Quote
http://translate.google.com.mx/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.eluniversal.com.mx%2Fnotas%2F639189.html&sl=es&tl=en&hl=es&ie=UTF-8
Because the President did a decree to dissolve LyFC (Electricity and power of the mid country) in this most important city of Mexico, we have the one and only inter-state highway blockaded, there have been shootouts between police and protesters, some other place protesters ran over some policemen, my school was shut down, and so was the UNAM (national autonomous university of mexico).
Besides the chaos of today, has some promise of extending itself longer.
What the fuck? He just shut the power off?
This got dissolved:
http://translate.google.com.mx/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fes.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FLYFC&sl=es&tl=en&hl=es&ie=UTF-8
LyFC was a state-run electric company which got dissolved and assimilated by CFE (Federal Electric Commission).
There seems to be valid reasons for it not existing anymore, but my point is that all over the country theres manifestations and stuff, there were about a million people at least protesting just here in the capitol.
The telephone sindicate is going along with them too, and im not sure who else.
http://endrtimes.blogspot.com/2009/10/mexico-shuts-down-state-run-power.html
interesting times we live in.
Isnt this pretty much the natural state of play in Mexico, though? I'm thinking the drug wars, Oaxaca, Chiapas etc? I'm sure there are parts of the country that are very relaxed and peaceful, but all I ever seem to read about is either cartels or some sort of grass-roots protestors creating no-go areas, and the Mexican state trying (with varying degrees of success) to get them back.
The followup seems to be getting rid of federal support for "food crops". You know, those that arent mad profitable but are for eating?
Well yes, it is the typical crap but this one is a bit more significant than the usual. And i try to not get into the "oh this is normal business" mentality, even do i know theres not much to be done.
It's the "usual": "in this times of crisis we should move farther away from protectionist policies" and "we're gonna cut down on spending/close institutions that don't make us roll around any more currency than we already have"
That's one thing I've always admired about Mexico.
They are shameless about being all about the bottom line.
Quote from: JohNyx on November 15, 2009, 01:56:41 AMWell yes, it is the typical crap but this one is a bit more significant than the usual. And i try to not get into the "oh this is normal business" mentality, even do i know theres not much to be done.
TITCM.
once you start thinking the pres disconnecting the power is
normal, something goes wrong, and you might stop getting real angry about it.
LOL omg, the metro fare is going up 200-250%...
the electricians are gonna strike again and shut down the city...
the 10,000,000 population delegation (Iztapalapa) is falling apart and they want to destitute the governor, but he refuses...
electricity, water and gas is going up 150%...
The beat goes on on on
Looks like the American Dream is trying to share itself with our southern neighbors.
Quote from: JohNyx on December 02, 2009, 12:17:31 AM
LOL omg, the metro fare is going up 200-250%...
the electricians are gonna strike again and shut down the city...
the 10,000,000 population delegation (Iztapalapa) is falling apart and they want to destitute the governor, but he refuses...
electricity, water and gas is going up 150%...
The beat goes on on on
Welcome to the future, Tomorrow Person.
why are you guys so worried...the seeds of new romes fall have already been planted...like in the fifties.
as was said by some guy, this too shall pass...just like a kidney stone.
Quote from: indigoblade on December 03, 2009, 04:56:27 AM
why are you guys so worried...the seeds of new romes fall have already been planted...like in the fifties.
as was said by some guy, this too shall pass...just like a kidney stone.
Oh right, we should be celebrating :roll:
Fuck you
Quote from: indigoblade on December 03, 2009, 04:56:27 AM
why are you guys so worried...the seeds of new romes fall have already been planted...like in the fifties.
as was said by some guy, this too shall pass...just like a kidney stone.
Har. You don't know Mexico real well, do you? It's all slippery slope. I don't blame JohNyx for his "Fuck you" at all. He has to live there and put up with that bullshit.
Most families live on a $461-ish salary each month.
Im sure everyone in the USA pays tons of more rent, but other than that i dont think prices vary for things, technology might even be cheaper, for most of it here is imported.
