Mexico: 28,000 killed in drug violence since 2006

[cory777]

Source: AP

MEXICO CITY (AP) - President Felipe Calderon said he would consider a debate on legalizing drugs Tuesday as his government announced that more than 28,000 people have been killed in drug violence since he launched a crackdown against cartels in 2006.

Intelligence agency director Guillermo Valdes also said authorities have confiscated about 84,000 weapons and made total cash seizures of $411 million in U.S. currency and $26 million worth in pesos (330 million pesos).

Valdes released the statistics during a meeting with Calderon and representatives of business and civic groups, where attendees exploring ways to improve Mexico's anti-drug strategy called on the government to open a debate on legalization.

Calderon said he has taken note of the idea of legally regulating drugs in the past.

Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gMi5B2USfJStXxfqgWWr2xjRYpOgD9HCE3380

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Up to the minute Breaking Activist News http://activistnews.blogspot.com

[Wilms]

1. Get with the program Cory.

The War on Drugs spent over 30 billion thus far this year.
http://www.drugsense.org/wodclock.htm

What's 28,000 lives when they're a million a pop? :shrug:

[cory777]

3. Thanks for the link, Wilms

I think it's important to get the people up to speed with the 'program'.

Check out my NewsBlog http://activistnews.blogspot.com

"Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power." - P.J. O'Rourke

[dkf]

2. How does this help?

And does it mean even more of a flood of drugs over the border?

[lbrtbell]

4. All because idiots won't stop using drugs

The law of supply and demand at work. No market = no business. Simplest, cheapest way to stop the drug wars, but it'll never happen. People are too selfish and self-destructive.

[Rebubula]

5. Several Points to make

1) Most of the pot used in this country comes from this country or Canada. I have not even seen Mexican weed in 2 decades.
2) Most people that smoke\eat\vaporize cannabis are employed, intelligent and (other than pot) are law abiding citizens. Our last 3 Presidents have smoked grass. OK...the last one is not a good example...lol.
3) It is the PROHIBITION that is causing the violence. We ended alcohol prohibition and violence due to black market business dropped to zero.
4) Your stance on drug use is well know around here.....PISS OFF

Now...I need to get back to my well paying job that supports my family, pays my mortgage\car and allows me to 'adopt' a family at the House of Ruth twice a year. Then I will go home, pull out my bong and get stoned before dinner...as I have done my entire adult life.

[a la izquierda]

6. Thank you for making an intelligent post...

I like you, you don't pull punches.
Mention Mexicans and/or drugs around here and the loathers come out.

[kenichol]

7. Drug War a Failure

Presidente Felipe Calderon is joining Columbia and Brazil in recognizing that the "War on Drugs" is half the problem and none of the solution. Being illegal, the drug trade is owned and operated by criminals who have found that the war and the illegality is very good for business, which has never been better.

The other half of the problem is the problem of unregulated drugs which should be addressed by regulation, taxation, licensed, taxed, and regulated and legitimate businesses, as well as treatment instead of incarceration of non-violent addicts.

This would be a good industry for American businesses the regulation of which could be financed by taxes.

As it stands, my partner and I live near the "ground zero" of drug violence in Juarez, Mexico. And the violence is moving North.

[Peace Patriot]

8. Wow! Great post! We really need to grasp that the U.S. "war on drugs" is nothing more than a...

boondoggle for war profiteers. Latin Americans are way ahead of us on this. We are such dolts, letting war profiteers suck BILLIONS and BILLIONS of dollars out of government coffers. FOR WHAT?! Everywhere the U.S. "war on drugs" goes, death and mayhem follow. It is not a solution. It is a GRAVY TRAIN for militarists.

Would it have been better, in Mexico, to have had...

--a few deaths over the last four years from drug use or gang fighting...or...28,000 people dead, many of them innocent victims, from a war between the police and the illicit drug business, which caused an additional war within the illicit drug business?

Would it have been better, here and everywhere, to have had...

--a few people addicted to hard drugs, which they can legally obtain, and everybody LEFT ALONE to choose their legally obtainable choice of mood altering substances, from alcohol and tobacco, to innocent herbs like marijuana and coca leaves, to all non-Big Pharma drugs...or...this vast looting of funds from social programs INTO the pockets of police, military and the "prison-industrial complex" profiteers WHO NEVER SOLVE THE PROBLEM?

Truly, this is a choice between REASON and INSANITY, and our alleged political representatives have been choosing INSANITY all this time, amidst vast political corruption.

