Blog dedicated to reporting on Mexican drug cartels
on the border line between the US and Mexico
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Wednesday, October 7, 2020

Time to End the Lethal Limbo of the U.S.-Mexican Drug Wars

 Chivis Martinez Borderland Beat  Crisis Group TY Gus

The failure of the “war on drugs” – now a welter of spreading conflicts – is a U.S.-Mexican co-production. Washington should stop pushing Mexico City to throw ever more military force at organised crime. Instead, it should help its southern neighbor find solutions tailored to each locale.

he criminal groups that are the public face of this violence is hardly circumspect about their power. In a video dated 17 July, the Jalisco Cartel New Generation – one of the “five most dangerous transnational criminal organizations” worldwide, according to the U.S. Justice Department – showed off some of its better-equipped and trained foot soldiers and their state-of-the-art weaponry. If the video seemed intended to broadcast the group’s paramilitary capabilities, that’s because it was. The display of force was a message to the government, a Jalisco Cartel operator told Crisis Group, “to take it easy” after the Mexican courts extradited the group’s leader’s son to the U.S. while freezing a number of its bank accounts. It was a way for the group to remind the authorities that “damage can be inflicted when arrangements aren’t being respected”, he said.

Whether or not because of the video, tensions did in fact ease in the aftermath of its release, with the threat of further escalation receding and conditions returning to “normal”. In Mexico, however, normal has come to mean a state of perpetual conflict, which accounts for a large portion of the country’s steady death toll of more than 35,000 homicides per year.

Criminal Predation in a Pandemic

Nothing is likely to change for the balance of the election season, but once it is over it will be past time for whoever occupies the Oval Office to face these questions squarely – if nothing else out of self-interest. Having a neighbor affected by conflict and instability entails major consequences for the U.S, with the biggest being Mexico’s growing displacement crisis. Mexican authorities are simply unable to protect citizens from criminal predation in an increasing number of regions, leading an estimated 1.7 million to abandon their homes due to insecurity in 2018 alone, according to Mexico’s National Institute of Geography and Statistics. Most of those forced to flee resettle within Mexico’s borders, but already in 2020 Mexican nationals have replaced Central Americans as the largest group apprehended while aiming to cross into the U.S.

The COVID-19 pandemic is only making the situation worse. Having killed approximately 80,000 Mexicans (a figure that could represent significant underreporting), the coronavirus has exacerbated the humanitarian situation and plunged the country into the worst economic crisis ever recorded, with GDP expected to fall by at least 8 per cent in 2020. It has also seen armed groups try to consolidate their hold on communities, where they have taken on self-appointed roles from quarantine enforcement to distribution of goods and services. As desperation mounts, so will the drive of highly vulnerable people to seek a safer and more prosperous life elsewhere. Washington and Mexico City can try to manage the flow of people by locking the border down even more tightly, but that is hardly an acceptable solution from a humanitarian perspective. It could also be difficult for both governments to sustain as the scale of the crisis grows and public pressure to address it increases.

Policymaking Inertia

Militarisation has proven to be anything but a remedy. Since 2006, when the Mexican government – urged on by Washington – unleashed the military to deliver what it promised would be a swift, definitive blow to organized crime, the situation has by many measures only gotten worse: more than 80,000 Mexicans have been disappeared and annual murders have quadrupled. The overall number of those who have met a violent death in this period, which is north of 330,000, is more than twice the number of conflict-related fatalities recorded in Afghanistan since the U.S. invaded in 2001.

Compounding the problem is pervasive impunity. Fewer than one in ten murders get resolved in the justice system – and the line between state officials and the criminals they are supposed to rein in is not only thin but occasionally non-existent. To offer just one prominent example, a chief architect of the latest iteration of the war on drugs, former federal Public Security Secretary Genaro García Luna, is being tried in a U.S. court for alleged collusion with the Sinaloa Cartel. (He denies the charges.)

A Series of “Stupid Wars”

The lack of accountability has allowed the armed groups to expand their businesses far beyond the illicit drugs that were once their primary domain. With their predatory “thiefdoms” spreading out over Mexico, groups use territorial control as a means of squeezing revenue out of whatever commodity is locally available, chiefly through extortion. The story repeats itself across the country.

