U. of C. to introduce 'open housing' (Chicago Tribune)
December 20, 2008
The University of Chicago, proud home of Nobel laureates, will undertake a bold experiment in chemistry: coed dorm rooms.
The pilot program allowing male and female students to sleep in the same room will start next month. It's not intended for romantic couples, but they won't be excluded, because the university won't ask students why they want to live together.
The proposal was a student-led initiative, university officials said.
Coed dorm rooms are allowed at more than 30 campuses nationwide, but they have generally been socially liberal institutions, such as Wesleyan University, Oberlin College and Oregon State University. The policy is a departure at U. of C., which has a no-nonsense, nose-in-a-book reputation.
The program won't apply to freshmen, and students won't need permission from their parents to live in "open housing." A letter announcing the program went out to parents this week.
"In today's day and age it's not really fair to discriminate based on gender anymore," said Asha Woodall, 19, a sophomore at the U. of C. and a supporter of the plan. "Sexuality is more of a spectrum."
Notions about sexuality and personal choice helped propel the program. In the university's letter to parents, the director of undergraduate housing said the gender-neutral plan "allows us to meet the needs of students for whom traditional, same-sex room assignments are not ideal."
Josh Gana, assistant director for operations and facilities with university housing at Oregon State University, said their "gender inclusives" program has been a great success. The program was introduced in fall 2007, Gana said, and the university will have more than doubled the number of mixed-gender arrangements this year.
"It's a way to accommodate diverse lifestyles," he said. "It's what students are demanding more and more."
To be sure, not every student likes the idea, and university officials are quick to point out that students will not be assigned to mixed-gender housing.
"Personally, I wouldn't feel comfortable," said Anna Tenuta, a 19-year-old freshman at U. of C. "Changing, and personal things in your bedroom—I would feel more comfortable having another woman."
Still, Tenuta said, she supported letting other students make their own choice.
Plenty of college officials have yet to embrace the concept. Some critics say the arrangement encourages promiscuity and caters to a politically correct handbook.
Northwestern University, for one, does not allow men and women to share dorm rooms. At Tufts University in Medford, Mass., a Boston suburb, coed suites are fine but officials have rejected the idea of coed dorm rooms.
Bruce Reitman, dean of student affairs at Tufts, told The Boston Globe this spring that the concept raised practical and moral concerns.
Alexandra Markiewicz, a 19-year-old sophomore at U. of C., said the idea isn't necessarily a racy one. Two of her close friends, platonic friends of the opposite sex, would simply make great roommates. The pair hope to take advantage of the new rule at some point, Markiewicz said.
D.J. Zissen, a 20-year-old junior at Oregon State University, is spending his second year in a residence hall that includes gender-inclusive rooms. Last year, he said his neighbor was transgender and going through the process of sex reassignment and hormone therapy. No one batted an eye, Zissen said.
"I enjoy that it's letting us live with whomever we want," he said.
Friday, January 2, 2009
The Descent...
What in god's name has happened to Mickey Rourke's face? And when did it become cool to look like a Pirate when you're not in a movie? Oh wait...it hasn't.
Mexico's Death Toll
Kristin Bricker - the narcosphere - December 31, 2008
A record-breaking 5,612 people were executed in Mexico’s drug war in 2008, making the drug war more deadly than the drugs (plus 18 more before the ball dropped on 2008)
Mexico's daily El Universal, which began counting drug war executions four years ago, reports that 5,612 people were executed in Mexico’s drug war in 2008. This year’s deaths more than doubled 2007’s total of over 2,700 executions. By El Universal's estimates, about 8,463 drug executions have occurred during the first two years of Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s six-year term in office. Calderon deployed the army and federal police to combat drug cartels almost immediately upon assuming office in December 2006.
The 2008 death toll means that the drug war in Mexico alone (that is, not including the copious number of drug war deaths in Colombia) is more deadly than illicit drugs in the United States, which is the biggest drug market in the world and the destination for the overwhelming majority of the American continent’s drugs.
In 2005, the latest year the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) has published statistics for fatal drug overdoses, 22,400 people fatally overdosed in the US—this statistic includes both intentional and unintentional overdoses. However, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines/amphetamines caused only 39%, or about 8,736, of those overdoses. Marijuana does not cause fatal overdoses. When presenting the 2005 statistics, the CDC stated that it expected the number of fatal overdoses to increase in subsequent years, but said that prescription drugs would be responsible for the increase. Prescription medications are the cause of more fatal overdoses than any other drug in the US.
The drugs in question in Mexico’s drug war—cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines/amphetamines, and marijuana—were responsible for 8,736 drug deaths in one year in the US, although 100% of these drugs do not pass through Mexico. Mexico has only recently become a major source for methamphetamines/amphetamines; it currently supplies about 53% of the meth found in the US. About 90% of the US’ cocaine passes through Mexico. About 11% of heroin seized in the US comes from Asia and does not pass through Mexico. For our purposes, the percentage of US marijuana that originates in Mexico is a moot point because it does not cause fatal overdoses. Therefore, it can be said that Mexico’s drug trafficking industry is not responsible for 100% of the US’ 8,736 fatal overdoses. However, because the CDC does not offer a drug-by-drug breakdown of overdose deaths, which would allow a more accurate calculation of how many US overdose deaths are related to Mexican drug trafficking, we’ll continue assuming that all 8,736 overdose deaths are related to Mexican drug trafficking, knowing that this is an inflated estimate.