Quotehttp://www.eluniversal.com.mx/primera/34143.html (http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/primera/34143.html)
The decapitaded bodies of two brothers, thrown from a plane in a locality at the south of Sonora, and the death, 2 hours later of Arturo Beltràn Leyva and 6 of his guards, in a department complex of Cuernavaca, became the most violent day, with a total of 64 homicides.
The war on organized crime, declared by Felipe Calderòn came up mid february with 15,507 victims, according to state records.
15,500 dead since january 2008 until december 2009 (so far).
The place where that cartel leader got killed is about 30-40 minutes away from where i live :horrormirth:
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War) Further information of the conflict, it upscaled in 2008)
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/650679.html (http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/650679.html)
Thursday:
-A dismembered body, with his face sewed into a soccer ball.
Friday:
-A body appeared in the middle of the street with head and hands cut off, with a message.
-Another body was found, with cercenated head, with eyes gouged off.
-Two women dead found in an abandoned field.
-A body with legs cut off.
-A cyclist got shot and killed.
-Five motorists shot and killed.
-Three dead at a shootout in a fast food restaurant near a school.
I gotta hand it to you, your thin-veneer-of-tourist-worthy-beauty-covering-a-cesspool-of-corruption-and-violence homeland sounds even more fucked up than mine.
kinda makes me want to come visit, but since there's no way I could pass as a native I much appreciate your posts which allow me to investigate this sort of thing vicariously.
This happened in Juarez, Sonora.
Never, EVER, go there.
If you stay out of the terror zones, youd be fine, everyone is a "malinchista" that loves foreigners more than their co-nationals.
Quote from: JohNyx on January 09, 2010, 08:43:43 PM
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/650679.html (http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/650679.html)
Thursday:
-A dismembered body, with his face sewed into a soccer ball.
Friday:
-A body appeared in the middle of the street with head and hands cut off, with a message.
-Another body was found, with cercenated head, with eyes gouged off.
-Two women dead found in an abandoned field.
-A body with legs cut off.
-A cyclist got shot and killed.
-Five motorists shot and killed.
-Three dead at a shootout in a fast food restaurant near a school.
:vom:
Especially the face sewn onto a soccer ball. Jesus!
The Mexican Drug War really is a barrel of laughs.
Quote from: JohNyx on January 09, 2010, 09:38:15 PM
This happened in Juarez, Sonora.
Never, EVER, go there.
If you stay out of the terror zones, youd be fine, everyone is a "malinchista" that loves foreigners more than their co-nationals.
heh. I'm from St. Thomas, USVI (aka America's dirty little secret), which has some of the worst and most violent slums in the western hemisphere. Growing up in a place like that has jaded me quite a bit. I've lived in Detroit and East LA and while they weren't any place I'd take a nice girl on a date, I never saw what all the fuss was about. I always thought of myself as harder than the places that were supposed to be hard.
About 10 years ago, I got stuck in El Paso for a day and decided to wander across the border to get some "authenticity" (whatever that means), and some food (since everything in El P was closed on sunday morning).
I got about 12 blocks into Juarez before I turned and ran back to the footbridge like a scared little bitch, about 3 steps ahead of a pack of 10 year-olds that I overheard planning to murder me for my clothes and shoes.
so yeah, Juarez is as fucked-up a place as I've ever seen and I have seen some places that would make most Americans weep.
Quote from: indigoblade on December 03, 2009, 04:56:27 AM
why are you guys so worried...the seeds of new romes fall have already been planted...like in the fifties.
as was said by some guy, this too shall pass...just like a kidney stone.
... because as fun as it might be in abstract, especially to little punks with nothing to lose but their own hides, people who actually have to live through it, well, they have to LIVE through it, and they might not. Or they might, but experience great hardship, and see people they care about die.
Funny, how people seem to have a problem with that.
Quote from: The Right Reverend Nigel on January 09, 2010, 10:12:09 PM
Quote from: indigoblade on December 03, 2009, 04:56:27 AM
why are you guys so worried...the seeds of new romes fall have already been planted...like in the fifties.
as was said by some guy, this too shall pass...just like a kidney stone.
