Must reads for June 11: What will Spain’s bailout really achieve? Who killed Li Wangyang? And will any of Mexico’s presidential hopefuls solve the country’s bloody narco crisis?
Drug War
Mexico’s Drug-Corruption Arrests: Why Soldiers Make Bad Narco Agents
When Mexican President Felipe Calderón sent his army after the country’s powerful drug cartels six years ago, we all understood the rationales. For starters, Calderón had won the 2006 presidential election by a razor-thin …
Can Mexico’s Presidential Hopefuls Stop the Bodies Piling Up?
Drug thugs dumped 49 bloodied and dismembered corpses on a northern Mexican highway on Sunday, May 13. We journalists are finding little new to say, few fresh insights to offer, about these all too frequent narco-massacres in …
Must-Reads from Around the World: March 16, 2012
Learning More – New details have emerged about the U.S. Soldier who allegedly killed 16 Afghan civilians. The Telegraph reports the accused has hired attorney John Henry Browne, who is best known for his involvement in the …
Legalizing Marijuana: Why Joe Biden Should Listen to Latin America’s Case
It started last summer, when it seemed that Mexican President Felipe Calderón had understandably reached the end of his rope. After 52 innocent people were massacred in August by drug gangsters who set fire to a Monterrey casino …
Fast and Infuriating: America’s Cops Need to Be an Example for Mexico’s
This week the U.S. Senate voted 99-0 to ban future “gunwalker” operations like the Obama Administration’s “Fast and Furious” debacle. “Fast and Furious” was the well-intentioned but awfully executed program headed by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives (ATF) in Arizona that let hundreds of …
Mexico’s Narco-Epiphany: Is Calderón Suggesting the U.S. Legalize Drugs?
The central statistic of Mexico’s violent drug war – 40,000 gangland murders in the past five years – is repeated so often it almost fails to alarm us anymore. But what happened last Thursday, Aug. 25, in the northern business capital of Monterrey – 52 innocent people massacred after gangsters set fire to a casino, presumably …
Guatemala’s Kaibiles: A Notorious Commando Unit Wrapped Up in Central America’s Drug War
In Guatemala’s northern Petén department, May 14, 2011, felt a lot like December 6, 1982. In May, on the Los Cocos ranch near La Libertad, 27 campesinos were slaughtered and decapitated by henchmen of a bloodthirsty Mexican drug cartel, the Zetas – whose ranks include former Guatemalan army commandos known as Los Kaibiles. …
Global Briefing, Mar. 24, 2011: Drug Wars and Arms Races
Gaddafi Holds His Ground — The question of who will lead air strikes on Libya is less important than determining the purpose, terms and limits of the mission, argues Tony Karon on Global Spin. See Christopher Morris’ photographs from Tripoli, here.
Arms Race — The Economist’s ‘Daily Chart’ takes a closer look at the ‘big …
WikiLeak Pique: Mexico’s Calderon Drives Out a U.S. Ambassador Over Leaked Cables
When WikiLeaks released U.S. diplomatic cables last fall expressing fears and criticism about the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, the Pakistani government largely shrugged. That’s because its leaders understood that frank private discussion is what any country’s taxpayers expect of their diplomats. They knew that …