Bodies hanging from bridge in Mexico are warning to social media users. Graphic Photos

[sce56]

Source: By Mariano Castillo, CNN

(CNN) -- Social media users who denounce drug cartel activities along the Mexican border received a brutal warning this week: Two mangled bodies hanging like cuts of meat from a pedestrian bridge. A woman was hogtied and disemboweled, her intestines protruding from three deep cuts on her abdomen. Attackers left her topless, dangling by her feet and hands from a bridge in the border city of Nuevo Laredo. A bloodied man next to her was hanging by his hands, his right shoulder severed so deeply the bone was visible.



Signs left near the bodies declared the pair, both apparently in their early 20s, were killed for posting denouncements of drug cartel activities on a social network. "This is going to happen to all of those posting funny things on the Internet," one sign said. "You better (expletive) pay attention. I'm about to get you." The gruesome scene sent a chilling message at a time when online posts have become some of the loudest voices reporting violence in Mexico. In some parts of the country, threats from cartels have silenced traditional media. Sometimes even local authorities fear speaking out.

Mexico's notoriously ruthless drug gangs regularly hang victims from bridges and highway overpasses.



Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/americas/09/14/mexico.violence/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

---

The Drug cartels seem to be smarter than the Arab oppressive regimes

[msongs]

1. the make drugs illegal crowd can be proud of this outcome yes? people will use religion or drugs no

matter what the law or gangs or social networking says.

[The Backlash Cometh]

14. Are you listening to what you're saying?

So we should appease people who have no value in human life? You have huge programs to stop the inhumane treatment of seamstresses in some third world country, boycott clothes made by exploitation, but the answer for druggies is just to make it easier to feed their habit?

If they gave a damn they would buy their own seeds and grow lights and take their own risks.

[lolly]

18. Making it legal isn't appeasing the cartels

If anything, it would be the opposite.

They thrive because drugs are illegal and therefore very expensive.

They are torturing and killing people who interfere with their profits in any way.

It isn't the drug users who are doing this. It's the cartels who profit off of the drug users.

[NashVegas]

33. The Only Difference Between These Guys and Pfizer

Is Pfizer is a little more civilized in how they're fucking us over by encouraging drug addiction.

[expatriate2mex]

47. That comment shows no regard at all for the mexicans dying.nt

[wordpix]

58. and corrupt police, border police & politicians who are paid off also benefit

It's a whole underground corrupt, dangerous corporate state

RIP, those who were hanged :cry:

[GliderGuider]

29. Did the repeal of prohibition "appease" the mob?

Or did it put a major crimp in the bootlegging, moonshining and rumrunning - as well as the shooting, bombing and arson?

[NashVegas]

34. Because Everyone Knows Organized Crime Went Away When Booze Was Legal Again

[Honeycombe8]

41. It moved from booze to other activities. History shows that if a substance is legal,

gangsters can't make money in it, so they move to something else. Prostitution, illegal gambling, racketeering (where they pay off politicians to get favors for businesses they open which do surprisingly well!), etc.

[expatriate2mex]

17. **Warning, more graphic spanish language site**

http://www.mundonarco.com/2011/09/cuelgan-cuerpo-de-dos-jovenes-en-puente.html

I live in mexico and their extortion is spreading to other cities. Going further south. They have spread out so much (other ways to make money) that legalizing drugs would not make them go away and it's simplistic to think that. They would only ratchet it up in other areas.

In many cities businesses are closing, dr's getting harder to find as they are leaving to escape extortion threats. They are turning up the heat in guadalajara, but the authorities try to keep it quiet. It keeps coming further south.

NY times on narcos

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/opinion/19longmire.html

[a la izquierda]

25. Hah, Guadalajara.

They're not turning up the heat there. THey're shitting where they eat and sleep. How long have you been in GDL? That's where they all live and have lived for decades. It's so evident when one enters a narco neighborhood (note, it sure as hell isn't the crappy side of town). IT's gotten bloody violent there, yeah. But GDL is not, and has never been immune to the narco culture...it's just been relatively free from the violence. My husband finally put his foot down and said no way to my research trip there.

[expatriate2mex]

31. Hah, actually read my post .

I live south of guad, my family is from gto originally and my wife is from where we live now.

They are turning up the heat, there have been 2 shootings in chapala in the last few days and they they are also getting a lot heavier on extortion in guad, some places are shutting down and bailing out.

I know guad has had narcos there for a long time and you can call it what you want, but they are cranking up the heat there. They are not just now moving in, they are just cranking it up further south.

