Clinton admits US blame on drugs

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the US must take part of the blame for drug-related violence in Mexico, as the BBC reports here:

Speaking as she arrived in Mexico, she said America's appetite for drugs and its inability to stop arms crossing the border were helping fuel the violence.

Her two-day visit comes a day after the Obama administration announced new measures to boost border security.

Some 8,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico over the past two years.

On Tuesday, the White House unveiled a $700m (£475m) strategy that includes boosting security on the border, moves to stem the flow of illegal guns and drug profits from the US into Mexico, and steps to cut domestic drug consumption.

Speaking to reporters accompanying her to Mexico City, Mrs Clinton said: "Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade.

"Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians.

"I feel very strongly we have a co-responsibility."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7963292.stm

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Do you agree with Secretary Clinton's statement? And if so, what is the US to do about it?
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Third World/The United States of Mexico Study Guide

Presidente Fox/President Bush on boarder policy
WTO/NAFTA effects on Mexico
Mexican independence
Constitution of 1917 -- similarities & differences with US Constitution
President and Generals of Mexico till mid-20th century
Mexican legislature -- format and characteristics
Political Parties -- PAN,PRI,PRD place on political spectrum
Sexenio presidency
Federal Election Commission
Political Efficacy in Mexico
Technicos
Politicos
Mestizos
patron-client relations
corruption
corporatist structure
Para-statal sector
PEMEX
Mexico's policy of structural adjustment under Fox/Calderon
Economy/Immigration as a poltical issue
Narco War as a political issue...legitimacy of the state
Mexican trade with U.S./U.S. trade with Mexico
Mexican civil service
Mexican political culture
Mexico by comparitive economic sectors
Camarillas
Political cleavages in Mexico
Judicial Review in Mexico?
Mexicans living in the U.S. and the effects on both countries
Presidente Calderon on private investment of state oil/electricity

Presidential Bracketology

It’s bracket time boys and girls, and here is your opportunity to show your stuff by telling us who you think is the best.

Washington or Cleveland; Roosevelt or Lincoln?

Espn.com is not going to help you predict bracket busters in this contest, but a history book might.

Before you predict that your Final Four is going to resemble Mount Rushmore, remember that Washington and Jefferson are in the same regional and that Mount Rushmore doesn’t include FDR or Reagan.

Link here: 74.220.207.112/~mrreedne/usva/projects/brackets/bracket.htm to Jeffrey Reed's website and follow the directions, dividing the class into four brackets. Each take a bracket, print it and fill it out. We'll go over the Madness on Monday.

The directions:

*Divide your class into four groups. Assign each group one of the four bracket divisions.
*Each group must research the presidents listed inside their division.
A focus should be on the accomplishments and failures of each president.
*For each matchup the group argues which of the two presidents was "greater."
This continues until all four groups have chosen the "greatest" president from their division.
*Each group briefly reviews their decisions to the class as a whole and then announces which president they selected as their winner.
*The entire class then debates the merits of the four division champions and reaches consensus on how the four should be ranked.

Note
*Do not discourage "upsets". Explain to your students that the seeds are in place according to numerous surveys of historians, and that so long as their choices are based on historical information they can proceed as they see fit. Of course, they will be pitting their winner against three others, so they want to come up with the president who in their minds is the strongest.

What's a failed state?

Two articles in the current issue of Foreign Policy present the question: Are Russia and Mexico on the verge of becoming failed states?

Half the class will read the first article:

Reversal of Fortune

"Vladimir Putin’s social contract has been premised on an authoritarian state delivering rising incomes and resurgent power. But the economic crisis is unraveling all that. And what comes next in Russia might be even worse...

"Today’s Russia is not the Soviet Union, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is not Joseph Stalin. But just as historians view 1929 as the end of the revolutionary period of Soviet history, scholars will (and already do) define Putin’s rule as a restoration that followed a revolution. Restoration—of lost geopolitical influence, of Soviet symbols, of fear, of even Stalin’s reputation—has been the main narrative of the past decade. But as history shows, periods of restoration do not restore the old order; they create new threats. This is what Russia is today—a new, much more nationalistic and aggressive country that bears as much (or as little) resemblance to the Soviet Union as it does to the free and colorful, though poor and chaotic, Russia of the 1990s...

