Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Mexico was second deadliest country in the world in 2016 with 23,000 killed. The news received few headlines-CNN (Mexico would have died without the option of sending one fifth of its population to the US-Spengler, June 2013)

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"Mexico would have died...without the option to send its rural poor--fully one-fifth of its population--to the United States."... 6/17/2013, "Syria and Egypt can't be fixed," by Spengler, Asia Times
 
5/9/17, "Mexico was second deadliest country in 2016," CNN, Elizabeth Roberts

"It was the second deadliest conflict in the world last year, but it hardly registered in the international headlines.

As Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan dominated the news agenda, Mexico's drug wars claimed 23,000 lives during 2016-- second only to Syria, where 50,000 people died as a result of the civil war. 

"This is all the more surprising, considering that the conflict deaths [in Mexico] are nearly all attributable to small arms," said John Chipman, chief executive and director-general of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which issued its annual survey of armed conflict on Tuesday. 

"The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan claimed 17,000 and 16,000 lives respectively in 2016, although in lethality they were surpassed by conflicts in Mexico and Central America, which have received much less attention from the media and the international community," said Anastasia Voronkova, the editor of the survey.

In comparison, there were 17,000 conflict deaths in Mexico in 2015 and 15,000 in 2014 according to the IISS....

Not on News Agenda

Jacob Parakilas, assistant head of the US and the Americas Programme at London-based think tank Chatham House, said part of the reason for the relative lack of attention paid to Mexico in the international media is "it's not a war in the political sense of the word. The participants largely don't have a political objective. They're not trying to create a breakaway state. It doesn't come with the same visuals. There are no air strikes....

"And Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a journalist. They are intentionally targeted in Mexico, which puts a dampener on the ability to report on this.""...





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