In Guerrero, gold mining has come to supplement heroin smuggling. In Michoacán, limes and avocados are add-ons to methamphetamine. In Chihuahua, illegal logging has come to accompany marijuana cultivation. The expansion of their business portfolio into licit commodities and crops increases the criminals’ power over people and politics – and bolsters their ability to fend off crackdowns.

Blame for this deteriorating situation falls at least in part on the war on drugs’ flawed kingpin strategy, which is based on the belief that arresting or killing criminal leaders makes criminal organizations implode. These groups do indeed die, but their parts live on, very often pitted against one another in countless feuds over parcels of land.

Michoacán is emblematic. This state was dominated by a single criminal organization until, in 2014, the federal government sent in its troops. With help from other illegal armed groups, the army succeeded in breaking up the once dominant organization, arresting one of its top leaders and killing the other. But after authorities failed to follow through with sustained institution- and peacebuilding measures – for example, to free law enforcement from corruption, provide youngsters with ways out of criminal groups and offer local populations licit economic alternatives – armed conflict bounced back. Today, the number of armed groups operating in the state has risen from one to twenty. Most are splinters of the once dominant group, and none has been able to impose itself fully on the others. The fighting has become perpetual. Moreover, Michoacán mirrors the nationwide trend. In 2006, there were six criminal conglomerates fighting it out in a handful of regions. In 2019, the number reached 198, according to a Crisis Group analysis of online citizen journalists’ websites called “narco-blogs”.

Children and women are no longer excluded as targets.

The result of this hyper-fragmentation of armed conflict has been the birth of a series of “stupid wars that nobody has control over and that don’t end”, as one criminal lieutenant allied with the Jalisco Cartel said. Yet he – and hundreds of others – keep at it, killing, disappearing and displacing enemy operatives and those perceived to have ties to them. Children and women are no longer excluded as targets. In Guerrero’s highlands, for instance, as part of a string of forced displacements, one armed group has driven hundreds of civilians out of their communities out of suspicion that they could in some fashion be tied socially or economically to its competitor. A former cocaine trafficker, active until the mid-1990s, reflected upon the changing logic of violence by saying “today’s narcos aren’t even narcos anymore”. He suggested that today’s criminal actors no longer adhere to the informal norms of conduct that his contemporaries once followed.

While trying to gain the upper hand in fights over territories and markets, criminal groups also try to draw state actors onto their side. All too often they are successful, with devastating effects on law enforcement. “Whoever is supported by the state grows”, as the Jalisco Cartel lieutenant summed up the situation. The alleged collusion between top narco-warrior García Luna and the Sinaloa Cartel is but the tip of the iceberg; similarly troubling arrangements can be found in the government’s lower echelons.

One Size Does Not Fit All

Given the overlap between the state and the criminals it is fighting, there are no meaningful enemies or front lines in this war. The war is not winnable. There are, however, clear and feasible steps Mexico can take to mitigate and eventually end its armed conflicts, with support from its partners in Washington.

The government should pivot away from a one-size-fits-all approach that treats the use of force as the primary solution to every crisis and ignores who and what drives lethal violence at the local level.

Most critically, the government should pivot away from a one-size-fits-all approach that treats the use of force as the primary solution to every crisis and ignores who and what drives lethal violence at the local level. In what has become a mosaic of regional conflicts, circumstances matter and have to form the basis for effective policy. Officials will thus need to understand not just the armed groups that are fighting but also the politicians and businesspeople who are aligned with them and the resources they are all fighting over. They will also need to get a handle on how to make control of these resources less profitable by alerting consumers about goods that come from criminally tainted supply chains, whether gold being purchased in Canada or avocados in the U.S.

Mexico’s government also has to invest more, with the support of the U.S. and other international partners, in social and economic programs that can divert vulnerable young people who might be drawn into the armed groups. Likewise, it should step up efforts to provide youngsters with ways out of armed groups through demobilization programs. Transitional justice mechanisms could also help communities come to terms with their fraught pasts and interrupt years-long cycles of revenge killings.

