because of the condescending tone of "We are talking about México?", Mexico is the 2nd destination of US exports and the 3rd source of US imports, also is the 10th economy in the world by PPP GDP, also Mexico has facilities for enriching uranium, so I suppose that a Country like that must have regulations about radioactive material disposal.
It's also an unstable country in the middle of a fight it's not winning with tens of thousands of casualties a year. Parts of the country are not really even under government control.
Driven in large part by an insatiable lust for the currently illegal substances in the US. The US War on Drugs has disrupted tens of thousands of lives in the states as well as abroad.
Mexico is like any other country, there are places you feel perfectly safe at night, and there are places where you don't.
> Driven in large part by an insatiable lust for the currently illegal substances in the US.
Totally irrelevant to the original point. This discussion isn't about blame, it's about why anyone is surprised at Mexico being dangerous.
And Mexico is not like any other country. Journalists are regularly killed, people using Twitter to criticize drug cartels are killed and bodies are hung in public areas. Local governments and police live in fear. So no, it's not like any other country.
Your original comment argued that because the country was embroiled in a drug war meant that they could not possibly have effective measures for protecting radioactive material shipments in place. Pointing to a violent drug war to prove why they cannot safely ship radioactive material is disingenuous because their drug war is deeply entangled with ours. Your comment came off to me as follows, "those Mexicans can't even keep control of their country, so who should be surprised that this happened." That is what I take issue with. Perhaps I am reading too much into it, but just flippantly declaring that there is a drug war without additional discussion is intellectually lazy, in my opinion.
That comes across as racist or bigoted and while I do think Mexico cannot control it's crime it's not for anything other than because they can't even keep their citizens or police from being killed.
And what I am saying is that Mexico would have a much easier time controlling its crime if there were not billions of dollars flowing southward from the United States into the hands of the cartels. The cartels are virtually invincible because of that money. If the US market for illegal drugs went away tomorrow, what do you suppose would happen to the crime rate in Mexico over the next few years? I believe it would go down dramatically as there would be much less incentive to be involved with the cartel.
EDIT: I should clarify that you are correct, you are statistically more likely to be randomly assaulted in certain parts of Mexico than you are in certain parts of the United States. What I am saying is that the problem is larger than Mexico simply being unable to effectively police certain factions of its citizenry.
> And what I am saying is that Mexico would have a much easier time controlling its crime if there were not billions of dollars flowing southward from the United States into the hands of the cartels.
This is totally fucking irrelevant in the given discussion. You just have an axe to grind and want to bring up some stupid anti-drug rant, however tragically true it may be, at any given moment, even when it's not appropriate. This discussion is not about why. It's not about it.
Pick up phone, call DHS - hey you know how you have a $100 billion budget and are supposed to monitor transportation security? We are about to transport something highly radioactive near your border, just thought you should know.
It would be the most closely watched transport ever.
In fact I am curious why the NSA didn't know about it and tell someone.
> It would be the most closely watched transport ever.
No. It would be one of thousands of such transports ocurring every year. A routine operation, not worth anyone's attention until the unexpected happened.
I agree with your sentiment, but although it was hijacked near Mexico City, 'nowhere near' seems a bit overstated:
"stolen earlier in the week in a carjacking as the material was being moved from a public hospital in the border town of Tijuana to a storage facility in central Mexico, news reports said."
