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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: 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.