Murder by organized crime, the presumed culprit, is the stuff of daily news here since the drug war was launched in late 2006. But the massacre of women and children, members of a powerful and well-known agribusiness family, in a remote area on the border of Chihuahua and Sonora where they have lived for a century, on the surface makes no sense. A crime this notorious, involving US citizens, brings down major binational heat on a drug cartel, something they normally try to avoid. More

It would be hard to point to a country whose president has more democratic legitimacy than Evo Morales. Nobody can seriously dispute that he won the first round of the presidential election on October 20 by a landslide. He received 47% of the vote in an election with 88% turnout, as most polls predicted. That doubles the percentage of the eligible vote that US presidents generally receive. I’ll say a bit more about that below, but it’s crucial to note that he was elected to his present term (which does not expire until January) with 61% of the vote in an election with roughly the same turnout. More

Trump’s primary defense as argued by his tools in Congress and through his own tweets seems to be “I know I am but what are you?” He isn’t denying his misdeeds and abuses of power, just arguing that he can do whatever he wants because he’s president and that every other politician does the same thing so what’s the problem? It’s not really much of a defense, but in the puerile world that is US politics and especially Trumpist politics, he could get away with it. Any explanation that Trump demanded what he did from Zelensky is because he is a businessman only serves to verify my understanding of Trump’s businesses—that they are essentially criminal enterprises depending on lies, intimidation, and fraud. More