Related: Mexicans Protest CIA Drug Running Operation
The Hard-Working Mexican Immigrant
Mexican Drug Gangs Worse Than "Al-CIA-Duh"
Drug Money Saving Banks
Also see: Einstein, insanity and the war on drugs
"Mexico drug violence spills over into US; Spike in killings, kidnappings" By Alicia A. Caldwell, Associated Press | February 10, 2009
Just as government officials had feared, the drug violence raging in Mexico is spilling over into the United States.
What BETTER WAY to promote a NORTH AMERICAN UNION, huh?
US authorities are reporting a spike in killings, kidnappings, and home invasions connected to Mexico's murderous cartels. And to some policymakers' surprise, much of the violence is happening not in towns along the border, where it was assumed the bloodshed would spread, but a considerable distance away, in places such as Phoenix and Atlanta.
Investigators fear the violence could erupt elsewhere around the country because the Mexican cartels are believed to have set up drug-dealing operations all over the United States, in such far-flung places as Anchorage; Boston; and Sioux Falls, S.D.
With CIA HELP!!!!
"The violence follows the drugs," said David Cuthbertson, agent in charge of El Paso's FBI office. The violence takes many forms: Drug customers who owe money are kidnapped until they pay up. Cartel employees who don't deliver the goods or turn over the profits are disciplined through beatings, kidnappings or worse.
So far, the violence is nowhere near as grisly as the mayhem in Mexico, which has witnessed beheadings, assassinations of police officers and soldiers, and mass killings in which the bodies were arranged to send a message. But law enforcement officials worry the violence on this side could escalate.
And CUI BONO? WHO BENEFITS from DRUG PROHIBITION anyway?
See: The Ron Paul Platform: Personal Freedom
"They are capable of doing about anything," said Rusty Payne, a Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman in Washington. "When you are willing to chop heads off, put them in an ice chest and drop them off at a police precinct, or roll a head into a disco, put beheadings on YouTube as a warning," very little is off-limits.
In an apartment near Birmingham, Ala., police found five men with their throats slit in August. They had apparently been tortured with electric shocks before being killed in a murder-for-hire orchestrated by a Mexican drug organization over a drug debt of about $400,000.
In Phoenix, 150 miles north of the Mexican border, police have reported a sharp increase in kidnappings and home invasions, with about 350 each year for the last two years, and say the majority were committed at the behest of the Mexican drug gangs.
Authorities in Atlanta are also seeing an increase in drug-related kidnappings tied to Mexican cartels. Estimates of how many such crimes are being committed are hard to come by because many victims are connected to the cartels and unwilling to go to the police, said Rodney G. Benson, a DEA agent in charge in Atlanta.
Agents said they have rarely seen such brutality in the United States since the "Miami Vice" years of the 1980s, when Colombian cartels had the corner on the cocaine market in Florida.
Related: Covering Up the CIA'S Colombian Drug Ring
Last summer, Atlanta-area police found a Dominican man who had been beaten, bound, gagged, and chained to a wall in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood in Lilburn, Ga. The Rhode Island resident owed $300,000 to Mexico's Gulf Cartel, Benson said.
State and federal governments have sent millions of dollars to local law enforcement along the Mexican border to help fend off spillover drug crime. But investigators believe Arizona and Atlanta are seeing the worst of the violence because they are major drug distribution hubs thanks to their webs of interstate highways.--more--"
Yeah, they can spy on our e-mails and phone calls but they can't find these guys.
Whatever.
"Kidnappings, shootout kill 21 in Mexico" by ASSOCIATED PRESS | February 11, 2009
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - A drug gang kidnapped and killed six people yesterday, prompting gun battles with soldiers that left 15 others dead.
The violence started when gunmen kidnapped nine suspected members of a rival drug gang in Villa Ahumada and executed six of them along the PanAmerican highway outside of the town, 80 miles south of El Paso, Texas, said Enrique Torres, spokesman for a joint military-police operation in Chihuahua state.
Assailants released three of the men, although their whereabouts was not immediately known, Torres said. Soldiers caught up with the gunmen and a series of shootouts ensued, leaving 14 alleged gunmen and one soldier dead, Torres said.
Mexico has been besieged by drug violence amid a two-year government crackdown. Villa Ahumada, a town of 1,500 people, was virtually taken over by drug gangs last year when they killed two police chiefs.--more--"
"Gunmen kill 12 in Mexico; 5 are children" by Associated Press | February 16, 2009
TABASCO, Mexico - Gunmen have killed a state police officer and 10 members of his family, including five children, authorities said yesterday.
A street vendor was also killed in front of the house of state police officer Carlos Reyes late Saturday, said Tabasco deputy prosecutor Alex Alvarez. Among the five children killed was a 2-year-old boy.
"It is confirmed that [the assailants] wanted to kill the state police officer but they killed his whole family," Alvarez said.
Alvarez said three other people were wounded the attack in the town of Monte Largo, near Mexico's border with Guatemala. Police hadn't determined a motive for the attack but Alvarez said Reyes directed a car chase and raids on two homes on Wednesday that led to the death of three suspected gang members and the arrest of seven others.
In Mexico City, authorities on Saturday found the decomposing bodies of two women in the trunk of a car that had been abandoned for at least a week, the Reforma newspaper reported. A city investigator told the newspaper that the women had been decapitated.
--more--"And just a thought as you continue reading.
