Thirty-five dead bodies were dumped close to the port of Veracruz in Mexico on Tuesday along with a threatening message to Mexico’s most notorious drug cartel, as drug-related gang violence continues to rise in the region.
The banner found nearby read “This is going to happen to all you Zeta shits operating in Veracruz. The territory now has a new boss.” Many of the dead bodies have confirmed links to organized crimes, although their gang loyalties are not yet known. If the corpses turn out to be members of the Zetas gang, this would mark the most dramatic counterattack yet in Mexico’s gang violence.
The Zetas are a paramilitary-style group founded by defectors of the US-trained special forces, and they have recently been expanding their turf in Mexico to previously peaceful locales, like Veracruz. Zetas also have ties to US-trained and funded Kaibiles, Guatemalan elite forces well known for their record of human rights abuses.
President Felipe Calderon’s effort to to crack down on the cartels has resulted in more than 42,000 dead in less than five years, and an increasingly militaristic state apparatus that seems only to inflame the violence. In his speech to the United Nations on Wednesday, Calderon urged a new approach to the drug issue, one that will reduce the exorbitant profits in the black market, namely “market alternatives.”
But Mexico largley follows orders form the United States in this respect, who has balked at decriminalization efforts in the past, insisting instead on maintaining artificial soaring prices resulting from prohibition and on escalating the violence. Additionally, President Barack Obama’s administration is reportedly withholding information from high-ranking Mexican law enforcement officials regarding Operation Fast and Furious, the program in which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives facilitated the sale of weaponry to drug gangs in a flawed effort to locate criminals.
Fast and Furious
While we were attending UW Superior, the head of all the public radio in Columbia, he and I would have long discussions on politics. Such as:
Ellis: “José, why are your people sending all those drugs up here to destroy our teenage boys?”
José: “John, do you think that we would be shipping boat loads and boat loads of drugs to your ports without your officials permission?
So, if most all drugs are coming in by boat, exactly what kind of counter-revolution does our CIA have going south of the border?
Here's another take on the same thing: if the USans weren't demanding, paying for and consuming the drugs, would they be trafficking them? Last I heard, the people of Mexico, Colombia, Peru, etc. were NOT the ones causing the demand. The decaying empire to the North was.
Decriminalizing drugs in Mexico won't have any impact – but decriminalizing here in the U.S. would.
Time to end the ludicrous and insane "war on drugs". Let people decide for themselves what they want to smoke or ingest into their own bodies. Didn't we learn anything from prohibition in the 1920's? The DEA's budget has increased 4000% since the 'war on drugs' (actually a war on the people of America) began. Enough of this criminal insanity.
There's too much willful ignorance and hateful spite in the U.S. to enact ANY kind of sensible legislation. There isn't a single thing in memory which the U.S. Government has done which was sensible, helpful, or useful to anyone aside from the Oligarchs and Plutocrats. The only way things like decriminalization will occur here is in a very Liberty minded post revolutionary landscape. Even now, if there were to be a "revolution" which threw out the incumbent govt, there's too many ignorant, hidebound Americans to create anything remarkably different from what we have today. I have zero faith in our society. We're too far gone down the road of Fascism to turn back on our own. Just like Nazi Germany, there will have to be external factors which force changes upon us.
The Sinaloa cartel has a shortage of machetes to hack people to pieces, perhaps the USG is willing to ship some over there. Of course to track the bad guys using them…
Decriminalization = More criminalization
The CIA is the worlds biggest drug dealer period.Just look at heroin in Afganistan.The American government is corrupt from top top bottom.Canada has corruption but it can be fixed if done soon.