Three Mexican journalists—each a woman who has spent years living with the real possibility that the death threats she regularly receives will one day result in a slow, gruesome death—heroically continue to report the truth about the drug war in their country that no mainstream American journalist has the balls to report about the drug war in ours:

“Mexico’s war on drugs is one big lie.”

Carmen Aristegui (above,left) Lydia Cacho (above, center) and Anabel Hernández(above, right) report Mexico’s drug lords and the Mexican government are two sides of the same coin. Each has more courage in her little finger than do hundreds of toadies, lapdogs, and sniveling careerists in the U.S. mindlessly passing along press releases fed to them by government handlers as news.

Que es mas macho?

Even as the U.S. mainstream media continues to parrot the latest “still winning hearts and minds” banalities from DEA spokesmen peddling the longest and costliest war (40 years at $40 billion per year) America has ever fought, a handful of brave Mexican journalists have been reporting the convergence between drug cartels, assisted by that country’s leading industrialists, and their partners at giant U.S. and UK “too big to fail” banks.

It should go without saying—but does not—that the same can be said for the U.S.

Paging Gary Webb, white courtesy telephone

When border guards in Nicaragua busted 18 Mexicans—17 men and one woman, wearing Televisa t-shirts and traveling in six satellite TV vans emblazoned with the Televisa logo while carrying press credentials from the network— it became clear some powerful entity was running a drug and money-laundering service.

In the weeks following the big bust, Mexican journalist Carmen Aristegui developed information that the Televisa employees had been running their drug and money laundering pipeline up and down the length of Central America for five years. Without anyone noticing.

Why it was invisible quickly became obvious. After the scandal broke Mexican reporters were bullied—thank god just in print—to leave the Narco-Televisa scandal alone. Reporting anything clearly violated the impunity Mexican oligarchs have come to believe is their due.

Controversy was raging over the refusal of Mexico’s Attorney General to investigate connections between the 18 Mexican Televisa employees, busted for carrying $9.2 million in drug money, and their bosses at Latin America’s largest TV network, including owner Emilio Azcarraga, the power behind the throne of Mexico’s new President Enrique Peña Nieto.

Reporter Carmen Aristegui stood accused of being a “manipulative freak” who is “sickly obsessed.” She has a “communication strategy Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels would have loved.”

In the columns of unfriendly Mexican journalists, she was said to share (with Proceso magazine) a “fixation.” She suffered from a “Fatal Obsession.” She engaged in “pure unsubstantiated sensationalism,” hoping that by “repeating a lie a certain number of times it would become the truth.”

Her reporting on the “Cocaine Caravan” scandal was called “an incredible waste of resources, both financial and human.” “Yet Aristegui persists in disguising her obsession with famous phrases like ‘the public interest’ and ‘questions that deserve answers.’”

Pooh-poohing the deep doo-doo

Not to be outdone, the Western World’s mainstream media jumped in with both feet. Not to investigate. To pooh-pooh the story.

A US reporter stationed in Mexico City called it—while providing no evidence to back the claim—the “fake journalists” scandal. FOX NEWS said the 18 Mexicans comprised a “phony news crew.” Reuters reported the Mexicans were merely “posing as journalists.”

Not to be outdone, the Associated Press used the incident to cast a gimlet eye on the post-Sandinista government of Nicaragua.

“Big cash seizure puts light on Nicaragua drug role” read the headline over the AP account. The seizure “pulled back the curtain on Nicaragua’s role as a (drug) conduit” said London’s Telegraph.

Reporter Tim Johnson, stationed in Mexico City for McClatchy Newspapers, allowed that the Nicaragua drug case was “vexing Televisa.”

“Pastor” Wayne Booth was also Chairman of the Endowment Fund at Falwell’s Liberty University, meaning he’s good at raising money. This was good, because while Falwell was still alive—as we saw in stories of Wally Hilliard’s million dollar loan to him— Jerry always needed money.