May 28 2010
Weekly Digest – 05/28/10
Our weekly edition is a nationally syndicated one-hour digest of the best of our daily coverage.
Audio Stream | 
Podcast | Mp3 Download
This week on Uprising – A 1 Hour Special:
* Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields
A city dreamed up from a dusty border mountain pass by promoters of the NAFTA, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, now typifies the failure of the so-called “war on drugs.” Directly across the border from El Paso, Texas, the 1.3 million person metropolis has garnered a gritty reputation in recent years. It’s a place where drug cartels battle for control, murder and rape run rampant, and the low wages offered by foreign-owned maquladoras cannot begin to compete with the heady allure of drug trafficking. When Mexican President Felipe Calderon dispatched 10,000 soldiers to the city in 2008 as a part of his drug war policy, murders spiraled further out of control, as citizens of Juarez clashed with the military. So far, the death toll in 2010 has exceeded 3,000 in Ciudad Juarez—already eclipsing that of 2009. 2010 is already the city’s deadliest year yet. Overshadowed by the drug violence, the femicide of young women and girls has continued unabated. More than fifty women have been killed this year, their bodies often mutilated by torture and abuse. The killings surged out of control beginning in 1993, when young women came to the US border in droves to the maquiladoras set up in the wake of the NAFTA. Political passivity has turned Ciudad Juarez into a place of murder without debt. According to the Chihuaha State Human Rights Commission, there are over 20,000 abandoned houses in Ciudad Juarez. Privileged residents fled over the border to El Paso to escape being caught in the constant crossfire of violence between residents and cartels. Award-winning author and critically acclaimed journalist Charles Bowden paints a vivid picture of Ciudad Juarez in his newest book “Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields.” In riveting prose, he explores the ongoing violence behind the headlines of mainstream US and Mexican media accounts of who is doing the killing and who is doing the dying. Bowden tells the story of the city by intertwining the narratives of a myriad of personalities—a pastor who runs a desert asylum, a penitent hitman for hire, a broken beauty queen, a journalist running for life. Poet, novelist and essayist Luis Alberto Urrea said of “Murder City,” there are moments when the book threatens to burst into flames and burn your hands.”
Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day
“There is no witness so terrible, no accuser so powerful as conscience which dwells within us.” –- Sophocles
One Response to “Weekly Digest – 05/28/10”
The war on drugs is a tale of a once great and free nation which fell down a rat hole into a fantasy world riddled with peculiar and dystopian logic.
No amount of money, police powers, weaponry, wishful thinking or pseudo-science will make our streets safe again; only an end to prohibition can do that. How much longer are we willing to foolishly risk our own survival by continuing to ignore the obvious, historically confirmed solution?
For those of you who are still living in some strange parallel universe, one where prohibition actually works, may I suggest that you return to high school economics class, and learn about supply and DEMAND. Learn that you cannot up DEMAND simply by upping supply. Contrary to popular held superstition, drugs are not PUSHED, the drug dealers are filling a DEMAND not creating one. The DEMAND is here in the US and is impossible to control, but what is possible to control, is the income from that DEMAND. All we have to do is allow legal businesses to meet that DEMAND. Under proper regulation drug use will not rise, as it couldn’t get any worse than it is at present.
If you support prohibition then you’ve helped trigger the worst crime wave in history.
If you support prohibition you’ve a helped create a black market with massive incentives to hook both adults and children alike.
If you support prohibition you’ve helped to make these dangerous substances available in schools and prisons.
If you support prohibition you’ve helped raise gang warfare to a level not seen since the days of alcohol bootlegging.
If you support prohibition you’ve helped create the prison-for-profit synergy with drug lords.
If you support prohibition you’ve helped remove many important civil liberties from those citizens you falsely claim to represent.
If you support prohibition you’ve helped put previously unknown and contaminated drugs on the streets.
If you support prohibition you’ve helped to escalate Theft, Muggings and Burglaries.
If you support prohibition you’ve helped to divert scarce law-enforcement resources away from protecting your fellow citizens from the ever escalating violence against their person or property.
If you support prohibition you’ve helped overcrowd the courts and prisons, thus making it increasingly impossible to curtail the people who are hurting and terrorizing others.
If you support prohibition you’ve helped evolve local gangs into transnational enterprises with intricate power structures that reach into every corner of society, controlling vast swaths of territory with significant social and military resources at their disposal.
And one last thought: The real “drug Dons” are the rich and powerful who control the government-licensed drug cartel (Big Pharma). They view people who oppose proper regulation of these unpatentable –thus at present illegal– substances, as “useful idiots”