tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30412896.post4591764233632873871..comments2024-01-05T02:53:03.358-06:00Comments on American Zombie: Nagin Trial - dados cargados?Jason Brad Berryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18421813599753848735noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30412896.post-25402647196966745882014-02-06T09:49:51.163-06:002014-02-06T09:49:51.163-06:00I don`t know if I was reading this blog in May, 20...I don`t know if I was reading this blog in May, 2008. I had other things on my mind. It was a big month for me. <br /><br />I caught up with you-- may even have found out about you for the first time-- sometime later. <br /><br />What you`ve written over the years has often completely shocked me, and given me information, even at a rumor grade level, I needed to have. I am sure many others can say the same. <br /><br />The work done by you and by some other reporters and bloggers will probably touch on more aspects of the corrupted political landscape than any court case ever will. <br /><br />Reading your blog, I came to see the truth of the old point made by some writers that the purpose of the WAR ON DRUGS is not to stop the drug trade, but to control it. <br /><br />I suspect that despite the honor and zeal of many police and investigators, and the personal and political desire of many system insiders to do the right thing, the courts will be used by some for damage control and limiting the scope of public awareness of certain rackets, not for bringing all the patterns of entrenched corruption to light in an ongoing rolling boil of flowing righteousness.<br /><br />Control, not eradication, of lucrative areas of corruption is probably an aspect of what will show up in open court, and what will not. <br /><br />Mexican journalists and civil society people have been dealing with the uncomfortable reality that they are living in a narco-state, a narco-`democracy.`<br /><br />Since the 1980s, some American writers have been talking about Miami and parts of LA and some other places in the USA as having characteristics of such a state, but on the whole, we have all been relieved that America is better than that, the social and political institutions more robust and uncorrupted. <br /><br />There are many, many honorable people in all walks of American public life, across all party lines. The citizens who truly make use of their First Amendment rights and responsibilities are perhaps the strongest line of defence the USA has. <br /><br />But this Mexican casino, and some of the other stories you have written about here, make me think about the ways greater and greater swathes of the USA seem to be too closely connected to the scarier and less functioning mode of political life South of the Border. <br /><br />I think I am very naive, and I am only starting to notice things that other, smarter people have known for years, and know with greater insight and awareness than I ever will. <br /><br />The Katrina cars, will we ever learn what happened there? The ones that you think made it out into a resale market through that Churchwell guy from Memphis, a land route, that`s one set of them. <br /><br />But they were also found all over South America. I`ve always wondered if some of them went out through the Port, and if so, how? <br /><br />How were they not spotted? Did the set of systemic blind spots that let them get out also let other things get in? Who knows? Do we want to know? Maybe not. <br /><br />We`ll never know, and while it is interesting, it is not so interesting that I`d want someone to stick their neck out finding out. <br /><br />Just don`t do drugs, try to avoid troubles I can see are troubles from a mile away, is what I figure I can manage. <br /><br />I just try to handle these choices personally. The Women`s Christian Temperance Movements and their prohibition push was great for the Mob of their day, so advocating for a systemic absolutism and purity often backfires, but to try to have personal behavior that is as responsible as possible and as decent as you can manage on a small scale personal level can help. <br /><br />These corruption cases dance all around the `cocaine standard` aspect of the current financial world. <br /><br />I suspect that a personal decision just not to do drugs because they are bad for the political health of the cities and nations I hold in high esteem is the best I can do. <br /><br /> <br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com