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A team of independent investigators, probing the disappearance and alleged killing of 43 college students at the hands of criminal gangs in 2014 in Mexico, is set to dispute the government's account of what happened, reports said Friday.
[...] The international panel faced a sustained campaign of harassment, stonewalling and intimidation, The New York Times reported. The panel of experts alleged that the investigators endured planned attacks from Mexican news media and a refusal by the government to turn over documents or grant interviews with essential figures.
[...] The Mexican government had earlier concluded that the 43 students, who were in the city of Iguala in southwestern Mexico as part of a protest, were kidnapped by police officers working for criminal gangs, who then killed and incinerated them in a garbage dump of a nearby town.
The attorney general, who led the government probe, reportedly called the office's finding the "historic truth."
The independent investigators have opposed this version and maintained that the government's account of the events was based in part on confessions apparently extracted by torture. The panel also dismissed the theory that the students were burnt beyond identification at a rubbish dump as physically impossible.
Source: The International Business Times
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday April 25 2016, @07:29AM
The best thing US can do for Mexico is to end the War on Drugs.
Mexico won't have any drug lords any more.
The flow of money into Mexico to support corruption will wear thin as well.
Better still, money from legalized drug sales - sale taxes and excises - will contribute to the US budget (mmm... if this is a good thing or not depends on what exactly the US govt will do with those money).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 25 2016, @07:38AM
The best thing US can do for Mexico is to end the War on Drugs.
Mexico won't have any drug lords any more.
The flow of money into Mexico to support corruption will wear thin as well.
And if you can't legalize drugs, then we should achieve the same things quoted above by building a Big Beautiful Wall... And that's why actual Mexicans love Trump.
They know they could still immigrate to the US if they wanted, so long as they don't have a criminal record, but a better wall would at least cut down on the forced prostitution rings and drug trafficking, and reduce the money paying off corrupt police and government. Search Keyword: "Autodefensa"
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Monday April 25 2016, @07:57AM
I looked [wikipedia.org].
I don't see anywhere the mention of them loving the idea of the "Big Beautiful Wall" or Trump for the matter...
Either you provide a citation or I'll feel this is BS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 25 2016, @08:12AM
a citation [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Touché) by c0lo on Monday April 25 2016, @09:13AM
Then [soylentnews.org] I call bullshit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 25 2016, @08:12AM
Actually, I don't know why we should give a damn wether Mexicans love Trump, or Obama, or any other president. Mexicans don't vote for their presidents based on how much the US likes their candidates. As for "actual Mexicans" - I can't help wondering WTF GP means by that. Mexicans aren't a monolithic voting block in the US or Mexico, any more than women are a monolithic voting block, or blacks, or Irish, or Russians.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday April 25 2016, @04:07PM
I think a distinction is being drawn between "actual Mexicans" as in general opinion among Mexicans in both Mexico and America vs the La Raza / Univision Community Organizers who get all of the face time on the boob tube.
(Score: 2) by devlux on Monday April 25 2016, @11:20PM
FYI prostitution is perfectly legal down here. As long as she is age of consent, it's considered a woman's choice what she wants to do with her body or how much she wants to sell it for.
I've known several ladies who choose the line of work and never met one with a pimp down here.
Oh yeah maybe that's because pimping and human trafficking is life in federal prison on a chain gang!
What is it in the USA now? Probation for the pimp and a minimum year in jail for the girls? Unless of course the girl is 17.99 years old then it's LWOP for the pimp.
A fence isn't going to stop coyotes, they'll dig under it, or go around it or bribe their way through.
Hell I'm a 10th generation US Citizen, with an honorable military service record and even I have more problems getting across on the rare occasion I need to, than they do.
Now setting a first time offense of jailing business owners who hire illegals knowingly or not and 10 years in prison on a second offense, might actually do something to stop it. But at that point you're tackling the source of the problem which is the demand side, not the supply side.
eVerify is a thing and it has been for quite awhile, but businesses need to use it, and there need to be real penalties to the business. The kind that cripple the company financially and give real jail time to the offenders. Otherwise you may as well not even have it.
If you did that, what you would find is far less businesses hiring illegals, but the illegals just setup shops and businesses of their own.
Nationalism is the real problem, stop being prejudiced based on where someone was born and raised. Stop with that, just let folks alone. Give those who come to your country through whatever means, a clear path to citizenship that isn't full of pitfalls that will get them discarded err deported and you'll see the illegal immigration problem cease.
