(I) The News of The Week section of Sunday's NYT (Oct 17) devoted a page to "scenes from a drug war":
Incidences of drug-related violence in Mexico and on the border continue to make news. We tend to hear about the crimes that touch American lives — like the reported killing of a man riding a Jet Ski on the Rio Grande. What we don’t hear as much about is how drugs and violence shape the everyday lives of Mexicans. So here are dispatches from four writers on how drug trafficking has changed their parts of the country. They were translated by Kristina Cordero from the Spanish.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/opini ... ico&st=cse
(II) On Point radio, host Tom Ashbrook covered much of the same ground as Bowden's Cuidad Juarez, with additional fascinating question "Why is foreign capital investment in Mexico very high, at the same time the country is showing dangerous signs of breakdown in law and order?"
You can hear yet another Drug Czar, Barry McCaffrey, retired four-star general in the U.S. Army and director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under President Clinton, opine on the state of Mexico and why we should keep on keeping on with the War on Drugs.The headlines from Mexico are fierce, frightening, and – if you listen closely – a little confusing.
Here are a few of those stories: mass murder, drug war, kidnapping, an American jet-skier killed by gangs on the border, investigator beheaded, whispers of civil war – and foreigners pouring money into Mexico. Then there’s the story that a hundred tons of U.S.-bound marijuana was seized yesterday in Tijuana. A Pentagon study warns of a Mexican “collapse.” And yet, Mexico’s stock market is at an all-time high.
We go into the gruesome headlines and beyond – what is going on in Mexico?
http://www.onpointradio.org/2010/10/mexico-turmoil
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