USA

Mexico Rethinks Drug Strategy

Posted on by Laughingnomad

As death toll rises, Mexico rethinks drug war strategy

By TIM JOHNSON
McClatchy Newspapers

MEXICO CITY | The drug war in Mexico is at a crossroads.

As the death toll climbs above 28,000, President Felipe Calderon confronts growing pressure to try a different strategy — some are even suggesting legalizing narcotics — to quell the violence unleashed by major drug syndicates.

Many Mexicans don’t know whether their country is winning or losing the war against drug traffickers, but they know they are fatigued by the brutality sweeping parts of their nation. For example:

Eighteen people were killed at a July 18 birthday party in Torreon, the capital of the state of Coahuila. A prison warden freed the assailants and lent them vehicles and assault rifles to do the killing.

In Durango, eight severed heads were left strewn around the state one late July morning. Outside of Monterrey, soldiers discovered a mass dumping ground of victims of the drug wars containing 51 bodies.

During Calderon’s tenure, gangs have killed 915 municipal police officers, 698 state police, and 463 federal agents, said the Secretariat of Public Safety.

Beyond the drug trade’s public violence, its corrupting aspects have affected many aspects of Mexican society.

“There are powerful interests in Mexico who benefit from the drug trade and the $40 billion, or whatever it is, that is pumped into the Mexican economy,” said Scott Stewart, vice president for tactical intelligence at Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based company that provides global analysis. “You’re talking bankers. You’re talking businesses that are laundering money, construction companies that are building resorts.”

When the huge drug trade boils into the public eye, it threatens another of Mexico’s major trade channels — tourism, the nation’s third-largest source of revenue, and generator of one out of every 7.7 jobs in Mexico.

Fighting the cartels
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Surreal Senility Or Sneaky Sane?

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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This cartoon originally appeared on womensEnews.org.  Check out more of the New Yorker cartoonist’s work at lizadonnelly.com (“How I Do and Don’t want to be Helen Thomas.”) and on her Open Salon blog.

89 year old Helen Thomas, a virtual institution in the Washington Press Corp, when ambushed by a rabbi, growled that Israel should get the hell out of Palestine and and that the Israelis there could move to Poland, Germany and the U.S.  Wow! Talk about speaking truth to power! It was too much for PC ears to take and she resigns her political column. The Washington press corps is pondering taking away her front row seat where she has needled presidents for generations. Hmmm.

_______________________

I have recently endured flights from Bangkok to Hong Kong, Hong Kong to Oregon, Oregon to Las Vegas, Las Vegas back to Oaxaca where I live. Right now, I don’t care if I see another airport or security line as long as I live. You don’t think jet lag combined with culture shock doesn’t turn the world into more of a surreal event than it already is?

Combine this with two months of demonstrations with round-the-clock fireworks, rockets, petrol bombs and gunshots and then three days of riots where 30,000 tires turned Bangkok black and 25 buildings were burned down…one of them Asia’s second largest mall…more than 90 people killed and a couple thousand injured…over 400 arrested and 200 disappeared…a volcanic eruption in Iceland that brought air travel to a halt nearly the world over and almost detained my dentist for weeks, floods, earthquakes, tsunami warnings…an outrageous “oil spill” that is surreal in itself. Add to that bombings in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan killing hundreds. A video  released by Wikileaks.com shows a U.S. helicopter attack on a group of people in Baghdad (and also their good samaritan rescuers) in which they were all killed including two Reuters journalists. Looked like a surreal video game except that it was horrendously real. Then a vicious Israeli attack on a Turkish flotilla attempting to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza by taking in supplies to the Palestinians. Helen Thomas conveniently took that off the front pages. (News junkie that I am, it’s a good thing I don’t have TV.)

Then Las Vegas, surreal in itself, where my son spent a week telling me all about the coming world financial crisis…backing it up with all his audio tapes by “renowned economic experts.”  Having read about the German bail-out of the Greeks and fear that Spain and Italy will follow, and with our debt in China’s hands it sounded rational to me. Buy gold and silver and get out of the market my son tells me. But…but…Come live with me in Oaxaca, I said, where people already live like people in the U.S will in the future.  It’s called self-sufficiency.

Finally it feels weird to be back in a relatively tiny slow Oaxacan pueblo after six months in Bangkok and Hong Kong.   70,000 teachers are striking again and a caravan to a barricaded Trique village in the mountains suffered the shooting death of a Trique woman and a Finnish human rights worker by a rival Trique group aligned with the government.  The weirder thing is that the demonstrators in Bangkok wore red T-shirts and the Triques wear red ethnic dress…at least the women.

A few days ago I took a nap about 3:30 in the afternoon. When I woke up, feeling quite refreshed, I went into the kitchen and checked the clock. 6:30, it said.  Oh my gosh, I thought, I slept clear through the night…not an uncommon occurrence these days! So I made coffee, toasted a bagel, and went out onto the veranda to check my email.

As I was sitting there facing the park, I noticed the sky getting dark. Oh, a storm must be coming in, I thought. I went on checking email (most of which are Couchsurfing.com forum posts) and Twitter where I get the latest information on the political aftermath of the Red Shirt rally in Thailand.  When  I looked up again the sky was a little darker…but no wind was coming up as is usual just before a storm, which, btw, took down one of the huge trees in the Zocalo the other day…the crack of it sending people running every direction. Somebody should prune!

So onto my Facebook updates.  By then the sky was really getting dark. I thought about that Mayan calendar that ends in 2012.  I noticed that my friend Rico was on line on Facebook chat so I asked him, Why is the sky getting dark?  He ignored me, however,  and started describing all his latest. Damn. Typical Rico, I thought.  But why is the sky getting dark!  By this time, I was really getting freaked out. RICO! What is going on?!!!  Dunno.  Is a storm coming in?  Don’t think so. It goes on like this.