But you can't ask others to change. You have to be the change.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Gravis on Monday April 25 2016, @08:21AM
how would that change what's happening in mexico? they would still want to move drugs into the US since said drugs would still be illegal. what if mexico just ended its own war on drugs? wouldn't it just be a problem in the US then?
legalization of marijuana much less coke and heroin conflicts with the current dogma, so that's not going to happen.
i have an alternative solution: contaminate the sources of the drugs. the basic problem is that you burn the fields, they just replant the next day. however, if you swap out what they are planting with something that is looks like what they want but is genetically modified to not produce the drug, you waste a LOT of time and labor for them. the trick is to force them to use more and more of their reserves and each time, you locate a new supply or supplier to sabotage. this way people won't be killed and nobody is importing drugs so everyone wins but the cartels and drug users. :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 25 2016, @08:46AM
You mean the old Monsanto spread and sue -trick. Of course the "sue" part is replaced with other forms of benefits.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 25 2016, @10:38AM
Mary J is being legalized, in addition to being cultivated here illegally. Cannabis isn't the real problem. Cocaine is the major drug from "South of the Border".
Coca leaves aren't burnt by American or other government actors. Instead, they are sprayed from the air with herbicides (Think along the lines of Agent Orange.) Some bright boys have genetically modified the coca plants to resist that herbicide. Roundup ready coca. When the government flies over and sprays, all the weeds and competing plants in the area are killed, leaving the coca plants to thrive. Story here, among other places: http://www.wired.com/2004/11/columbia/ [wired.com] Note the dateline on the story - as you read, you might conclude that the research was done around 1993. Personally, I suspect that it might have been done a little earlier - let's say '88 to '90.
The question I've never seen addressed is, how much did Monsanto and/or Monsanto's people help with this project? People don't just walk into the local hardware store, and buy all the stuff they need to genetically modify life in one go. The laboratory was shopped over a considerable period of time. Personnel were shopped over a similar period of time. Columbia isn't known for being the nexus of genetic research - they may have had to send people to college for advanced learning before they could even start the lab up. Unless, of course, Monsanto sent some "consultants" to help with the project, and maybe streamlined some of the purchases for the lab.
So, you're on target about burning fields - that don't happen. The Powers That Be didn't want contaminated product, either. The solution? Help the growers to produce MORE PRODUCT, enabling the DEA to intercept ever increasing amounts of drugs to justify their existence - while at the same time, increasing the flow of drugs into the United States.
Everyone is happy, except the random mule who is killed or imprisoned while running the drugs across the border.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday April 25 2016, @03:11PM
Wait, the cocaine they sell is genetically modified? Widely publicizing that should be quite effective against people starting to take it!
"Wanna try a shot of cocaine?" — "Are you silly? I'm not poisoning myself with that GM stuff! Give me some nice organic Marijuana instead!" :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 25 2016, @07:57PM
See Devlux answer below. There is some controversy, and the article isn't 100% clear. Attempts were made to genetically alter the stuff. Those attempts may or may not have been successful - but the coca plant is famous for mutating. What we know for certain is, the vast majority of coca plants will succumb to the Roundup pesticides. The Negra plants do not.
Did man do that, or did nature do it?
Either way, it's not precisely the same plant that was being cultivated prior to about 1998 or so. It has been genetically modified in some way, naturally or otherwise.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by devlux on Monday April 25 2016, @06:09PM
They didn't genetically modify it. Coca is an ancient plant with thousands of varieties and it "likes" to mutate. Same thing happened to coca as happened to MRSA. It mutated to survive.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 25 2016, @02:11PM
Leave it to slashdot for some pie-in-the-sky genetic engineering solution with no basis in reality to get modded up.
Might as well just say the solution to the problem is to pray really hard.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday April 25 2016, @03:17PM
Also an interesting idea. Constantly send prayers through loudspeakers onto the drug fields, until the field workers get so annoyed that they refuse to continue working there. ;-)
Another idea: Maybe we could convince ISIS to send suicide terrorists onto the drug fields … I'm sure those drugs are against the Koran! :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Monday April 25 2016, @02:22PM
I'm thinking there's more to it than the War on Drugs. What kind of sick society condones such violence? How could the murders of 49 people be met with such calculated indifference from their own society? Sicily has this culture of Omerta that empowers Mafia operations. Are they all cowards, too afraid of the narcos to fight back thought they must outnumber the criminals 3 to 1 at the least? Do they secretly wish for the deaths of people they view as competitors? The fact is, often two neighboring villages could each immediately benefit from the death of the other, if it can be pulled off without arousing too much suspicion and distrust, bringing down retaliation, or stirring any nobler thoughts of sympathy or fears that they could be the next victims in a return to a lawless jungle existence that they helped bring about. For that matter, are their institutions so corrupt they already are effectively lawless, and the society seeks rather a balance of power between corrupt government and brutal narcos in which they can eke out a miserable existence so long as these 2 powers remain largely at odds?