The US has a population of approximately 305,522,804 people, meaning that approximately 1 out of every 34,972 US residents fatally overdose on drugs that could have possibly originated in or passed through Mexico.
Mexico has a population of approximately 108,700,891 people. In 2008, 5,612 people, or 1 out of every 19,369 Mexicans, died in the drug war, meaning that the drug war is almost twice as deadly for Mexicans as illicit drugs are for US residents. Does this mean that a US resident’s life is nearly twice as valuable as that of a Mexican?
The death toll only continues to rise in Mexico. In addition to more than doubling 2007’s death toll and breaking an all-time execution record in Mexico, the drug war death toll has steadily—and rapidly—increased in 2008. During the last two months of 2008, drug executions reached a rate of one per hour.
Chaos and Violence: Anticipated and Desired
Drug war experts as well as Mexico’s own National Defense Department (Sedena in its Spanish initials) expected that drug trafficking-related deaths would increase as a result of Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s war on drugs. US President George W. Bush and President Calderon have both said that the increased homicides and drug-related deaths are signs of success because they mean that the drug cartels are getting desperate.
Rather than being an undesired consequence of the drug war, the increased death toll appears to be part of Sedena’s strategy. In a report obtained by the Mexican daily Milenio entitled “The National Defense Department in Combat Against Drug Trafficking” Sedena’s thirst for war is obvious. Sedena refers to its current military campaign as a “crusade” in which Milenio reports its “top priority is to attack the adversary in a coordinated manner on all fronts in order to be ready for a sign of weakness that would allow it to “annihilate”’ the cartels. The report states that one of Sedena’s four fundamental “aspects of combat” is to “cause [the cartels] the greater number of deaths; create divisionism in their structures; provoke internal confrontations and induce their self-destruction.” The chaos and violence caused by Calderon’s deployment of troops against the cartels was not only anticipated, but desired.
Plan Colombia has demonstrated that eliminating cartels does not eliminate the drug market. Plan Colombia destroyed Colombia’s two biggest cartels, but they were quickly replaced by numerous smaller boutique cartels. Thanks to drug traffickers’ ability to adapt to new circumstances, coca production has increased 15% during Plan Colombia, and cocaine production has increased 4%.
The Institute for Policy Studies’ Sanho Tree explained to Pacifica Radio’s Drug War News why Mexico’s strategy of “annihilating” cartels has caused what he refers to as a “bloodbath.” Tree argues, “When you have this kind of turf battle going on between rival cartels, the worst thing the state can do is get in the middle of that.” He says he explained this to staffers on Capitol Hill when Congress was debating Plan Mexico, also known as the Merida Initiative. Plan Mexico throws the might of the US military industrial complex behind Mexico’s drug war.
Tree's warnings obviously fell on deaf ears in Congress, which passed the first year of Plan Mexico funding.
Tree compares Mexico’s turf wars to street dealing in the US:
If you pull a small-time dealer off a street corner, you've opened up a very valuable piece of real estate, and so other groups try to move in, to control that space, because that's where people go to buy drugs. You can't really go to a judge and say "Your Honor, I've been dealing drugs in this city for 15 years, and here comes this upstart gang from across town moving in on my turf." So the way they settle that is with violence or threats of violence, and you can see that on the macro level in Mexico. There, the Gulf cartel and the Sinaloa cartel are having this ongoing turf battle, and President Calderon's reaction when he first came into office was to be Mr. Tough Guy: "I'm gonna go down there and kick some butt and put the army in there.” And all that does is keep these rival cartels off-balance. Because the profits are so extreme, they're going to keep struggling to get the upper hand. It's an endless cycle. Being tough is not the same as being effective.
A record-breaking 5,612 people were executed in Mexico’s drug war in 2008, making the drug war more deadly than the drugs (plus 18 more before the ball dropped on 2008)
Mexico's daily El Universal, which began counting drug war executions four years ago, reports that 5,612 people were executed in Mexico’s drug war in 2008. This year’s deaths more than doubled 2007’s total of over 2,700 executions. By El Universal's estimates, about 8,463 drug executions have occurred during the first two years of Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s six-year term in office. Calderon deployed the army and federal police to combat drug cartels almost immediately upon assuming office in December 2006.
The 2008 death toll means that the drug war in Mexico alone (that is, not including the copious number of drug war deaths in Colombia) is more deadly than illicit drugs in the United States, which is the biggest drug market in the world and the destination for the overwhelming majority of the American continent’s drugs.
In 2005, the latest year the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) has published statistics for fatal drug overdoses, 22,400 people fatally overdosed in the US—this statistic includes both intentional and unintentional overdoses. However, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines/amphetamines caused only 39%, or about 8,736, of those overdoses. Marijuana does not cause fatal overdoses. When presenting the 2005 statistics, the CDC stated that it expected the number of fatal overdoses to increase in subsequent years, but said that prescription drugs would be responsible for the increase. Prescription medications are the cause of more fatal overdoses than any other drug in the US.
