Gunmen block roads in Mexico's drug-plagued north

[cory777]

Source: Reuters

(Reuters) - Armed men likely linked to drug gangs blocked highways with trucks and buses in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey on Friday in an apparent attempt to hamper army operations near the U.S. border.

Gunmen pulled truck and bus drivers out of their vehicles in the wealthy business city and used them to set up blockades on major four-lane highways, sometimes slashing tires to make it harder to tow them away, police and motorists said.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62I3Z220100320

[Hell Hath No Fury]

1. It is flippin' out of control down there. :(

And our drug lust is the cause if it. More reason to legalize the shit. It's the least we can do for the poor Mexican people being hurt by our "war on drugs".

[superconnected]

13. Sometimes I really hate that DU doesn't offer a thumbs down button.

[msongs]

2. drug plaued ONLY because Americans use "illegal" drugs coming thru mexico nt

[kiranon]

15. Wish this message was prominently displayed in US - It is the end user

and supplier in the US that need to stop using and/or supplying drugs to people here. More drug treatment programs and decriminalization can stop much of the violence in the northern part of Mexico and here not to mention save lives.

[Skink]

3. As America prepares to get well.

[roamer65]

4. Mexico is starting to sound like Afghanistan.

[rabs]

5. As a Mexican Senate leader said this week

The United States provides the demand and consumption of illegal drugs.

Private arms dealers in the United States provide the weapons for the drug cartels.

Mexico provides the bodies.

[Johnyawl]

6. What he forgot to add...

...was that Mexico provides the poverty and corruption that makes it all possible.

[L. Coyote]

10. It is easy to say that from the part of Mexico that was stolen!

Odds are quite good that someone living in the USA is living in the richest part of the country, the part stolen from Mexico.

Imagine, all the food grown in California is from Old Mexico. We are rich, they are poor. Why. We have "their country" to feed ourselves.

[friendly_iconoclast]

7. A slight correction to that statement. Your second line should read:

"Private arms dealers in the United States provide the weapons for the Mexican government which regularly end up in the
hands of the drug cartels."

FTFY

[Fumesucker]

8. He also forgot to mention that it is the US that makes the drugs illegal in the first place..

I cannot understand why the politicians that make the laws creating these situations continually get a pass for their culpability, even here on DU..

When alcohol was illegal in the US we had exactly the same sort of violence going on surrounding the alcohol black market, when Prohibition was repealed the violence went away as if by magic..

[mbperrin]

11. Actually, when people like Al Capone were in prison or dead, the violence

mostly went away.

Check out robberies for beer in any metro area.

http://www.nwcn.com/news/Beer-thieves-assault-elderly-woman-during-getaway-88313757.html

Beer thieves assault elderly woman during getaway

EVERETT, Wash. - They went on a beer run and ran out of the store without paying, but not before knocking a 74-year-old woman to ground, sending her to the hospital....."I had a concussion. I had to have staples on the back on my head," said Friske.

She also has deep bruises on the back of her leg that keep her from sitting for long periods. She spent a night in the hospital and missed three days of work, all because three guys wanted to steal some beer.... more at links and lots more hits on Google.

Bootleggers are still operating in parts of the country where liquor is quite legal, but more expensive, than moon. Never mind the crimes committed under the influence of alcohol.

Corruption of law enforcement is what made the bootlegging possible then, same as now.

Otherwise, we could just say, making something illegal creates problems and making it legal would solve the problem; like pedophilia, murder, rape, burglary; just make them legal, and bingo! No more problems!

This mythology about Prohibition gets a little bigger each year, but that's not a magic bullet.

[Fumesucker]

16. Clearly then we should make alcohol illegal again, that would ameliorate the problems..

I've tried that on DU before and *nobody* believes it, the worst flaming I ever got and that is saying a lot.

Pedophilia, murder, rape and burglary all have actual victims, people who are directly harmed, the same is no more true of "drugs" than it is of the local 7-11 when it sells a 12 pack of beer.

And the facts are at odds with your statement..

[mbperrin]

17. My parents' home was burned down by my meth lab operating sister.

My grandparents' home was burned down by my heroin addict cousin when he couldn't pay the electric bill.

Any more non-victims?

[Fumesucker]

19. They were victims of the *illegality* of the drugs in question..

If you could buy legal and regulated drugs people wouldn't be cooking meth in their homes.

Alcoholics also burn down homes when they can't pay the bills.

Is that the fault of the convenience store owner who sells the Budweiser?

Do you advocate making alcohol illegal and if not why not?

[mbperrin]

21. Wouldn't be cooking meth if it was legal? So nobody is out there

making moonshine any more, even in areas where liquor is sold, because moonshine is so cheap?

[Fumesucker]

26. There are some few out making moonshine but it's almost a literal drop in the bucket

Compared to legal alcohol sales..

I can walk a couple of hundred feet and buy legal beer and malt liquor, drive about a mile and buy legal distilled spirits. I wouldn't have the slightest clue where to go and buy moonshine in my area and I live in a semi rural area.

My brother makes his own wine, totally legally, he just can't sell it legally and he doesn't.

[mbperrin]

23. Explain how making heroin legal would prevent addicts from spending

all their money on heroin, and then using heartstrings to move in to dead relatives' homes with the heirs' permission, and then being careless with fire and burning the place down.

