Tag: environment

Mexico’s Murderous Drug Cartels Are Winning

We begin with the horrendous massacre of three Mormon women and six children on a highway in the north of Mexico by suspected members of a drug gang who might have mistaken the convoy of vehicles for a rival cartel. An expert on the drug wars in Mexico that have killed 250,000 since 2007 with an additional 40,000 missing, Ioan Grillo, joins us from Mexico City. The author of “El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency” and his latest “Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars. Killing Fields and the Politics of Latin America”, we will discuss the growing pressure on Mexico’s President Lopez Obrador who was recently humiliated by a brazen attack by 800 cartel gunmen (sicarios) who recaptured “Little Chapo”, the son of the drug lord El Chapo from the out-gunned Mexican military. Having abandoned the U.S.-backed “kingpin strategy”, Lopez Obrador, under pressure from Donald Trump, has had to divert the newly-created Mexican National Guard away from fighting the drug cartels to policing the southern border with Guatemala to stop refugees from heading to the U.S.  And since the Sinaloa cartel was able to take over the city of Culiacan with 800 heavily-armed gunman wielding military-style weapons obtained in the NRA’s gun-saturated United States, like the 50 caliber rifles that blew off the legs of Mexican soldiers, the “kingpin strategy” does not appear to working as an endless supply of underlings appear ready to take over from the drug lords.

Democrats Take False Comfort from National Polls as Trump’s Electoral College Reelection Looks Likely

Then we examine the latest research which indicates the Democrats might be taking false comfort from the polls indicating Trump will lose the nationwide vote against the top five Democratic presidential candidates, since Trump’s path to reelection via the Electoral College remains secure from all of the Democrats except Joe Biden. David Schultz, a Professor of Political Science at Hamline University and the University of Minnesota School of Law and author of “Presidential Swing States: Why Only Ten Matter” and “American Politics in the Age of Ignorance: Why Lawmakers Choose Belief Over Research”, joins us.  We will discuss the problem for Democrats that their candidate most likely to stop Trump’s reelection, Joe Biden, is running out of money as his support among the more progressive Democratic primary voters and donors wanes.

An Alarming New Report on Global Warming

Then finally, on the day after the Trump Administration announced its formal withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords, we look into a new report from the Conservation Biology Institute by 11,000 researchers from around the world published in BioScience warning of “untold suffering” if humanity does not change its ways. Janet Redman, the Climate Campaign Director at Greenpeace USA joins us to discuss the urgent need to replace fossil fuels, cut emissions of climate pollutants, restore ecosystems, build a carbon-free economy and stabilize population growth with family planning and girls education.