This may be one of the reasons

http://www.chapala.com/wwwboard/webboard.html

There are fucking narcos everywhere, la barbie was living in la marquesa not far from where we live and it was no secret. He had a zoo, massive place but they did not terrorize the locals. It's probably just a matter of time though, everyone from this area knows they are moving their tactics further south.

Maybe you should actually read what I said:

"their extortion is spreading to other cities. Going further south."

"They are turning up the heat in guadalajara, but the authorities try to keep it quiet. It keeps coming further south."

I DID NOT say guad has been immune, I DID NOT say the narcos are just moving in. I DID say "their extortion" is moving further south and they are turning up the heat in guad. That's true whether you like it or not. Where do you live? The US? Hah.

Since I think you are purposefully misreading my post just looking for a fight, adios.

[a la izquierda]

32. Jesus christ, dude.

You can keep on attacking me. I've been here for a long time. I've lived back and forth between GDL and the US for years. I study the region for a living. I was not assuming you're a country rube or a dumb gringo. You ASSumed all that from my post. I traveled the bus route on which a bus was hijacked and blown up. In GDL.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, dumb gringa knows nothing.:banghead:

[expatriate2mex]

44. Jeez, YOU attacked my post and made plenty of assumptions

about it, not even comprehending what I said. Yea, yeah, yeah, dumb mexican knows nothing about the country he lives in.

I would not give you a plug nickle for the news people get in the us about what is happening here, the mainstream mexican media is the same.

[Name removed]

50. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Booster]

2. I don't even know what to say about this. Just gruesome.

[ChandlerJr]

3. How about a boycott of recreational drugs?

I've been doing it for 40 years. I'll wager if the North American market dried up for 6 months a lot of these problems would go away.

I guess it isn't really that important.

[RainDog]

4. how about taking a clue from prohibition?

or, conversely, making it legal to grow and purchase cannabis grown in the U.S.

that would really hurt the cartels and help Americans.

if people had a choice between cartel product and American-made - not too many would choose the first one.

the reality is that people drank alcohol all during prohibition and criminals made money off of it and killed innocent people. the problem is the prohibition. this has ever been so.

[1620rock]

5. Jeez, maybe we do need that wall?

[boppers]

52. The wall exists.

It's tunneled under, and flown over, and scaled, and demolished, etc.

Walls are a simple idea to a complex problem, which explains rethuglican insistence on them... they can't wrap their minds around the idea that a simple idea is.... simple.

[ChandlerJr]

6. That's fine with me, legalize everything. But how likely and how soon

will that happen? Meanwhile 100s of Mexicans are being slaughtered every week to keep the US supplied with drugs. It's really their problem though isn't it, a few minutes of personal pleasure is much more important.

I suppose those people are expendable in our pursuit of a cheap high. You gotta have your priorities in order.

It's like cheap I-phones I-pads and the latest sneakers, just don't bother me with the working conditions where they are made.

[lunasun]

9. look how many people in the middle east bleed for our oil consumption too

[RainDog]

11. you make assumptions about me that aren't true

because I choose to have a rational view of human behavior and a better answer than to pretend that prohibition works.

pretending that prohibition is the same as cheaply-made foreign goods is stupid. a joke.

I don't want people anywhere to die b/c of the stupid drug war. You are entirely unrealistic if you think you can stop the use of mind-altering substances in Americans - just not going to happen.

Something that can happen, however, is an end to the stupid, wasteful drug war. Mexico's past present calls for this very thing, so all he cares about is getting high, I guess.

-honestly- what an ASSHOLE thing to say - to assume that anyone who supports an end to the war on drugs wants to use any Mexican drug product. grow up.

[Dennis Donovan]

13. +1

:thumbsup:

[RainDog]

12. oh, and how long? the drug war could end tomorrow

or, at least the most egregious part of it, with the stroke of a pen by the Attn.Gen.

[GliderGuider]

28. There's a simple answer to the conscience problem.

Grow your own.

It's like making your own biodiesel so you can thumb your nose at the Arabs.

[expatriate2mex]

45. Lots of people seem to think that legalizing pot

would make them go away. The reality is that they are long past that point. They have long since taken over illegal immigration and control that, theft of oil tankers and other trucks, extortion also. Extortion is nothing new and is on the rise in more cities further south. They are pretty much everywhere but they are cranking it up and it and more openly. Child trafficing, the list goes on. To think they would suddenly quit and go home is nothing short of ridiculous, it's not ALL about drugs any more and ther would just get it in other ways. It will take more than legalizing pot to stop this.