The focus for these efforts should be those regions where conflict is most intense and that account for the bulk of Mexico’s violent deaths and displacement. Bold policies introduced by past and current administrations have often foundered as a result of indiscriminate application of one reform model to many different settings. Concentrating resources and efforts on regional intervention plans that have been devised on the basis of a close study of local conflict dynamics would be a better way to make progress, even if the gains appear on the surface more limited.

Even with these changes, there will still be a role for the use of force in managing these conflicts, but that role will be different than it is today. Security forces might be used to support the foregoing initiatives and their beneficiaries, who would likely be targets of violent attacks and criminal co-optation. They might also be deployed to deter brazen criminal aggression against those local populations whose data show to be most vulnerable to displacement and other abuses. But while the state would continue to employ force where needed, it would no longer be the primary and only tool for rooting out insecurity.

Finally, key to the success of any new initiative to staunch lethal violence in Mexico will be a push to clean up the institutions charged with protecting the public from crime, and that for decades have been riddled with collusion and corruption.

Various criminal operators have told Crisis Group that “reaching agreements” with police and armed forces commanders is routine. These understandings depend on security institutions such as the armed forces remaining largely self-governing and impervious to oversight. To develop a more reliable group of officials to carry out the policies described above, the government will need to introduce transparency and accountability mechanisms throughout the security forces and to give them teeth through external watchdogs.

 Any solution to Mexico’s conflicts will require backing from the U.S.

Which brings us back to Washington. To be successful, any solution to Mexico’s conflicts will require backing from the U.S., which would be well advised to rethink, and ultimately overhaul, the militarized approach to law enforcement it has exported to Mexico. The U.S. government, in championing, designing, financing and, in effect, imposing the war on drugs on its neighbor, hoped it could purge the country of the corrosive social, political and economic impact of the narcotics trade and bring greater stability to the region. Since the late 1960s, it has invested in this vision, pouring wave after wave of U.S. taxpayer dollars – billions all told – into the effort. But while U.S. resolve was enough to persuade Mexican leaders to go along with this scheme, reliance on iron-fist militarisation has proven a failure. It is time for Washington to grasp this hard truth and change its course. If it wants to see peace across its southern border, it must support Mexico in moving away from the war footing that has spawned so much conflict

60 comments:

  1. Until corruption is handled, nothing good will happen.

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    1. There's a naked a child in the background while no education or vocation homie poses in the background.

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  2. Mexico once had almost as much Oil as Saudi. The elite of the country have stolen(are steeling) everything. the elite OWN everything & anyone of stature. Mexico is/was a RICH country - like Saudi. The people are generally poor, helpless and ignorant, thanks to the endemic Kleptocracy since the discovery of Oil. When you think about this basic fact - it only follows that Drugs is simply another industry that fill the elites pockets... Chnage is not possible in MX with out revolution. This will never happen again - the MX people are disenfranchised.

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    1. Mexican economy ranked 15th in the world out of over 200 today. It's still a rich country.

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  3. What’s up with Mayos people claiming cartel de escorpión and not CDS? <CJNG

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    1. Pussies just incase shit gets real lol

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  4. Animo Sicarios

    As long as drugs are consumed in the USA there will be Cartels to cross it over the border.

    New People 006

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    1. Por pendejos como tu esta Mexico como esta.
      Mejor callate el oscico pinche hablador y ponte a trabajar!

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  5. I read about homicides daily, but nothing is done. New president promised things would get better, he is a joke, un abrazo of a criminal it doesn't work.

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    1. 6:13 check about recent report "escuadrón de la muerte" de felipe calderon en Cd Juarez y Ojinaga, puros militares...
      FECAL HAD HUEVOS, THE MILITARY that when exposed arrested other mlitary members, dressed them down, and tortured them to make them confess to their own crimes, directed by SEDENA Sec general guillermo galvan galvan.
      You don't know what huevos is, sometimes they are just a marrana's ass
      ..