"Does the government and main stream media ever lie? If you can think of one instance that they do, and I'm sure you can, then ask yourself why we should believe anything they say" --source
"Mexico police chief quits amid threats" by Associated Press | February 21, 2009
CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico - Ciudad Juárez's police chief stepped down yesterday after criminal gangs made a chilling demand: Resign or we will kill more local officials.
Public Safety Secretary Roberto Orduna announced he was leaving his post only hours after gunmen killed a police officer and a jail guard and left signs on their bodies saying they had fulfilled a promise made Wednesday to slay at least one officer every 48 hours until Orduna quit.
The slayings were a grim sign that criminal gangs are determined to control the police force of the biggest Mexican border city, with a population of 1.3 million people across from El Paso.
Mayor José Reyes insisted earlier yesterday the city would not back down.
"We will not allow the control of the police force to fall in the hands of criminal gangs," he said.
But Orduna said he didn't want to endanger more officers.
"We can't allow men who work defending our citizens to continue to lose their lives," he said. "That is why I am presenting my permanent resignation."
The resignation was effective immediately. Authorities said an interim chief would be named later yesterday, and a permanent replacement would be found in the coming weeks.
A retired army major, Orduna took over as chief in May after former Public Safety Secretary Guillermo Prieto resigned and fled to El Paso following the slaying of his operations director.--more--"
And how do you get to an NAU? Simply DECLARE MEXICO a FAILED STATE -- one that must be TAKEN OVER or ABSORBED for its OWN SAKE and SAFETY, right?
"Mexico leader rejects label of 'failed state'; Calderon says drug cartels will be defeated" by Traci Carl, Associated Press | February 27, 2009
MEXICO CITY - President Felipe Calderón yesterday rejected US concerns that Mexico is losing control of its territory to drug cartels and allowing violence to spiral out of control.
They have OIL, too, don't they?
Calderón said Mexico is making progress in its war against the cartels.... The "failed state" concern has been a major topic of discussion since the US military raised it in a Nov. 25 report on potential global security risks. The report singled out Mexico and Pakistan as countries whose governments are at risk of a "rapid and sudden collapse."
That's a VERY INTERESTING COMBINATION, isn't it?
Earlier yesterday, federal Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said that more than 1,000 people have been killed in drug violence in the first eight weeks of this year. He said that 6,290 people were killed last year....
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Medina Mora applauded cross-border efforts that the US Drug Enforcement Administration said resulted in the arrests of 755 Sinaloa cartel members this week and seizure of $59 million in criminal proceeds in the United States. But both the president and his top prosecutor want the United States to do more. Calderón wants a corruption purge to eliminate US customs and border guards he said allow drugs to pass into US territory.
Medina Mora would like more US prosecutions of people who reinforce the cartels by sending illegal weapons and drug profits south....
Yeah, I WONDER WHO that could be.
Medina Mora said the cartels are "melting down" under pressure from turf wars and the national crackdown, but he doesn't expect Mexico to stop them altogether. The goal is to make smuggling so difficult that they no longer use Mexico as their conduit to the United States....
Even as he spoke, five more suspected drug killings were announced by authorities in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero. The men were shot Wednesday night....
--more--"
So HOW LONG until an AMERICAN gets caught up in the violence and killed?
PHOENIX - The State Department and universities around the country are warning college students headed to Mexico for spring break of a surge in drug-related killings and mayhem south of the border.
"We're not necessarily telling students not to go, but we're going to certainly alert them," said Tom Dougan, vice president for student affairs at the University of Rhode Island. "There have been Americans kidnapped, and if you go you need to be very aware and very alert to this fact."
More than 100,000 high school- and college-age Americans travel to Mexican resort areas during spring break each year. Much of the drug violence is happening in border towns, and tourists have generally not been targeted, though there have been killings in Acapulco and Cancun, two locales frequented by visitors that are located well away from the border.
The University of Arizona in Tucson is urging its approximately 37,000 students not to go to Mexico. Other universities - in the Southwest and far beyond, including Penn State, Notre Dame, the University of Colorado, and the University at Buffalo - said they would call students' attention to the travel warning issued Feb. 20 by the State Department.
Canceling the hedonistic spring break worship of immorality and alcohol?
Good!!!!
The State Department stopped short of warning students not to go to Mexico, but advised them to avoid areas of prostitution and drug-dealing and take other common-sense precautions....
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Mexico's drug cartels are waging a bloody fight among themselves for smuggling routes and against government forces, carrying out massacres and dumping beheaded bodies in the streets. More than 6,000 people were killed in drug violence in Mexico last year.
But Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora of Mexico said in an interview that "There is no major risk for students coming into Mexico in general terms. It is always important to advise the youngsters to behave."
Like this is all somehow their fault? Pffffttt!
Now I say DON'T GO DOWN there so this s****er insulter doesn't get any $$$$!
Despite the bloodshed, the number of foreign tourists visiting Mexico surged to 23 million in 2008, up 5.9 percent from the year before, spurred in part by the tumbling value of the peso against the dollar, according to the country's Tourism Department....
--more--"
Yeah, KEEP YOUR DOLLARS at HOME since the Mexicans thinks the YOUNGSTERS MISBEHAVING are causing the problems!!
If it is such an issue, sir, how about installing a PROHIBITION REGIME!!
I'm sure our kids could go some other place to get drunk.
