Never been so glad that I'm out of school

[Kirai]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... llion.html

Ok, I can see police handcuffing somebody for beating another student up. I can see it happening for drug use... or selling...

For doodling on your desk? What the hell?

[Darkandus]

Good job Police. Arresting children for writing on desks is an excellent use of resources.

[gman391]

In my town they just beat you for being drunk...this seems a little excessive even by those standards.

[tjchaos]

Looks like another shining example of 'zero tolerance' implemented by a school.

[doc.exe]

This gives a new meaning to the phrase "Scare them straight".

Well, that is at least better than "accidentally" killing a pair of college students while they were on campus, then trying to pass them as members of the Narcotraffic.

(Sorry, I'm just bitter about the astounding levels of idiocy and incompetence of the authorities in my country)

[Lthayer3]

Wow. Just wow.

This isn't just the schools to blame here, either. This brings into the question the judgment of the New York police department. Handcuffing a 5 year old? Arresting children for writing on desks? You'd think the police would just laugh at the principals and go do something more productive with their time.

[Calinero]

This gives a new meaning to the phrase "Scare them straight".

Well, that is at least better than "accidentally" killing a pair of college students while they were on campus, then trying to pass them as members of the Narcotraffic.

(Sorry, I'm just bitter about the astounding levels of idiocy and incompetence of the authorities in my country)

To what country and incident is this referring?

[doc.exe]

Mexico. Two weeks ago, the army was chasing some members of the Narcotraffic, when they decided to forcefully enter the campus of a University in the northern states. They brutally killed a pair of students, then tried to pass them as the criminals they were chasing (who, by the way, managed to escape).

The truth came out a couple of days later, yet nobody does anything about it, because unlike other more politically advanced countries were members of the army are forced to face charges and take responsibility for their mistakes, here the armed forces are a government within a government and don't have to respond to the rest of the citizens for their abuse of authority.

This also proves that you should not put the army to do work that corresponds to the police. But given that the police forces are more corrupt than the army and just as incompetent... Yarrrghh... The worst part: Is not the first time they try to pass innocent civilians caught in the cross fire as members of the criminal cartels. Whether they were killed by the criminals or by the soldiers seems to not matter to them. And the president insists this whole fiasco of the drugs war is under control... yeah! Right!

[SLAMU]

Has he declared "Mission Accomplished" from atop an aircraft carrier yet? Because that's kinda hard to beat, "not really under control"-wise.

[doc.exe]

He and all the other politicians just keep bombarding TV and other media with ads about "how much they have progressed in the war against the cartels", "how they have arrested many of the important criminal figures", "decomissioned tons of drugs", and blah, blah, blah... Yet, the insecurity in the frontier states is worst than ever. And other important matters (like what the fuck are we going to do with the goddammed recession) are ignored.

But to say the truth, I won't be surprised if he ever did the aircraft carrier part (that man is not only an idiot, he seems to also be a military geek *shuders*).

[Darkandus]

If someone came along in the morning and offered to 'remove' the entire Mexican government, police force, army and Beaurocratic system. Completely replacing them with competent, uncorruptable counterparts that actually cared about the people would you take the offer even if it meant the deaths of potentially tens of thousands of people?

[Minion]

Heh, this actually makes me feel a bit better about what I went through. The ridiculousness.. it stuns me.

[doc.exe]

Well, it proves there are idiots in every authority level in every country in the world.

If someone came along in the morning and offered to 'remove' the entire Mexican government, police force, army and Beaurocratic system. Completely replacing them with competent, uncorruptable counterparts that actually cared about the people would you take the offer even if it meant the deaths of potentially tens of thousands of people?

The thing is, if that happened, I'll just be certain I died during the night and went to Heaven... or Hell, but you get my point.

...Or on a more rational level, it would mean the second Revolution war just started and they came to recruit me (which I'll accept very likely *shrugs*).

[Calinero]

I would go with 'no,' there. It's not my place to judge who deserves to die, although it certainly sounds like something needs to be done. I'd just prefer something nonlethal, preferably reform brought about through existing legitimate channels. But that's not always possible.

[SLAMU]

...hose down all current and potential candidates with silly string to check for a sense of humor? Just an idea, really, but...

[Calinero]

Yeah, I think that a sense of humor is a valuable thing in a politician, as well as a lack of a temper.

[tjchaos]

The situation in Mexico really sucks. In addition to the drug war problems Mexico has taken a huge hit on money coming from the U.S. due to our economic problems. Additionally they've also taken a huge hit on their oil revenue due to many decades of mis-management of their oil resources being revealed as the Cantarell field collapses. So during a time when they need every single bit of money they've been losing major amounts of their income. I believe that the only reason why Mexico hasn't completely collapsed already is because the price of oil is still pretty high and it didn't stay in the $50/bbl range for very long last year.

[Calinero]

I can't say that I'm an expert on the situation, but most of what I've heard sounds bad. Hopefully, things will improve.

