U.S. Drug Users Are Root of Violence, Calderon Says (Update1)By Jens Erik Gould
May 29 (Bloomberg) -- Mexican President Felipe Calderon said demand from U.S. drug users is the root cause of violence that killed thousands of people this year.
``The battle Mexico is waging every day takes the lives of Mexican policemen even though the majority of consumers are Americans,'' Calderon said today in Mexico City at a meeting with governors of U.S. and Mexican border states.
The U.S. and Mexico must boost efforts to fight the drug cartels that bring marijuana and cocaine into the U.S., Calderon said. The governors voiced support for Plan Merida, the Bush administration's aid package to help fight Mexican drug crime that has yet to clear the U.S. Congress, said Jose Gonzalez Paras, governor of Nuevo Leon state in Mexico.
Mexico's top police officers are being targeted and killed as drug traffickers retaliate for arrests and record seizures stemming from Calderon's crackdown on narcotics gangs.
Seven Mexican federal policemen died in a shootout with drug traffickers in Sinaloa state this week, the highest number of federal agents killed in one day. Mexico's acting federal police chief Edgar Millan was shot nine times and killed May 8 as he returned to his home in Mexico City.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger praised Calderon's efforts to fight organized crime.
``We want to congratulate him for the courage that he has to stand up against the drug lords,'' Schwarzenegger said.
There have been 1,356 drug-related killings so far this year, newspaper El Universal reported May 21. More than 2,500 people, including hundreds of police and military officers, were killed last year by drug violence.
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and Texas Governor Rick Perry also attended the meeting.
The Mexico aid package has been met with resistance from a diverse group in the United States, from right-wing radio hosts who want Mexico to fund its own drug war, to Amnesty International, which says the Mexican military needs to improve its human rights record.
ReplyDeleteThe Mexico City meeting, which also brought together governors from five Mexican border states, was a continuation of a February meeting with Bush in Washington. The border governors, who have been meeting regularly since 1980, have in the past year sought to get more federal funding — from both governments — for border security.
Perry agreed that the United States needs to play a role in confronting the drug cartels. "This is not just Mexico's problem, with the killings and violence, it's also about the U.S. and the consumption side of it," he said.
Seeking Help
The devastating effects of alcohol abuse and addiction on every facet of our combined lives, we are all aware of.
ReplyDeleteBut knowing this would we go back to prohibition as a cure?
Legalize it for a trial period. See how it all shakes out.
ReplyDeleteReduction in crime/killing/cartel activity.
vs.
Increase in crime/killing/cartel activity.
vs.
Reduction in work productivity.
vs.
Domestic violence
If there winds up being too many negatives, outlaw it again. Start off with pot.
Then again we could be like Indonesia and Malaysia and make it the death penalty for possession of any amount.
Just sayin.
ReplyDeleteThen come the first three DHS recommendations:
ReplyDelete* "[The U.S. Government] should not feed the notion that America is engaged in a broad struggle against the so-called 'Muslim World.'"
* "Al-Qaeda may be spreading its influence, but the USG should not abet its franchising by making links when none exist."
* "The USG should avoid unintentionally portraying terrorists, who lack moral and religious legitimacy, as brave fighters, legitimate soldiers, or spokesmen for ordinary Muslims. Therefore, the experts counseled caution in using terms such as, 'jihadist,' 'Islamic terrorist,' 'Islamist,' and 'holy warrior' as grandiose descriptions."
War of Words
Yeah, well, when you're knee deep in hired Muslims...
ReplyDeleteNot a lot of brain power required there.
(Wretchard call your office. Square that circle, guy. Oh, we are.)
Businessman Joseph Zangar Bright, 36, a stocky Americo-Liberian who lived in Ottawa for nine years, is an avowed sushi lover. He also likes Heineken beer and imported whiskey.
ReplyDeleteAll these things are easier to find in Monrovia, he said, because of the glut of foreign money. But he also said many of the groups have "overstayed their usefulness."
"People do good work," Bright said, "but people really are enjoying themselves in this backward, postwar country."
Paradise Amid the Poverty
Relax, sam.
ReplyDeleteAmerica's surprising six figure jobs:
ReplyDeleteFlight Attendants
Agricultural Managers
Sales Representatives
Forbes
Ok.
ReplyDeleteFlight attendants? In this high fuel cost economy? I ain't buying it.
ReplyDeleteSubstitute the local drug dealers for flight attendants, I might buy that.
