I knew NSO group were an unscrupulous bunch, but working with cartels against journalists is a new low. Saudi persecution of dissidents is one thing you can try to excuse if you have shit for morals (they went against the law of the land), but cartels?
The way I read that report: NSO has a policy of only selling to governments for anti-terrorism and law enforcement purposes; the Mexican government is a customer; the cartels have insiders in the government and/or have obtained the software from the government.
Sort of a corollary to government-mandated encryption backdoors, any offensive software under the control of a government should be considered public knowledge and integrated into your threat model.
Killing journalists is so sad. It means corruption is winning. We take it for granted that corruption isn’t in control but that is far from universal.
(That said the us has a lot of issues with powerful interests who significant skew policy - eg lack of health care, insulin prices, carried interest tax provisions etc - making but it is still better than just outright killing people.)
If securing the border differentially cuts off small-time operations more than it cuts off the cartels (even if it partly cuts off some cartel routes), it will raise the cartel's profits by causing prices to rise over and above the decline in sales. That's the basis of the argument that if you really wanted to get rid of cartels, you'd legalize drugs and let small operations make all of them.
"Legalize all drugs" is de-facto policy in some large west coast cities. It is also an abject failure. Easier access to drugs is not a solution, it is merely calous / criminal negligence.
Even in cities where drugs have been somewhat decriminalized, the production and distribution remains illegal enough to allow cartels to flourish. You can disagree that legalization is the answer, but it hasn't been tried and failed.
"personal choice" is not that personal. Just like "common sense" is not that common. There are herd effects that should be considered, we are not isolated atoms bouncing around subject only to Newton's laws. As a matter of fact, we are highly mimetic creatures.
The empirical question is what are the chances you (or a loved one) gets hooked on openly available drugs, vs violent thugs kidnapping you (or a loved one). If the empirical chance of 1st is 10x-100x higher than the 2nd, then perhaps we should focus our social efforts on limiting drug availability.
Edit. The world is imperfect, and it will always be imperfect. There is no solution, and especially no government policy, that can possibly make everyone's lives perfect. Maybe, asymptotically, an individual aspiration to sainthood / life well lived / nirvana / etc.
In the social media era we have lost the concept of tradeoffs, of minimizing harm. We are compelled to attempt to completely eliminate harm, which is impossible.
> then perhaps we should focus our social efforts on limiting drug availability.
I’d rather limit the existence of roving bands of murderous thugs funded by their monopoly on illegal drugs
Again, not a reality in the US fortunately - but even with the century old drug war the drugs keep coming in. Readily available to our kids at school. So, we’ve tried that
But the devastating consequences of cartel proliferation get externalized to LatAm
Not gonna happen during AMLO's presidency. He has been recorded eating tacos with the mother of "El Chapo" and her operators, he negotiated the extradition of Secretary of Defense Salvador Cienfuegos when he was arrested in USA, and promptly exonerated him, and has publicly declared that cartel members are human beings and deserve respect. "Hugs, not bullets" is still his "strategy".
His almost two decades of presidential campaign had suspicious and illegal funding, I wouldn't be surprised if narco money reached his hands too, with the implicit compromises. He and his accomplices haven't seen any consequences for his many blatant, which speaks volumes of the weak justice system in Mexico, or of the overpowered presidential figure.
The US could close it's own border if it wanted to.
The US designating them as terrorists would allow the US to go in and remove the threats just like any other cell.
Cooperation of the Mexican government is ideal and could be done through economic leverage like the last admin did with the USMCA to get the Stay in Mexico policy and Mexican troops on the border.
Besides closing the borders and economic sanctions (to your largest trade partner, mind you), you really don't want to go the armed way because terrorism.
It's one thing to f-up small countries in the other side of the world, but doing that to a neighbor almost half your size, with a huge shared border, impossible to land lock, and with millions of sympathizers residing in your own territory... you don't want a giant Afghanistan/Cuba as your roommate.
I'm not saying to lie about WMDs and invade a country on a false premise like Iraq, I'm saying to pick up specific people at a high level in the cartels.
So if you're against the US picking these cartel members up the armed way, what method would be more effective or is the current status quo okay?
The US tries that all Latin America will respond. What a disgusting take you have made. Why are you in so much need of keeping the US as the imperalist machinery that is today? you neoconservative, bloodthirsty fucking loser.
Once one gets asylum-status, they can seek green card. Gang threats, criminal threats, and cartel threats to oneself and his/her family are not sufficient grounds to get asylum status; of course, one can seek asylum, but USCIS, administrative judges, even federal courts deny asylum to such people.
The moment the USA declares that Mexico is a terrorist-controlled state, then judges can grant asylum automatically, even if USCIS declines at first. When USA does something, they look at these issues.
Let me cite another instance, why Obama signed DACA executive order. Whenever someone enters USA illegally, such a person can never the green card, even if his/her American spouse sponsors. Only amendment of immigration laws can allow that. Here, what Obama did in the name of DACA is helpful: people can get Advance parole through DACA, then they can go to their home countries, and can come back through the port of entries (with a stamp on their passports, a stamp that says "paroled" on xx/yy/20zz). Now such a DACA person can get a green card, if his/her spouse sponsors(And this option was foreclosed earlier without DACA EAD/AP).
Dead Mexican journalists have only become interesting to the US again as a way to attack AMLO. I wonder how the poor cartels managed to murder so many journalists before AMLO implicitly gave them permission by sometimes criticizing the right-wing papers that scream for his head every day.
