Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article is about Mexican cartels taking the fight to the police. As a South African, I worry that our crime levels probably get more attention than they deserve. The are certainly not much more than any other country. Even on platforms like HN, a few people watch a few videos and see a few social media posts. Conclude the country must be rife with violent crime and proceed to happily spread the word, even when no…
Not trying to offend any party here but the violence in Mexico seems more organised, targeted but brutal and extreme. The violence in ZA seems more random, more opportunity crime and more about property than people. At least this is how media show it. I may be wrong here.
In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes
221–230 of 251 posts
Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
More thoughtful commenters (e.g. Taleb) actually noticed early that ISIS and wahhabism in general is a deeply rooted and quite old political movement, not all-of-a-sudden religious cult and madness. Partly because of this conflation the whole narrative (heavily sponsored by oil money of course) have kept blind Western elites for very long time, especially in Europe, where they only start to understand that worship pl…
In the west it's common to take an overly reductive view and start throwing labels around as if they actually mean anything. Wahhabist is not really actually something anyone would refer to themselves as. It seems to refer to really any Muslim group that has some links to Saudi Arabia which is a key player in the geopolitical arena of the Middle East. Salafi is really anyone that would like to emulate the companions…
Not every religion is a religion, that is.
Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes
#223I'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…
SF isn’t there yet by a long shot, but a couple of decades of hands off approach and deference to criminals and it’s not out of the question.
Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes
#224Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes
#225I'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…
In the US we have legalized extortion, which have a benign term: taxes. Take away the taxes and the people in powers will morph in not what is considered the mafia. To me they are both, sides of the same coin.
Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
For comparison the USA... Therein lies my problem. You are going to compare one of the wealthiest, most powerful countries in human history, with South Africa?
Umm okay. Which country do you want me to compare it with? How about some from Africa? SA - 36 CAR - 20 DR Congo - 13.5 Uganda - 10.4 Nigeria - 10 How about some poor countries from Europe? Ukraine - 6.1 Bulgaria - 1.3 War-torn countries in Asia? Iraq - 10 Afghanistan - 6.6
But what does this have to do with the Topic discussed about Mexican Cartel operations against the police? Is it relevant?
This is not the right thread for discourse about SA. We shall leave that for the appropriate platform/post.
Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ask yourself what country is responsible for the war on drugs fueling the black market funding the cartels.
Nearly all of them? This problem is not caused by some weird, out of line policy of the USA. Basically nowhere wants hard drugs on the streets. And some places that experimented with legalisation rolled it back or changed their approach. Where I live there are still quite a few places with junkie lights, remnants of a hands off approach some decades ago. It led to a central public park becoming completely taken over…
Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes
#228I'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…
Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I would say that depends on how intensely you are being watched. Traffic analysis and timestamp correlation are a powerful tool. Small traffic bursts going out, slightly larger ones coming in: surfing, reading the front page. (Or new post page.) Small traffic burst going out, lots of traffic coming in: loading an active topic thread page. Slightly bigger traffic burst going out, lots of traffic coming back in: postin…
HTTPS is a great first-base — it is not enough.
Re: In Mexico, cartels are hunting down police at their homes
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exploitation in the drug market happens in the reverse of what you think. The target market is the first world, because the product has maximal value there. The positive externalities are all gained by the producer countries. Traffickers and coca producers have even risen to become major politicians in places like Venezuela and Bolivia. Meanwhile, negative externalities -- crime, addiction, and so forth -- get distri…
The case here is that coca traffickers and producers are very different. Producers the bottom of the chain, who live in the violence, sometimes they’re threatened if they try to change their crops. Traffickers are the ones that have got into politics, actively sabotaging any effort of legalization, while also controlling the mass media, and preaching under the blessing of US drug fight. That is the very same group of…