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Stalking her daughter’s killers across Mexico, one by one

nytimes.com

101–110 of 233 posts

Re: Stalking her daughter’s killers across Mexico, one by one

#101

Criminalization of drugs is a price support program for the cartels. Legalise the drugs and allow legal production - and the cartels will have to find an honest way to make a living like the rest of us have to do.

We half-legalized one drug (cannabis) and they pivoted to stealing oil out of pipelines.

Re: Stalking her daughter’s killers across Mexico, one by one

#102
post #99

Criminalization of drugs is a price support program for the cartels. Legalise the drugs and allow legal production - and the cartels will have to find an honest way to make a living like the rest of us have to do.

> Legalise the drugs and allow legal production - and the cartels will have to find an honest way to make a living like the rest of us have to do. This is magical thinking. Organized crime can make money in other ways. This story is about kidnapping, for example. Organized crime exists in many places where it’s not funded by drug trade.

But if organized crime didn't have the resources to buy off the government, military, and police wholesale the magnitude of the problem would be much smaller.

Re: Stalking her daughter’s killers across Mexico, one by one

#103
post #99

Criminalization of drugs is a price support program for the cartels. Legalise the drugs and allow legal production - and the cartels will have to find an honest way to make a living like the rest of us have to do.

> Legalise the drugs and allow legal production - and the cartels will have to find an honest way to make a living like the rest of us have to do. This is magical thinking. Organized crime can make money in other ways. This story is about kidnapping, for example. Organized crime exists in many places where it’s not funded by drug trade.

You serious think that taking away the stream of income that has put trillions of usd in the hands of cartels / organized crime won't have a huge impact?

Re: Stalking her daughter’s killers across Mexico, one by one

#104
post #99

Criminalization of drugs is a price support program for the cartels. Legalise the drugs and allow legal production - and the cartels will have to find an honest way to make a living like the rest of us have to do.

> Legalise the drugs and allow legal production - and the cartels will have to find an honest way to make a living like the rest of us have to do. This is magical thinking. Organized crime can make money in other ways. This story is about kidnapping, for example. Organized crime exists in many places where it’s not funded by drug trade.

There just isn't nearly as much money in any alternatives. At its root money is required to maintain cartel power.

Sure they aren't going to disappear overnight. But cutting out their most profitable product lines would make a huge dent without a doubt.

We have a real-world example of that from Prohibition so it isn't entirely theoretical.

Re: Stalking her daughter’s killers across Mexico, one by one

#105
post #9

This 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.

Really? I consider it one of the three worst films I've seen: just a celebration of excessive violence and gratuitous avoidance of due process/checks and balances, made to seem defensible only because of unrealistic movie-protagonist ultracompetence. It's a worse case of Tom Clancy syndrome than the man himself ever did.

Re: Stalking her daughter’s killers across Mexico, one by one

#106
As someone who has been living in Mexico for a couple of years now to save money, these types of stories terrify me.

I am seriously thinking of moving back to the United States. The only problem is that I cannot really afford to live there.

I have some unresolved health issues and for many years have been working exclusively online because I could not handle commuting. But for me it has not been easy to find high-paying programming jobs online. There are just many more low-paying contracts and often I run out of money before I find a high-paying one which seems like it will have a workload that's manageable for me.

So now so I have something which is totally fine in a way in that it's about $2000 per month (to handle all of the programming and servers for an automated cryptocurrency trading system that seems to be going nowhere but has been a steady income for several years) and I have Thursday and Friday to work on my deep learning classes. And I can easily manage to get by in Tijuana on that much.

But this kidnapping thing is terrifying.

Maybe Rosarito will be safer than Tijuana? I mean my neighborhood here in Playas _seems_ very safe. I would have to move to a ghetto or something in the US. Which I would not really quite be able to afford.

Re: Stalking her daughter’s killers across Mexico, one by one

#107
post #103
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Legalise the drugs and allow legal production - and the cartels will have to find an honest way to make a living like the rest of us have to do. This is magical thinking. Organized crime can make money in other ways. This story is about kidnapping, for example. Organized crime exists in many places where it’s not funded by drug trade.

You serious think that taking away the stream of income that has put trillions of usd in the hands of cartels / organized crime won't have a huge impact?

It will remove 90% of their power. The 10% will still be a force for evil, but then it becomes easier to attack them

Re: Stalking her daughter’s killers across Mexico, one by one

#108

Criminalization of drugs is a price support program for the cartels. Legalise the drugs and allow legal production - and the cartels will have to find an honest way to make a living like the rest of us have to do.

Look at marijuana today, your example doesn't hold. The black market would still hold an advantage due to not paying taxes. Black market marijuana sells for 25-40 percent of the cost at the regulated market, often at a higher quality

Re: Stalking her daughter’s killers across Mexico, one by one

#109
post #99

Criminalization of drugs is a price support program for the cartels. Legalise the drugs and allow legal production - and the cartels will have to find an honest way to make a living like the rest of us have to do.

> Legalise the drugs and allow legal production - and the cartels will have to find an honest way to make a living like the rest of us have to do. This is magical thinking. Organized crime can make money in other ways. This story is about kidnapping, for example. Organized crime exists in many places where it’s not funded by drug trade.

Given that, according to your profile, you're an appellate lawyer, and the more crime there is, the more work there is for lawyers generally (though maybe not for you personally) that seems like an instance of

>“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Upton Sinclair ~ 1934

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/21810-it-is-difficult-to-ge...

Re: Stalking her daughter’s killers across Mexico, one by one

#110
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a latino I noticed that Narcos increased the stereotyping of the region, not the other way around.

As a caucasian male, Narcos has made me want to visit Mexico and Colombia and eat yummy food. Reading the New York Times has made me scared of visiting Mexico. Colombia seems okay though.

> Colombia seems okay though.

Depends highly on where you go, but then again, that probably goes for every country. Even so, if you go make sure you have a local person you can rely on, and it really helps if you speak Spanish.

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