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Mexican Newspaper Shuts Down, Saying It Is Too Dangerous to Continue

nytimes.com

211–220 of 435 posts

Re: Mexican Newspaper Shuts Down, Saying It Is Too Dangerous to Continue

#211
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about Singapore, but Doha and Dubai are the both capital cities of a monarchy: Qatar and UAE, respectively. Keep that in mind if you ever visit. I lived in the UAE for ~14 years, so I can give you some idea of how safe Dubai is. - You can leave your car in a parking lot for hours, unlocked, with expensive devices clearly visible. Nobody would even come close to it. - There is no need to lock your house w…

Safe for tourists, not for residents. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/may/27/dubai-...

Yep, their human rights track record is terrible, but even with that, Dubai is still safer than most other large cities.

What do you mean by "tourists"? Did you miss the part where I say that I lived in the UAE for 14 years?

Re: Mexican Newspaper Shuts Down, Saying It Is Too Dangerous to Continue

#212
post #161
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a European that sounds terrible! That it is not as bad as a lawless warzone in a failed African state isn't much consolation??

I remember reading some anecdote from an Iraqi at the peak of the war. They talked about how most of the time you're totally safe, but every once in a while a bomb will go off and a bunch of people will die. There's a spectrum of danger that a lot of us have had the privilege to not experience. I could imagine getting mugged in some places in Europe, but not really imagine dying in the "mugging gone wrong => someone…

The majority of the US has a murder rate comparable to Canada. The US has particularly extremely tilted murder rates based on location. Relatively small areas with hyper murder rates very substantially skew the numbers. A couple dozen neighborhoods in Chicago for example combine to account for about 2% of all murders in the US (with murder rates 50 to 100 times the national average).

A minimum of 95% of the US population live in areas with murder rates comparable to Canada (around 1.5 to 2 per 100,000 depending on the year). More than 200 million Americans live in areas with murder rates under 2. That's not impressive compared to the nicest parts of Europe, but it is very impressive compared to Latin America and Europe's largest country, Russia.

Re: Mexican Newspaper Shuts Down, Saying It Is Too Dangerous to Continue

#213

It's us , the USA, that is causing this paper to shutdown. The cartels are financed by the insatiable drug appetite of its close neighbor. Our inability and/or unwillingness to legalize recreational drugs is the feeding tube for these vicious groups.

I agree with you, that the US needs to legalize production and sale. However, why has Canada never been wrecked by extremely violent cartels seeking to feed that insatiable drug appetite?

How do you explain nearly all of Latin America having wild murder rates? All of the most dangerous non-war zone countries on earth are in Latin America. And yet that same murder & violent crime problem isn't represented in Canada. What could possibly explain that consistency across ~15 different Latin American nations, except that it's a cultural and institutional problem? Colombia for example has seen dramatic improvements, despite the US demand for drugs increasing in the last 15 years. Or take Venezuela, one of the most dangerous nations, with a truly shocking murder rate, and it has very little to do with the US drug demand. Or take Brazil, a nation of 200 million with a murder rate 7 to 10 times that of the US (with up to half of all murders unreported in official stats), which also doesn't derive its huge murder problems from the US drug demand.

It's far too simplistic to just blame the US for everything.

Re: Mexican Newspaper Shuts Down, Saying It Is Too Dangerous to Continue

#214
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is not like a safe European city center where you can go almost anywhere alone on foot at any time of day. Which European city are you referring to? The major European cities (e.g., Paris, London, and Berlin) don't fit this description either.

Speaking of Italy, you'd be hard pressed to feel endangered in Rome, Milan, Turin etc. Naples can get a bit sketchy, but even then. Switzerland and Austria also seem pretty relaxed in my experience.

Trieste seems pretty sketchy too (easternmost major city in Northern Italy). I was traveling from Milan to Croatia, got all mixed up on trains, and got in to Trieste at about 8pm with no connecting bus to Croatia until the following morning and most hotels/hostels full for the night. Dodgy people walking around and weird vibe in general. Luckily I got a ride out that night.

Re: Mexican Newspaper Shuts Down, Saying It Is Too Dangerous to Continue

#216
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to see truly safe cities, even by EU standards, check out Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai, or Doha.

Or Montreal!

