Ciudad Juarez is all our futures. This is the inevitable war of capitalism gone mad

[marmar]

Ciudad Juarez is all our futures. This is the inevitable war of capitalism gone mad
Mexico's drug cartels are actually pioneers of the global economy in their business logic and modus operandi

Ed Vulliamy
guardian.co.uk, Monday 20 June 2011


War, as I came to report it, was something fought between people with causes, however crazy or honourable: like between the American and British occupiers of Iraq and the insurgents who opposed them. Then I stumbled across Mexico's drug war – which has claimed nearly 40,000 lives, mostly civilians – and all the rules changed. This is warfare for the 21st century, and another creature altogether.

Mexico's war is inextricable from everyday life. In Ciudad Juarez, the most murderous city in the world, street markets and malls remain open; Sarah Brightman sang a concert there recently. When I was back there last month, people had reappeared at night to eat dinner and socialise, out of devil-may-care recklessness and exhaustion with years of self-imposed curfew. Before, there had been an eerie quiet at night, now there is an even eerier semblance of normality – punctuated by gunfire.

On the surface, the combatants have the veneer of a cause: control of smuggling routes into the US. But even if this were the full explanation, the cause of drugs places Mexico's war firmly in our new postideological, postmoral, postpolitical world. The only causes are profits from the chemicals that get America and Europe high.

Interestingly, in a highly politicised society there is no rightwing or Mussolinian "law and order" mass movement against the cartels, or any significant leftwing or union opposition. The grassroots movement against the postpolitical cartel warriors, the National Movement for Peace, is famously led by the poet Javier Sicilia, who organised a week-long peace march after the murder of his son in the spring. This very male war is opposed by women, in the workplaces and barrios, and in the home. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/20/war-capitalism-mexico-drug-cartels?INTCMP=SRCH

[geckosfeet]

1. Reccing. But it seems some under-a-rock dwelling invertebrate has unrecced already.

Ciudad Juarez is all our futures. This is the inevitable war of capitalism gone mad

But this is not just a war between narco-cartels. Juarez has imploded into a state of criminal anarchy – the cartels, acting like any corporation, have outsourced violence to gangs affiliated or unaffiliated with them, who compete for tenders with corrupt police officers. /---

---/ Not by coincidence, Juarez is also a model for the capitalist economy. Recruits for the drug war come from the vast, sprawling maquiladora – bonded assembly plants where, for rock-bottom wages, workers make the goods that fill America's supermarket shelves or become America's automobiles, imported duty-free. Now, the corporations can do it cheaper in Asia, casually shedding their Mexican workers, and Juarez has become a teeming recruitment pool for the cartels and killers. It is a city that follows religiously the philosophy of a free market.

"It's a city based on markets and on trash," says Julián Cardona, a photographer who has chronicled the implosion. "Killing and drug addiction are activities in the economy, and the economy is based on what happens when you treat people like trash." Very much, then, a war for the 21st century. Cardona told me how many times he had been asked for his view on the Javier Sicilia peace march: "I replied: 'How can you march against the market?'"

I think we can expect that this activity crosses the border and moves into our cities as capitalism does it's dirty business closer and closer to 'home'.

[locahungaria]

2. That's OK....

I countered the unrec!

:D

BTW, interesting article, marmar!

[ImNotTed]

7. I saw and raised

;-)

[somone]

3. Recommended

[bemildred]

4. Yes, the new "Free Companies".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_company

[DeSwiss]

5. K&R

The http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/20/war-capitalism-mexico-drug-cartels?INTCMP=SRCH">truth of it:

"People also ask: what can be done? There is endless debate over military tactics, US aid to Mexico, the war on drugs, and whether narcotics should be decriminalised. I answer: these are largely of tangential importance; what can the authorities do? Simple: Go After the Money. But they won't.

Narco-cartels are not pastiches of global corporations, nor are they errant bastards of the global economy – they are pioneers of it. They point, in their business logic and modus operandi, to how the legal economy will arrange itself next. The Mexican cartels epitomised the North American free trade agreement long before it was dreamed up, and they thrive upon it.

