De War on Drugs in Mexico - hier verder

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Op donderdag 9 juni 2011 20:20 schreef koffiegast het volgende:
In arme landen of waar je weinig kunt doen/vrijheid hebt of waar het gewoon moeilijk is om zorgeloos te leven is drugs zo'n gemakkelijke uitweg om het leven te ontsnappen. Ik denk dat je dan juist vooral mensen krijgt die verslaafd worden. Terwijl hier, je niks kunt doen en geld kunt vangen bij wijze van spreken, en er niet zo'n drang is om te ontsnappen, want het leven is hier over het algemeen uitstekend.

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Iran has the highest rate of heroin and opium addiction per head of population in the world, according to the UN: one in 17 is a regular user and 20% of the Iranian population aged 15-60 is involved in drug abuse

There are an estimated 500,000 drug dealers in Iran, circulating narcotics with an estimated street value of £1.7bn to £2.83bn

Drug abuse is the main factor behind 60% of divorces in Iran, according to a survey

Official government figures estimate that illegal drugs cost the Iranian economy £630m in 2004

More than 3,200 Iranian law enforcers have been killed in clashes with drug traffickers since 1979. In 2003, officers seized 220 tonnes of drugs, up 54% on the previous year.

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Op donderdag 9 juni 2011 22:29 schreef waht het volgende:

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Er is van alles mis met goede heroine.

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Op vrijdag 10 juni 2011 01:40 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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Op vrijdag 10 juni 2011 09:49 schreef Eyjafjallajoekull het volgende:

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Moet toch idd wel iets flink mis zijn in Amerika dat men zijn toevlucht zo massaal zoekt in drugs. Ik heb zelf nooit die drang gehad (komt natuurlijk ook omdat ik het prima heb hier) maar ook omdat ik er geen behoefte aan heb om het te proberen ofzo. Maarja in Mexico snap ik het wel. Als je mexicaanse vriendin is verkracht en in stukken is gezaagt zou ik als man ook aan de drugs gaan waarschijnlijk.... Het is een visueuze cirkel daar.

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Op vrijdag 10 juni 2011 12:16 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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Welnee, er is niets mis met drugs. Ze grijpen naar pijnstillers omdat er op coke gejaagd word.

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Mexican TV cop show pitches for hearts and minds in battle with drug cartels

Producer sees El Equipo as 'building faith in our institutions', but others say it is crude propaganda

A thunderous sky frames Santiago, Fermín, Mateo and Magda as they stand, hands on hips and eyes fixed on the viewer, at the end of each episode of Mexico's biggest television police drama. They are El Equipo, or The Team, and, the motto goes, "They know that good overcomes evil."

It's not going to revolutionise cop shows, but the programme has become the focus of a controversial battle for hearts and minds in the government's campaign against the country's drug cartels.

"Mexico is living through a difficult time," producer Pedro Torres said, referring to the violence that has claimed about 40,000 lives since the offensive began in 2007. "If the message gets through that there are flesh and blood policemen who are committed to struggling for Mexico, then it was worth it."

Until recently, government strategy against the cartels has relied heavily on the military, on the grounds that soldiers are less vulnerable to infiltration than the notoriously corrupt police.

The government is now promoting a revamped federal police as the civilian future of the battle against organised crime, so that the army can return to barracks. Staffed with an unprecedented number of university graduates and equipped with state-of-the-art technology, the idea is to replicate the model at the state level.

El Equipo was made with the help of the federal police and loosely based on real events intermingled with romantic subplots. The four stars each represent a different ideal. There is the honest veteran, the redeemed trafficker, the brilliant beautiful lawyer and the general's son who prefers to be a police officer.

What Torres sees as "building faith in our institutions," others see as crude propaganda for a strategy that bears much of the blame for the escalating violence.

"It is immoral to try to change the perception of the security situation through a television programme," said the opposition federal deputy Leticia Quezada. "It is bread and circus."

Quezada has demanded that the federal auditor's office investigate whether public money was illegally channelled into the 15 episodes shown on the influential Televisa network that controls 70% of terrestrial TV programming.

The show is screened just before Televisa's main nightly news programme, and critics say its primetime slot is part of a shift towards more government-friendly coverage of the drug wars. A few months ago Televisa news coverage seemed to emphasize the widespread sense that the drug wars had spiralled beyond control. Now the focus is on the federal forces squaring up to the challenge posed by the cartels.

"The official line is now the norm," says investigative media journalist Jenaro Villamil. "They cover the rest, but only tangentially."

President Felipe Calderón still complains that the media is in a "competition to demolish the national spirit". But Televisa will be rerunning El Equipo on Saturdays, and a second series is being discussed. Good, it seems, is likely to overcome evil again, at least on screen.