One more thing that may not be obvious to people who haven't been following the U.S. military buildup in Colombia and in the Central America/Caribbean region, and political developments in Latin America:

The U.S. has larded Colombia with $7 BILLION in military aid, and the U.S. military is now occupying at least seven military bases in Colombia, with U.S. military use of all civilian infrastructure, in a secretly negotiated agreement that includes total diplomatic immunity for all U.S. soldiers and U.S. military 'contractors,' no matter what they do in Colombia--all in the name of the U.S. "war on drugs" (to which the Bush Junta added the U.S. "war on terror").

Colombia has one of the worst human rights records on earth. 92% of the murders of trade unionists in Colombia are committed by the Colombian military (about half) and its closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads (the other half). Thousands of trade unionists, community activists, teachers, human rights workers, journalists, political leftists and peasant farmer leaders have been slaughtered in Colombia, quite deliberately, in an official reign of terror to eliminate the political opposition, and 5 MILLION peasant farmers have been displaced from their land--the second worst human displacement crisis on earth--all in the name of the U.S. "war on drugs" with the added fillip of the "war on terror."

Colombia's rich elite, narco-thug leadership and U.S. bought and paid for military have been engaged in a civil war, in Colombia, with a left-wing insurgency for something like 70 years. This chronic civil war has been turned into a bloodbath by the infusion of $7 BILLION of U.S. taxpayer-funded military aid to one side of the conflict. But more than this, Colombia is now threatening Venezuela, a peaceful democracy that Washington hates because it gave the finger to Exxon Mobil and is using oil profits to benefit the poor--and has inspired other peoples and their leaders to reject U.S. domination and to join together with other Latin American countries, in trade groups and political organizations, for collective strength in dealing with Washington and improving their own societies. Not incidentally, Venezuela possesses the largest oil reserves in the world (twice Saudi Arabia's, according to a USGS report).

I greatly fear that the Pentagon is seguing the "war on drugs" into Oil War II--closer to home, and, in their view, "easier pickuns" than the oil in the Middle East . The U.S. "war on drugs" is not just a corrupt, murderous failure. It may be far more lethal than all the carnage in Mexico, Colombia and other places, and far more destructive of our own and other societies in this hemisphere than is already evident. It has permitted the Pentagon to quietly surround Venezuela's Caribbean oil coast and northern oil provinces with war assets--right over the border in Colombia, on the Dutch islands right off Venezuela's oil coast, in the Caribbean (the USN 4th Fleet) and other places, forming an arc around this target. Recently, Colombia charged Venezuela with 'harboring' some of Colombia's domestic guerrilla fighters on Venezuela's side of the chaotic Venezuela-Colombian border. The border area has been MADE chaotic by Colombia itself. A quarter of a million Colombians--mostly poor farmers--have sought refuge in Venezuela from the Colombian military and its death squads. They flee over the porous border, where also drug traffickers, traffickers in other goods, rightwing death squads and leftist guerrillas move back and forth. As the head of the OAS has said, neither country has control of its border and to blame Venezuela for this is absurd.

This chaotic border situation--exacerbated by the U.S. funded Colombian military--is now a made-to-order region for a "Gulf of Tonkin"-type incident that could be the trigger for a Vietnam-like war, at first using the Colombian government and military as proxies for the U.S., and then escalating into a U.S. war, to destabilize and topple Venezuela's democratic government and restore U.S. corporate control of the the oil. One shooting incident involving U.S. soldiers (there are at least 1,500 in Colombia), vs the Venezuelan military or border patrol, and the war is on.

It is extremely dangerous for a society to maintain a huge war machine as the U.S. does. It is an on-going temptation not only to tyrants like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, but also, in our circumstances, to the multinational corporations that are running things in Washington DC, and to those who profiteer from war. The war on Iraq is a prime example of the extreme dangerousness of a huge war machine. The "war on drugs"--with all its corrosion of society, murder, mayhem and huge expense--has been MELDED INTO this war machine. They have become one and the same.

The discussion of whether drugs, like alcohol, should be legal or illegal must be seen in this context. It needs to be a discussion of war in general--the Forever War that war profiteers have engaged us in. When are we going to STOP BEING AT WAR, and start becoming a civilized, democratic country again, once the beacon of hope to the world? When are we going to STOP KILLING PEOPLE and re-learn how to solve problems with diplomacy and fairness and reason? It doesn't always work, but, by God, every war since the END of WW II has proven, beyond question, that neither does war. War almost never works, and never ever ever should be Option No. 1 in solving problems. Not drug problems. Not "terrorism." Not need for oil. Not need for markets. It should always and ever be the very last option. It should not be A WAY OF LIFE!