[Stormseed]

I think that's a significant part of why my grandfather left Mexico and rarely ever went back. My dad says that he never spoke Spanish again after crossing the border.

[doc.exe]

That is the reason why a lot of people has been migrating to other countries for decades. Simply put, they have more chances of improving their situation in the outside and not many incentives (if any at all) to return.

Now, while the situation is bad, I'm glad that we still have not degraded to the level of other Latin American countries in certain difficult periods of time (Argentina during their economic crisis, Colombia regarding the situation of the cartels *shuders*). Unfortunately, at times it seems we are heading in that direction.

I think tjchaos summarized our situation perfectly. There is a folks saying here: "When USA has a cold, Mexico has pneumonia". Our economy has become too dependant of USA in a way that has left us very vulnerable. Unfortunately, rather than focus on bringing solutions, it seems that the politics believe that by saturing the media with ads they are resolving the problem.

Worst of all: Rather than invest in infrastructure to improve our industry and use effectively our many natural resources, most of the income that the fisco receives from taxes is spend keeping a large and inefficient bureaucratic and political body that is good for nothing. Our oil reserves and the high prices of the fuel on the international market has keep us afloat, but none of them are eternal.

The private initiative can't do much. The excess of fiscal, bureaucratic and legal requirements and obstacles, plus other factors (like insecurity) makes undesirable to invest here, at least in the scale and areas that are necessary to improve the situation. Any attempts to reform the necessary laws usually end in massive discussions were the political interests prevail.

Unfortunately, there is little a single person like me can do. People have become so disapointed with the system that most are apathetic when it comes to take civil or political action. The fact that those who work to correct the situation with the government via civil and political action are usually blocked in their attempts by the system itself, corrupted by it or (worse) even killed, doesn't help.

Now, while at times it seems that a full scale revolt might be the only solution, I actually believe (jokes aside) something like that is very unlikely to happen in our modern society. It seems that another (and more serious) crisis will have to hit us first before the political class finally decides to change.

So the only solutions available t an average person like me are to work hard or to leave the country. Sad but true.

(Sorry to bring all of this to the forum, I just needed a place to vent).

[SLAMU]

Vent away, I don't mind. I can't speak for the other forumites, but I find this kind of insider's view informative adn fascinating. The only problem I have with it is that it's real crap happening to real people, not just a case study or hypothetical situation like we get in class.

[Lthayer3]

I find it rather sad that we in the US hear so little about what is happening with our neighbors to the south. We're saturated with news about the 'war on terror' and every little attack in Iraq or Afghanistan, but a serious crisis in one of the two countries that actually shares a border with us? Nothing.

Maybe if the rest of the world actually heard about Latin America, short of a natural disaster happening, something could be done to help fix the problem. I mean, if Mexico were more stable and less corrupt, the USA wouldn't have to worry about all those illegal immigrants. And helping our neighbors would certainly be more productive than spending untold billions to guard the border, deport people, deal with drug trafficking, etc, etc, over the course of the past however many years.

[gman391]

The last time I heard about Mexico in the news was the Canadian Travel bureau telling us not to go there. Also a couple Canadians died there as well.

....Jesu it sounds like it's about to self destruct doc

[doc.exe]

Well, another factor that may be helping is the fact that a good percentage of the unemployed population is working in the "informal market" (you know that part of the economy where you don't pay taxes, are not formally registered with the fisco, don't uphold the laboral, hygiene and quality standards that law demands, etc.). Most of it is composed by commerce and service activities, usually at a small scale.

Thanks to it, people with few resources manage to survive, and the economic flow of money and goods keeps active (if not in the optimal way). It may serve to spread and support illegal and criminal activities (piracy being the most common, though not the only one), but as one teacher told me once: "It's probably the only reason why we have not seen massive riots starting yet".

Edit: Of course, thinking about it, it's not only a placebo, in the long term it also serves as a symptom and cause of a rather nasty vicious cycle: More people in the informal market = less taxes for the government = government implements more taxes and more severe methods of fiscalization in order to get resources = enterprises cut off costs due to new taxes, including the lay off of workers = more unemployed people = more people in the informal market.

[tjchaos]

From what I read another economic pressure negatively effecting Mexico is the Ethanol industry here in the U.S. Corn based ethanol typically uses yellow corn. With the relatively recent (three years ago?) expansion of the use of ethanol here in the U.S. in order to supposedly cut down on oil imports a lot of Mexican farmers switched from growing white corn which is a primary food source in Mexico over to yellow corn that they could sell at a much higher price to ethanol producers than they would get from the sale of white corn. The result was to roughly triple the cost of all corn based food in Mexico for a while there. That's bad news when a significant percentage of the population is living at a sustenance level on not much more than corn fajitas and beans. I believe that there were several riots over that and yet another sad real world example of 'The Law of Unintended Consequences'. I think several laws were passed after that mandating 'food first'.