The trouble with legalizing the dangerous drugs--the immediately dangerous drugs like heroin and coke--is it seems so out of whack with a sane responsible government. It usually takes a long time to drink ones self to death, but this stuff is true poison. I'd be a lot more comfortable shooting the drug dealers, maryjane excepted. Working to get people hooked on a poison--that's a death penalty offense to me. We don't have the spunk to do it though.
I'm not sure of the details, but I think the Netherlands and others are throttling back a bit on some of their liberalisms in this regard.
The states have no business selling these lottery tickets, either. Just sucking off the weak and vulnerable. Just the state run numbers racket.
Did they really steal that White House furniture?
ReplyDeleteClinton's Chickens Coming Home to
Roost
THE CLINTONS JUST HAVE TO WIN
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
In January 1998, right after The Washington Post revealed President Bill Clinton’s relationship with Monica, I spoke with him about his predicament. Shell-shocked and stunned at the calls for his impeachment, he knew he was facing the fight of his life. At first, he was vintage Bill Clinton: maudlin, sad and full of self-pity. But as we talked, he gradually changed his tone. Admitting that he was not innocent, but recognizing his diminishing support, he then told me defiantly: “Well, we’ll just have to win.”
Several years later, I was surprised to read in Sidney Blumenthal’s memoirs that then-first lady Hillary Clinton had used the exact same words on the exact same day in a conversation with the White House aide. “We’ll just have to win.”
That’s how the Clintons think — no matter what, they have to win. Winning is everything, and how you do it is not determined by any inner sense of values or ethics, but by a resolve to do whatever needs to be done, no more and certainly no less. So, on that day in January 1998 — because they had to win — their campaign to discredit a 23-year-old intern began in the White House. Private investigators dug up her old boyfriends. White House operatives spread the word that it was the president who was the victim. The young woman was an unbalanced stalker.
As impeachment unfolded, the extramarital affairs of key members of the Republican leadership in the House were suddenly outed.
Hillary Clinton began the disinformation campaign. Appearing on “The Today Show,” she righteously claimed that there was nothing to support Lewinsky’s claims and insisted that Bill was just “ministering” to a “troubled young woman.” Then came the blue dress and the Clintons finally — and reluctantly — changed gears.
But they never changed philosophies. Winning is still everything. No matter who gets destroyed, offended or hurt in the process.
We’ve seen it throughout Hillary’s campaign: the race-baiting by Bill Clinton in South Carolina and by Hillary in Kentucky. His comparison of Obama to Jesse Jackson and her talk about “hard-working whites” was not accidental. The Clintons don’t make verbal mistakes.
Everything they say is deliberate. And then Bill Clinton actually had the nerve to say that it was the Obama campaign and not him — that they had played the race card. Once again, he’s the victim.
Now Bill and Hillary are desperate to keep Hillary in the race. Despite mathematical impossibility, the Clintons are biding their time. Out of money and out of delegates, they are waiting for some unknown force to suddenly emerge and change the race. That’s why Hillary made the reference to Bobby Kennedy.
Because the Clintons know, better than most people, that time has often been a friend.
Anything can happen. Remember how, in 2001, they left the White House as pariahs amid the uproar about the last-minute pardons involving brothers of both of them, the hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts of china, silver and furniture that they arranged to get from donors, and the theft of White House furniture. They were in disgrace. Hillary’s first press conference was a defense of her brothers’ payments for pardons. Both Clintons were lambasted by The New York Times, The Washington Post and every other media outlet. And, in Bill’s last hours in office, he pleaded guilty to crime and was disbarred.
But seven years later, Hillary has come amazingly close to becoming the Democratic Party nominee. And until he destroyed his reputation by his bizarre and belligerent behavior in Hillary’s campaign, Bill Clinton was the most popular guy in the world.
Time allowed Bill and Hillary to remake themselves — he as a save-the-world philanthropist and she as a hard-working senator who got along with everyone.
Just like time had turned the special counsel’s draft indictment of Hillary into scrap paper, particularly after Jim McDougal, the chief witness, died in prison.
And time erased the memory of the Clintons’ pardon of the FALN terrorist group to help Hillary with the Puerto Rican community.
But now time is finally running out for the Clintons. They’ve stayed at the party too long, and it isn’t a pretty sight. But they won’t leave gracefully. No way. They still believe that there’s a chance to win. And they’ll do anything to make that happen.
Because they just have to win.