... because as fun as it might be in abstract, especially to little punks with nothing to lose but their own hides, people who actually have to live through it, well, they have to LIVE through it, and they might not. Or they might, but experience great hardship, and see people they care about die.
Funny, how people seem to have a problem with that.
THIS
As self-satisfying as it is to get on one's high horse and preach about society's" well-deserved" downfall, that sort of attitude is immature and insensitive to all the human suffering that a collapse entails.
I mean, look at Somalia. How many anarchists would like to live there?
Some asshole spat into my eye, thru a window, right when i was leaving the metro station in a wagon.
Lucky me, my periphereal vision and reflexes managed to close my eyelid on time.
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/columnas/81755.html (http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/columnas/81755.html)
$2,000 million have been assigned to build a touristic trolley in the Zócalo zone in Distrito Federal.
Nevermind the Metro of course!
The project was sketched during these vacations time, in deep obscurity; the "free" (data)Base of Licitations only gave up the information after payment of $730 (which for the average person is about 2 months salary worth).
Nevermind anyone, except my contractor friends!
Over the course of last month and a half, some people have three times...
called my grandmother, first person posing as a young male, screaming for help, and the second person asking for ransom money...
a slight twist of the "express kidnap" technique.
Quote from: JohNyx on January 22, 2010, 06:44:47 PM
Over the course of last month and a half, some people have three times...
called my grandmother, first person posing as a young male, screaming for help, and the second person asking for ransom money...
a slight twist of the "express kidnap" technique.
Ugh, youre poor grandmother. :(
MS-13 isn't gonna like that much. In fact, I'm guessing the Zetas will get a nasty surprise if they seriously try to establish control of the drug trade in any major American city, whether it's MS-13, the Angels, the Yaks, or any of the black gangs.
They should stick to being wholesalers.
Also, I'm curious by what you mean by their old masters going after them now. Are you talking about the Gulf Cartel? I hadn't heard about the split. Are they independent now, then? Or are they going to swing to the Sinaloa Cartel?
Well, since those American "tourists" (yeah, uh huh) were gunned down, the local colleges decided to send "Don't Spend Spring Break in Mexico" messages to all their students. Fuck that...Baja's fine. Maybe I'm drinking some horchata here, but I am thinking we'll be in Rosarito Beach come June.
Yeah, I've heard about the Zetas/Gulf split as well.
What is really interesting is that Beltrán-Leyva took Los Zetas side in the split as well. Beltrán-Leyva split from Sinaloa, the Gulf Cartel's biggest enemies, a year or so ago. More importantly, Beltrán-Leyva brought with them Los Negros, the Sinaloan paramilitary unit set up in response to Los Zetas.
Now, I've found nothing to say which way Los Negros have gone in this falling out. However, Los Negros have very good contacts with MS-13 and the Mexican Mafia, often farming out more low level work to them. If they did follow Beltrán-Leyva, like they did before, then all three could become very serious players in the lower US and northern Mexico, assuming their alliance holds. Los Zetas also have contacts within MS-13, but everything I've heard suggests these are not as good as Los Negros, possibly due to the membership of the former.
Edit: I gotta say, you have to admire the Beltrán-Leyva brothers, even if you admit they are complete bastards. Their defection likely crippled Sinaloa in the short term, given how long they'd been in the business, and how tight they were with Guzman. They also headed up the more violent end of the operation, and having your best troops walk out on you during what is basically a war is not exactly helpful. Then, they not only walk out on the Gulf Cartel, but take their best soldiers with them. Also, with many of the arrests of top Gulf Cartel men, the Zetas were increasingly controlling the enterprise before their defection.
So two of the biggest cartels are now significantly wounded, and the most capable from both of them are now operating in a new enterprise, one which is also allied with the rival Juarez and Tijuana cartels. Assuming they can hold that together, that gives them most of the western half of the border as somewhere they can traffic drugs through. All they'd need to do is take down Sinaloa to ensure a monopoly on drugs into the western United States. Meanwhile, they can easily drop intel on their former employers to the Mexican feds and weaken them even more.