Thirteen dead journalists is inconsequential to AMLO, who uses a significant part of his daily conferences to attack, call names, and expose private data of journalists who criticize him. He has even called them "traitors to the motherland".
He's such a clown dictator wannabe. He always seeks the way to become the victim of any negative event. When the line 12 of Mexico City Metro crumbled for lack of maintenance, killing 26 people, he said people were exaggerating the event to attack him personally.
If you're curious, the one who built it was Marcelo Ebrard, current Secretary of Foreign Affairs. The one who should have done maintenance on it was Claudia Sheinbaum, actual major of Mexico City. Both are close to AMLO, none has been questioned, and he has publicly vouched for them. Thirteen dead journalists is small news.
Doesn't need to be framed in a statistical context to be troubling. If cartels are murdering journalists for reporting on their activities, that is a serious problem.
I am not trying to downplay the killings. Obviously murder is wrong especially if you are doing it to continue terrible behavior.
The article doesn't make it clear if the amount of murders of journalists is increasing or not. Maybe by this time last year 15 journalists were killed for reporting on cartels and things are getting better. It is hard to take anything away other than some people were killed by cartels.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 104 ms ] threadI knew NSO group were an unscrupulous bunch, but working with cartels against journalists is a new low. Saudi persecution of dissidents is one thing you can try to excuse if you have shit for morals (they went against the law of the land), but cartels?
Sort of a corollary to government-mandated encryption backdoors, any offensive software under the control of a government should be considered public knowledge and integrated into your threat model.
(That said the us has a lot of issues with powerful interests who significant skew policy - eg lack of health care, insulin prices, carried interest tax provisions etc - making but it is still better than just outright killing people.)
People already cannot pay the prices so they work it off once they get over to the US.
The higher the price the less people they can convince to exploit.
Make it more difficult for them, or is the strategy to just let them keep trafficking?
Cartels are diversified, but currently a big section of profits are from human exploitation and that's the easiest to stop.
a. Easy access to drugs.
b. Cartels.
As terrible as cartels are, easy access to drugs is easily a much bigger problem.
Edit: I'm using an admittedly simplistic heuristic: How many people are going to have their lives destroyed by a. compared to b.?
Also no one has their life ruined by cartels in the US - somehow they all turn entrepreneurial once they cross the borders
Edit. The world is imperfect, and it will always be imperfect. There is no solution, and especially no government policy, that can possibly make everyone's lives perfect. Maybe, asymptotically, an individual aspiration to sainthood / life well lived / nirvana / etc.
In the social media era we have lost the concept of tradeoffs, of minimizing harm. We are compelled to attempt to completely eliminate harm, which is impossible.
I’d rather limit the existence of roving bands of murderous thugs funded by their monopoly on illegal drugs
Again, not a reality in the US fortunately - but even with the century old drug war the drugs keep coming in. Readily available to our kids at school. So, we’ve tried that
But the devastating consequences of cartel proliferation get externalized to LatAm
Maybe there’s a Paretto distribution at play here
His almost two decades of presidential campaign had suspicious and illegal funding, I wouldn't be surprised if narco money reached his hands too, with the implicit compromises. He and his accomplices haven't seen any consequences for his many blatant, which speaks volumes of the weak justice system in Mexico, or of the overpowered presidential figure.
The US designating them as terrorists would allow the US to go in and remove the threats just like any other cell.
Cooperation of the Mexican government is ideal and could be done through economic leverage like the last admin did with the USMCA to get the Stay in Mexico policy and Mexican troops on the border.
It's one thing to f-up small countries in the other side of the world, but doing that to a neighbor almost half your size, with a huge shared border, impossible to land lock, and with millions of sympathizers residing in your own territory... you don't want a giant Afghanistan/Cuba as your roommate.
So if you're against the US picking these cartel members up the armed way, what method would be more effective or is the current status quo okay?
Please stick to the discussion next time though, instead of attacking the person, it shows weak emotional control, it's rude, and it's immature.
Plus ya'know, it violates this site's guidelines.
The moment the USA declares that Mexico is a terrorist-controlled state, then judges can grant asylum automatically, even if USCIS declines at first. When USA does something, they look at these issues.
Let me cite another instance, why Obama signed DACA executive order. Whenever someone enters USA illegally, such a person can never the green card, even if his/her American spouse sponsors. Only amendment of immigration laws can allow that. Here, what Obama did in the name of DACA is helpful: people can get Advance parole through DACA, then they can go to their home countries, and can come back through the port of entries (with a stamp on their passports, a stamp that says "paroled" on xx/yy/20zz). Now such a DACA person can get a green card, if his/her spouse sponsors(And this option was foreclosed earlier without DACA EAD/AP).
He's such a clown dictator wannabe. He always seeks the way to become the victim of any negative event. When the line 12 of Mexico City Metro crumbled for lack of maintenance, killing 26 people, he said people were exaggerating the event to attack him personally.
If you're curious, the one who built it was Marcelo Ebrard, current Secretary of Foreign Affairs. The one who should have done maintenance on it was Claudia Sheinbaum, actual major of Mexico City. Both are close to AMLO, none has been questioned, and he has publicly vouched for them. Thirteen dead journalists is small news.
The article doesn't make it clear if the amount of murders of journalists is increasing or not. Maybe by this time last year 15 journalists were killed for reporting on cartels and things are getting better. It is hard to take anything away other than some people were killed by cartels.