Hillary Clinton says U.S. drug war policies have “failed.” But she’s still clueless as to why they have failed. The spike in Mexican violence started just after Mexican President Felipe Calderon, with U.S. support, brought in the Mexican military to “crack down” on the drug trade. Clinton praised Calderon for the crackdown, and promised more U.S. aid to help continue it. And so it goes.
GOP senators attacking Obama’s OLC nominee because she doesn’t believe in torture or take an expansive view of executive power. I guess they’re at least consistent. But I think I prefer partisan hackery to consistently, dangerously wrong.
Charges have been dropped against the Florida mother/model arrested for videotaping police after they arrested her son in a movie theater parking lot. But they still haven’t given back her camera, which includes video of her arrest. Hope she sues.
Scientists rally around colleague exposed to the Ebola virus.
Google classic!
This is a horribly written article. But it looks like Detroit’s police chief has suspended or is investigating the city’s entire vice squad for corruption, brutality, false arrests, and writing false tickets.
Debunking the media hysteria about how the Mexican drug war is “spilling over” into America.
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on Thursday, March 26th, 2009 at 8:58 am by Radley Balko
and is filed under General Criminal Justice, General Drug War, Police Professionalism.
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TheAgitator.com
As someone raised in the Detroit metropolitan area, the time has long since come for the State to step in and take over the government, preferably reorganizing the entire area as a metropolitan form of government. The city and its surrounding municipalities and counties have been in a death spiral caused, in large part, by mutual hatred.
Oh come on Radley, are you accusing the Action News Investigative Team of shaky writing?
I love the names they come up with for “news teams”.
Hope those sin cops get what they undoubtedly deserve. Actually I hope their bosses get it, but that’s too much to ask.
In comments to U.S. reporters, Clinton called for a new approach to tackling the drug problem, noting that “we have been pursuing these strategies for 30 years.”
“Neither interdiction [of drugs] nor reducing demand have been successful,” she said.
In other comments, she talked about “insatiable demand” in the US. That’s pretty much it in a nutshell, isn’t it? Supply and demand, the dynamic duo of economics. Sounds to me like she understands the “why” pretty well, but may differ with you (and myself) on the solution to the problem.
great article exposing the propaganda of the drug war and Mexico. This looks like a giant train-wreck in the making…
It’s not that the “article” is horribly written, per se. It’s that these stations often plop their (horribly written) TV text onto their websites verbatim.
In other words, these strings of words are at least somewhat functional on the air because they’re accompanied by images that help it all make sense. As straight text, though, they’re just awful.
Anybody who’s cheering the demise of newspapers oughta remember what we’re going to be left with when it comes to local news: this TV crap.
Any time you write laws that are judged on arrest numbers you’ll get corruption.D.U.I and drug law enforcement are prime examples of how not to write law.It’s not about harm to others it’s about numbers.Of course it helps to turn your opponents into monsters.Anyone who uses drugs is a addict and a person that has a few beers or glass of wine and drives is a alcoholic.The more you lower the bar the more ‘monsters’ you have to fight.
Regarding the photographers arrested in Fla., “resisting arrest without violence”? What does that even mean? The cop didn’t like your attitude?
It will be interesting to see if the Obama administration really makes any significant changes to U.S. drug policy. The fact that he stopped the medical marijuana raids sounds good, but the population has been subjected to decades of propaganda designed to sell the drug war. In addition to that, Mexico is increasingly being characterized as an enemy by much of the mainstream media. Remember, the border fence was far more about keeping people out than violence or drugs.
Also, I don’t see Hillary as being anything other than a consummate politician whose self-interest far exceeds any capacity for stepping out on a limb with a fundamental policy shift. She will always fight violence with escalating violence for fear of looking weak.
Clinton is quoted as saying that the U.S. has an insatiable appetite for illegal drugs. Well, Mrs. Clinton, there is a quick and easy way to eliminate that “insatiable appetite” quickly: legalize drugs! If drugs were legal, there would be no demand for illegal drugs, right? DUH!!!!
I’ve seen studies that concluded that just legalizing Marijuana will eliminate drug profits by 60-80% (yes, it’s a wide number, but even at the low end, it’s a pretty good thing for “the War on Drugs”).
I think people on both sides of the border are over simplifying the issues behind the most recent spike in violence. While I’m certain that drug money is funding the arms race within mexico, there are portions of that nation that have been on the edge of a civil war for decades. I guess my point is that even if there were zero dollars coming from the drug trade there would still be violence and civil unrest throughout the country. Trying to lay the ineptitude of the mexican system of government on the drug trade is a little silly.
