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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

#91

Post by sebmellen »

staplers wrote: post #66
qPM9l3XJrF wrote: post #31

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

”Most” is quite definitely an overstatement.

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

#92

Post by qPM9l3XJrF »

vmception wrote: post #70
edgyquant wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Do you have a citation for this?

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

#93

Post by ipaddr »

boterock wrote: post #11

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…

"Typical case of a northern country exploiting a southern country"

Like Canada exploiting the US. Or Columbia exploiting Chile. Or Sweden exploiting Denmark. Typical? No...

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

#94

Post by edgyquant »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #20
alex-wallish wrote: post #3

why do humans do this sort of thing?

An equivalent question is: why does human evil exist? Your answer will depend on your worldview -- your beliefs on matters like origin, meaning, morality, and destiny. If you're not sure, I'd suggest evaluating candidate worldviews with an eye toward comparing the extent to which their propositions correspond to reality and are internally consistent.

It’s not evil. These people don’t go to bed at night thinking they are the villain. The real answer is more depressing: people have to eat. These police are part of a system that is threatening the livelihood of cartels and with the exception of a few people at the top this livelihood is what feeds theirs families.

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

#95

Post by totalZero »

What are the arguments against two years of compulsory police (or naval) service for men at age 18 in Mexico? It would certainly alter the political dynamics of the war on drug cartels if moms nationwide were to send their sons to fight trafficking, and scooping young men out of their communities might prevent them from getting involved in criminal enterprises.

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

#96

Post by zozbot234 »

qPM9l3XJrF wrote: post #85
gonzo41 wrote: 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.

I think it's a bit more complicated than that. First, just because the state loses its monopoly doesn't mean some other entity gains a monopoly. In Mexico, cartels aren't just fighting the state, they are also fighting each other. If the state collapsed, they will continue fighting each other, and the people of Mexico will effectively live in a semi-permanent warzone. Second, not all violent entities are created equa…

> In Mexico, cartels aren't just fighting the state, they are also fighting each other.

To be fair, states also sometimes fight each other. They also tend to de-escalate these fights over time as long-term institutional arrangements come to predominate.

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

#97

Post by wrycoder »

edgyquant wrote: post #57
gonzo41 wrote: 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…

That’s not a defeat - it’s a race to the bottom. And a country can stay there for a long time. Example - Venezuela.

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

#98

Post by vmception »

qPM9l3XJrF wrote: post #92
vmception wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Some cartels in Mexico govern way better than the Federal government there. Do you have a citation for this?

Experience? Infrastructure? Level of development?

You can act afraid of Mexico or just go there and have a good time and notice the difference. The only bad parts of Mexico is where the recognized government and the local cartel haven't ceded power and are in conflict.

They both like a booming economy and market confidence, just a different strongman to pay from a user experience perspective.

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

#99

Post by narrator »

The problem with saying legalization will solve everything is the legal industries, such as avocados, are subject to extortion by the cartels. So if you legalized drugs you'd just have cartels extorting the legal drug makers and have the same amount of violence and gang activity.

Some areas where the local militia has replaced the police now exist because the police are too demoralized, corrupt or scared to protect the industry in that area from extortion, so the industry creates its own security force by arming local citizens.

This makes a case for the second amendment. If the police are too scared to protect you, why not let people without a criminal record have guns and form a militia?

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/may/18/avocado-polic...

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

#100

Post by qart »

qPM9l3XJrF wrote: post #31

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…

For an Indian example where the links between crime and government are more direct, there was a recent scandal where a disgraced Mumbai Police Commissioner wrote an open letter where he said his (also disgraced) subordinate was tasked by the state's Home Minister to extort 13 million USD from the city's businessmen every month. Heck, I assumed that nearly all politicians and a lot of policemen here are thoroughly corrupt. This open letter showed me I had underestimated the extent of it. The aspect of Vaze's "encounters" are worth a read too.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sachin_Vaze#Extortion_allegati...

Edit: I wonder how imprudent it was of me to not use a VPN'd account to write this comment. On the one hand, this information is on Wikipedia. On the other hand, the political party I wrote about has a history of sending their police dogs after ordinary citizens for comments made on the internet.

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