In reality all it would do is make pot smokers feel better about themselves, get rid of any guilt they feel. The narcos will be here anyway though.

[Uncle Joe]

51. People have been smoking cannabis for thousands of years, that's not going to stop.

No one believes legalizing cannabis will shut down the cartels or organized crime but it will certainly hurt their finances, making it more difficult for them to corrupt the police and government and it will create great societal benefits outside of the effect on organized crime.

The people that should feel guilt are those waging this counterproductive, dysfunctional, insane "War Against Drugs" turning what should be an educational, personal/privacy and medical issue into a criminal one and then on top of that creating an industry that profits from the imprisonment of the people.

If the cartels move in to other avenues of making money, at least the government might occupy the moral high ground; something which doesn't exist in the "War Against Drugs."

[expatriate2mex]

55. There was a post here earlier that said

"legalize marijuana and it will all go away". There are a lot of people that believe that and it's just plain wrong.

Yes, it will hurt their finances for a little while, but they will just get it in other ways. The police and government were being corrupted here long before the rise of the narcos, it won't be going anywhere. They are in child trafficing also (among lots of other stuff), the gob and cops do not take the high road there, just what do you think will make them do so? Maybe hanging murdered people off bridges that were killed for posting on a blog, or herding people off of busses and robbing and killing......oh wait. Monry talks, it doesn't matter what it is.

I never said the war on drugs is good, I think MJ should be legal, and I know pot smoking is here to stay. I do stand by my statement though, that people that believe legalizing pot will make these atrocities stop do so to make themselves feel better about smoking pot (And there are people that believe it). I DO NOT believe everyone that smokes pot feels that way, not even remotely, nor am I against smoking pot.

[Uncle Joe]

56. Legalizing cannabis and possibly some other drugs will weaken the cartels in two ways.

#1. They will suffer a loss of income with the reduced ability to corrupt and arm themselves but that's just part of it.

2# I agree gov/police corruption has existed before and it will exist afterward, but the "War on Drugs" has alienated/disenfranchised far too many people and this is what has made the loss of the moral high ground all the more devastating. If they're not drug users, and those number in the tens if not cracking a hundred+ million, they're connected to someone that is, family or friend and the harsh draconian laws and shotgun measures used against the people has created either too much sympathy or at the very least apathy from the people. Most of, if not all of the police and judiciary know this and that's why it's easy for the weaker ones to give in to corruption.

Child trafficking, slavery, extortion etc. have nowhere near the type of public support or sympathy as that of drug use, convicted child abusers in prison are in danger themselves from other prisoners just for having committed the act of child abuse, drug users or drug pushers face no such risk unless a competitor wants to wipe them out.

Any representative government truly wanting to take the moral high road, must represent the will of the people and not just a simple majority but a super majority, that's not the case in the "War on Drugs" and the result is a weakened government and police disconnected from too many of its' citizens making atrocities like this all the easier for the cartels/organized crime to get away with.

If a representative government doesn't justly represent a super majority of its' citizens, the people become disconnected and alienated from the police and the mob gains additional power in this vacuum, the police become increasingly corrupted and afraid of the mob and the people become afraid of both.

[lunasun]

7. True, Al Capone etc. left some gruesome crime scenes during prohibition

[MikeW]

19. the problem is with people who insist on breaking the law

you can live without pot

you can live without coke

People who have to turn to drugs or getting ripped on booze to have a good time need to have their heads checked.

[RainDog]

21. some people don't get "ripped" on booze - some people have a glass of wine with dinner

some people can't seem to allow that their arguments are based upon bullshit about the issue of choice.

maybe we should make sugar illegal because some people eat to much of it, get as fat as sows, and yet don't stop. make sugar illegal and you'll have church ladies toting uzis for their supply. lol.

some people cannot "get" that it doesn't matter whether someone should live without coke, or sugar, for that matter. some people don't. sure, they might benefit from mental health care - in fact, the issue behind the end of the war on drugs is to put money into treatment rather than punishment or creating a criminal market for such things.

you can live without god - MOST ESPECIALLY a judgmental and punitive version of the same. people who believe in an imaginary being because they were taught this myth from birth should also have their heads checked, because such thinking is delusional. it's a habit of mind and sometimes an addiction, causing all kinds of negative outcomes. but, you know what? it's their choice and right to believe in something that is obviously false and often bad for society. as long as they don't use this drug of choice to harm others, it's none of my business.

