Mexico's Gang Wars: 80,000 dead, 22,000 missing since 2006

[pietillidie]

As a preface, all I ask is that folk broaden their world knowledge before forming broad theories about nations, religions, peoples, political systems and violence. Moreover, the sooner we stop tolerating fearmongering and vilification based on extremely abstract, almost entirely creative mental constructs such as "Western civilisation", "the Chinese", "Islam", "the direction the world is heading in", "our way", "them", and so on, the better.

The world is a very complex place. Despite being 90% Christian—that's 90% Christian, not 90% Muslim, Latin America bears an horrific extent of global violence. I mention this not to burden people with even more dark news, but to challenge some of the very targeted irrational and ill-disciplined conclusions being drawn about what is a great diversity of Muslim peoples.

In case you missed some of the more horrific recent killings in other parts of the world, 43 university students went missing late last year in Mexico, believed to have been abducted and incinerated or dumped in a river, possibly at the behest of a mayor and his wife, but no one really knows given how corrupt the government is.

[think positive]

Are yes, I can see this turning into a USA problem!

22 years ago we popped over the border for a day, $£$%^%%$ scary place even back then. Last 2 visits travel warnings said don't go, so we didn't! No different to any of the other countries we argue about, they just don't use religion as the excuse to kill each other. It's about power, money, evil. And they generally don't try to take their reach around the globe.

[pietillidie]

^Well, actually, Christianity has long tried to take its ideas all around the world, while drugs also seem to travel quite well

The point I would focus on here, though, is that simply noticing a proximate relationship between a vague category (e.g., "Christian") and some complex phenomenon (e.g., "high gang homicide rates"), very likely tells you nothing meaningful about the world.

To go from that to vilifying people, or formulating theories about the fate or state of "civilisations"—as if you've just discovered something so sure and so meaningful that you can even run calculations off it—is incredibly undisciplined, and in many cases extremely unethical and/or dangerous and violent.

[Mugwump]

Interesting, just completely irrelevant to the fact that Islamists are now regularly trying to overthrow our way of life by murdering uninvolved civilians in our country, and that's a subject for serious public policy. When the Mexican gangs and the notoriously corrupt Mexican state starts doing that here, i reckon there might be some serious thinking about how to deal with that problem, too.

[pietillidie]

[Mugwump]

[think positive]

ah, the perfect solution, stick a bunch of hard line muslims in the middle of cartel country, could be a hell of a movie there!!

[HAL]

So you understand. Good. Is that a fact.

[Tannin]

[think positive]

[Mugwump]

[HAL]

And then what happened?

[pietillidie]

[Tannin]

[pietillidie]