Like I said, bastards, but smart ones.
I thought most of this was directed BY the Federalis? That they issued an ultimatum that the Mexican Mafia had to oust the outsiders or be wiped off and outed? My info is old and not recent at all, but everything I read on this pointed it to a government coverup disguised as a takeover.
It's hard to say. There is local, regional and national corruption, and figuring out who pulls what strings is something of a guessing game.
For instance, the Mexican Feds probably did issue a warning...but on who's say so? Was someone paid off, were guns put at the heads of family members? Or was the pressure political? Or did corrupt cops who were profiting from another group's largesse take the initative to try and force them out? Ultimately, it seems the strings reside with the Cartel leaders, and the massive amounts of money they make has corrupted the political and legal system, making it impossible for them to respond as they should in theory. They lead, and the rest follow.
From what I heard on NPR as well as the local papers (our local NPR station tends to dish out a few "Mexico, Like WHOAH!" exposes every 6 mos or so), as well as what my husband has from his patients (I'd say about 75-80% of them cross the border daily, or near that statistic), it's a combination of all of the above, Cain. The government issued warnings to preserve ties with local and state US officials, and also to keep its money from going further North into AZ, NM, etc. So what looked like a crackdown was actually more of a corralling of all points south of the border and their various "agents."
This caused a lateral push so that there were not just local police being offed while the cartels jockeyed for key insider positions but also MAJOR drug family pointmen. That is when you saw all hell breaking loose about 2-3 weeks into this thing, and I remember going down the 1N highway being stopped by blackhooded Mexican Federalis in fatigues with machine guns as we were on our way to the beach. That was I think when they were "on the lookout" but really just making a weak stance to look powerful. Cartel guys don't need to use the paid highways in Mexico for chrissakes, they could probably use a fucking goat track through the mountains if they wanted.
Anyway, it seemed that almost every level cracked down on every other level, to the point of boiling over, and you had the press even being targeted in TJ for covering the blood running down the streets.
Of course, there are so many repercussions and manifestations of the various actions taken by the Mexican Feds as well as the cartels, both outsider and insider, that it's almost like an Afghan war at this point. Knowing who's on what team and why and where they got this and where they're going to, etc. is really heresay and innuendo until it's already over with.
http://www.krgv.com/news/local/story/Mexican-Cartels-Using-IEDs/OEcUIcNtJk6ixXN_T7PaKg.cspx
QuoteAUSTIN - The Mexican military seized improvised explosive devices just miles from the Valley. The IEDs (or roadside bombs) are the same weapons terrorists use in the Middle East.
The homemade explosives can be sophisticated or crude. They're often deadly. They've killed troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
CHANNEL 5 NEWS learned the weapons are also in the hands of the drug cartels in Mexico.
On March 30, more than 50 cartel members attacked the Mexican military in Matamoros and Reynosa. Eighteen people died.
Soldiers seized 50 rifles, 60 hand grenades, and eight IEDs.
"The seizure of the IEDs is definitely worrisome," says a Latin American tactical analyst for STRATFOR, a private intelligence agency.
CHANNEL 5 NEWS traveled to Austin to meet with the analyst. We concealed his identity for security reasons.
"The construction of the devices that we've seen are similar to crude devices that are being used in Afghanistan and Iraq," he tells us.
He says the IEDs used in Matamoros and Reynosa were mining grade explosives.
"As you're experimenting with the craft of bomb making, there's going to be a learning curve to it," explains the analyst.
That means cartel bomb makers are getting more advanced.
The STRATFOR analyst says, "We've never seen them actually construct a device up until recently."
The Mexican military disabled an IED in Oaxaca, Mexico in February. Another IED blew up in Nuevo Leon last month.
"The blast is going to have a much larger effect than a single rifle round," the analyst tells us.
We're told the danger is real.
"Once again, the risk of collateral damage - being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time," explains the STRATFOR analyst.
STRATFOR says the cartels are making more IEDs everyday. Right now, experts don't think they'll try to use them here in the U.S. But they're not ruling anything out.
