What can I do as an individual to see less of this stuff happen?
I'm not sure about you specifically, but these are financially motivated crimes, and generally reducing poverty dramatically reduces crime.
Stalking her daughter’s killers across Mexico, one by one
71–80 of 233 posts
Re: Stalking her daughter’s killers across Mexico, one by one
#72Amazing story, and real journalism. If only the news spent more time uncovering the truth instead of opining about politics. I'm so sick of politics.
I found the pointed reference to 'Born Again Christianity' political, and in line with NYT political philosophy. The NYT will go to great lengths to point out alignment with right-side politics in such matters. Left-side alignments seem not to get much mention, at least as far as I can tell.
In the context of the sentence (contrasting the banality of the roles the murders tried to take with the crime) it didn't seem political at all:
"In three years, Mrs. Rodríguez captured nearly every living member of the crew that had abducted her daughter for ransom, a rogues’ gallery of criminals who tried to start new lives — as a born-again Christian, a taxi driver, a car salesman, a babysitter."
Re: Stalking her daughter’s killers across Mexico, one by one
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
International law? And, also, just "law". One of the better developments of last few decades is that national borders are, for the most part, no longer subject to violent change. That's due to territory simply losing importance: raw materials are insignificant, economically, compared to the fruits of intellectual labor. Borders have also become much more porous: the conflict in Northern Ireland, for example, lost muc…
Norman Angell argued almost the exact same thing as you-- in 1909. Doubled down on this argument in 1933. "The Great Illusion". He was wrong -- both times. :)
It's extremely unclear what you think Angell was arguing for and what you think he was wrong about.
"The Great Illusion" argued that economic integration made war unlikely. He was wrong in that he hadn't realized how much people wanted something that went against their interests.
But he learned that lesson well: "From the mid-1930s, Angell actively campaigned for collective international opposition to the aggressive policies of Germany, Italy, and Japan. He went to the United States in 1940 to lecture in favour of American support for Britain in World War II"[1]
Re: Stalking her daughter’s killers across Mexico, one by one
#74Amazing story, and real journalism. If only the news spent more time uncovering the truth instead of opining about politics. I'm so sick of politics.
Well, a lot of feel-good "one person fought the system/the mob/etc" stories are effectively political by giving the impression the way to deal with these huge problem is individual initiative.
And indeed, a lot of purely repression based solutions to different social ills lean heavily on the "heroes can fight the bad guys" trope. This reinforces the "drug war", which is in many ways the source of the orgy of murder this woman confronted and this isn't going to be solved by more heroics of her sort.
Re: Stalking her daughter’s killers across Mexico, one by one
#75The US government spends trillions on the military, what stops them from descending with a crapload of police forces into a city like this and putting an end to it?
That strategy did not work for Afghanistan.
Re: Stalking her daughter’s killers across Mexico, one by one
#76The US government spends trillions on the military, what stops them from descending with a crapload of police forces into a city like this and putting an end to it?
Building the wall will inhibit smugglers. We'll see if it reduces the cartels income.
What the USA should not do (again) is "purposely allowed licensed firearms dealers to sell weapons to illegal straw buyers, hoping to track the guns to Mexican drug cartel leaders and arrest them"
Re: Stalking her daughter’s killers across Mexico, one by one
#77I've been trying to think of ideas of how they could help themselves. The only thing I can think of is to use technology - camera's everywhere, body cams and tracking devices on vehicles and people. I know they aren't wealthy, but the town could put cameras on the streets like the do in London. I'm just brainstorming here... Such a sad situation they are in.
Re: Stalking her daughter’s killers across Mexico, one by one
#78Amazing story, and real journalism. If only the news spent more time uncovering the truth instead of opining about politics. I'm so sick of politics.
I found the pointed reference to 'Born Again Christianity' political, and in line with NYT political philosophy. The NYT will go to great lengths to point out alignment with right-side politics in such matters. Left-side alignments seem not to get much mention, at least as far as I can tell.
Evangelicalism in Mexico is a considerably different topic than in the US as well.
Re: Stalking her daughter’s killers across Mexico, one by one
#79This really should be made into a movie. It is absolutely astonishing and there are a lot of details I’d be interested in knowing about her campaign.
Sorta related, this is a good film: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicario_(2015_film)
Also, one of the subplots in the excellent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babel_(film) is in Mexico.
Babel is by Mexican directors and writers. See the previous two in the triptych too.
Re: Stalking her daughter’s killers across Mexico, one by one
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's probably partly why certain entities try to make it so toxic. People are more controllable when they're rabid and when they're inert.
Also reasonable people check out when people are running around livid because of false information.
> Also reasonable people check out when people are running around livid because of false information.
The comment you are responding to both recognizes that and is telling you that that is a fact that is deliberately being manipulated by and to the advantage of the people promoting false information.
A major part of the goal of extreme political propaganda, nearly as important as mobilizing unreasonable people, is getting reasonable people exhausted with the political system so that they check out.