The drugs in question in Mexico’s drug war—cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines/amphetamines, and marijuana—were responsible for 8,736 drug deaths in one year in the US, although 100% of these drugs do not pass through Mexico. Mexico has only recently become a major source for methamphetamines/amphetamines; it currently supplies about 53% of the meth found in the US. About 90% of the US’ cocaine passes through Mexico. About 11% of heroin seized in the US comes from Asia and does not pass through Mexico. For our purposes, the percentage of US marijuana that originates in Mexico is a moot point because it does not cause fatal overdoses. Therefore, it can be said that Mexico’s drug trafficking industry is not responsible for 100% of the US’ 8,736 fatal overdoses. However, because the CDC does not offer a drug-by-drug breakdown of overdose deaths, which would allow a more accurate calculation of how many US overdose deaths are related to Mexican drug trafficking, we’ll continue assuming that all 8,736 overdose deaths are related to Mexican drug trafficking, knowing that this is an inflated estimate.
The US has a population of approximately 305,522,804 people, meaning that approximately 1 out of every 34,972 US residents fatally overdose on drugs that could have possibly originated in or passed through Mexico.
Mexico has a population of approximately 108,700,891 people. In 2008, 5,612 people, or 1 out of every 19,369 Mexicans, died in the drug war, meaning that the drug war is almost twice as deadly for Mexicans as illicit drugs are for US residents. Does this mean that a US resident’s life is nearly twice as valuable as that of a Mexican?
The death toll only continues to rise in Mexico. In addition to more than doubling 2007’s death toll and breaking an all-time execution record in Mexico, the drug war death toll has steadily—and rapidly—increased in 2008. During the last two months of 2008, drug executions reached a rate of one per hour.
Chaos and Violence: Anticipated and Desired
Drug war experts as well as Mexico’s own National Defense Department (Sedena in its Spanish initials) expected that drug trafficking-related deaths would increase as a result of Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s war on drugs. US President George W. Bush and President Calderon have both said that the increased homicides and drug-related deaths are signs of success because they mean that the drug cartels are getting desperate.
Rather than being an undesired consequence of the drug war, the increased death toll appears to be part of Sedena’s strategy. In a report obtained by the Mexican daily Milenio entitled “The National Defense Department in Combat Against Drug Trafficking” Sedena’s thirst for war is obvious. Sedena refers to its current military campaign as a “crusade” in which Milenio reports its “top priority is to attack the adversary in a coordinated manner on all fronts in order to be ready for a sign of weakness that would allow it to “annihilate”’ the cartels. The report states that one of Sedena’s four fundamental “aspects of combat” is to “cause [the cartels] the greater number of deaths; create divisionism in their structures; provoke internal confrontations and induce their self-destruction.” The chaos and violence caused by Calderon’s deployment of troops against the cartels was not only anticipated, but desired.
Plan Colombia has demonstrated that eliminating cartels does not eliminate the drug market. Plan Colombia destroyed Colombia’s two biggest cartels, but they were quickly replaced by numerous smaller boutique cartels. Thanks to drug traffickers’ ability to adapt to new circumstances, coca production has increased 15% during Plan Colombia, and cocaine production has increased 4%.
The Institute for Policy Studies’ Sanho Tree explained to Pacifica Radio’s Drug War News why Mexico’s strategy of “annihilating” cartels has caused what he refers to as a “bloodbath.” Tree argues, “When you have this kind of turf battle going on between rival cartels, the worst thing the state can do is get in the middle of that.” He says he explained this to staffers on Capitol Hill when Congress was debating Plan Mexico, also known as the Merida Initiative. Plan Mexico throws the might of the US military industrial complex behind Mexico’s drug war.
Tree's warnings obviously fell on deaf ears in Congress, which passed the first year of Plan Mexico funding.
Tree compares Mexico’s turf wars to street dealing in the US:
If you pull a small-time dealer off a street corner, you've opened up a very valuable piece of real estate, and so other groups try to move in, to control that space, because that's where people go to buy drugs. You can't really go to a judge and say "Your Honor, I've been dealing drugs in this city for 15 years, and here comes this upstart gang from across town moving in on my turf." So the way they settle that is with violence or threats of violence, and you can see that on the macro level in Mexico. There, the Gulf cartel and the Sinaloa cartel are having this ongoing turf battle, and President Calderon's reaction when he first came into office was to be Mr. Tough Guy: "I'm gonna go down there and kick some butt and put the army in there.” And all that does is keep these rival cartels off-balance. Because the profits are so extreme, they're going to keep struggling to get the upper hand. It's an endless cycle. Being tough is not the same as being effective.
News No One Pays Attention To
MEXICO UNDER SIEGE (LA TIMES)
Mistrust bedevils war on Mexican drug cartels
The U.S. and Mexico agree that cartels have morphed into crime syndicates that pose an urgent security threat to the region. But working together has not been easy.