"Confidence in the rule of a wealthy, heavy-handed Russian state has been shaken, and it is now a real possibility that the global economic crisis, as it persists and even intensifies, could cause Putin’s social contract to unravel. What is not clear, however, is what would take its place—and whether it would be any improvement. The nationalist passions and paranoia that Putin has stirred up have poisoned Russian society in lasting ways. Now, 2009 could be a new “Great Break” [1929] for Russia, but the result might just be a country in upheaval—broken..."
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Half will read the second:

State of War

"Mexico’s hillbilly drug smugglers have morphed into a raging insurgency. Violence claimed more lives there last year alone than all the Americans killed in the war in Iraq. And there’s no end in sight...

"Mexico’s surge in gang violence has been accompanied by a similar spike in kidnapping...

"All of this is taking a toll on Mexicans who had been insulated from the country’s drug violence. Elites are retreating to bunkered lives behind video cameras and security gates. Others are fleeing for places like San Antonio and McAllen, Texas...

"Mexico’s gangs had the means and motive to create upheaval, and in Mexico’s failure to reform into a modern state, especially at local levels, the cartels found their opportunity. Mexico has traditionally starved its cities. They have weak taxing power. Their mayors can’t be reelected. Constant turnover breeds incompetence, improvisation, and corruption. Local cops are poorly paid, trained, and equipped...

"In addition to fighting each other, the cartels are now increasingly fighting the Mexican state as well, and the killing shows no sign of slowing. The Mexican Army is outgunned, even with U.S. support..."

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Get into groups to explain to their classmates what they've read. Defend or contradict the failed state prognosis. Ask them to come to some agreements.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4350

Russian Political-Economic Protest

The political adage, "It's the Economy, Stupid," may also be true in Russia. Did this protest take the government by surprise? Did the government decide to allow it for some reason? Or does this help provide an explanation for coming policy changes?

The BBC reports on this Vladivostok uprising late last month. Hit the headlines to link you to the stories. The BBC has film of the protest.

Thousands protest in Russian east

"Several thousand people have held a rally in Russia's Far East, demanding the government resign over the country's growing economic problems.

"The protesters in Vladivostok blamed Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's cabinet for mismanaging the economy and suppressing political dissent.

"The rally - which passed off peacefully - was the first in a series of protests expected in Russia on Saturday...

"Such protests were unthinkable just a few months ago as the economy boomed with record high oil prices and as the Kremlin tightened its grip over almost all aspects of society, the BBC's Richard Galpin in Moscow says...

"The anti-government demonstration in Vladivostok was called by the Communist Party...

"In a separate demonstration in Vladivostock, thousands of supporters of the ruling United Russia held a rally in support of the government."

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Russian stability threatened by anger over economy

"The financial crisis is threatening to destabilise Russia amid unprecedented calls for the resignation of Vladimir Putin and his government...

"According to opinion polls, Mr Putin remains popular, enjoying an approval rating of 83 per cent. Even now, with the economy under strain, there is no sign of a challenger, who could usurp his place in the heart of most Russians...

"Seeking to show his affection among the people remained undimmed, Mr Putin's ruling party is forcing factory workers in to holding public rallies of loyalty this week that will proclaim the prime minister's wisdom and munificence..."

EU ecomonic debate

While we have focused on the Euro debate through a British economic lens, the New York Times article on the problems of the euro offers a good chance to look at another aspect of the EU to discuss, debate, and analyze.

Once a Boon, Euro Now Burdens Some Nations

"The adoption of the euro just a decade ago was meant to pull Europe together economically and politically, ending the sometimes furious battles over who could devalue their currency the fastest and beggar their neighbor.

"For the Continent, the currency signaled the potential to one day rival the United States. For its poorer countries, winning admission to the euro zone was a point of pride, showing that they had tamed their budget deficits and set their financial houses in order.

"Now, in the middle of the worst economic downturn since the euro’s birth, a new view is emerging — especially as the creditworthiness of Greece, Spain and Portugal, one after the other, has been downgraded. The view is that the balm of euro membership allowed these countries to gloss over serious economic problems that have now roared to the fore...

"While sharing a currency with some of the mightiest economies in the world helped Europe’s poorer nations share in the wealth, a boon during boom times, in hard times the rules of membership are keeping them from doing what countries normally do to ride out economic storms, including enormous spending.

"So Germany, France and the Scandinavian countries are mounting billion-dollar stimulus plans and erecting fences to protect their banks. But the peripheral economies are being left to twist in the market winds.

