Paul Harvey just passed away earlier this year, and that is a pity because he was famous for supplying “the rest of the story” for a lot of hyper-infotainment highlighted news stories. For example, the headline at the venerable NYTimes is “In Drug War, Mexico Fights Cartel and Itself”.
Now the Times is doing a service telling potential travelers to Mexico how bad the situation is not just at the US Mexico border but starting to stretch to the the Gulf Coast resorts. Also the corruption of the the police and even Mexican Federal Justice officials gives a clear insight into the depth of the problem. Likewise Boston.com’s stark pictorial again tells only half the story, only in the comments can you pick up glimmers of the extent of the real problem.
Thus in both stories there are some key facts missing and/or under emphasized – the rest of the story which shows the tarnished symbiosis between the two countries criminal elements and the US populace.In contrast nearly a month before, CBS News ran a story on how US Gun suppliers were providing the weapons for many of the cartels. The situation reached such proportions that the local police had less firepower than the criminals. So it should not be a wonder that nearly 8000 have died in the past 16 months in Mexico’s border states – nearly double all the US deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the biggest missing fact is that US demand for drugs is has not diminished in the past 10 years and the number of illicit drug takers is saturated in the 21-35 year old age group. Finally cocaine is the drug of affluence. These key facts are truly “the rest of the story”.