A variety of links to articles/interviews/speeches on current topics that may be of interest.

A variety of links to articles/interviews on current topics that may, or may not, be of interest.

As Marcy Wheeler says, this plot has it all – Mexican drug cartels, Iran, assassinations, attacks on the Saudi AND Israeli embassies. You name it, it’s in there.

The government’s long-running war on drugs is having little impact, according to documents just released. The National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) of the Justice Department reports demand for drugs is rising and the demand is being supplied by major transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) or cartels, which adapt to government “counterdrug efforts” modifying interrelationships, altering drug production levels and adjusting trafficking routes and methods.

At trade talks in Chicago, the Obama administration will work with other officials to develop a trade agreement that will incorporate Vietnam, Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand, Australia, Chile and Peru. Labor, environmental and human rights groups will gather in the city to warn that the structure, and guiding ideology, of the emerging trade deal could expand a model of free-marketeering that has displaced masses of workers across the globe and granted multinationals unprecedented powers to flout national and international laws.

Fifty years ago today, East German soldiers began overseeing the construction of the Berlin Wall. That wall came down in 1989, but as Der Spiegel reminds us, other walls remain elsewhere in the world.

Even more insidious, though, are the invisible walls we build with money and defend with lawyers, all in an attempt to defend the status quo and nail things down as they are right now.

Sorry, but life is like a river, and you can’t nail it down. Count me among those who yearn for life without such walls.

Our elected officials have basically set up a political system that legalizes and facilitates bribery. And our failure to deal with that has created the most successful business model of the late 20th and early 21st centuries: maximize your profits by making bigger and badder loans that precipitate a “crisis” when they go belly up (which you fuel with a massive PR campaign), then you squeeze the government to make you whole.

The violence in Mexico–directly a result of the huge profits that can be made thanks to the US prohibitions against drugs–reached new heights last year.

From the “guns don’t kill people — people kill people” file.

It’s long been understood among the traveling public that Mexico is problematic. Police corruption and endemic kidnapping long were reasons to stay away from sites that were off the beaten path. Now, with the gang warfare that plagues our southern border, those trying to make a living by farming also are leaving.