People who have live and work in Mexico say the IEDs are just one more thing to worry about. They tell us it already feels like they're living in a war zone.
They say they never know if they'll encounter a shootout or even a roadside bomb.
The people we spoke to add they're worried about the future and what will be left behind for their children, after the cartel war.
I read elsewhere they were mining grade explosives, which actually makes them more advanced than Afghan IEDs
Quote from: Joh'Nyx on April 20, 2010, 08:43:06 PM
The only good thing about cartels, is that they are usually focused on profits.
If they had a terrorist agenda it would really fuck things up.
They might just be pushed far enough to do that, if you want to know the truth. I think, luckily, enough Mexicans give a shit not to let that happen (on each level of this shitty fucking mess). But it's terribly, horribly sad what everyone's putting up with, and continues to put up with, because they feel they have to.
Mexicans have too much lose, apparently, to want to make it much different at this point.
QuotePredator B aerial drones, which have proved successful fighting insurgents in Afghanistan, were deployed this week along the border between Texas and Mexico.
http://nwotruth.com/predator-b-drones-deployed-on-texas-mexico-border/ (http://nwotruth.com/predator-b-drones-deployed-on-texas-mexico-border/)
I apologize for the shitty news source, i couldnt find a better one.
Anyways, isnt it nice? :|
If by successful, they mean "it got a fail-Jihadi to try and blow up Times Square in revenge, and kills 2 civilians for every
suspected terrorist", then I dread to understand what they mean by unsuccessful.
Also, some more legit links http://www.texastribune.org/texas-mexico-border-news/texas-mexico-border/faa-approved-a-second-drone-to-patrol-over-texas/
This is also a part of a more general creep in use of military surveillance/weapons platforms being used in the USA in general http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/14/faa-drone-ruling-sought-h_n_611386.html
QuoteThe Federal Aviation Administration has been asked to issue flying rights for a range of pilotless planes to carry out civilian and law-enforcement functions but has been hesitant to act. Officials are worried that they might plow into airliners, cargo planes and corporate jets that zoom around at high altitudes, or helicopters and hot air balloons that fly as low as a few hundred feet off the ground.
On top of that, these pilotless aircraft come in a variety of sizes. Some are as big as a small airliner, others the size of a backpack. The tiniest are small enough to fly through a house window.
The obvious risks have not deterred the civilian demand for pilotless planes. Tornado researchers want to send them into storms to gather data. Energy companies want to use them to monitor pipelines. State police hope to send them up to capture images of speeding cars' license plates. Local police envision using them to track fleeing suspects.
Of course, the use for which drones are most widely known for is entirely absent from the reasons why state officials in America would want to deploy them, right?
QuoteThe National Transportation Safety Board held a forum in 2008 on safety concerns associated with pilotless aircraft after a Predator crashed in Arizona. The board concluded the ground operator remotely controlling the plane had inadvertently cut off the plane's fuel.
High tech + monkeys = LULZ
Also:
QuoteSome concerns will be alleviated when the FAA moves from a radar-based air traffic control system to one based on GPS technology.
Quote from: Joh'Nyx on June 24, 2010, 12:15:17 PM
QuoteThe National Transportation Safety Board held a forum in 2008 on safety concerns associated with pilotless aircraft after a Predator crashed in Arizona. The board concluded the ground operator remotely controlling the plane had inadvertently cut off the plane's fuel.
High tech + monkeys = LULZ
Also:
QuoteSome concerns will be alleviated when the FAA moves from a radar-based air traffic control system to one based on GPS technology.
Ugh. :facepalm:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-29/banks-financing-mexico-s-drug-cartels-admitted-in-wells-fargo-s-u-s-deal.html
QuoteJust before sunset on April 10, 2006, a DC-9 jet landed at the international airport in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, 500 miles east of Mexico City. As soldiers on the ground approached the plane, the crew tried to shoo them away, saying there was a dangerous oil leak. So the troops grew suspicious and searched the jet.
They found 128 black suitcases, packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100 million. The stash was supposed to have been delivered from Caracas to drug traffickers in Toluca, near Mexico City, Mexican prosecutors later found. Law enforcement officials also discovered something else.