Mexico's carnage is that of the age of effective global government by multinational banks – banks that, according to Antonio Maria Costa, the former head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, have been for years kept afloat by laundering drug and criminal profits. Cartel bosses and street gangbangers cannot go around in trucks full of cash. They have to bank it – and politicians could throttle this river of money, as they have with actions against terrorist funding. But they choose not to, for obvious reasons: the good burgers of capitalism and their political quislings depend on this money, while bleating about the evils of drugs cooked in the ghetto and snorted up the noses of the rich."

- There ya go.



Been there, done that.....

[chervilant]

11. Add to that

the fact that the obscenely wealthy are well aware of the relative docility of a drugged hoi polloi, AND the likelihood that violence will be lateral rather than hierarchical, and it's a win-win for those bat rasturds.

[flamingdem]

12. wow, this explains mucho! nt

[JDPriestly]

6. Thank you Greenspan and Ayn Rand.

In Ciudad Juarez, you can see Ayn Rand's philosophy in practice, unfettered by any tacky ideas about altruism, kindness, religion, love, compassion, empathy. (sarcasm in case you missed it) Ayn Rand's soul must be hovering above Ciudad Juarez reveling in the bloodbath.

Greenspan, why don't you do the right thing and speak loudly against the excesses that the philosophy you preached have visited upon the world? Please redeem yourself. Remember Pascal's wager. (I'm sure you know about Pascal. He was a bit of a mathematician, I believe.) In case there is a God, you need to get on his right side before it is too late. You are an old man, and your meet-up with God could happen any day now. Make things right while you still have a chance.

[Puget Progressive]

10. Indeed, a massive apology is required

by the odious Greenspan. He sort of did that after the 2008 crash but, as I understand it, he is back with the same old crap with respect to unregulated markets ala Milton Friedman. As for Ayn Rand it is depressing that her books are making a comeback just like in the 80s. There was even a highly panned film of "Atlas Shrugged" recently. What a mean spirited person she was, saying that there was no such thing as society. In classic right-wing fashion, however, she turned out to be a complete hypocrite. In her later years she accepted Medicare and Social Security, you know, just like the "parasites" that she criticized in her books. What a whore for unregulated, casino capitalism she turned out to be.

[The Big Vetolski]

13. Great point on Randian philosophy. Juarez is clearly an example

of how pure, unfettered capitalism works. The most "productive" people, in this case the drug cartels and their willing sponsors the Western banks, get to enjoy everything they can take or steal while the rest of the losers are left to grovel in the dirt. "Take that, you collectivists!," Rand might say. "Look at Juarez! That's what you deserve!" And then she'd take a snort of cocaine because she deserved it.

As for Greenspan, he'd better hope the Hindus are right and he can be reincarnated as a cockroach and then work his way back up to humanity over hundreds of millions of years of pious living.

[kenichol]

8. I see Juarez as the 'War on Drugs' ground zero

It is our US's War on Drugs policy most visible result. The violence is a direct result of our War on Drugs...but also, now I see, it's also, "...the inevitable war of capitalism gone mad..."

[The Big Vetolski]

14. Capitalism IS insane by any standard of thought that favors the

survival of the species.

[socialist_n_TN]

9. Kicked. At some point in the future

the more "legitimate" capitalist businesses will be doing this too. It'll start as a covert thing, under the radar, then explode into corporate armies going at it head to head.

That'a ANOTHER reason for an armed worker's militia. To protect workers and working class neighborhoods from this futher capialist blight on the lives of the rest of us.

[yurbud]

16. I've long suspected there's a class in MBA's take to cost out doing a business legally or not

If taxes and liability for harm for your product outweigh the inherent costs of criminality like money laundering fees, occasional loss of product and personnel to token law enforcement efforts, and so forth. Either way, I imagine the cost of politicians is about the same though.

[The Big Vetolski]

15. Hearty kick!

[kenny blankenship]

17. As I explained to someone recently

who found it odd that I said I wanted to live part of the year in Mexico, which I agreed had become a borderline failed state and was highly dangerous, even while I routinely decried the unraveling of society in the United States: I just want to get an early take on what the future looks like.

[Blue_Tires]

18. excellent piece...