By Josh Meyer
December 31, 2008
Reporting from Washington — The U.S. has begun pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into Mexico to help stanch the expansion of drug-fueled violence and corruption that has claimed more than 5,000 lives south of the border this year.
The bloodshed has spread to American cities, even to the heartland, and U.S. officials are realizing that their fight against powerful drug cartels responsible for the carnage has come down to this: Either walk away or support Mexican President Felipe Calderon's strategy, even with the risk that counter-narcotics intelligence, equipment and training could end up in the hands of cartel bosses.
Both nations agree that the cartels have morphed into transnational crime syndicates that pose an urgent threat to their security and that of the region. Law enforcement agencies from the border to Maine acknowledge that the traffickers have brought a war once dismissed as a foreign affair to the doorstep of local communities. The trail of slayings, kidnappings and other crimes stretches through at least 195 U.S. cities.
The rapidly escalating problem will probably present the Obama administration with hard choices on how to work with Mexico to combat the cartels and the gun-running, money-laundering and other illicit businesses that nourish them.
So far, the fight has largely been waged by the Calderon administration, which deployed thousands of federal troops and police to 18 states to take on the cartels, some of which have paramilitary forces protecting them and many police officers and politicians in their pockets.
"They know they have a monumental undertaking, but you have to start somewhere," Michael A. Braun, former assistant director and chief of operations at the Drug Enforcement Administration, said of the Mexican government. "If you don't, in another five years the cartels will be running Mexico."
The U.S. answer for fighting the cartels is contained in a package known as the Merida Initiative, named for the Mexican city where it was unveiled by Presidents Calderon and Bush in October 2007. When Congress passed the first installment of the three-year aid package in June, it contained at least 33 programs, giving about $400 million to Mexico for this fiscal year and $65 million for drug-fighting efforts in various Central American and Caribbean countries.
The first tranche of money was delayed until this month, and squabbling and other problems have held up delivery of most direct assistance. A senior State Department official confirmed that Mexico would have to wait more than a year for at least two U.S. transport helicopters and a reconnaissance plane that it says it desperately needs.
Starting from scratch
Some senior U.S. counter-narcotics officials and lawmakers say the U.S.-Mexico relationship has been so polluted for decades by mistrust, neglect and failure to collaborate that the countries must build much of their anti-drug strategy from scratch, even at a time when beheadings and other brutal slayings have become commonplace in Mexico.
They fear the cartels are so strong and well-funded that Mexican government forces will continue to be undertrained, under-equipped and outgunned for years, even with U.S. aid. And they say it could take decades and billions of dollars more to establish the corruption-resistant criminal justice institutions needed to eliminate the cartels and their government benefactors.
"You need a robust internal capacity to identify the cancer, cut it out and move on while checking the margins to make sure it hasn't spread," said Braun, who is now managing partner at Spectre Group International, a security consulting firm. "And they have never done that. They never institutionalized law enforcement at any level."
U.S. authorities remain deeply troubled that corruption in the top echelons of Calderon's administration could undermine the Merida effort. Some said the recent arrest of Mexico's former drug czar, Noe Ramirez Mandujano, on suspicion of taking a $450,000 bribe from the cartels showed that Calderon's effort to root out corruption was working.
Some U.S. officials say they share more information than ever with Mexico. Others are conducting damage assessments after Ramirez's arrest, and after Mexico revealed that cartel operatives had infiltrated Interpol, the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City and even DEA operations.
Calderon will probably discover more corruption within his government and his administration, but he deserves credit for requesting assistance and battling the cartels since his election two years ago, Braun and other current and former U.S. officials said.
Since it was first unveiled in Merida, the drug plan has been criticized as a confusing patchwork of questionable programs, including military and law enforcement training, high-tech drug-detection scanners and gang-prevention programs.
Then Congress set about making it even more complicated.
Some lawmakers got more money for U.S. counter-narcotics efforts, and others focused on more funding for Central American regional security programs. Many have complained that no one is coordinating the initiative, and that turf battles and confusion reign among the many agencies that have a piece of it.
"You've got so many different agencies involved -- who would you even put in charge of it?" said an official with the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Hard feelings
Privately, Mexican officials are furious with Bush for not doing more to investigate and stop the flood of assault weapons coming in from U.S. gun shops and gun shows. One senior Mexican official said the weapons made up about 90% of the cartels' arsenals.
And Mexico continues to accuse Washington of doing far too little to diminish the southbound flow of billions of dollars in laundered drug proceeds and drug precursor chemicals, even though both are addressed in the initiative.
Washington, particularly the DEA, is so distrustful of Mexican authorities that they share sensitive counter- narcotics intelligence and evidence with only a small group of Mexican officials.
These include a handful of recently installed top aides to Calderon and about 225 Mexican law enforcement officials who have been thoroughly investigated and trained, and who can be continually monitored by the U.S.
They say they have no choice.
"It is very troubling from the standpoint that in order for us to help the government of Mexico help themselves, we've got to have the confidence to share very sensitive information without the fear that that information is going to be leaked to the traffickers or to others in a way that could compromise operations and ultimately get people killed," said Anthony Placido, the DEA's director of intelligence.
