is compromised. Power maintained through lies is inherently unstable.

Deadliest month of the War on Drugs so far, 1,402 people died violently:

IMAGE(http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/7281/mexmp1gg.jpg)

What does "En el sexenio" mean? Surely it's not as sexy as it looks.

"In (the) six years"

iaintgotnopants wrote:

What does "En el sexenio" mean? Surely it's not as sexy as it looks.

It's the term a President serves in Mexico, 6 years. In this case it means "Since the current president took office", which was 2006. So, officially reported, about 34,000 dead.

The scary one for regular people is the one on the right - "Cuerpos encontrados en fosas" means "Bodies found in unmarked graves", basically the narcos took innocent civilians and did stuff to them (kidnapping, rape, just for fun), and buried them somewhere.

It's been confirmed that a lot of these bodies come from passengers in buses between states, and I personally know a friend who was stopped in one of those buses, but they let them go after robbing them.

Again, 1,400 dead people is just in April, and only the ones that were reported who died in violent ways. Doesn't count injured people, or citizens affected by the violence, businesses closing down, etc.

http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2011...

"These criminal groups have morphed from being strictly drug cartels into a kind of alternative society and economy," Campbell said. "They are the dominant forces of coercion, tax the population, steal from or control utilities such as gasoline, sell their own products and are the ultimate decision-makers in the territories they control."
Aetius wrote:

http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2011...

"These criminal groups have morphed from being strictly drug cartels into a kind of alternative society and economy," Campbell said. "They are the dominant forces of coercion, tax the population, steal from or control utilities such as gasoline, sell their own products and are the ultimate decision-makers in the territories they control."

So, can we stop calling it a drug war, and start using the more correct term; Civil War? Or is it too late for that?

In interviews with at least a dozen vendors, businessmen, cab drivers and shoe shiners, all talked of paying monthly extortion fees to the cartel. Fees range from 100 pesos - about $9 - for street vendors, to 500 pesos ($45) for cab drivers and 800 pesos ($70) for junkyard owners. The Juarez cartel and their enforcers, the La Linea gang, have even set up bank accounts so businessmen can make direct deposits. Many of those interviewed said they were not even bothering to pay federal taxes anymore.

I knew this was going to happen, but I didn't expect it so soon. So what's gonna happen now? The state falls into disrepair, or what? The cartels are interested in money, but I don't expect them to keep the highways and electricity working. Or maybe they will, who knows.

Mex wrote:

So what's gonna happen now? The state falls into disrepair, or what? The cartels are interested in money, but I don't expect them to keep the highways and electricity working. Or maybe they will, who knows.

The incentives indicate that they will, probably in a rather lackluster fashion similar to other autocratic regimes. They still need the compliance of a large portion of the population; armed revolt does not keep the money flowing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...

Thousands of Mexicans protest the current war on drug trafficking on Sunday.

Calderón's government has reacted negatively to the protests. The public security minister, Genaro García Luna, said it was "unthinkable" that the fight against the cartels might be wrong. Calderón boasted that he had "the law, reason and force" on his side.

And the cartels have market forces from the wealthiest economy in the world backing them. Luna has no chance.

It's the economy, stupid. Put Mexicans to work in Mexico and the cartels will lose their power.

Drug jobs pay better than almost anything else, because DRUGS pay better than anything else. Its illegality makes it profitable to the point that the Mexican government is steadily losing to the drug cartels -- arguably, it has lost already.

There's nothing the government can really do -- nothing else is that profitable. Running a normal economy, taking a percentage of the wealth generated, and using that to fund all the social and military services simply doesn't provide enough money. The cartels extract a percentage of the American economy's output with their product, rather than having to rely on local wealth generation, and the more illegal we make drugs, the more expensive drugs become and the wealthier they get.

It ends up being the American economy directly pitted against the Mexican one, and you can see who's winning that fight.

And it's damaging us too -- we're spending ridiculous amounts of money on police and border guards and judges and prisons. We pay to investigate, pay to arrest and hold people, pay to try them, and then pay to hold them in prison, where they generate little of use. Meanwhile, the people on the outside pay a lot more for drugs than they should, meaning they don't have money to use more productively.

We're at war with ourselves, and as it ramps up in intensity, it becomes more and more destructive, just like any other armed conflict.

There's simply no way that even widespread drug use would do as much damage to us as the War on Drugs does.

Dirt wrote:

It's the economy, stupid. Put Mexicans to work in Mexico and the cartels will lose their power.

So simple, please outline your plan as to what to do exactly and I'll pass it along to the President, thanks!

Mex wrote:
Dirt wrote:

It's the economy, stupid. Put Mexicans to work in Mexico and the cartels will lose their power.

So simple, please outline your plan as to what to do exactly and I'll pass it along to the President, thanks!

Have the cartels hire them. Duh.

Mex wrote:
Dirt wrote:

It's the economy, stupid. Put Mexicans to work in Mexico and the cartels will lose their power.

So simple, please outline your plan as to what to do exactly and I'll pass it along to the President, thanks!

Chinese foreign direct investment.

They made a tank! Maybe next time, they will armor the tires.

That thing looks like it came straight from Mad Max.

Not sure which version that is, but they've been making armored vehicles for some time now, they call them "Monstruos". The first version supposedly was so heavy with guns that the tires gave out and it only went 40kph, the new versions can go 100kph+, that might be the 2010 version

Am I the only person sadistic enough to wonder what that thing would look like getting hit with a FGM-148 Javelin?

Probably about the same as an APC -- ie, not much left. Those things will take out MBTs -- a little homemade welded armor plate isn't exactly comparable.

Now I want to see a combat mission: cuidad Juarez.

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/05/16...

Zetas expansion into Guatemala. They were targeting the owner of the farm, but he wasn't there.

That makes me really sad. My wife and I were just there last fall.

I'm surprised by the lack of media coverage of this in the US. You hear a story now and then, but it's hardly noticeable. These stories read like horror movie scripts. How bad does it have to get before we really start paying attention to this?