The smugglers had bought the DC-9 with laundered funds they transferred through two of the biggest banks in the U.S.: Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America Corp., Bloomberg Markets reports in its August 2010 issue.
This was no isolated incident. Wachovia, it turns out, had made a habit of helping move money for Mexican drug smugglers. Wells Fargo & Co., which bought Wachovia in 2008, has admitted in court that its unit failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers — including the cash used to buy four planes that shipped a total of 22 tons of cocaine.
The admission came in an agreement that Charlotte, North Carolina-based Wachovia struck with federal prosecutors in March, and it sheds light on the largely undocumented role of U.S. banks in contributing to the violent drug trade that has convulsed Mexico for the past four years.
Quote"Wachovia's blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations," says Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor who handled the case.
Since 2006, more than 22,000 people have been killed in drug-related battles that have raged mostly along the 2,000-mile (3,200-kilometer) border that Mexico shares with the U.S. In the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, 700 people had been murdered this year as of mid- June. Six Juarez police officers were slaughtered by automatic weapons fire in a midday ambush in April.
Rondolfo Torre, the leading candidate for governor in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas, was gunned down yesterday, less than a week before elections in which violence related to drug trafficking was a central issue.
Quote"It's the banks laundering money for the cartels that finances the tragedy," says Martin Woods, director of Wachovia's anti-money-laundering unit in London from 2006 to 2009. Woods says he quit the bank in disgust after executives ignored his documentation that drug dealers were funneling money through Wachovia's branch network.
"If you don't see the correlation between the money laundering by banks and the 22,000 people killed in Mexico, you're missing the point," Woods says.
Cleansing Dirty Cash
Wachovia is just one of the U.S. and European banks that have been used for drug money laundering. For the past two decades, Latin American drug traffickers have gone to U.S. banks to cleanse their dirty cash, says Paul Campo, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's financial crimes unit.
Miami-based American Express Bank International paid fines in both 1994 and 2007 after admitting it had failed to spot and report drug dealers laundering money through its accounts. Drug traffickers used accounts at Bank of America in Oklahoma City to buy three planes that carried 10 tons of cocaine, according to Mexican court filings.
Federal agents caught people who work for Mexican cartels depositing illicit funds in Bank of America accounts in Atlanta, Chicago and Brownsville, Texas, from 2002 to 2009. Mexican drug dealers used shell companies to open accounts at London-based HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe's biggest bank by assets, an investigation by the Mexican Finance Ministry found.
QuoteThe bank didn't react quickly enough to the prosecutors' requests and failed to hire enough investigators, the U.S. Treasury Department said in March. After a 22-month investigation, the Justice Department on March 12 charged Wachovia with violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to run an effective anti-money-laundering program.
Five days later, Wells Fargo promised in a Miami federal courtroom to revamp its detection systems. Wachovia's new owner paid $160 million in fines and penalties, less than 2 percent of its $12.3 billion profit in 2009.
If Wells Fargo keeps its pledge, the U.S. government will, according to the agreement, drop all charges against the bank in March 2011.
Wells Fargo regrets that some of Wachovia's former anti- money-laundering efforts fell short, spokeswoman Mary Eshet says. Wells Fargo has invested $42 million in the past three years to improve its anti-money-laundering program and has been working with regulators, she says.
Quote"I am sure Wachovia knew what was going on," says Marmolejo, who oversaw the criminal investigation into Wachovia's customers. "It went on too long and they made too much money not to have known."
At Wachovia's anti-money-laundering unit in London, Woods and his colleague Jim DeFazio, in Charlotte, say they suspected that drug dealers were using the bank to move funds.
Woods, a former Scotland Yard investigator, spotted illegible signatures and other suspicious markings on traveler's checks from Mexican exchange companies, he said in a September 2008 letter to the U.K. Financial Services Authority. He sent copies of the letter to the DEA and Treasury Department in the U.S.