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Op maandag 13 juni 2011 10:11 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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Gunmen kill 5 members of family in northern Mexico

rcc/dk= CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) — Gunmen have killed five members of a family, including two young children, in the drug cartel-plagued state of Chihuahua in northern Mexico.

State Attorney's General's Office spokesman Carlos Gonzalez says the unidentified gunmen took the spent shell casings away with them after shooting the family in El Terrero in the municipality of Guadalupe y Calvo.

Witnesses say five gunmen arrived at the house asking for a person. When the family said they didn't know where he was, the assailants opened fire.

Those killed Saturday were two adult women, a teenager and two children aged 3 and 4.

Chihuahua state, which contains Ciudad Juarez, is a hotspot in Mexico's drug war, which has claimed more than 34,000 lives since 2006

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Op vrijdag 5 maart 2010 13:32 schreef sp3c het volgende:

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maar het blijft oorlog in mexico

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Cartels have taken cruelty up a notch, says one drug trafficker: kidnapping bus passengers for gladiatorlike fights to the death

The elderly are killed. Young women are raped. And able-bodied men are given hammers, machetes and sticks and forced to fight to the death.

In one of the most chilling revelations yet about the violence in Mexico, a drug cartel-connected trafficker claims fellow gangsters have kidnapped highway bus passengers and forced them into gladiatorlike fights to groom fresh assassins.

In an in-person interview arranged by intermediaries on the condition that neither his name nor the location of his Texas visit be published, the trafficker also admitted to helping push cocaine worth $5 million to $10 million a month into the United States.

Law enforcement sources confirm he is a cartel operative but not a fugitive from pending charges.

His words are not those of a federal agent or drawn from a news conference or court papers.

Instead, he offers a voice from inside Mexico's mayhem — a mafioso who mingles among crime bosses and foot soldiers in a protracted war between drug cartels as well as against the government.

If what he says is true, gangsters who make commonplace beheadings, hangings and quartering bodies have managed an even crueler twist to their barbarity.

Members of the Zetas cartel, he says, have pushed passengers into an ancient Rome-like blood sport with a modern Mexico twist that they call, "Who is going to be the next hit man?"

"They cut guys to pieces," he said.

The victims are likely among the hundreds of people found in mass graves in recent months, he said.

In the vicinity of the Mexican city of San Fernando, nearly 200 bodies were unearthed from pits, and authorities said most appeared to have died of blunt force head trauma.

Many are believed to have been dragged off buses traveling through Mexico, but little has been said about the circumstances of their deaths.

The trafficker said those who survive are taken captive and eventually given suicide missions, such as riding into a town controlled by rivals and shooting up the place.

The trafficker said he did not see the clashes, but his fellow criminals have boasted to him of their exploits.
Killing 'for amusement'

Former and current federal law-enforcement officers in the U.S. said that while they knew Mexican bus passengers had been targeted for violence, they'd never before heard of forcing passengers into death matches.

But given the level of violence in Mexico — nearly 40,000 killed in gangland warfare over the past several years — they didn't find it tough to believe.

Borderland Beat, a blog specializing in drug cartels, reported an account in April of bus passengers brutalized by Zeta thugs and taunted into fighting.

"The stuff you would not think possible a few years ago is now commonplace," said Peter Hanna, a retired FBI agent who built his career focusing on Mexico's cartels. "It used to be you'd find dead bodies in drums with acid; now there are beheadings."

Even so, Hanna noted, killing people this way would be time-consuming and inefficient. "It would be more for amusement," he suggested. "I don't see it as intimidation or a successful way to recruit people."

Hidden behind designer sunglasses and a whisper of a beard, the trafficker interviewed by the Houston Chronicle talked at a restaurant's back table. He had silver shopping bags filled at Nordstrom, but seemed anything but a typical wealthy Mexican on a Texas shopping trip.

As a condition of the interview, he asked that he be referred to only as Juan.

He has worked as a drug-trafficker in Northern Mexico for more than a decade, he said, but has grown tired of gangsters running roughshod over each other and innocent civilians.

Juan, who has worked with the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel, the two major drug organizations that control territory along the South Texas-Mexico border, said that back home, he sleeps with a semiautomatic rifle by his bed and a handgun under his pillow.

"It is like the Wild West. You can carry a gun and you are Superman," he said of gangsters and killing at will. "Like everybody says, it is out of control now. We have to put a stop to it."

A recent U.S. Senate report contends the Zetas are the most violent of Mexico's cartels. Its members are believed to be responsible for the recent killing of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who was shot on a Mexican highway.
'They brag about it'

Just on Thursday, authorities in Mexico said they arrested members of the Zetas and seized 201 automatic weapons, 600 camouflage uniforms and 30,000 rounds of ammunition.

"I am not defending the Sinaloa or the Gulf Cartel," Juan said of the Zetas' main rivals. "I earn more money with the Zetas, but I know the (crap) they do," he said. "They brag about it."