"It would be easy to take the path of least resistance and say they're all corrupt and we can't work with them," Placido said. "But the reality is it is simply much too important not to. They have taken on these traffickers, and now they have to win. And they deserve and need our support."
The contentiousness surrounding the Merida plan is no surprise to veteran counter-narcotics officials and policymakers. They say it is emblematic of a turbulent relationship between the two countries that has often been defined by bickering, public finger-pointing and an overall atmosphere of mistrust.
For more than two decades, U.S. officials have accused Mexico of ignoring hard evidence that violent homegrown crime syndicates were gaining power and corrupting its police, army and government in a lucrative campaign to flood American streets with cocaine, heroin and other drugs.
Mexican officials said Washington had done little to diminish Americans' voracious demand for illicit drugs, and had made Mexico vulnerable by cracking down on the Colombian cartels, which then turned to Mexican organizations to move their drugs to the U.S.
And after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. turned away from the drug fight, some Mexican officials say.
As the two countries watched and often feuded, the drug groups grew into sophisticated and deadly organized-crime cartels with a global reach, a strong U.S. presence and a stranglehold over many of the Mexican governmental institutions responsible for stopping them.
DEA intelligence now estimates that the cartels are paying hundreds of millions in bribes a year and that they have expanded their operations to Africa, Europe and elsewhere.
Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico's ambassador to the U.S. and a former counter-narcotics official, cautioned that Merida was only a first step.
He said it wouldn't be easy to improve cross-border interdiction, intelligence-sharing and an integration of both countries' counter-narcotics efforts after so much neglect.
"Obviously, the longer you take to address a challenge or disease, the harder it is to root out," Sarukhan said. "And whoever thinks that the Merida Initiative or the type of cooperation that we have implemented since President Calderon arrived is a silver bullet that will eliminate a decades-old challenge in Mexico is wrong."
Mistrust bedevils war on Mexican drug cartels
The U.S. and Mexico agree that cartels have morphed into crime syndicates that pose an urgent security threat to the region. But working together has not been easy.
By Josh Meyer
December 31, 2008
Reporting from Washington — The U.S. has begun pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into Mexico to help stanch the expansion of drug-fueled violence and corruption that has claimed more than 5,000 lives south of the border this year.
The bloodshed has spread to American cities, even to the heartland, and U.S. officials are realizing that their fight against powerful drug cartels responsible for the carnage has come down to this: Either walk away or support Mexican President Felipe Calderon's strategy, even with the risk that counter-narcotics intelligence, equipment and training could end up in the hands of cartel bosses.
Both nations agree that the cartels have morphed into transnational crime syndicates that pose an urgent threat to their security and that of the region. Law enforcement agencies from the border to Maine acknowledge that the traffickers have brought a war once dismissed as a foreign affair to the doorstep of local communities. The trail of slayings, kidnappings and other crimes stretches through at least 195 U.S. cities.
The rapidly escalating problem will probably present the Obama administration with hard choices on how to work with Mexico to combat the cartels and the gun-running, money-laundering and other illicit businesses that nourish them.
So far, the fight has largely been waged by the Calderon administration, which deployed thousands of federal troops and police to 18 states to take on the cartels, some of which have paramilitary forces protecting them and many police officers and politicians in their pockets.
"They know they have a monumental undertaking, but you have to start somewhere," Michael A. Braun, former assistant director and chief of operations at the Drug Enforcement Administration, said of the Mexican government. "If you don't, in another five years the cartels will be running Mexico."
The U.S. answer for fighting the cartels is contained in a package known as the Merida Initiative, named for the Mexican city where it was unveiled by Presidents Calderon and Bush in October 2007. When Congress passed the first installment of the three-year aid package in June, it contained at least 33 programs, giving about $400 million to Mexico for this fiscal year and $65 million for drug-fighting efforts in various Central American and Caribbean countries.
The first tranche of money was delayed until this month, and squabbling and other problems have held up delivery of most direct assistance. A senior State Department official confirmed that Mexico would have to wait more than a year for at least two U.S. transport helicopters and a reconnaissance plane that it says it desperately needs.
Starting from scratch
Some senior U.S. counter-narcotics officials and lawmakers say the U.S.-Mexico relationship has been so polluted for decades by mistrust, neglect and failure to collaborate that the countries must build much of their anti-drug strategy from scratch, even at a time when beheadings and other brutal slayings have become commonplace in Mexico.
They fear the cartels are so strong and well-funded that Mexican government forces will continue to be undertrained, under-equipped and outgunned for years, even with U.S. aid. And they say it could take decades and billions of dollars more to establish the corruption-resistant criminal justice institutions needed to eliminate the cartels and their government benefactors.
"You need a robust internal capacity to identify the cancer, cut it out and move on while checking the margins to make sure it hasn't spread," said Braun, who is now managing partner at Spectre Group International, a security consulting firm. "And they have never done that. They never institutionalized law enforcement at any level."