[bemildred]

22. The problem is people who insist on making and trying to enforce stupid laws. nt

[GliderGuider]

30. People have been "turning to" mind-altering substances as far back as we can tell.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3225729/Stone-Age-man-took-drugs-say-scientists.html

People may have been using things like peyote for over 5,000 years, and alcohol for 8,000 years. That suggests we're not about to stop any time soon, law or no law. When the law runs so contrary to human urges, then - in the words of Dickens' Mr. Bumble - "The law is a ass — a idiot." The problem is not the consumption of mind-altering substances, the problem is the violence associated with their arbitrary illegality.

Any politician who opposes the legalization of cannabis implicitly supports the disemboweling of 20-year-old girls.

[NashVegas]

37. Yeah, But They Haven't Been Marketing It so Much

At least, I'm not aware of any cave paintings that depict your local pharmacy, circa 30,000 BC

[RainDog]

39. that's because you're obviously fairly ignorant about this issue

in the case of cannabis, which is, honestly, not really a drug anyway, but it's the one that causes the most aggravation b/c of the federal govt's stupidity about it as a medically useful substance that is far less harmful than legal substances -

cannabis was cultivated in China in the neolithic era, about 6500 years ago, according to botanist/archeologists.

During the Chou dynasty, over 3,000 years ago, someone recorded the historical use of cannabis before their time - and scholars think this refers to the neolithic people mentioned above.

The Pên-ts'ao Ching is the oldest pharmacopoeia (record of medical knowledge) known, and it describes using hemp flowers. to "communicate with spirits and lightens one's body." Marijuana, with a powerful effects on the psyche, must have been just being formed. The Pên-ts'ao Ching, during the reign of Emperor Shên-nung (around 2000 B.C.), suggests using cannabis for "malaria, beriberi, constipation, rheumatic pains, absent-mindedness, and female disorders."

Cannabis root was used in early medicine as way to relieve the pain of broken bones and surgery by applying it as a ground-up paste.

Mention of cannabis in India goes back 4000 years.

Herodotus described the ritual inhalation of cannabis by the Scythians in burial ceremonies in the 5th BC.

In fact, prohibition of cannabis is an anomaly in human society - it has only been illegal in the U.S. for the last 70 years.

Obviously, tho, the problem is all about people who are breaking the law and not a stupid law - even tho the law was only made law because of the corrupt actions of fewer than a dozen self-interested people. When cannabis was made illegal, the lawyer for the AMA protested and he was attacked by a legislator in the pocket of the DuPonts.

See, not that much has changed.

At this very moment the AMA wants hearings to reschedule cannabis and yet the DEA will not. At the same time, a pharmaceutical co wants to grow the cannabis elsewhere and market it here - and they want to sell cannabis, make no mistake, not a synthetic - but whole plant cannabis - for MS - and this is not a problem.

The problem is the govt wants to make it profitable for certain people - pharma cos, the DEA, the drug cartels - to make money. If not, they would stop criminalizing cannabis.

but the govt wants to keep it illegal.

now, who is the criminal in this instance?

[NashVegas]

35. + 1,000,000

Amazing, isn't it, how many of these thumb-suckers are complicit in this murder and their answer is, "legalize it."

[RainDog]

36. what's the answer to this issue?

do you really think that you are going to be able to destroy the market for drugs or for cannabis?

what an idiotic line of thinking - there is no evidence that this EVER works. However, there is evidence that creating a harm-reduction strategy for people who have problems with addiction does work - evidence from prohibition, evidence from the Portuguese experiment in legalization of all drugs that has taken place over the last decade.

those examples show that prohibition is the least useful way to approach this issue.

YOU are complicit in murder by refusing to accept that YOUR stance contributes to the deaths of innocent people because YOU think you can socially engineer society in such a way that no one will choose to use mind-altering substances.

the difference between many of them simply has to do with whether or not they are legal. that's all. you remove the illegality and you remove the profit motive. obviously criminals will find criminal things to do - but why give them this one? let them stick to selling women into slavery and go after them for that. Put police power behind crimes that are clearly crimes, not matters of personal choice.

"drug warriors" make me want to puke. your stance creates unnecessary harm to society. yet you think you are all high and mighty.

So, next time you want to say something about who is responsible for this sort of murder - look at your own fool self.

[NashVegas]

38. Look What We've Done For Cigarette Smoking

At one point, cigarette smoking rates were up to something like 45%. Thanks to social stigma, that's back down to about 20% now.

I see no harm in stigmatizing MJ use.