"With the need for stimulus to deal with the severe downturn, these countries find themselves caught in an awful policy bind: credit is available, but only at punitive rates; and further borrowing not only breaks with European Commission dictates but raises broader questions about their solvency.

"Bond and currency speculators have demonstrated that they intend to punish countries with dubious economic prospects, just as they have punished banks...

"Few experts expect Greece or the other Mediterranean countries to run out of money or leave the euro. But the widening gap between the interest rate that Greece and larger economies like Germany have to pay to borrow reveals the first cracks in what so far has been a fairly solid fortress Europe..."

The Pint: A battle EU importers couldn't win

A blurb from last year, re-run to teach about the European Union and its struggles when its bureaucratic rules, backed up by legislation from the European Parliament, challenge national sovereignty, sparks fly. What's a sovereign nation to do?

In this, the latest example involving the EU and its members, the EU bureaucrats, using their wide range of discretion, seem to have backed down. The defenders of pints, miles, and pounds (as weight, not money) are not entirely satisfied. By the way, those of us not in the UK (or the Republic o Ireland) might not understand that the pint is the most important of these traditional measures.

EU gives up on 'metric Britain'

The European Union is set to confirm it has abandoned what became one of its most unpopular policies among many British people."

It is proposing to allow the UK to continue using pounds, miles and pints as units of measurement indefinitely..."Under the plans which have now been scrapped, even displaying the price of fruit and vegetables in pounds and ounces would have become grounds for a criminal prosecution."The decision to back down was made by Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen... 'I want to bring to an end a bitter, bitter battle that has lasted for decades and which in my view is completely pointless. We're bringing this battle to an end.'..."John Gardner, director of the pro-imperial British Weights and Measures Association, said: 'If a trader tries to conduct his business in just imperial measurements that will be illegal.'"

The UK Metric Association said the statement does not mean that traders can go back to weighing and pricing in imperial measures, and it will be 'business as usual'..."

Ken Wedding on his blog, Teaching Comparative Govenment and Politics, http://compgovpol.blogspot.com goes back on some Minnesota history when metric rationalists seemed to have been gained the upper hand and even in the US people saw km/hr speed limit signs, learned that a dime (part of a metric system) weighed about a gram, and that a meter was about a yard long.

In 1977, the NCAA sanctioned a Division III metric football game between Carleton and St. Olaf Colleges here in Northfield, Minnesota. But the enthusiasm for imposing metric (even in Europe)uniformity may be waning.

Yet another victim on nationalistic pride. The Brits and Irish will raise a pint to that.

National Snow Day

Remember our analysis of federalism in time of crisis? Well, what of a unitary government stopped cold -- by four inches of snow.

The CBC (part of the British commonwealth) coverage pokes fun here of the worst snowstorm in 18 years in that shut London down on Monday.

"There are no buses running in the entire city, while 10 out of the 11 Underground lines are shut down.

"London Mayor Boris Johnson said the buses were pulled from service because the vehicles would become a "lethal weapon" if they skidded.

The city's ambulance services have said they will only respond in life-threatening cases."

The Cold War is over, but reading this report, Vladimir Putin would probably claim victory over the blocked-in Brits.

"We're not in Russia here," said Guy Pitt, a Transport for London spokesman. "We don't have an infrastructure built for constant snow."

Mayor Johnson said many of the city's authorities simply didn't have enough snow plows to deal with the downfall. In the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, the local authority said it had no plows and only two machines to salt roads.

Johnson, who commutes by bicycle, said even he'd suffered a wobble on the glassy stretches of roads around the capital.

Lawmakers who sit on London's assembly said they have called transport officials to a meeting at the capital's City Hall next week to explain whether more could have been done to prevent disruption.

David Frost, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said few people raised in the freezing British winters of the 1960s and 1970s could understand the failure to prepare, despite days of warning that heavy snow was likely.

"It was hardly a surprise when we pulled back the curtains yesterday morning," Frost told The Associated Press. "But, I think that there is a complacency because we're told that we'll have steadily rising temperatures as a result of climate change."

"Those in authority need to be more open to the fact that we'll still get heavy snow falls, too," he said.

Many Londoners noted that bus services had continued through World War II and paused only for about an hour during the city's 2005 terrorist attack, when four suicide bombers killed 52 commuters on the transit network.

The news of a day off wasn't being greeted entirely with gloom, she said, as children who would otherwise be in school flocked to the parks to play in the snow.

"They haven't really had that opportunity," Duarte said. "In general, there's quite a good feeling."

(From the CBC & AP)