Drug Wars, Corporate Welfare and Teaching Technê

Mexican Drug Cartels

The Real Deal

Classical World

Three subjects to occupy an evenings reading. First, is this from Strafor who files this report on Mexico's efforts to confront the drug cartels http://www.stratfor.com/.

Mexico’s war against drug cartels continued in 2008. The mission President Felipe Calderon launched shortly after his inauguration two years ago to target the cartels has since escalated in nearly every way imaginable. Significant changes in Mexico’s security situation and the nature of the drug trade in the Western Hemisphere also have occurred over the last 12 months.

In this year’s report on Mexico’s drug cartels, we assess the most significant developments of the past year and provide an updated description of the country’s powerful drug-trafficking organizations. This annual report is a product of the coverage we maintain on a weekly basis through our Mexico Security Memo and various other reports.

The subject covered include:

Mexico’s Drug-Trafficking Organizations

Calderon’s Success Story

2008: A Year of Flux

Changing Geography

Deteriorating Security

Looking Ahead

The whole story:

Mexico and the War Against the Drug Cartels in 2008

And this related article from the Christian Science Monitor, reminds us that long wars will eventually wear down some societies, to a dull point where they give way to the less painful path, only to fall off a cliff.

Mexicans Question President Calderón's Drug War

Mexico City - Five thousand, three hundred, and seventy-six people have been killed in Mexico's drug war so far this year, double the number from last year and more than all the US troops killed in Iraq.

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Is this what victory looks like?

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That's the question Mexico is grappling with two years after President Felipe Calderón took office announcing a massive military effort to dismantle drug trafficking organizations.

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My blog friend Dan, host of tdaxp.com has been diligent in following the latest attempted grabs by the domestic auto industry to slow their plunge onto the rocks of reality, (competition).

Here are two of his latest posts, Dan says in part:

There are two lines of argument I have read for the UAW Bailout. One is essentially Keynesian, and argues in these bad economic times, building a giant pit and hiding money in it would be a good move, so building cars no one wants is no worse.

Read more: Buy their cars, or they’ll take your money

Here is a tease about Dan's next post:

The interesting point is near the end, where he says GM is a victim of history in the choices those companies made in supporting the UAW:

Read more: GM: Gaining the political benefits, and Making you pay

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Lastly, Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers offers this opinion about the state of a classical education in our universities. Hanson, hits all the bases by pulling no punches in describing where he thinks our institutions have strayed away from their bedrock foundations built on a foundation classical thought.

Until recently, classical education served as the foundation of the wider liberal arts curriculum, which in turn defined the mission of the traditional university. Classical learning dedicated itself to turning out literate citizens who could read and write well, express themselves, and make sense of the confusion of the present by drawing on the wisdom of the past. Students grounded in the classics appreciated the history of their civilization and understood the rights and responsibilities of their unique citizenship. Universities, then, acted as cultural custodians, helping students understand our present values in the context of a 2,500-year tradition that began with the ancient Greeks.

But in recent decades, classical and traditional liberal arts education has begun to erode, and a variety of unexpected consequences have followed. The academic battle has now gone beyond the in-house “culture wars” of the 1980s. Though the argument over politically correct curricula, controversial faculty appointments, and the traditional mission of the university is ongoing, the university now finds itself being bypassed technologically, conceptually, and culturally, in ways both welcome and disturbing.

Read more: "Humanities Move Off Campus"