Good land is precious, the problem is almost always that it's not vacant. I imagine that villages just outside some natural disaster area thrived and gained rather more than average in the wake of the disaster. Nazi Germany was certainly based upon plunder, to name one of the most recent examples in history. The Mongol Empire was another of that stripe. And of course the European conquest of the Americas is another standout example, with the US-Mexican War of 1848 a closing chapter in that thinly justified land grab.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday April 25 2016, @02:50PM
The explanation may be as simple as: the local drug lord have more money that whatever the central govt can offer to the local administration.
A similar (in principle) situation happens in US: the corporations have more influencing power on the govt/legislative than the citizens... the difference stays only the fact that the corps made whatever they are doing to be(came) legal, so that they don't need to resort to violence to prevail - the effect on the citizens is the same, though: they are the less able to govern their own lives [pewsocialtrends.org].
I can answer in the negative [wikipedia.org] (thanks to an AC trolling/astroturfing [soylentnews.org])
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday April 25 2016, @05:12PM
What kind of sick society condones such violence? How could the murders of 49 people be met with such calculated indifference from their own society? Sicily has this culture of Omerta that empowers Mafia operations.
I think it's location.
Notice that usually, the most fucked-up cultures on Earth are close to the Equator. The closer, the worse they are. Middle eastern cultures are generally the worst (see ISIS, Wahhabism) but Latin American cultures are pretty close too. What do they have in common: they're close to the Equator. And so is Sicily. Notice that northern Italy is generally much more corruption-free and industrious than southern Italy, with Sicily, being south of most of the nation, is the worst part. The South and Texas in the US are more fucked-up than places to the north. Back in Europe, Spain was under a dictatorship until the mid-70s, and Greece was too. The most prosperous nations in Europe are generally the ones to the north: Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, and then after the Iron Curtain fell, look at which countries really prospered when they weren't shackled by the Soviets: Czechia (their new name), Poland, Latvia, and Finland. Heck, Finland is now the envy of the world in many ways, and that place is downright frigid. Others have had much more trouble, namely Yugoslavia. What's the difference? Latvia and Finland are in the north, Yugoslavia is in the south.
There must be something about being close to the Equator that makes people crazy.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday April 25 2016, @06:14PM
Somewhat relatedly: North-South divide [wikipedia.org]
And your observations are only true recently. Back in the day, Rome, Byzantium, Alexander the Great, Persia, various civilizations in the fertile crescent...would the most recent example of a really successful civilization in that area be the Ottoman Empire? Which was broken up at the end of WWI.
Yeah yeah, my cultural biases are showing :/
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 5, Informative) by devlux on Monday April 25 2016, @06:22PM
Fuck dude just because it barely met with a blip on the US news media doesn't mean it wasn't a HUGE deal here in Mexico.
No one condoned this shit. There were marches, there were sit ins. There were people who torched the govt central offices in that state and burned it to the ground.
The Mayor fled the area and was found hiding 2,000 miles away in what was the largest manhunt in memory.
There are people today who still bring together memorial ceremonies and celebrations.
That thing was a HUGE deal that effected everyone from TJ to Cancun and it still is.
Quit being a small minded racist prick and assuming just because it didn't make the 6'oclock news in the USA, that it wasn't earth shattering down here to the people actually living it.
Then realize that Mexico prefers to be left the hell alone and an outside body trying to "dig truth" probably will be stonewalled simply because the natives here will assume that the "truth digger" has an agenda.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 25 2016, @04:14PM
No. The cartels will just move into the US with operations. This is what they want. To become legal. This is not just a drug/money probem; this is a culture/corruption problem.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday April 25 2016, @06:05PM
Mexico won't have any drug lords any more.
Chuckle....
People do not assemble and maintain criminal armies over decades, and then just fold their tent and slip away into the night.
Mexico will take decades, perhaps a hundred years, to purge this army in their midst. The cartels own significant portions of the government, and they will find new sources of income. Kidnappings, forced property "sales", bank robberies, national treasury robberies, you name it.
I bet you think the Mafia just vanished at the end of prohibition.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.