Serious concern here. Finally I checked the date/time on my computer thinking maybe I didn’t change the time zone from Asia to Mexico…a 12 hour difference. No, it’s ok. Then I noticed the computer said it was Wednesday.  It should have said Thursday. What day is it, Rico? Wednesday, why?

As is obvious by now to my dear readers, in all this time it never once occurred to me that it was 6:30 in the evening.  Damn. Is this what I have to look forward to? Quit reading the news, I hear you telling me.  But isn’t this what senility really is?  Thoughts wondering aimlessly…alone…among their own disconnected damaged brain cells…oblivious to the world?

I take heart, though, from 89 year old Helen Thomas, who, btw, I think is sneaky sane. Me? Dunno. At 66 it doesn’t look good.

Back Home in Oaxaca

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Whew!  What a ride! A week in Vegas, a month in Salem Oregon, a week in Hong Kong, 5 months in Thailand (4 in Bangkok and a month on Koh Samui) a week in Hong Kong again, 2 weeks in Salem, 10 days in Vegas and now back home in Oaxaca. Right now, I don’t care if I see another airport again!

Oaxaca is in the middle of an historical heat wave. Am I still in Thailand? Three fans on in my bedroom at night. Oh where is that Thai A/C?! Too hot to go grocery shopping!  (Maybe I’ll lose some weight.) Tomorrow I’ll just water my plants and drink what’s left of my Arizona Iced Green Tea.  And then take a nap.

Last Day In Vegas

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Yesterday got my glasses replaced that son Greg’s new yellow labrador puppy ate. Puppy? At 16 weeks he’s huge…but oh so loving! And he’s so cute when he carries his own leish in his mouth when we go for walks. 🙂 He jumps in the pool and swims after the bugs…but like any two year old he’s constantly underfoot looking for affection.  Now Greg is getting a taste of his own medicine. He he.

Greg and I (in Las Vegas) talked to Greg’s father in Thailand on video skype. No, I didn’t fall down! Now making big batches of chili and spaghetti sauce to blues music. I’m in my glory.

The Strip? What’s that?

Video Skype Mishap

Posted on by Laughingnomad

You can just imagine the look on my son Josh’s face in Hong Kong today as my chair collapsed out from under me in Las Vegas as I disappeared from view in his skype video frame! He he. Fell on my bum as he kept helplessly asking “are you alright?” Are you alright?”

Normal In Las Vegas

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Had an outside lunch with son Greg, his Punjabi surgeon friend, Jody, and his wife Heather, and Greg Smith who was a classmate of Greg’s in high school.

Playing with Val, Greg’s 16 month old yellow lab who is constantly underfoot.  He is now jumping by himself in the pool and getting out and jumping in again over and over…shaking himself on us each time. “OMG, close the door!”

Son Doug calls from Salem, Oregon

Greg gives me a knife to carry for protection when I travel. He worries about me. Gives me a lecture called the Color Code of Mental Awareness

White:    Unaware of any threat in your immediate surroundings
Yellow:   Aware of your immediate environment
Orange:  Aware of specific, potential threat; continue to observe
Red:        Aware of specific, real threat; no doubt in your mind
Black:     The line in the sand is crossed by your assailant

I clean and polish all of Greg’s stainless steel cookware

Noi, my Thai friend Skype-chats me from Bangkok.

A high school classmate visiting here in Las Vegas will drive over to see me.

Great Greek dinner last night with Greg and erstwhile girlfriend, Adela, at a Greek restaurant

Naps during the afternoon.

In other words I am no longer aware of any danger in my environment.  It’s nice.  But Greg says I should always be aware.  Ok, so I usually am when I travel.  But I figure an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Me In Las Vegas

Posted on by Laughingnomad

After a week in Hong Kong,  just in time to avoid the worst of the burning of Bangkok just up the road from Sukhumvit 20 where I was staying, I flew to Portland Oregon with a transfer in San Francisco on my favorite airline…Cathay Pacific.  Travel time from Hong Kong to the west coast is much shorter (about 10 hours) than a flight from Bangkok with a long layover in Taiwan or Seoul (14-18 hours).

But after 8 months in Asia, the jet lag and culture shock really hit me hard, as usual, flying to the western hemisphere from the east.  In short feeling like I have the flu on top of disorientation, lack of short-term memory (where are my glasses now…and those damn keys…and my phone!) and feeling scattered, very fatigued and strange.  So I holed up in a hotel for a week in Salem…not wanting to inflict myself on my friends…and where I could curl up on a cloud-soft mattress like a baby.

But then, beginning to feel somewhat normal again and stuck in a “cell”  the weather turned from rain to sun and I really wanted out of the hotel. And didn’t appreciate US CNN which is incredibly inferior to International CNN!  I missed the superior BBC, Aljazeera and Russia Today that I could get in Bangkok so I just relied on my computer on free wireless internet which was better than TV anyway. Then a very generous friend offered to have me stay with her and her husband.  This couple had spent a few years in Thailand in the Peace Corps in the 70’s, so it was wonderful to have someone to trade information and debrief the chaos in Bangkok with…especially since they had been following the web videos, articles, forums and tweets like I had been.  Thank you so much Judy and Bob! I hope someday I can be as generous with you!

So now, after almost missing my plane because of bumper to bumper traffic from Salem to Portland, I am in Las Vegas with weather in the 80’s and enjoying my son Greg and his new toddler, Val, a very sweet yellow labrador 18 month old puppy.  We have plans for a Bar B Q with his friends and a Cirque du Seleil show based on Elvis. If it is as good as the one based on the Beatles during my last visit to LV, it will be a fine evening. Greg is at work. Think I’ll curl up and take a nap.