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    2. oscar balderas, of EME EQUIS
      "El Pelotón de la Muerte de Felipe Calderón"
      No wonder Alvaro Uribe Velez, "el Ubérrimo" president of Colombia gave FECAL and his henchman genarco garcia luna so many golden medals...

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    3. 1:57 fecal was helping cds, thsts why there were so many dead in cd juares, and all over mex for that matter, but look at cds with out the help from the president! They are on the decline! Thats what happens when you depend on the gov so much, now they are an easy win for cjng!

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  6. Apenas comiensa lo bueno camarada! Apoco de la muerte te queres soltare. Esta Muerta ni madres que nose dejamos de mantener su propio lugar. Ah la muerte voy decidido y para mostrarla ah qual quere guey que se quere adalentar. Pura cruz de madera meh lo quelgo y le martio los clavos.

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  7. the U.S. government can do nothing for Mexico, this is a Mexican government problem.

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  8. One problem, Mexico is corrupt and does not want help from the USA. Mexico only wants help when US funding stops or borders close. Other wise Mexican politicians only ignore the problems in their own country and simply blame the USA for everything...

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  9. Ok. Good fucking luck. Broken system, broken government, broken country. A damn shame because Mexico is home to one of the greatest cultures of the world, some of the friendliest, most hard working individuals I have ever met and unbelievable culinary cuisine. Mexico is like a train wreck into a burning dumpster fire. The corruption runs too deep to facilitate any end to a war on drugs.

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    1. The war on drugs simply generates too much profits in the forms of bribes for the 'takers' to abandon it

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  10. No son las drogas las que deben eliminarse. Es el peso y el secuestro lo que lastima a los mexicanos honestos. Gran parte del alto precio de los aguacates, frutas y verduras, va a los coyotes y luego a las pandillas. Los carros robados han cambiado las placas de matrícula robadas y se van para siempre. Los sindicatos pagan coyotes

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  11. The 67,000 overdose deaths in the USA every year is significantly more than the 35,000 murders in Mexico. And people want to legalize it and open the flood gates? That nonsense will never happen

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    1. if it were legal there would be less overdose deaths because people would know what they were taking.

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    2. @10:23 Right nonsense huh... Then explain to me why cannabis seizures are down over 70% since legalization begin in the United States? Explain to me why government heroin programs in Canada are actually effective at helping addicts become productive members of society at an 80% effective rate. The war on drugs is a punitive war on a societal problem and mental illness. It’s called a DSM 5 maybe you should check it out sometime. Treating this problem in a criminal way makes it worse that should be evident after 50 years of the most massive failure in our country in terms of time, effort and money; unless you’re blind to the data. If you take the money out of it you eliminate the problem, but that’s the only way if there’s less cash to be made the criminal element will diminish; No it won’t go away completely. But then again virtually every legal product we have in this country has a black market it would however reduce it to a manageable problem and reduce problematic drug addiction and drug related problems. But you actually have to be open minded and look at data

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    3. The American Government will never legalize Cocaine, Heroin, Crystal Meth or Fentyal...ever. They basically stopped prescribing pain medication because people overdosed on that...what a ridiculous statement

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    4. @ 10:23
      That's one way to maintain population control.
      After all the world is overpopulated.

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  12. It should BUT will it?
    NOT a CHANCE..
    Too much MONEY from the CARTELS buying high caliber WEAPONS and the cause in effect of DRUGS going up NORTH.
    EVERY body on TOP wins but the Mexican locals caught in THE cross FIRE suffer..
    I see THIS fake WAR on drugs lasting MANY more YEARS to come..
    Sad BUT true.. Just SAYING...
    WAR on DRUGS is a SHAM...
    Even AMLO said just hug and kiss the capos and SICARIOS.. What a SHAME...

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  13. Great insight on the Quagmire that goes in Mexico everyday. US had given backing by money and military aid every year to fight the war on drugs, but on the Mexican side minimal is done. Most currupted politicians pocket the money every year, there was a time, the Mexican Marina's would do a quota of 5 siezures per year of drugs warehouses, but rarely catch criminals.