Start there. Legal, illegal, drugs have effects, and those effects have consequences. Right now, drug users are shielded from their actions because they were under the influence. Why?

[Fumesucker]

25. Where in the law does it say a drug user is shielded from the consequences of their actions?

I've never heard that anywhere, do you have a link?

Heroin would be _much_ cheaper if it were legal..

[Dark]

30. It's explained here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin_assisted_treatment

[mbperrin]

24. I personally favor being able to legally abort offspring until they're about

60. About then, you can figure maybe you know what they're about and they won't be too much trouble. And if the birth parents are deceased before the statute on junior is up, that becomes part of the estate, to be exercised by the executor other than junior.

How's that? Manners might improve markedly.

You seem to think the examples I gave are hypothetical. They were not. Four lifetimes of work and investment were completely wasted because someone wanted something in their vein. That okay with you?

[Fumesucker]

27. What if they wanted to drink alcohol and the four lifetimes of work were wasted?

And you know it happens every single day.. Multiple times, we have special police patrols out to catch those who drive under the influence of mainly alcohol because it ruins so many lives?

Like yours, these are not hypothetical situations.

Do you favor making alcohol illegal for this reason and if not why not?

[mbperrin]

18. So the beer run robbery had no victim? The elderly woman hurt herself!

If only the dumb old bitch was at home where she belonged!

Right?

[Fumesucker]

20. You are confusing two different things..

Who is the victim of the person of the convenience store that sold the Budweiser?

Would the person who was robbed for the money not have been robbed if beer were illegal?

Do you advocate making alcoholic beverages illegal and if not why not?

[mbperrin]

22. You didn't read the article. Nobody sold the beer. It was stolen.

Available for sale, but stolen. The thieves knocked the woman down and then ran over her with their car getting away.

This is beer available legally, and the woman was walking down the street in the general area. She was not robbed.

I advocate making being drunk or drug impaired no legal excuse to escape consequence, for a start. You?

[Fumesucker]

34. Drunk or drug impaired is *already* not a legal excuse to escape consequences..

And I don't have a problem with that..

And by the way, since alcohol is a drug, drunk *is* drug impaired.

Who is the victim of of the woman selling the beer who was run over?

Who is the victim of someone selling alcoholic beverages?

[superconnected]

14. Excellent post!

[spin]

35. Some weapons flow from the U.S. to Mexico but ...

Drug cartels' new weaponry means war

ZIHUATANEJO, MEXICO, AND MEXICO CITY — It was a brazen assault, not just because it targeted the city's police station, but for the choice of weapon: grenades.

The Feb. 21 attack on police headquarters in coastal Zihuatanejo, which injured four people, fit a disturbing trend of Mexico's drug wars. Traffickers have escalated their arms race, acquiring military-grade weapons, including hand grenades, grenade launchers, armor-piercing munitions and antitank rockets with firepower far beyond the assault rifles and pistols that have dominated their arsenals.

***snip***

Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling of semiauto- matic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

The proliferation of heavier armaments points to a menacing new stage in the Mexican government's 2-year-old war against drug organizations, which are evolving into a more militarized force prepared to take on Mexican army troops, deployed by the thousands, as well as to attack each other.

These groups appear to be taking advantage of a robust global black market and porous borders, especially between Mexico and Guatemala. Some of the weapons are left over from the wars that the United States helped fight in Central America, U.S. officials said.

"There is an arms race between the cartels," said Alberto Islas, a security consultant who advises the Mexican government.

"One group gets rocket-propelled grenades, the other has to have them."

***snip***

The enhanced weaponry represents a wide sampling from the international arms bazaar, with grenades and launchers produced by U.S., South Korean, Israeli, Spanish or former Soviet bloc manufacturers. Many had been sold legally to governments, including Mexico's, and then were diverted onto the black market. Some may be sold directly to the traffickers by corrupt elements of national armies, authorities and experts say.
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/mar/15/world/fg-mexico-arms-race15

We do need to do everything we can to tighten up our borders to prevent gun smuggling, but even if we were able to totally stop the flow of weapons south, the Mexican drug cartels will still have sources of weapons form south of their border.

[timo]

9. cheap guns

bought from south america too!! wonder why that NEVER gets put in?? or cheap guns bought by the sea can load from china???

[lonestarnot]

12. More woopsie.

[NickB79]

28. We're gonna have a failed state on our southern border within the decade

If you think it's bad now, just wait a few years...

[roamer65]

29. That's what I'm scared of with Mexico.

All of this narco-violence, plus major oil fields like Cantarell are drying up. It is not a good mix.

[amandabeech]

33. Cantarell is going to be a big problem.

It has been bankrolling Mexico for some time. It pays for what social programs there are.

Frankly, I don't know what is worse, the drug problem or the oil problem.

It's not going to be pretty.

[Dark]

31. Eventually we're going to have to do something. I don't know what that something is,

but we're going to have to do it.

I just wish we'd solve the problem now. Mexico should be, after recovering the economy, at the top of Obama's to do list.

Cause if we have a refugee crisis... dear god, that would be insane.

[The abyss]

32. What part of “cartoon news” doesn’t anyone get?

This is all about providing USA Americans with a thrill factor.

Excellent story, amping up if for no other reason than – Think about it!