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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

#171

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 t…

No one says it will solve everything, but taking cocaine trafficking away from them will hurt them in their pockets.

There are only so much avocado entrepreneurs they can kidnap and extort.

Legalizing alcohol again in the US didn't make organized crime disappear, but it did make them much weaker. It has been a success.

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

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Edit: I wonder how imprudent it was of me to not use a VPN'd account to write this comment. Unless they can hack HN servers to check its logs, I don't see how they'd track down the IP from where your comment was submitted from.

Could be posting from inside India?

Given HN uses HTTPS, there's no way they can determine how a particular user is interacting with HN just by monitoring the data being routed by India-based internet switches.

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

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insurance is likely your best option for an actual remedy. That kind of crime can be very difficult to deal with. Prosecution, enforcement, all of it is very expensive. Damages to the victim can be severe or minor. Best defense is to avoid being a victim and or having options should it happen anyway, and or limiting your personal risk exposure. As another said, remedies are not robust and that is true for many govern…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paragraph

If it were formal writing...

But it is not.

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

#174

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 t…

Good point. In that regard, i think the cartels have also latched on to the oil trade.

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

#175

If I were running things in Mexico I would legalize or decriminalize all drugs. Setup compounds to securely house the police forces. Change the policy to "balazos, muchos balazos".

Compounds to house the extended families of police as well? Otherwise what's the point? Stopping cartels requires true international effort and coordination. Unless the bankers and money launderers bear some responsibility for the murders and drug flow nothing will change. It's nearly impossible I think, given the absolutely vast sums of money and profit on the table. Life sentences are not too much for the people en…

In France, the gendarmes (police force outside of big cities) are military and live with family in garrison-like building blocks. SWAT team members identity is a secret, and if you mess up with them, French special forces will get you anywhere in the world, even if it means dying trying. We also have institutions like the Legion to give a safe reboot place to « guys with a history ». There are ways for institutions to compensate the power of money.

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

#176
post #109
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISIS did actually govern. They had their own DMV.

Which was always the reason I thought there was more to ISIS than the western portrait of a group of extremist ideologues. State construction and maintenance is not a trivial thing and their are not the sort of skills you stumble upon within a group of "madmen". The groups spontaneous arrival and near immediate success in this regard was a little remarkable imo, and raises interesting questions on support and backing…

I think I'm going to earn my Godwin point.

My understanding is that Da'esh governance (and recruitment, to some extent) was not dissimilar to early Nazi governance. Yes, they managed their state, but within an ideology based on an imaginary past, on permanent internal violence against real and imaginary enemies of the state, total war against foreign inferiors, and of course genocide (against Yezedi in the case of Daesh).

To add to the parallel, the economy of both states were also, to a large extent, based on plunder, and both nations were born from the ashes of scars of the partial destruction of their country at the hands of foreign powers and a revenge fantasy against said powers and the imaginary conspiracy that caused the fall.

There are also many differences, of course. But my take on it is that there are enough similarities that the world (including myself) not seeing it coming is a failure. Also, yeah, both nazis and da'esh had a mostly working state, but at what cost?

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

#178
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These cartel bosses have fancy cars and luxurious homes. We could drone them all day every day if we wanted, but we don’t because they are employees of our intelligence services. They pay their tribute and they get to be rich, while “our” side gets a fat black budget not accountable to congress. The banks who launder the money only get fees and no jail time because they are working under the table for the same agenci…

This is a serious accusation you have no proof of, it doesn’t belong here.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_co...

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

#179
post #100

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 co…

About your statement on posting via VPN, I think you are overreacting a bit here. I don't deny that institutional persecution doesn't happen in India. But what you have posted is already there in the public domain and has been widely reported.

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

#180

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.

It would help to merge police and cartels even more. They are not two distinct entities, there is significant overlap between the two. If you force young man into military, you might just force them into situation where he has to cooperate with cartel or get corrupt.

It uses young men as a tool to coerce their mothers to do something political without even being sure what that thing is. You want sacrifice young men but don't stare for what.

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