261–270 of 435 posts
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.
Columbia has done a pretty good turn around from Mexican style violence to peaceful.
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Well, there is a huge difference between Europe and the US/Mexico: most people don't have guns. You will rarely see anybody with a weapon here. If you get attacked, it will be with fists, sometime a knife. Having the possibility that somebody pulls a gun on you is crazy to me, like something that should only happen in a movie.
Living in the Netherlands, I know that people with bad intentions most likely have guns. Even in my small hometown, a citizen that owned a spy equipment store got shot up in daylight in front of his home. Other example would be people getting robbed in their house with guns (not daily, but it happens). There are plenty of other examples... I cannot say I feel 100% save most of the time.
You're 20 times more likely to get killed by a gun in the US or Mexico.
Note that in the whole of Holland there are 50 gun homicides per year, so you were actually pretty unlucky to experience that. Your experience is exceptional and not a common occurrence, especially as I assume most Holland murders are not widely reported spouse killings, etc.
Mexico had 18,398 gun homicides in 2011, for comparison, Holland, 60, US, 11,068.
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When were you last in central London or Paris? It's been a long time since Limehouse or Montparnasse were dangerous to walk in at night.
Head out of canary wharf onto the isle of dogs. Or parts of peckham. Or West Ham. Christ.
But I know, it's a broad definition.
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legalizing drugs would cause the collapse of the cartels and help to end this violence.
It would likely end violence, but why can't these highly-organized, powerful cartels simply pivot into dealing wholesale, once legal?
Legalization implies regulation of some sort (e.g. like alcohol). You could also have a government-run monopoly.
The point is to remove the billions of dollars in black-market profits which give rise to criminal organizations who cannot depend on the law to resolve their disputes and must therefore "make their own law".
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My friends are thinkers and challengers of the system: it's for them I am more worried, that they can't speak freely. I could move to Condesa and live a protected life, but that's just colonialism (using my spending power to put a cocoon around me with Uber and private parties). That's not the México I'm interested in. I've also been mugged rather violently there anyway on Calle Amsterdam, (though no worse than Barce…
I've been living in Mexico for 8 years. I'm from Europe and married to a Mexican woman. I've lived in a couple different states (DF, Edo. Mexico, Queretaro, Veracruz, Quintana Roo). I've never once felt not safe, or seen violence. I see the news and I really wonder if I'm living in a different country.
She realises that there are bad things in Mexico, but sometimes she actually feels more scared here in Europe due to the terrorist events that have happened lately. Though there has been only one in my country, she really hates going to Brussels.
As she tells me, it is worse with terrorism because it involves civilians minding their own business, whilst most of the terrible news from Mexico actually happens due to narcos and not to random civilians on the street.
As I have not lived in Mexico, I can't really compare the two. But by the sounds of her and her family, it's not as bad as the news would have you believe. (Or, alternatively, they happen to live in a good part of Monterrey / Mexico).
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Nope, still America.
yes, that's why Canada is just as bad a Mexico, with Canadian drug cartels mass beheading their rivals in the streets of Toronto.
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. W…
Stop it in Colombia and it shifts to Mexico. Stop the routes along all of Mexico and the Caribbean and who knows - no reason to be so sure it absolutely couldn't happen in Canada.
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don't agree with berlin either, of course some areas are more criminal (almost anywhere), but going on foot alone is still possible, even at night and i've been to most of the trouble-spots. Also: Munich, it's unbelievable safe, more boring than berlin, but safer.
I've been around central Berlin a good bit and honestly never had such a problem. If anything I end up with the opposite problem, I'm the foreign hipster who hasn't kept up with the trends enough to realize that this area has gentried sufficiently that I am no longer welcome here, because it's now an area for rich West Germans.
Less than 1% of crimes are punished in Mexico: http://www.insightcrime.org/news-briefs/mexico-impunity-leve...
interesting. I wonder how that ranks against other lawless countries / regions
http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/europe/russias-99-convi...
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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. W…
The richer the country and the stronger its institutions, the less likely cartels will take over sure, but when $40 billion USD in yearly profit (in the US drug trade) are up for grabs, someone's going to be stepping up. Stop it in Colombia and it shifts to Mexico. Stop the routes along all of Mexico and the Caribbean and who knows - no reason to be so sure it absolutely couldn't happen in Canada.
[0] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/latin_america-jan-june11... [1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/guatemalas-...