    El Cajon

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    1. 7:54 look like here, Mister Cagón...
      The US needs mexican politicos and secretaries to buy 5 million dollar residences and Yatches for the Marinas on the US, orefferred two of each, at least that when confiscated bring revenue to the treasury and nada to Mexico, that goes for narcos too.

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  14. If American gun manufacturers didn't sell cartels trucks loads of guns every day, there wouldn't be a war, and there'd be a lot less cadavers.

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    1. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they enjoy using knives too. In fact, there are some gruesome videos on here you can find that should show you that. If you ban a weapon they’ll just find another one to kill with. They literally use fire sometimes. Can’t exactly get rid of that can we.. It’s the huge amounts of money that drive the violence. That coupled with an industry that operates outside the law. Drugs are just the product sold, and guns are just the weapon of choice. The same gun violence happened in America when alcohol was illegal, they were driving around Chicago with machine guns mowing each other down in broad daylight. If you want all this violence to all stop you have to either legalize and allow companies to produce these like they do with marijuana, or you have to make the drugs so worthless nobody even bothers with it.

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    2. 807 it's not like that Mijo...straw hat buyers go buy the guns at gun shops, jack up the price and sell to cartels.

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  15. Let me paint the picture your saying.....a big 30 footer truck from the US, arrives to Tijuana, on the truck it says Smith and Wesson. The Areallo Filex Cartel arrives and buys 400 guns at 500 each. Do you expect me to believe that how it happens.?

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    1. No that’s not what he’s saying and I’ll speak for Cody; what he saying is the gun manufacturers are complicit and know that their products are going to Mexico. But for the purposes of making money they don’t care. Which is why the NRA lobbies against ending gun shows where people can go and buy massive amounts of weapons with no background checks and export them to Mexico and sell them for a profit. Happens all the time down here in Texas it is as routine is going to the grocery store
      Great commentary and article Chivis

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    2. BTW corruption is not exclusive to Mexico and is almost as rampant here in the United States. Houston police department, mission Police Department, San Antonio law-enforcement, El Paso customs, multiple border patrol etc. I could go on and on and on it’s the straight cash homie That is at the root of the problem

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    3. @ 9:27
      Glad someone pointed this out.

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    4. allow Mexicans to own guns then. The criminals do anyway....

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  16. Sorry to say but the government sees it as a necessary evil.. more guns and drugs more money and jobs cops firefighters dea hospitals etc

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    1. have always said this. all those dea agents living comfy lives with their comfy wages by creating even more demand for their job due to their job in the first place breaking up cartels is like that one 2 headed beast that just kept on growing more heads.

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    2. Bingo! It's its own economic industry.

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    3. 8:57 tás más güey bato!!!
      The money government gets or takes from criminals, drug traffickers, etc like fines, confiscations, etc, never pay the expenses, over time, wages, nothing, it is all on loans from china, specially these days...

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  17. As I understand it a Narco or Gangster puts Family and Business above killing, killing is only done when it is absolutely necessary to do so. The Narcos of today are enjoying killing to the point where they consume the flesh of their rivals, it is true that "today's Narcos are not Narcos anymore".

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    1. Curious to know what you think of those legitimate companies / corporations politically connected?
      Being the BIG Bad Wolf has its benefits.

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  18. https://youtu.be/yF0xIlpZiw0

    Los Cazadores Vs Cartel de Caborca

    Its important to note, that el cazadors group carries themselves in a very organized and tactical way. Impressive.

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  19. You would be surprised at how much $ US sends every year to fight the war on drugs. That's a whole new article for Da Chivis to write about. Nevertheless how much effort does Mexican government put into it....would say 30%, therefore US should slice the money aide 70%, fair is fair

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    1. 11:29 the US pays for the War on Drugs, but US Middlemen get the most of it, thay why they lobbied hard for it...
      --can you handle that truth?

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    2. 1129 Whats your resource for that info? What middlemen?

