I don’t have much time to post today, but I am mid way through Mother Jones’ cover package on the war on drugs and it’s good thus far. Here’s one of the bigger pieces in it on freedom of the press in Mexico and how it intersects with the war on drugs – it’s pretty scary stuff. Excerpt below:
There are two Mexicos.
There is the one reported by the US press, a place where the Mexican president is fighting a valiant war on drugs, aided by the Mexican Army and the Mérida Initiative, the $1.4 billion in aid the United States has committed to the cause. This Mexico has newspapers, courts, laws, and is seen by the United States government as a sister republic.
It does not exist.
There is a second Mexico where the war is for drugs, where the police and the military fight for their share of drug profits, where the press is restrained by the murder of reporters and feasts on a steady diet of bribes, and where the line between the government and the drug world has never existed.
The thrust of the cover package thus far is that, in addition to being a monumental waste of taxpayer dollars and time, the war on drugs is also rapidly turning Mexico into another Columbia-like failed narco state. It’s not uplifting reading, to say the least. But ch-ch-check it out for sure.
*An odd title, I know.