U.S. authorities remain deeply troubled that corruption in the top echelons of Calderon's administration could undermine the Merida effort. Some said the recent arrest of Mexico's former drug czar, Noe Ramirez Mandujano, on suspicion of taking a $450,000 bribe from the cartels showed that Calderon's effort to root out corruption was working.
Some U.S. officials say they share more information than ever with Mexico. Others are conducting damage assessments after Ramirez's arrest, and after Mexico revealed that cartel operatives had infiltrated Interpol, the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City and even DEA operations.
Calderon will probably discover more corruption within his government and his administration, but he deserves credit for requesting assistance and battling the cartels since his election two years ago, Braun and other current and former U.S. officials said.
Since it was first unveiled in Merida, the drug plan has been criticized as a confusing patchwork of questionable programs, including military and law enforcement training, high-tech drug-detection scanners and gang-prevention programs.
Then Congress set about making it even more complicated.
Some lawmakers got more money for U.S. counter-narcotics efforts, and others focused on more funding for Central American regional security programs. Many have complained that no one is coordinating the initiative, and that turf battles and confusion reign among the many agencies that have a piece of it.
"You've got so many different agencies involved -- who would you even put in charge of it?" said an official with the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Hard feelings
Privately, Mexican officials are furious with Bush for not doing more to investigate and stop the flood of assault weapons coming in from U.S. gun shops and gun shows. One senior Mexican official said the weapons made up about 90% of the cartels' arsenals.
And Mexico continues to accuse Washington of doing far too little to diminish the southbound flow of billions of dollars in laundered drug proceeds and drug precursor chemicals, even though both are addressed in the initiative.
Washington, particularly the DEA, is so distrustful of Mexican authorities that they share sensitive counter- narcotics intelligence and evidence with only a small group of Mexican officials.
These include a handful of recently installed top aides to Calderon and about 225 Mexican law enforcement officials who have been thoroughly investigated and trained, and who can be continually monitored by the U.S.
They say they have no choice.
"It is very troubling from the standpoint that in order for us to help the government of Mexico help themselves, we've got to have the confidence to share very sensitive information without the fear that that information is going to be leaked to the traffickers or to others in a way that could compromise operations and ultimately get people killed," said Anthony Placido, the DEA's director of intelligence.
"It would be easy to take the path of least resistance and say they're all corrupt and we can't work with them," Placido said. "But the reality is it is simply much too important not to. They have taken on these traffickers, and now they have to win. And they deserve and need our support."
The contentiousness surrounding the Merida plan is no surprise to veteran counter-narcotics officials and policymakers. They say it is emblematic of a turbulent relationship between the two countries that has often been defined by bickering, public finger-pointing and an overall atmosphere of mistrust.
For more than two decades, U.S. officials have accused Mexico of ignoring hard evidence that violent homegrown crime syndicates were gaining power and corrupting its police, army and government in a lucrative campaign to flood American streets with cocaine, heroin and other drugs.
Mexican officials said Washington had done little to diminish Americans' voracious demand for illicit drugs, and had made Mexico vulnerable by cracking down on the Colombian cartels, which then turned to Mexican organizations to move their drugs to the U.S.
And after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. turned away from the drug fight, some Mexican officials say.
As the two countries watched and often feuded, the drug groups grew into sophisticated and deadly organized-crime cartels with a global reach, a strong U.S. presence and a stranglehold over many of the Mexican governmental institutions responsible for stopping them.
DEA intelligence now estimates that the cartels are paying hundreds of millions in bribes a year and that they have expanded their operations to Africa, Europe and elsewhere.
Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico's ambassador to the U.S. and a former counter-narcotics official, cautioned that Merida was only a first step.
He said it wouldn't be easy to improve cross-border interdiction, intelligence-sharing and an integration of both countries' counter-narcotics efforts after so much neglect.
"Obviously, the longer you take to address a challenge or disease, the harder it is to root out," Sarukhan said. "And whoever thinks that the Merida Initiative or the type of cooperation that we have implemented since President Calderon arrived is a silver bullet that will eliminate a decades-old challenge in Mexico is wrong."
American Apparel must be trying to sell meth, not clothes...
Check these girls out. I know, its mean or whatever to call people ugly...I blame the marketing team and the model scouts. and whatever your angle is, this does NOT convince me to buy your clothes. So, if that was your goal, to get people to gawk at your site and think: Ew. No thanks. then: Success! If it wasn't, you might want a go in another angle. like...attractive.
I think they're trying to be like cutting edge or something. with the white background and the stupid 70's sunglasses. but my god, my computer screen actually vomited when I clicked in these images.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Angry Elf...
NYT Op-Ed by BOB HERBERT
Does anyone know where George W. Bush is?
You don’t hear much from him anymore. The last image most of us remember is of the president ducking a pair of size 10s that were hurled at him in Baghdad.
We’re still at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel is thrashing the Palestinians in Gaza. And the U.S. economy is about as vibrant as the 0-16 Detroit Lions.
But hardly a peep have we heard from George, the 43rd.
When Mr. Bush officially takes his leave in three weeks (in reality, he checked out long ago), most Americans will be content to sigh good riddance. I disagree. I don’t think he should be allowed to slip quietly out of town. There should be a great hue and cry — a loud, collective angry howl, demonstrations with signs and bullhorns and fiery speeches — over the damage he’s done to this country.