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  20. Mexico is the most corrupt country in the world. And amlo is the most useless president they had so far and their elections are every 6 years theyre fucked no other way to look at it. And with amlo or state leaders like cabeza de vaca the tamaulipas governor whom is using his office to get a piece of the illegal activites in his state mexico is a faile state. At least colombia tries but the usa gets no hel from our neighbor. The contrary mexico plays the d.e.a. like a fucking video game. The usa shld not give any help any money and put sanctions against mexico and the war on drugs is won or lost on the border. Put all our resources to stop drugs coming in at border.

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    1. Finally! Someone on this shit site that gets it! Go buddy. Fuck mexico!

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    2. 1:29 more like the DEA plays mexican CARTELS like a video game, they are THE ones THAT call the shots on who stays on top as long as they PAY the right price..
      MEXICO is corupt but NOT the MOST curupt in the 🌎 tonto..
      You HAVE a lot to learn LITTLE buddy...

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    3. 10:19 I regret to inform you due to unforeseen events in the world... Mexico tops number 1 in curruption, furthermore they top number 1 in homicides. Brazil and Syria come 2nd and 3rdbin homicides.

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    4. Lol @1019 your the Tonto, it backfired on you, Google places with the most yearly homicides, I too am surprised they made number 1 for 2019

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  21. The real question here is how the fuck did they attach that 40mm launcher to an HK G3??

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  22. Seal the border with Mexico.
    No travel and no trade keeps the money north and the drugs south.
    Without money the cartels die but even without drugs the cartels are involved in other areas of Mexico’s economy.
    Just close the border and leave it closed for a year to all travel and see what happens.

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    1. @11:14 Have you ever been to the border in Texas or New Mexico or Arizona for that matter? What you were saying is laughable and completely impossible and just not feasible The remote nature of the Texas border, most of it in private hands could never be sealed and it damn sure couldn’t be sealed with a wall and if it was the traffickers would find a way around it. Yes the border patrol has sensors to detect movement placed all over on the border but as I indicated above that corruption is not exclusive to Mexico in the 1980s we possessed maps of all of the sensors the BP put out in Starr county from a BP agent who was more than happy to take our cash. To those of you who think the war on drugs can be won I say it’s called reality join me in it because you’re definitely not living in it if you think the war on drugs has done anything but make the drug problem worse look at the data.
      To the comment above who thinks it’s crazy and will never happen and everyone will overdose follow this link and do a little bit of research before you make a mindless comment based solely on a gut visceral and not on data

      https://drugfree.org/drug-and-alcohol-news/interest-canadas-prescription-heroin-clinic-grows-light-u-s-crisis/#

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  23. I agree end the drug war. In 1 day just bomb all cartels!Cartels dont fear the law make them fear it, no jail just bomb them if they no they can and will be wiped out at any moment less are likely to join cartels

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  24. Ndrangheta vs cartels..who take?

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  25. 6:57 well, Madam, corruption starts at the very top of the toppermost, Mexico does not have the artillery or the frigates or the corsairs to impose shit on the US, and as we all know shit still rolls downhill...

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  26. The war on drugs will only end the day all drugs are legalized and regulated like cannabis has in now 11 states, but this will never happen, there is still much money to be made in federal grants, law enforcement overtime and congress allocated funds to “fight” this “war”, while keeping minorities in check locked up in jails fill to the brim for a gram of weed in a permanent state of serfdom, working for pennies on the hour, only to be then, when released, be marked for life as a felon. This system sucks, and drugs also suck, but we can’t legislate morality. Total legalization is the only solution.

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    1. 8:33 dishonest immorality has been legislated and judicated many times on the US, but honest legislation and debate has become a matters for dummies and suckers, money in politics has ruined the US beyond the metrics, and that was the idea, based on lies and lies and more lies.

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  27. The war on drugs will only end the day all drugs are legalized and regulated like cannabis has in now 11 states, but this will never happen, there is still much money to be made in federal grants, law enforcement overtime and congress allocated funds to “fight” this “war”, while keeping minorities in check locked up in jails fill to the brim for a gram of weed in a permanent state of serfdom, working for pennies on the hour, only to be then, when released, be marked for life as a felon. This system sucks, and drugs also suck, but we can’t legislate morality. Total legalization is the only solution.

    ReplyDelete

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