#10: Given that nearly 100 percent of the increase in homicides over the last two years have been drug-related, and that the increase began with the crackdown, I’m having a hard time understanding why blaming the drug war for the violence is “silly.”
Can you point to significant sources of violence in Mexico that aren’t drug-related?
The heat?
Hell, Radley you about gave me a heart attack with the Ebola scare. Put in the tag that it happened in Germany, we do not need that on this side of the pond. I’ve got to pity the poor lady who got the stick, she didn’t even get lucky enough to get the less fatal strain, she gets the 90% going to kill you strain. It is nice to find out that a vaccine is closer to being finished for it and Marburg.
I’ve got to love the bit about “the institute is “struggling a little” with Hamburg public health authorities reluctant to let the patient out, he says. Because so few Ebola cases occur in developed countries, there’s no consensus on the right precautions.” Strange every protocol from CDC seems to be keep them in isolation for about a month to prove they’re either well or dead. You don’t want a disease with a death rate that high running around in your city.
I’m sure the lady in Florida will get her camera back. Ofcourse, the memory will be deleted and it may or may not contain a GPS tracking device.
While I’m certain that drug money is funding the arms race within mexico, there are portions of that nation that have been on the edge of a civil war for decades.
Those portions are the southern end of Mexico, where the Indians live. They have long been considered second class citizens (and worse..) by the Mexicans.
This has nothing at all to do with drugs, by the way.
The best way to keep weapons out of the hands of the bad guys in Mexico is for us to stop giving them to the “good” guys…
Radley,
#15 beat me to it.
Maybe my phrasing could have been a little better, I wasn’t implying that the drug trade had nothing to do with the violence in mexico but I’m not buying anywhere near the 100% number. I’m sure the percentage is huge around the border areas but I’m betting its no where near as bad once you move further in country. A large chunck of the southern half of the country has basically been run by little fiefdoms and has been incredibly dangerous for generations. I traveled through almost 10 years ago and ran into “road” blockades, some manned by government troops and others by unknowns with military grade weaponry. You pay your “toll”, keep your mouth shut, and move on.
My point was drug money is just a means to an end for some of these people. Groups that don’t have adequate representation will take it upon themselves to do what they have to do in order to survive. If the US stopped smoking mexican weed tomorrow, it isn’t going to change the culture of corruption within mexico, and especially within the mexican government. I’m a firm believer that a lot of the “drug violence” within the country has more to do with age-old political rivalries than actual drugs.
I’m just a little tired of the press and politicians just looking at the aftermath instead of the root causes. All we’ve been hearing is how all this weaponry is coming from american gun shows (a load of crap) and yesterday our esteemed Sec. O’ State blamed american dope smokers. It’s silly. If the mexican gov’t were really interested in doing something about the violence, it would start by fielding a legislature and judiciary that actually worked.
@Tokin42: Yeah I see your point, but it’s hard to argue that cutting off an overwhelming percentage of a cartel’s income will have nothing more than a minor impact on their operative abilities.
Would ending the drug war suddenly put an end to all Mexican violence? Of course not. But it would take out a huge portion of the money flowing into the offending organizations. Not only would the purchasing power of the cartels — for bribery, weapons, etc — drop precipitously, but a major incentive encouraging new gang members would be completely absent.
It would not make things perfect, but it would certainly make them much better.
A previous commenter is right: Hilary essentially has our ENTIRE argument bottled up in her phrases. Almost every time I heard her talk I could just imagine her taking that next step, but then I remembered who we are dealing with. She stops short, somehow claiming that even though all of this prohibition stuff hasn’t really worked out we should try a different version of it or pump money into different enforcement agencies. It’s pretty pitiful because newsgroups and interview guests take the same route: they set up the argument almost perfectly and then fail to take the next step. Example: “The drug trade is extremely lucrative and these cartels fueled by high US demand for drugs. What we really need to do is stop the guns and money from getting back into Mexico.” WTF…If you can’t stop the drugs I don’t see how you can stop the money.
I think Steven Den Beste said it best:
“When someone tries to use a strategy which is dictated by their ideology, and that strategy doesn’t seem to work, then they are caught in something of a cognitive bind. If they acknowledge the failure of the strategy, then they would be forced to question their ideology. If questioning the ideology is unthinkable, then the only possible conclusion is that the strategy failed because it wasn’t executed sufficiently well. They respond by turning up the power, rather than by considering alternatives.”
Indeed.
Google Classic! Fantastic!
I sent away for a ‘street view’ of my house and they wrote back with these instructions: Exit front door, proceed down driveway to street, rotate body 180 degrees, look.
And I’ll be damned if it didn’t work.