This is the man who gave us the war in Iraq and Guantánamo and torture and rendition; who turned the Clinton economy and the budget surplus into fool’s gold; who dithered while New Orleans drowned; who trampled our civil liberties at home and ruined our reputation abroad; who let Dick Cheney run hog wild and thought Brownie was doing a heckuva job.
The Bush administration specialized in deceit. How else could you get the public (and a feckless Congress) to go along with an invasion of Iraq as an absolutely essential response to the Sept. 11 attacks, when Iraq had had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks?
Exploiting the public’s understandable fears, Mr. Bush made it sound as if Iraq was about to nuke us: “We cannot wait,” he said, “for the final proof — the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”
He then set the blaze that has continued to rage for nearly six years, consuming more than 4,000 American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. (A car bomb over the weekend killed two dozen more Iraqis, many of them religious pilgrims.) The financial cost to the U.S. will eventually reach $3 trillion or more, according to the Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz.
A year into the war Mr. Bush was cracking jokes about it at the annual dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents Association. He displayed a series of photos that showed him searching the Oval Office, peering behind curtains and looking under the furniture. A mock caption had Mr. Bush saying: “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere.”
And then there’s the Bush economy, another disaster, a trapdoor through which middle-class Americans can plunge toward the bracing experiences normally reserved for the poor and the destitute.
Mr. Bush traveled the country in the early days of his presidency, promoting his tax cut plans as hugely beneficial to small-business people and families of modest means. This was more deceit. The tax cuts would go overwhelmingly to the very rich.
The president would give the wealthy and the powerful virtually everything they wanted. He would throw sand into the regulatory apparatus and help foster the most extreme income disparities since the years leading up to the Great Depression. Once again he was lighting a fire. This time the flames would engulf the economy and, as with Iraq, bring catastrophe.
If the U.S. were a product line, it would be seen now as deeply damaged goods, subject to recall.
There seemed to be no end to Mr. Bush’s talent for destruction. He tried to hand the piggy bank known as Social Security over to the marauders of the financial sector, but saner heads prevailed.
In New Orleans, the president failed to intervene swiftly and decisively to aid the tens of thousands of poor people who were very publicly suffering and, in many cases, dying. He then compounded this colossal failure of leadership by traveling to New Orleans and promising, in a dramatic, floodlit appearance, to spare no effort in rebuilding the flood-torn region and the wrecked lives of the victims.
He went further, vowing to confront the issue of poverty in America “with bold action.”
It was all nonsense, of course. He did nothing of the kind.
The catalog of his transgressions against the nation’s interests — sins of commission and omission — would keep Mr. Bush in a confessional for the rest of his life. Don’t hold your breath. He’s hardly the contrite sort.
He told ABC’s Charlie Gibson: “I don’t spend a lot of time really worrying about short-term history. I guess I don’t worry about long-term history, either, since I’m not going to be around to read it.”
The president chuckled, thinking — as he did when he made his jokes about the missing weapons of mass destruction — that there was something funny going on.
Does anyone know where George W. Bush is?
You don’t hear much from him anymore. The last image most of us remember is of the president ducking a pair of size 10s that were hurled at him in Baghdad.
We’re still at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel is thrashing the Palestinians in Gaza. And the U.S. economy is about as vibrant as the 0-16 Detroit Lions.
But hardly a peep have we heard from George, the 43rd.
When Mr. Bush officially takes his leave in three weeks (in reality, he checked out long ago), most Americans will be content to sigh good riddance. I disagree. I don’t think he should be allowed to slip quietly out of town. There should be a great hue and cry — a loud, collective angry howl, demonstrations with signs and bullhorns and fiery speeches — over the damage he’s done to this country.
This is the man who gave us the war in Iraq and Guantánamo and torture and rendition; who turned the Clinton economy and the budget surplus into fool’s gold; who dithered while New Orleans drowned; who trampled our civil liberties at home and ruined our reputation abroad; who let Dick Cheney run hog wild and thought Brownie was doing a heckuva job.
The Bush administration specialized in deceit. How else could you get the public (and a feckless Congress) to go along with an invasion of Iraq as an absolutely essential response to the Sept. 11 attacks, when Iraq had had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks?
Exploiting the public’s understandable fears, Mr. Bush made it sound as if Iraq was about to nuke us: “We cannot wait,” he said, “for the final proof — the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”
He then set the blaze that has continued to rage for nearly six years, consuming more than 4,000 American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. (A car bomb over the weekend killed two dozen more Iraqis, many of them religious pilgrims.) The financial cost to the U.S. will eventually reach $3 trillion or more, according to the Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz.
A year into the war Mr. Bush was cracking jokes about it at the annual dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents Association. He displayed a series of photos that showed him searching the Oval Office, peering behind curtains and looking under the furniture. A mock caption had Mr. Bush saying: “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere.”
And then there’s the Bush economy, another disaster, a trapdoor through which middle-class Americans can plunge toward the bracing experiences normally reserved for the poor and the destitute.
