Newshoggers Archive: Cross-border violence

Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.

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Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Cross-border violence

By Dave Anderson:

The common story of cross-border violence between the United States and Mexico is the following: Mexican drug smugglers hire Mexican muscle to attack or kill a US citizen who was either a threat to the smugglers' organization or had reneged on a deal. That is the common story. It is not the only story.

ThaIndianNews reports on a rash of violence in Mexico that was cross-border in nature, but it was a Texas based gang that carried out an attack against a high school party that left about a dozen people dead:

On Sunday, hitmen stormed a high school party in Ciudad Juarez,
killing several students. Federal authorities said on Monday night that
a Texas-based gang called �The Aztecs� was probably behind the killings.
Nearly 1,000 people have died in Mexico in drug-related violence in
2010, according to a tally published by the Milenio newspaper.

The northern Mexican states are becoming a TAZ for drug cartels and other smugglers. They have created a comprehensive network of violence producers that can vie with the state's monopoly on violence. The cash flow that fuels this complex system is also fueling cross-border producers of violence; those gangs are likely to freelance when the price is right.

Cutting off a significant element of the cartel cash-flow as a defensive matter would be a worthwhile idea, but our policy and political apparatus is kludged, so defensive cannabis/THC legalization is not even on the table in the US.

Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Cross-border violence

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