Drug violence spills into Mexico's election campaigns, 6 candidates murdered in 2 weeks

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TODAY:

• In Mexico, 88 candidates for office have been murdered since last fall — six of them in the past two weeks — as violence spills over into the election campaign ahead of the July 1 vote
• Authorities on Hawaii's Big Island are warning that the Kilauea volcano is entering a dangerous new phase
• Ireland's upcoming referendum on abortion rights is fast becoming an international cyber tug-of-war

Power from the barrel of a gun

Democracy is under siege in Mexico, as the country's long-running drug violence spills over into its national election campaign.

At least 88 candidates for office have been murdered since last fall — six of them in the past two weeks.

The latest victim, Abel Montufar Mendoza, was a local mayor running for seat in state legislature in Guerrero. He was found dead in his car in the city of Ciudad Altamirano on Tuesday, pantless and riddled with gunshot wounds.

But the brutal drug cartels that control so much of Mexican life are unwilling to leave the choice to voters, and have instead been selecting the losers via bullets. Thereby ensuring that whoever takes power won't dare to interfere with business.

Last year was the most violent in Mexican history, with 29,168 recorded murders, a 27 per cent increase from 2017.

The beginning of 2018 has been trending even worse, with 7,667 killings by the end of March — an average of 85 per day.

The battles have even spread into previously safe tourist areas like Cancun, with 14 people gunned down in the space of 36 hours in early April.

Few people feel secure. A recent survey by Mexico's national statistics agency found that 77 per cent of urban residents admit to feeling unsafe in their homes.

Two-thirds of respondents said that they had witnessed assaults or robberies, and 40 per cent said they have frequently heard gunfire.

Efforts by the government — aided by the United States — to stamp out the cartels have proven fruitless, with Mexico having endured more than 200,000 homicides since the army was first put into the streets in 2006.

And it doesn't seem to matter who is in charge. As of the end of March, there had been 104,583 reported homicide cases during the term of President Enrique Peña Nieto, just slightly more than the 102,859 under his predecessor Felipe Calderon.

The debate over public safety turned a corner earlier this week, when Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the frontrunner to become Mexico's next president, said he is willing to go a different route if elected.

ALMO, as he is known, mused about asking international organizations to help Mexico fight drug violence and corruption, and instituting a South-African style peace and reconciliation process.

If elected, López Obrador is promising to remove Mexico's Army from the drug fight. He even pitched the idea of an amnesty for traffickers — which was not particularly well-received.

Still, the leftist former mayor of Mexico City remains the man to beat.

A poll published this week gives AMLO 42 per cent support, nine points ahead of his nearest rival, the conservative Ricardo Anaya. Jose Antonio Meade, who is carrying the banner of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), is in third place with 19 per cent support.

An explosive danger in paradise

Authorities on Hawaii's Big Island are warning that the Kilauea volcano is entering a dangerous, new phase — one that could see an explosive eruption in the coming weeks.

Lava flows from a four-kilometre-long series of fissures have already destroyed 26 homes and 10 other structures over the past week.

The danger is neatly summarized in this graphic from the U.S. Geological Survey.

A similar lava-lake drop in 1924 touched off a major eruption at Kilauea that killed one person and sent rocks and dust into the air for 17 straight days.  

Kilauea is by far the deadliest volcano in the United States, responsible for more than half of the 708 eruption-related deaths recorded since 1784.

But as this Washington Post graphic shows, steam-driven flying rocks aren't the biggest danger, but rather pyroclastic density currents — the choking clouds of hot gas and ash that follow the blast.

And a more pressing danger for area residents might be only tangentially related.

Last night, Hawaii Gov. David Ige warned about a "very, very hazardous" situation at the nearby Puna Geothermal Venture plant, where 190,000 litres of the highly flammable gas pentane are stored. Workers are busy trying to move it off-site, in case a lava vent opens up and touches off an explosion.

But it can be every bit as deadly as a volcano. In 1956, a blaze at a North Texas refinery touched off a pentane blast that killed 19 firefighters.

And it occasionally kills in home settings, too.

A 2011 explosion and fire that killed two residents of a Woodstock, Ont., apartment building was traced back to pentane gas in a laundry room — released by someone putting plastic in a clothes dryer.

Ireland referendum tug-of-war

Ireland's upcoming referendum on abortion rights is fast becoming an international cyber tug-of-war.

Yesterday, Google announced that it will halt all advertising related to the May 25 vote on whether or not to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the country's constitution, which recognizes the "equal right to life of the mother and the unborn."

The company said it was concerned that ads on its platforms like YouTube might be undermining its global efforts to protect "election integrity."

Passed in a divisive 1983 vote, the Eighth Amendment has effectively banned abortions in all but the most medically threatening situations, with 25 performed at Irish hospitals in 2016.

An opinion poll released earlier this week suggests that the Yes campaign to do away with the restrictions is in the lead with 45 per cent, versus 34 per cent for the No side. It indicated that 18 per cent of voters remain undecided.  

It's the battle to sway those who remain on the fence that concerns the internet giants and many Irish politicians, amid growing calls for a law to regulate online election ads.

Many of the ads have been purchased by American-based pro-life organizations, with some reports suggesting that "hundreds of U.S. religious and political groups" have been involved in the Irish campaign.

There are also fears that data is being harvested for a further "microtargeting" push ahead of the vote.

A coalition of No groups issued a statement denouncing the moves.

"This decision is not about 'concerns about the integrity of elections,'" it read. "It is about concerns the No side will win … Online was the only platform available to the No campaign to speak to voters directly. That platform is now being undermined, in order to prevent the public from hearing the message of one side."

Quote of the moment

"We will not let Iran turn Syria into a forward base against Israel. This is the policy, a very, very clear policy, and we're acting according to this policy … They need to remember this arrogance of theirs. If we get rain, they'll get a flood. I hope that we ended this chapter and that everyone understood."

- Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman, speaking at an annual security conference north of Tel Aviv, about Thursday's Israeli military strikes on Iran's military installations in Syria. Israel says the strikes were in response to an Iranian rocket barrage on Israeli positions in the occupied Golan Heights.

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Today in history

May 10, 1959: The struggle for Berlin

"So long as the West is here, Berlin has the stamina for survival," says reporter Michael Maclear. Although the nearly $1 billion in financial aid that the U.S. and West Germany had provided to the city since the end of the war surely helped too. In the spring of 1959, the four occupying powers were heading to a big conference in Geneva to discuss the future of the divided city. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev wanted the West out, and an end to the flow of refugees fleeing the East. Britain, France and the U.S. refused to budge, and two years later, construction began on the wall.

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