With the recent killing of the ICE agent and perhaps other attacks, the Zetas also are breaking the golden rule for Mexican traffickers: Don't kill Americans, he said. It brings too much heat.

If the Zetas are crushed, violence will lessen, he said, and Mexico's older cartels will go back to the older way of doing business - dividing up territory and agreeing not to clash with each other.
Death toll has exploded

Mike Vigil, a retired Drug Enforcement Administration agent who was the chief of international operations, said Mexican gangsters used to understand that violence should be used sparingly.

"They love brutality," Vigil said of the Zetas. "They do not care whether you are a police officer, a trafficker or an innocent bystander.

"The drug-trafficking organizations are eventually going to have to deal with the Zetas."

The death toll has exploded since Mexican President Felipe Calderon took office in 2006 and dispersed military troops throughout the country to fight the cartels. The resulting battles have wrought carnage among local politicians, soldiers, gangsters and civilians alike.

As for the military, Juan said, "They are not helping," noting that the soldiers, like the gangsters, seem to kill whoever they want.

He also discussed some of the finer points of drug trafficking.
Checkpoints no problem

"We don't hide it," he said, telling stories of openly off-loading tractor-trailer rigs of cocaine in parking lots. "These are not lies. Everybody in Mexico knows it."

Even the checkpoints Mexican officials operate along the highways between Central Mexico and the border do not pose much of a problem, Juan said.

The trick, he confided, is to send someone in advance to bribe a commander so a drug load won't be bothered.

"It is better to tell them," he said. "It will cost you more if they catch it."
Tries not to be flashy

As for how he's been able to survive a decade, Juan said the secret is not being greedy or flashy enough to draw attention from other gangsters, who these days show no hesitation to cut down rivals.

He said he can quickly size up in a bar or cafe who is likely to be a trafficker, from the money they spend to the way they talk, sit or eat.

"You can tell in a restaurant or anywhere - that guy is moving dope," Juan said.

Other keys to longevity in the business: knowing your place in the Mexican under­world's hierarchy and not giving the impression you are making more money or interested in taking a chunk out of another gangster's livelihood.

"You keep doing the work you do," Juan said. "Stay at your level."

Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp(...)2.html#ixzz1PAWfgs52

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Op maandag 13 juni 2011 17:07 schreef Mr.Silencer het volgende:

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WTF

Het zou wel verklaren waarom er zoveel immigranten verdwijnen en dood worden teruggevonden.

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Op maandag 13 juni 2011 11:08 schreef michaelmoore het volgende:

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Nee dat geloof ik niet , als de reden van de oorlog weg is dan is er geen reden voor oorlog

Het gaat om de macht om de smokkelroutes

Wie zich kapot wil maken moet dat gewoon kunnen doen, dus vrijgeven die rotzooi, gratis , dan zijn de bendes gelijk zo arm als de ratten

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Op maandag 13 juni 2011 17:49 schreef sp3c het volgende:

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oorlog stopt niet zo eenvoudig ... de oplossing die je aandraagt het die oorlog kunnen voorkomen maar op dit moment heeft het weinig nut

dan zit je met een aantal organisaties met heel veel mensen en nog meer wapentuig zonder inkomsten, wat gaan die doen denk je?
uitkering aanvragen?

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Op maandag 13 juni 2011 11:08 schreef michaelmoore het volgende:

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Nee dat geloof ik niet , als de reden van de oorlog weg is dan is er geen reden voor oorlog

Het gaat om de macht om de smokkelroutes

Wie zich kapot wil maken moet dat gewoon kunnen doen, dus vrijgeven die rotzooi, gratis , dan zijn de bendes gelijk zo arm als de ratten

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Op maandag 13 juni 2011 17:51 schreef sp3c het volgende:
ja precies, zo run je staten

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Op maandag 13 juni 2011 17:52 schreef arucard het volgende:

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Dit werkt in ieder geval niet, waarom niet het andere proberen?

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Op maandag 13 juni 2011 17:55 schreef sp3c het volgende:

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ik zeg niet dat ze het andere niet moeten proberen ... mijn zegen hebben ze

maar de oorlog die nu woed stop je er niet mee en dat moet je niet als argument voor legalisering gebruiken, die stop je door harder te vechten als de cartels en harder op te treden tegen corruptie binnen de eigen gelederen

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Op maandag 13 juni 2011 17:59 schreef sp3c het volgende:
oorlog tegen de cartels

oorlog tegen drugs zal me mijn reet roesten

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Op maandag 13 juni 2011 17:49 schreef sp3c het volgende:

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oorlog stopt niet zo eenvoudig ... de oplossing die je aandraagt het die oorlog kunnen voorkomen maar op dit moment heeft het weinig nut

dan zit je met een aantal organisaties met heel veel mensen en nog meer wapentuig zonder inkomsten, wat gaan die doen denk je?
uitkering aanvragen?