Tony Villar and a large gang of drifters are going on a six nation summerfest tour, including Israel, where they will learn about security.
ReplyDelete...but of course, when they come back, they will utter not a WORD, about the tremendous decrease in violence brought about after the fence was constructed.
Since we sure as Hell would not want to stop the free flow of drugs, violence, crimminals, terrorists, grifters, et al with something as old fashioned as a FENCE!
Never have all levels of govt been so out of touch w/the will of the people, and so willing to ignore the laws they are sworn to uphold.
Maybe if we built a fence they'd follow the Palis and respond w/rockets.
ReplyDeleteThen we could nuke the place and be done w/it.
(even I can learn and grow at BC)
BC:
ReplyDeleteLike the Comic Strip!
Whit's nightmare of envirofreaks running the show is coming true--the carbon chickens are coming home to roost--
ReplyDeleteMovig Toward Rationing
Thinking about the envirofreaks is keeping me awake, burning up precious electricity when I should be asleep.
Martian Lander Photographs "Anomalous Object" Right After Landing
ReplyDeleteWhat is it? An obvious underground periscope, popping up to take a look at the new arrival.
See it now, before NASA expunges the image. We who have studied thoroughly this issue of life on Mars have long known the life forms moved underground when the atmosphere thinned, to escape the toxic solar radiation.
Another Photo of the Lander Landing
ReplyDeleteAstronomy Picture of the Day.
Really amazing when you think about it. There isn't much of an atmosphere left on Mars, so the parachute doesn't do a lot, got to fire those retro rockets to touch down.
Only Christian chickens allowed to roost--
ReplyDeleteMay 29, 2008
Merkel's party in Germany: Only Christians from Iraq, please
The clear subtext here is that Christians will assimilate better into Germany than Muslims will. The addition of Mandaeans and Yazidis also suggests that there is a tacit recognition, among the CDU at least, that Muslim refugees bring with them a program of supremacism and a challenge to non-Muslim societal structures.
This statement, then, is a small hint that the stranglehold of the multiculturalist orthodoxy that threatens to destroy Europe may be loosening.
"Germany's CDU Interested in Accepting Refugees from Iraq," from Spiegel, May 28 (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):
Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats on Wednesday said they would like to see Germany take on thousands of refugees from Iraq. The hitch? They only want the Christians.
For months, ethnic violence has been on the ebb in war-torn Iraq. But that has done little to ease the pressure of over 2 million refugees seeking shelter in neighboring Syria and Jordan. Indeed, for many of them -- particularly those once part of Iraq's Christian minority -- going back may never be an option.
On Wednesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party said it would like to see Germany do its part to help out. At a press conference in Berlin, parliamentarian Erika Steinbach, the CDU's human rights spokeswoman, said her party wanted to see Germany accept thousands of Iraqi refugees. In particular, she said, the CDU wants to extend its welcoming hand to Iraqis who have suffered religious persecution in Iraq. In particular, that means the Christians.
"One would be doing a good thing were a long-term solution to be found," Steinbach said.
According to Steinbach, the CDU envisions bringing a large group (possibly as many as 10,000) of non-Muslim refugees to Germany with the understanding that they would not be treated as asylum seekers. Asylum seekers are not allowed to work in Germany, and Steinbach said that it is unrealistic to think that Christian refugees from Iraq would ever be able to return. For this reason, their ultimate integration in Germany should be supported.
Members of Yazidis and Mandaean religious minorities would also be among those allowed in, according to the party's proposal. The CDU argues that, in contrast to Muslim refugees from Iraq, religious persecution makes it unlikely that Christians, Yazidis and Mandaeans would ever by able to return....
Fuck.
ReplyDeleteYou were a bunch of retards back then.
And now?
Don't take my word for it.
Take my son's.
???????????
ReplyDeleteWTF?
Fuck Who?
Who was a retard, and why?
Oh, my!
Geez, Trish. What happened?
ReplyDeleteIf anyone needed a reason to vote for McCain--
ReplyDeleteSUSAN SARANDON, who appeared in three films last year and won kudos for her TV movie "Bernard and Doris," is still not a contented soul. She says if John McCain gets elected, she will move to Italy or Canada. She adds, "It's a critical time, but I have faith in the American people."
Trish got hit by a profanity burster.
ReplyDeleteI was jokin' about the periscope on Mars, Trish.
ReplyDeletesigned, not a tard
I may be a shit,
ReplyDeletebut I'm not a tard.
A big shit in the big bus.