Aiding Insecurity: Four Years of Mexico's Drug War

Saturday 16 July 2011
Aiding Insecurity: Four Years of Mexico's Drug War
Tom Barry, Truthout: "Mexico's drug-trafficking organizations constitute a threat to regional security and to US national security, says the US government. Yet the region is becoming less secure and less safe as the result of the security emphasis of US counternarcotics initiatives... Has the Merida Initiative improved regional security? Certainly not, if measured by levels of drug-related violence, which keep escalating in Mexico, and at an even greater pace in Central America."
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One Thing Certain in Debt Debate: More Cuts for States
Michael Cooper, The New York Times News Service: "The rancorous debate in Washington over whether to raise the federal debt ceiling is alarming many of the nation's governors from both parties, who fear that whatever the outcome, much-needed money will almost certainly be drained from their states. If the federal debt limit is not raised... the ensuing default will harm the economy, make it difficult for states to borrow money and delay some of the vital federal payments that states count on for everything from Medicaid to unemployment benefits."
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How Murdoch Reporters' Bribes to British Cops Violate US Law
Jake Bernstein, ProPublica: "News International Limited, the British arm of the Murdoch empire, is a subsidiary of News Corp., a publicly traded American company which also owns the Wall Street Journal and Fox News (not to mention the Sunday Times of London, the Times of London, and the British tabloid the Sun). Because of this, experts say, News Corp. and all of its subsidiaries come under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a Watergate-era law which makes it a crime for U.S. companies to participate in bribery abroad."
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Violence Against Migrant Women Won't End After DSK Case
Michelle Chen, Colorlines: "The narrative of the immigrant housekeeper allegedly assaulted by a European official perfectly illustrates an axiom of violence and power: the wider the gap between genders and races, the greater the latitude of injustice. Yet the same story plays out every day on an endless loop around the globe: a retaliatory rape against a young girl sends a warning to the enemy militia; a wife is pummeled into bloody silence, her bedroom beyond the purview of traditional local courts; a daughter is married off to pay down a farm debt. The stories weave into a pattern that a media-fatigued public has come to normalize."
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You Can't Kill a Planet and Live on It, Too
Frank Joseph Smecker and Derrick Jensen, Truthout: "With an entire planet being slaughtered before our eyes, it's terrifying to watch the very culture responsible for this - the culture of industrial civilization, fueled by a finite source of fossil fuels, primarily a dwindling supply of oil - thrust forward wantonly to fuel its insatiable appetite for 'growth.' Deluded by myths of progress and suffering from the psychosis of technomania complicated by addiction to depleting oil reserves, industrial society leaves a crescendo of atrocities in its wake."
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How Important Is Class Size After All?
Marion Brady, The Washington Post: "Class size is one of a long list of education-related issues about which arguments rage. Generally speaking, educators want small classes because they allow more individual attention. Those averse to taxes want large classes because they're cheaper. Many think class size makes no important difference. Bill Gates speaks approvingly of one master teacher, alone in a television studio, lecturing millions of kids."
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Slow Flow of Immigrants Already Impacting California Farms?
Elena Shore and Jonah Most, New America Media: "The number of immigrants illegally crossing into the United States from Mexico has declined according to a new study, and some California farmers are already seeing the effects on their crops... Net immigration from Mexico has fallen sharply, and may even be down to zero, according to a recent study by Princeton University demographer Douglas S. Massey. Massey credits several factors for the shift: smaller family sizes and more job opportunities in Mexico, rising border crime, and immigration crackdowns in the United States."
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State Fracking Rules Could Allow Drilling Near New York City Water Supply Tunnels
Nicholas Kusnetz, ProPublica: "The latest draft of guidelines for hydraulic fracturing in New York could open the door to drilling within 1,000 feet of aging underground tunnels that carry water to New York City - a far cry from the seven-mile buffer once sought by city officials. The draft environmental impact statement, released last week by state officials, is a crucial step toward allowing high-volume hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in New York."
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G20: Speculation and Agricultural Price Volatility
Timothy A. Wise, TripleCrisis: "The G20 agriculture ministers dodged most of the tough issues in their meeting last month in Paris, leaving the heavy lifting on France's ambitious G20 agenda to finance ministers later this year. Among the dodged issues were agricultural price volatility and the so-called 'financialization' of commodity markets. Despite a relatively ambitious set of reforms proposed by an interagency group, the agriculture ministers 'action plan' took very few actions beyond pushing for better information on grain inventories."
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BUZZFLASH DAILY HEADLINES

The BuzzFlash commentary for Truthout will return Monday.
Blundering Toward Recession: Urgency and Sense Elude the House
Read the Article at The New York Times
Murdoch's Political Money Trail
Read the Article at The Daily Beast
Turkey Charges 14 Militants With Anti-US Plot
Read the Article at Yahoo! News
California Temporarly Reinstates "Don't Ask Don't Tell"
Read the Article at The New York Times
How the US Government Uses Its Media Servants to Attack Real Journalism
Read the Article at Salon
Another Setback for Consumers: White House Gives Into GOP and Won't Appoint Elizabeth Warren to Head Consumer Bureau
Read the Article at Bloomberg
How More Flexibility in Federal Education Funding Will Hurt Low-Income and Minority Students
Read the Article at Unfinished Business
Click here for more BuzzFlash headlines

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