Never been, but I would assume it's an amazing place. I would love to visit someday :)

Re: Mexican Newspaper Shuts Down, Saying It Is Too Dangerous to Continue

#217
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're at a precarious time in history when journalism is being used particularly effectively as an intentional disinformation tool. "Real journalism" unfortunately does need to be distinguished. Free speech doesn't encompass fraud.

>Free speech doesn't encompass fraud. Indeed it doesn't, which is why fraud has been illegal since the foundation of the country. Is "disinformation" the same as fraud? Who shall decide what constitutes "intentional disinformation" and what doesn't, and at what point it rises to fraudulence? We already have laws that address these questions -- how do you suggest modifying them? If we're using the election as a meter…

> Whomever has the most power at the time will be able to decree some speech "fraud" and "disinformation" and punish people for speaking ideas that are too dangerous to entrust to the hoi polloi.

Yes, and in a free speech society, whomever has the most power and/or money at the time will be able to take advantage of free speech to conduct widespread and targeted disinformation and harassment campaigns - under a false flag of "angry citizens" - that can change (and have changed) the course of history.

It cuts both ways, sadly.

Re: Mexican Newspaper Shuts Down, Saying It Is Too Dangerous to Continue

#218
post #197

The entire Spanish new world has been a failed state for the past 300 years. Peruvian and Mexican metals kept them viable for a while, but that ran out long ago. Coke has barely filled the void, thanks to US prohibition.

Chile, Panama, Argentina are pretty good in comparison to many other countries. Also if you take into account the last 300 years, well... not only Argentina was richer than the USA 100 years ago but Venezuela (yes, Venezuela) was in better economic shape than, for example Spain, for decades during the XX century.

Re: Mexican Newspaper Shuts Down, Saying It Is Too Dangerous to Continue

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is irrelevant; you can do this on a visa just as easily. Additionally, this exists for a reason even if you don't like it. If anything it reduces the incentive to do this, because you can get 99% of the benefits without doing it. Regardless all you have to do to make this birth-neutral is make it as hard to get a state green card as it is to get a visa. The whole premise is that some states want to make it eas…

>The whole premise is that some states want to make it easier than that. What is a state green card even for if it's just redundant with an existing H1B visa and doesn't increase the total number of immigrants whatsoever? Look, here's some perspective. The US annually admits: 65,000 H1B visas 70,000 Refugee visas ~200,000 nonfamily immigration visas ~675,000 undetected illegal immigrants 675,000 immigration visas tot…

> If you want to just drop a kid down so they become a citizen, it is a hundred times easier to do it on a travel visa and it always will be. Regardless of how many state green cards there are, it will always be orders of magnitude easier to get a travel visa, hop on a plane, and stay under the radar for a couple months.

That requires that you can afford to buy a plane ticket and then spend nine months not working while paying US cost of living and pregnancy-related medical expenses out of pocket, which puts it out of reach for most people in the world. An easy-to-get work visa turns the economics around.

And it's not just people who come here exclusively for that reason. More people means more children. If the additional people are unskilled laborers who make low wages and pay little in taxes, someone else has to make up the difference.

> When I said immigrants pay more into taxes than they take out that was was a statement of fact[1], not opinion. They pay the same taxes as us and see severely reduced benefits, even at very low incomes.

The article is only considering social security against itself. Someone making $20K/year is paying > Cut federal benefits entirely for them and require the states to pay if you like. It's a tiny problem.

Take away the federal money and the states won't be able to afford it. Or won't want to pay it. The problem isn't social security, it's schools and healthcare.

And it's not like you can just leave children to grow up without schools or let infections go untreated.

> If cross-border crime and employment is a problem it would be pretty trivial to have an exclusion zone on the border of states that don't want immigrants. Immigrants wouldn't be able to have residences in that area.

For many states (e.g. Pennsylvania, New Hampshire) a 100 mile exclusion zone would have multiple other states fully inside it.

Re: Mexican Newspaper Shuts Down, Saying It Is Too Dangerous to Continue

#220
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My very limited experience with Mexico City is that I'd treat it like many U.S. cities: it's fine, if you know which areas to avoid after dark, and which areas to avoid entirely. It is not like a safe European city center where you can go almost anywhere alone on foot at any time of day. But most U.S. cities don't fit that description either. And it's not at the other extreme that some people imagine, some kind of So…

> It is not like a safe European city center where you can go almost anywhere alone on foot at any time of day. Which European city are you referring to? The major European cities (e.g., Paris, London, and Berlin) don't fit this description either.

Vienna / Austria is like this.
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