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In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

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Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#61

About that last sentence: "former U.S. Ambassador [...] said in April that López Obrador views the fight against drug cartels as a distraction ... So he has basically adopted an agenda of a pretty laissez-faire attitude towards them, which is pretty troubling to our government, obviously.” Not from Mexico, but from Colombia, where we also have a very hard time with drugs. The real problem with drugs has never been he…

> the US which always pushed us to fight drugs from this side, while they don't seem to do much from their side Isn't the typical complaint that the US does too much to fight drugs?

The complaint, as I understand it, hasn't been the US does too much; it's been that the US has adopted an incredibly violent and inefficient system to fighting drugs by heavily punishing users.

Throwing an entire generation of drug users in jail did little to curb the actual inflow if illegal drugs into America.

Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the US which always pushed us to fight drugs from this side, while they don't seem to do much from their side Isn't the typical complaint that the US does too much to fight drugs?

Maybe they do the same that politicians do here... they keep the cops busy grabbing individuals, but they turn a blind eye to the shipments of tons that are sent via airplanes that could be intercepted easily. In the end everyone knows that it is a deal between traffickers and politicians.

> In the end everyone knows that it is a deal between traffickers and politicians

This is not true in the US. We have no politicians that are suspected of being involved with cartels.

While our policies might not help the situation, no politician is actually working with traffickers.

Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#63
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cartels only exist because of its illegality. Same reason alcohol smuggling gangsters existed during the US prohibition era.

Cartels would continue to exist though. Because there are always other illegal services that need to be provided. Prostitution, gambling, murder-for-hire, mercenaries, unlicensed surgeons, as well as a still-extant illegal drugs market because they are merely cheaper, or sold to those who cannot buy the otherwise state-approved drugs(underage, banned for some reason).

None of that provides 1% of the income that illegal drugs does.

Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the US which always pushed us to fight drugs from this side, while they don't seem to do much from their side Isn't the typical complaint that the US does too much to fight drugs?

Maybe they do the same that politicians do here... they keep the cops busy grabbing individuals, but they turn a blind eye to the shipments of tons that are sent via airplanes that could be intercepted easily. In the end everyone knows that it is a deal between traffickers and politicians.

It’s definitely not like that in the US (at least on a large scale) and we regularly have large busts and individual cities taking down large operations. Even large scale gangs don’t tend to last long as a centralized bloc because then the fed launches an operation and seizes bank accounts/arrests all the guys at the top.

The problem is that people want to do cocaine, they just do. I’ve been to plenty of parties full of people who aren’t into drugs, the type from well of families with good degrees and good jobs who’ve never been arrested, where cocaine is brought out because it’s considered a party drug like ecstasy among the American middle/upper class. When people like that are willing to spend hundreds of dollars there is a lucrative market and someone is going to supply it. So when American agencies take down large scale operations another (usually decentralized) group swoops in and the cycle repeats.

Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the US which always pushed us to fight drugs from this side, while they don't seem to do much from their side Isn't the typical complaint that the US does too much to fight drugs?

Maybe they do the same that politicians do here... they keep the cops busy grabbing individuals, but they turn a blind eye to the shipments of tons that are sent via airplanes that could be intercepted easily. In the end everyone knows that it is a deal between traffickers and politicians.

Large shipments quite literally rely on small individuals being busted. For at least ten years now, border security agencies have been receiving training on how not to act in the face of a small bust. Their typical response is to start waving people through with little to no scrutiny, because all of the agents want to have some part in the bust, if at least just to have a rubbernecked sort of view at the excitement going on. Now they are being trained that the presence of a small bust is the cue to start raising scrutiny on all vehicles, and larger vehicles in particular.

One of the most disturbing findings is that the largest busts are almost always precipitated by some individual getting caught who is absolutely insistent that they didn't know that a brick of coke was taped to their gas tank (or similar). Previously, those individuals might go straight to prison for a decade or more on trafficking charges. Now that agencies (and defense lawyers) are catching on, there is now a lot of credence given to the idea that those individuals are actually unwitting drug mules used to distract CBP agents from doing their jobs while they slip truckloads past them at the border.

How many "drug traffickers" have we imprisoned that have merely been pawns in a drug trafficking scheme that they had no part in?

Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#66

I'm reminded of this recent viral Youtube which depicts what is apparently a routine occurrence in South Africa: A professional gang, armed with heavy caliber weapons, executes a sophisticated highway ambush in an attempt to capture a vehicle loaded with cell phones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAvqDF3Wujc I watched an interview with Leo Prinsloo, the star of the video. He mentioned that although this incident we…

  where gangs and police forces have started to merge
"By 1923 it was estimated over half of the PPB were also members of the Klan."

If you research most municipal police forces in the United States, it's always been that way.. we just aren't taught that in American schools.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_Police_Bureau

Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

blame drug addicted garbage that keep shoving that shit up their noses.

I think drug users should be called out for supporting this violent industry similar to how drunk drivers, sexual harassers, and racists are social pariahs

Horrible victim blaming.

Only under neoleftism could addicted victims of these violent destructive drug pushing cartels be considered to be supporters of the cartels, and not the cartels or the people or governments of the countries they flourish under.

Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#68
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cartels only exist because of its illegality. Same reason alcohol smuggling gangsters existed during the US prohibition era.

> Cartels only exist because of its illegality. Wait, what? You are saying there are no cartels in enterprises where the underlying good is legal? For example, oil cartels don't exist? The cartel will exist if the existance of the cartel causes it to make more money than would otherwise be the case. You should read about all the knee cappings and dirty dealings standard oil did in the U.S. When the US had mob problem…

It's obviously he means drug cartels, not cartels in general

Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#69
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drug addicted individuals are not garbage. They are human beings. I see them as worthy of compassion and a sincere helping hand, however it can be given.

More needs to be done to wean them off drugs, rehabilitate them, teach them how to contribute to a healthy, functioning, civil society.

I agree.

Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes

#70
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're observing is the process in which states originally asserted themselves as sovereign in the first place. Ie with a ton of violence. Say in ~20 years if those states failed, and Narco states were born out of them, eventually they'll establish a version of governance and im sure sure the cycle would continue.

There was an old (facetious) John Stewart bit where he said the cheapest way to defeat (iirc ISIS) was to not fight them at all but let them get bogged down in having to actually govern. Obviously ISIS is an extreme example but I do think this method could be applied in a way to cartels. I’m not up to date on the situation but I do know that Columbia officially ended its civil war in 2019 with the FARC becoming a pol…

Some cartels in Mexico govern way better than the Federal government there.

So, funny joke, but we'd be better off inviting them to the UN and sternly demanding that they codify their random executions into some form of law that they follow consistently.

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