Mr. Bush traveled the country in the early days of his presidency, promoting his tax cut plans as hugely beneficial to small-business people and families of modest means. This was more deceit. The tax cuts would go overwhelmingly to the very rich.
The president would give the wealthy and the powerful virtually everything they wanted. He would throw sand into the regulatory apparatus and help foster the most extreme income disparities since the years leading up to the Great Depression. Once again he was lighting a fire. This time the flames would engulf the economy and, as with Iraq, bring catastrophe.
If the U.S. were a product line, it would be seen now as deeply damaged goods, subject to recall.
There seemed to be no end to Mr. Bush’s talent for destruction. He tried to hand the piggy bank known as Social Security over to the marauders of the financial sector, but saner heads prevailed.
In New Orleans, the president failed to intervene swiftly and decisively to aid the tens of thousands of poor people who were very publicly suffering and, in many cases, dying. He then compounded this colossal failure of leadership by traveling to New Orleans and promising, in a dramatic, floodlit appearance, to spare no effort in rebuilding the flood-torn region and the wrecked lives of the victims.
He went further, vowing to confront the issue of poverty in America “with bold action.”
It was all nonsense, of course. He did nothing of the kind.
The catalog of his transgressions against the nation’s interests — sins of commission and omission — would keep Mr. Bush in a confessional for the rest of his life. Don’t hold your breath. He’s hardly the contrite sort.
He told ABC’s Charlie Gibson: “I don’t spend a lot of time really worrying about short-term history. I guess I don’t worry about long-term history, either, since I’m not going to be around to read it.”
The president chuckled, thinking — as he did when he made his jokes about the missing weapons of mass destruction — that there was something funny going on.
What a pair...
CNN New Year's Eve
Bring in the New Year with Anderson Cooper & Kathy Griffin, live from Times Square in New York! Live coverage begins 11 ET PT
** I would rather bleed out my eyes. Its like putting Colin Powell with Gary Coleman to ring in 2009 on BET. Or the guy who won the Nobel Prize in Phsycis with Spencer from The Hills on MTV...I think this is a forboding sign for 2009...
Bring in the New Year with Anderson Cooper & Kathy Griffin, live from Times Square in New York! Live coverage begins 11 ET PT
** I would rather bleed out my eyes. Its like putting Colin Powell with Gary Coleman to ring in 2009 on BET. Or the guy who won the Nobel Prize in Phsycis with Spencer from The Hills on MTV...I think this is a forboding sign for 2009...
The Newest Republican in Alaska
Bristol Palin, the 18-year-old daughter of former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, gave birth on Saturday to a healthy 7 lb., 7 oz., baby boy in Palmer, Alaska.
"We think it's wonderful," said Colleen Jones, the sister of Bristol's grandmother Sally Heath, who confirmed the news. "The baby is fine and Bristol is doing well. Everyone is excited."
The baby's name is Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston and he was born at 5:30 a.m., according to Jones. Baby Tripp takes his surname from his dad, Levi Johnston, an apprentice electrician and former Wasilla High School hockey player who has been dating Bristol for three years. Bristol Palin is currently residing in Wasilla and completing her high-school diploma through correspondence courses.
Johnston is studying to become an electrician. He told the Associated Press in October that he and fiancée Bristol plan to wed in 2009 and raise the child together.
** This reads like the baby announcement in the Warren Weekly. Diploma through correspondence courses?!?! I feel like they should be living next door to me with a truck on the lawn and empty budweiser cans in the mailbox.
"We think it's wonderful," said Colleen Jones, the sister of Bristol's grandmother Sally Heath, who confirmed the news. "The baby is fine and Bristol is doing well. Everyone is excited."
The baby's name is Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston and he was born at 5:30 a.m., according to Jones. Baby Tripp takes his surname from his dad, Levi Johnston, an apprentice electrician and former Wasilla High School hockey player who has been dating Bristol for three years. Bristol Palin is currently residing in Wasilla and completing her high-school diploma through correspondence courses.
Johnston is studying to become an electrician. He told the Associated Press in October that he and fiancée Bristol plan to wed in 2009 and raise the child together.
** This reads like the baby announcement in the Warren Weekly. Diploma through correspondence courses?!?! I feel like they should be living next door to me with a truck on the lawn and empty budweiser cans in the mailbox.
Nuking the Fridge
The whole webpage is worth reading...but this struck me as particularly hilarious. Its all about the biggest movie WTF?!s of 2008...
STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS -- CAPOTE THE HUTT
George Lucas not only seems to enjoy murdering precious childhood memories, but also seems to relish jumping up and down on their corpses. That was abundantly clear half way through his animated yarn "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" when Ziro the Hutt -- Jabba's uncle -- appears. Looking like Dame Edna at Burning Man, Ziro jarringly speaks in such a fabulously affected manner that it would set off the gaydar of a coma patient. Lucas reportedly demanded that Ziro's voice be modeled on Truman Capote, and, for better or worse, that's exactly who Ziro sounds like.
http://movies.yahoo.com/photos/collections/gallery/1328/nuking-the-fridge
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