Posted on 03/06/2009 10:16:24 AM PST by AuntB
The Mexican president has blamed US "corruption" for hampering his nation's efforts to combat violent drug cartels.
Felipe Calderon also told the AFP news agency that the main cause of Mexico's drug gang problems was "having the world's biggest consumer [of drugs] next to us".
"Drug trafficking in the United States is fuelled by the phenomenon of corruption on the part of the American authorities," he said on Wednesday.
The Mexican president launched a massive assault on drug cartels after entering office in late 2006 but the cartels have responded with campaigns of violence and intimidation that left 6,000 dead in 2008 alone and around 1,000 in 2009 so far.
Calderon acknowledged some Mexican officials had helped the cartels but said the US should ask itself how many of its own officials were implicated.
"It is not an exclusively Mexican problem, it is a common problem between Mexico and the United States," he said.
"I want to know how many American officials have been prosecuted for this [corruption]."
Border concerns
Mexico has deployed thousands of troops in a bid to quell drugs violence [Reuters] Calderon, who has deployed more than 36,000 troops to the troubled Mexico-US border regions to crack down on violence, also said that the US must halt the flow of weapons into Mexico, where the police and security services are often outgunned.
But he said recent talks with Barack Obama, the US president, had provided "a clearer, more decisive response, one which matches the magnitude of the problem which we face," he said.
Mexican border cities, such as Ciudad Juarez have suffered the brunt of the violence prompting concerns in Washington that the killings and attacks could cross over into the US.
On Wednesday at least 20 people were killed during a prison riot in the city sparked by violence between rival gangs.
Mexican authorities have said they plan to have around 7,500 troops deployed in Ciudad Juarez by the end of this week in a bid to quell the violence, along with 2,000 in the rest of Chihuahua state.
Calderon's comments come as Admiral Mike Mullen, head of the US military, is due to visit Mexico this week as the US is to step up military and other assistance to Mexico in its battle against the cartels.
In February the US department of justice said US and Mexican authorities had arrested 750 people over 21 months in an anti-drug sweep, including 52 members of Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel.
Notable opponents of the United States in the U.N. include the following recipients of U.S. foreign assistance:
... Mexico, which received a $50 billion multilateral bailout thanks to U.S. urging in 1994 ...
They paid it back with interest.
Al Jazeera? LOL! Wow, that’s perfect!
Yes. For years I have been saying we should charge a healthy tax on all money being sent out of the country, and put that money to use paying for the medical bills and other taxpayer-provided goods and services that go to immigrants. Unfortunately, the money-wire companies have bought and paid for both the House and Senate banking committees that control this, to my direct knowledge going back to the early 1990s. They make billions, we pay the bills. Now the Fairfax County Federal Credit Union is advertising on Spanish TV here for new Hispanics members to join by promising them FREE MONEY TRANSFERS, which doubtless all of the credit union shareholders will get to pay for, because as we know, nothing is free.
That's right. If we'd just try a little harder we could wipe out the problem of illegal drugs. We need more leaders like good old chairman Mao Zedong to turn this into a great country worth living in. If our government would just emulate his government, we'd cut the drug problem way down. Short of that it will all just be half measures that will never do much good. We need to get the people to all inform on each other, tow the party line or face execution or being sent off to reeducation camps. You're right about appeals too. We don't need no stinkin’ right of appeal. Shoot, we shouldn't be wasting a lot of time with trials either. If we suspect someone is using or dealing in illegal drugs, we could just shoot them in the back of the head or send them off the a reeducation camps just like the Chinese did. The drug problem would shrink down to almost nothing just like it did in China. Wouldn't it be great to live in a country like that? Of course the Chinese are seeing a resurgence in their drug problem because they've gotten too soft. Now they are talking about get tough again. Good old China. Why can't we be more like them?
I'm kidding of course. I'm from an area where they really are hard on people involved with illegal drugs, compared to much of the rest of the nation. They aren't executing people of course but selling any amount of a drug like cocaine or meth can get you life sentence in my state and the prosecutors and judges tend to be really hard on folks in drug cases. Most of the people going to prison in my area are going for drug crimes and they're getting long sentences. Selling a tiny bit of dope to another doper will get someone a lot more time than burglarizing homes in my area and every time we have arraignments in court we'll have along line of folks there on drug charges, more than any other type of charge. It doesn't make drugs expensive or hard to get in my area, but at least we can say we're tough on drugs.
It's all just half measures though. For us to ever make a real difference we're going to have to become something like Chairman Mao's China. The good people of this country, hopefully, will never stand for that. We'll look more and more like Mao's China as we slowly crank up the drug war, but long before we ever get to the point we'd need to get to to achieve the kind of results you are after the people of this country will have had enough.