[RainDog]

40. they didn't make cigarettes illegal.

they didn't criminalize cigarette use. if they had, criminal organizations would be making (more) money off of cigarettes and people would die to protect this criminal market.

what you're talking about is what pro-legalization people talk about - using harm reduction rather than criminalization.

if you make something forbidden, you increase its interest for some people - that's just a reality. In The Netherlands, with their coffee shops, cannabis use is lower among teenagers, for instance, than here, where it's illegal. It's easier for kids to get cannabis here because it's illegal, rather than regulated and sold in shops, like alcohol.

but, unlike alcohol, there are legitimate medical uses for cannabis that no other substance has shown to provide and that no synthetic can duplicate.

I don't like to be around stupid stoners or drunks or old women who take too many barbituates - and I don't spend time with them.

but that doesn't mean that all people who use cannabis, alcohol or barbituates abuse them, either, nor are they all stupid. Those people should not have to be lumped in with every idiot who ever walked into a bar, etc.

[Lucky Luciano]

8. Reminds me of "The Usual Suspects"

Kevin Spacey tells the cop that Kaiser Soze was so successful as a drug cartel leader because "he was willing to do what the other guys wouldn't." The cartels seem to have learned that their power will be unmatched when they have no boundaries. They really have no boundaries- I am speechless.

[a simple pattern]

10. Hmm what do the arab oppressive regimes

have in common with the zetas

i wonder

[ChazII]

15. Yup, our border is safe and

secure. No worries. :sarcasm:

[bemildred]

16. The "strange fruit" of the Drug War(tm). nt

[GliderGuider]

24. +1. "Strange Fruit" indeed.

Some things never seem to change.

[bemildred]

26. I knew somebody would get it.

:hi:

[GliderGuider]

27. Another Billie Holiday fan here.

:hi:

[Blandocyte]

20. That won't stop my FB use

I'lll still post photos of my cats and hummingbirds at the feeder. They'll have to try harder to scare me.

[GliderGuider]

23. Acid baths are also a favored form of execution

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/20/war-capitalism-mexico-drug-cartels

People often ask: why the savagery of Mexico's war? It is infamous for such inventive perversions as sewing one victim's flayed face to a soccer ball or hanging decapitated corpses from bridges by the ankles; and innovative torture, such as dipping people into vats of acid so that their limbs evaporate while doctors keep the victim conscious.

Legalize pot and this all goes away.

[Honeycombe8]

42. I wonder how they found out who the posters were? You don't think...

they didn't conceal their identities, do you? Not that it's their fault, but surely if they knew anything about the cartel, they knew to hide their identities.

Horrible. There is a place in hell for people like that.

[legin]

43. The Internet users need a military wing

At the moment any wacko with a gun can 'shut down' Internet debate on any subject, by a bit of old fashioned intimidation.

'Might is right' seems apposite here.

I'm not saying we need an army but just something to give the arseholes that perpetrated this obscenity something to give them pause, as opposed to it being a free shot.

[legin]

46. Possibly a person whose existence is a trifle redundant

It would be a informed guess that the Zetas cartel are responsible.

Their leader is Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heriberto_Lazcano

[expatriate2mex]

48. The Z signature makes it a little more than a guess,nt

[legin]

49. Hi expatriate2mex

:hi:

[expatriate2mex]

54. Hola legin

:hi:

[legin]

57. Another redundant person

seems to be in charge of Nuevo Laredo where this outrage took place

Miguel Angel Treviño Morales (a.k.a: Z-40, 40, Zeta 40, David Estrada-Corado, Comandante Forty, El Catorce) is a Mexican drug trafficker who is a commander of the drug cartel known as Los Zetas, currently led by Heriberto Lazcano. Miguel is an important figure in the Zetas, currently acting as gatekeeper of Nuevo Laredo city.

Miguel Treviño is a former member of the Mexican Army’s elite Airborne Special Forces Group (GAFE), trained in locating and apprehending drug cartel members. It is believed that he was also trained at the military School of the Americas in the United States. Also, he was trained by foreign specialists, including Americans, French, and Israelis, in rapid deployment, aerial assaults, marksmanship, ambushes, small-group tactics, intelligence collection, counter-surveillance techniques, prisoner rescues and sophisticated communications.

In the late 1990s, the Gulf Cartel, a Mexican criminal organization, recruited him and 30 other GAFE members to provide protection and perform other vital functions, thus becoming Los Zetas, the paramilitary wing of the Gulf Cartel, responsible for the smuggling of multi-ton quantities of cocaine, marijuana and heroin into the United States from Mexico annually.

(snip)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Trevi%C3%B1o_Morales

[octothorpe]

53. Early 20's. That's sad. These drug cartels must have some pretty thin skin if they can't take

people saying mean thing about them.