A World In Flames?

Has the world gone gone to hell?

The World In Flames?

That question has to be asked if you just look around at the state it's in.

Only Time And Fate Will Tell

Last week a (rare) commenter, pointed out that Donald Trump has really doubled down on his claims on and about Canada, Mexico, China and Greenland.

Trump Has A Gaza Plan

My reply was "I guess that Trump and his supporters would point out that he's been successful so far, with Mexico and Canada (and some extent Denmark/Greenland) all negotiating with him now. China has restricted its retaliation to lower tariffs than Trump has imposed .... so winner winner chicken dinner!!" 

Going Pear Shaped

On this blog I have discussed India's rise and attempts to get invited permanently to the top table ....

Indians Need Jobs

.... and the reasons for its failures to do so. So I am not going to reprise these attempts and the reasons why they have not really succeeded, but instead look at a structural problem within the Indian economy, that could easily destabilise the whole project.

Robo Trump

Funniest take on the expected Trump Presidency so far by Uruguayan production house Aparato......

..... laughing at the outrageous consequences of Donald Trump´s plan of banning immigration and building an enormous wall on the Mexico - US border.

Nothing more needs to be said really .... funny!

The Future Belongs To Us

Poor old Mexico .... drug cartels everywhere you look, engaged in a low level civil war with those same cartels that is seemingly endless, and has cost tens of thousands of lives, and yet unbelievably that isn't its biggest problem.

SNTE Union Protects Its Interests

No, it is in fact a very bloated, very corrupt trades union. One that has had a massive influence over the  way civic Mexico has developed for the last 70 years, and will also develop in the next 50 as well.

 

Zombie Walks

Good to see that despite their terrible problems, the citizens of Mexio, and more particularly the residents of Mexico City have managed to set a new record for the "Zombie Walk" ...

The Zombie Craze is World Wide

..... this is a craze that is sweeping those parts of the world where you can't be denounced and killed for having a laugh, where people dressed as zombies can shuffle and moan about a city centre in their thousands.

 

Narco States And The West's Blood Guilt?

Do Drugs and the money they create, corrupt a society to the point that it becomes a Narco State?

I ask because the news from Mexico's drug war is getting increasingly bad ..... a mass grave discovered in Mexico, contained the bodies of 18 kidnapped tourists. They were seized by a drugs gang, although it may have been mistaken identity and their deaths bring the total to more than 28,000 people who have died in drug-related violence in Mexico since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon began deploying troops to take on the traffickers. If the killings continue to increase at the current rate, that total will rise to about 75,000 by the time the government's term in office ends in December 2012.

This map, shows just how powerful Mexico's drug cartels have grown, with at least a billion dollars of US money coming over the boarders, and enabling the traffickers able to buy the very latest in weapons from the gun dealers in the US ..... see there is a trade of sorts.

Columbia is also discovering that drug lord money can corrupt even the law officials.

Police in Columbia became suspicious of what was happening at the National Narcotics Office, after drug traffickers were found to be in possession of properties, which had officially been seized by the National Narcotics Office, the agency that was supposed to  seize assets from drug traffickers .... it was found that in at least one instance the person put in charge of managing the property seized from an infamous drug dealer, had links to the dealer's cartel.

Colombian Minister of Justice German Vargas Lleras said he had ordered the intervention after "hundreds of irregularities and many serious anomalies" had surfaced at the National Narcotics Office, with over 100 of its contractors dismissed.

The Heavily Guarded German Vargas Lleras

I am increasingly supportive of calls for drugs to be 'legalised' as government monopolies, with the price and marketing set at about that for cigarettes .... because the misery and cost experienced by poorer countries to try to stop drugs being provided for the Western (US/European) market is far in excess of that being suffered by those Western consumer countries.

The point about the drugs trade is that its demand led ..... if the West wasn't producing millions of addicts, who are rich enough to buy the drugs, then the drugs trade would cease ..... it's this demand in the West, that fuels the drug trade, from supplier states such as Columbia and Afghanistan (where it funds killing our troops), through the route states such as Mexico, Turkey, Pakistan, and finally to the drug markets of the Western cities.

It is therefore up to us to find some way of breaking the trafficking cycle, but surely not with the blood of innocent Mexicans, and Colombians?