In related themes

[unixronin]

jordan179 outs Amnesty International for supporting jihad.  All you have to do is claim, however unsupportably, that it's "in self defense", and Amnesty International will have no problem with it whatsoever, and will actually suspend any of its own personnel who have a problem with Amnesty International endorsing jihad.  And as pointed out in that thread, Islam has been making war on other peoples "for its own defense" since at least about the eighth century AD.

And, in another case where it's all about definitions, Strategic Forecasting points out that Mexico's having lost control of its northern states to drug cartels isn't necessarily a problem, for Mexico, if you look at it the right way.  Looked at from the perspective that drug smuggling into the US is America's problem, drug smuggling across the Mexican border brings Mexico forty billion dollars of hard (well ... OK, harder) foreign currency a year.  About thirty two billion dollars of this is profit, which would require about a third of a trillion dollars in conventional business to produce.  In other words, the drug trade pumps as much new money into the Mexican economy as does roughly a third of Mexico's GDP.  As has been pointed out before, it is not in Mexico's economic interest to stem the flow of illegal drugs from Mexico into the US, any more than it's in Mexico's interest to stem the flow of illegal immigrants.

Of course, to be fair, this knife — like many others — cuts both ways.  There are things the US could do fix the problem from the US side; principally, taking the profit out of smuggling through drug legalization.  But the US cannot bring itself to do that, and can't figure out how to reduce the demand for drugs while keeping them illegal.  So, short of massive military action against Mexico, here we stand.

Comments

Re: Have a care of sources

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

"The vast majority of those in Guantanamo Bay are Al Qaeda or Taliban members, or Al Qaeda or Taliban sympathizers"

Or perhaps people whose neighbors informed on them for the bounties.

I've been opposed to the Taliban since before it was fashionable. I knew of al-Qaeda for a long time. You say you take human rights seriously. So do I. And because I do, I won't convict anyone on rumors. I know that there is almost no way of knowing who in Guantanamo is guilty of what at all--most of the reliable evidence has been destroyed by war, time, torture, and the malleability of memory and what remains, if anything, has yet to be brought forward for fair trials. The evidence that any Amnesty officials are al-Qaeda or Taliban sympathizers is still being debated. So far the claims have not been proven, or even argued extensively: one article in the Times of London, based on one person's opinions, is not proof. At best it's a reason to investigate. Meantime, I know that Amnesty has a long clean record and many enemies among those who hate human rights. If there is more and more substantial evidence, bring it forward! I will listen. But let us not slam them for rumors.