We will never make illegal drugs go away. It's not possible to make them go away completely anywhere and it's not possible to put a big dent in the problem just by cranking up the drug war another notch and another notch until we finally reach the desired results and remain a free country that doesn't resemble Mao's China.
Pat Buchanan just did an article where he said we have to go Milton Friedman's way or Mao Zedong's way, legalization or Maoist solution. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2200610/posts I don't think we need to legalize all drugs. We just need to recognize the limitations of the drug war, recognize that we quickly reach the point of diminishing returns trying to arrest and incarcerate our way out of the problem if we aren't going to go all out with the Maoist solution. We just blow a fortune, overfill our prisons such that we don't have room to house people who really need to be there for the good of us all, and achieve no better results than we did before we cranked up the drug war the last few notches.
With the exception of marijuana, not many people are using illegal drugs in this country. It's a very small percentage of our population. Personally, I think we should just legalize pot because it doesn't cause that many problems for innocent people and because we completely failing in our efforts to make it hard to find and drive up the price such that people either can't afford to try it or can't afford to use it regularly. That drug is cheap on a per use basis and easy to find anywhere in this country. The likelihood that a pot smoker will get caught is slim and if he does get caught odds are he's going to get basically a slap on the wrist because that's just the way it works in most parts of the country now. People aren't deterred by the law and most who want to smoke it already smoke it. I think we'd have a lot more control over it if we regulated the industry and in so doing we'd deprive these Mexican cartels of most of their income. According to the ONDCP about 62% of their gross receipts from drugs bound for the U.S. About another 28% comes from cocaine but they're just the middlemen for that drug which must first be purchased and smuggled from South America before it is smuggled into this country. Take pot away from them and they will be smaller, less powerful, and far less of a threat in Mexico and here. http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/022208dnintdrugs
As for the other drugs it's just a problem we are going to have to manage and we should try to do it without breaking the bank and without turning into Chairman Mao's China. We could start by trying to use common sense and science to guide our drug policies rather than our emotions. When we let our fear and frustration take over all we get are more laws making more things criminal acts, increasing the punishments on existing crimes, using twisted logic to justify encroachments on constitutional protections, etc. We keep cranking it up and it costs us more and more financially and otherwise yet the drugs keep flowing just like they were before.
Mexico knows corruption when they see it. They wrote the book!
And of course, when Mexico completely collapses, this lowlife batnard will want political asylum in the US.
“Am I the only person that sees this guys name and think of the dope dealer on Miami Vice?”
I call this jerk Flippy Cabron.
Actually we do! Sounds like you're reporting for Al Jazeera!
Being condemned for corruption by Mexico is like being lectured on morality by the adult film industry.
“Being condemned for corruption by Mexico is like being lectured on morality by the adult film industry.”
Tag line material!!
Excellent idea, and that’s exactly what I will do.
Didn’t have enough space.
Please identify, aside from the Merida initiative money. In fact, we do not provide foreign aid to Mexico. You can go back and look at the Foreign Operations Appropriations bills (where the foreign aid is funded) for three or four decades and you won’t find an earmark for Mexico. Mexico has, on occasion, provided foreign aid to Central America. We do fund a number of U.N. initiatives that Mexico benefits from, such as the lovely family planning programs and several agricultural projects. We have provided them, in the past, with law enforcement equipment for the war on drugs, which it could be argued was an investment in our own interests. In 1995 we funded a bailout of the Mexican economy to the tune of $50 billion in loan guarantees to shore up the peso. Mexico paid that back with interest, two years later and two years before it came due. If you had bothered to look at my earlier posts, you would have seen that I consider Al Jazeera AND AFP to be suspect sources of reliable information.
I vote for you.
Ping!
Another foreign policy disaster just waiting to explode...
The only element that keeps the cartels in business are the users, so the logical thing to do is start prosecuting users on this side of the border: Jail them and put the producers and the pushers out of business.
Why doesn’t that get done?
“Jail them and put the producers and the pushers out of business.
Why doesn’t that get done?”
Not enough jails. We can’t even get the gang bangers locked up or deported. No society has ever stopped addiction. We won’t either. The idea it can be stopped is pure fantasy. The supply, however, can be stopped.
Why doesn’t that get done?”
We do prosecute users. Something like a million people were busted for drug possession last year, 700,000 or so for possession of marijuana. We don't put people in jail much for possession though, especially marijuana possession, and that's the drug these Mexican cartels make most of their money from. Aside from the fact that we don't have the jail space, and we really don't have the jail space, the majority think marijuana users should just be fined. The poll results show that only a small minority want people to go to jail for marijuana possession. Over 40% now want it to be legalized and regulated similar to alcohol, and that percentage is steadily growing. One recent poll had something like 42% for legalization, 46% for keeping it illegal, and the rest undecided. There isn't enough support for locking people up for smoking pot, so it's not going to happen, much. Eventually it's just going to be legalized and that really will hurt the cartels.
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