Woods, 45, says his bosses instructed him to keep quiet and tried to have him fired, according to his letter to the FSA. In one meeting, a bank official insisted Woods shouldn't have filed suspicious activity reports to the government, as both U.S. and U.K. laws require.
Thanks for that; i did know about the candidate being killed and the aproximate death toll, but i had no idea about Fargo/Weico, and it sheds a whole new light on the situation - US government demanding Mexican authorities to "stop their mud people from bringing drugs to our babies" while they do jack-shit.
Yeah, and all the n00bz bawwwing about Irak and Afghanistan and waiting for 2012 while keeping a blind eye to their backyard full scale conflict.
Well you're all violent and angry brown people, so you might as well all be the same. The only difference is Mexico is much closer, but the newscasters know how to pronounce the names of various cities in Iraq now.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-10670858
First use of a car bomb in the current drug war
Quote from: Cain on July 18, 2010, 01:57:52 AM
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-10670858
First use of a car bomb in the current drug war
It would be hard to find the source but ill tell you that... they tied up some guy inside the car as bait to lure emergency people and policemen to it...
of course, they never arrive on time, so the guy that actually went for the bait was some random musician that promptly got detonated along with the bait.
Some would say that fate was justified, if he was a member of a mariachi band.
I recall you speaking of drug cartels developing the ability and technique to use explosives not too long ago.
Right on the money, weren't you?
Quote from: Cain on July 18, 2010, 02:26:27 AM
Some would say that fate was justified, if he was a member of a mariachi band.
:lulz:
Huapango is worse - id mention other genres, but, i repressed them from my memory.
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2010/06/us-military-has-special-ops-boots-ground-mexico
Quotea special operations task force under the command of the Pentagon is currently in place south of the border providing advice and training to the Mexican Army in gathering intelligence, infiltrating and, as needed, taking direct action against narco-trafficking organizations.
Also read this: http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/2010/07/all-in-family-global-drug-trade-fueled.html All of it. A sample:
QuoteWhen investigative journalist Daniel Hopsicker broke the story four years ago that a DC-9 (N900SA) "registered to a company which once used as its address the hangar of Huffman Aviation, the flight school at the Venice, Florida Airport which trained both terrorist pilots who crashed planes into the World Trade Center, was caught in Campeche by the Mexican military ... carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine destined for the U.S.," it elicited a collective yawn from corporate media.
And when authorities searched the plane and found its cargo consisted solely of 128 identical black suitcases marked "private," packed with cocaine valued at more than $100 million, the silence was deafening.
But now a Bloomberg Markets magazine report, "Wachovia's Drug Habit," reveals that drug traffickers bought that plane, and perhaps fifty others, "with laundered funds they transferred through two of the biggest banks in the U.S.," Wachovia and Bank of America.
The Justice Department charge sheet against the bank tells us that between 2003 and 2008, Wachovia handled $378.4 billion for Mexican currency exchanges, "the largest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering law, in U.S. history."
"A sum" Bloomberg averred, equal to one-third of Mexico's current gross domestic product."
Since 2006, some 22,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence. Thousands more have been wounded, countless others "disappeared," torture and illegal imprisonment is rampant.
In a frightening echo of the Reagan administration's anti-communist jihad in Central America during the 1980s, the Bush and now, Obama administration has poured fuel on the fire with some $1.4 billion in "War on Drugs" funding under Plan Mérida. Much of that "aid" is destined to purchase military equipment for repressive police, specialized paramilitary units and the Mexican Army.
There is also evidence of direct U.S. military involvement. In June, The Narco News Bulletin reported that "a special operations task force under the command of the Pentagon is currently in place south of the border providing advice and training to the Mexican Army in gathering intelligence, infiltrating and, as needed, taking direct action against narco-trafficking organizations."
One former U.S. government official told investigative journalist Bill Conroy, "'Black operations have been going on forever. The recent [mainstream] media reports about those operations under the Obama administration make it sound like it's a big scoop, but it's nothing new for those who understand how things really work'."
But, as numerous investigations by American and Mexican journalists have revealed, there is strong evidence of collusion between the Mexican Army and the Juarez and Sinaloa drug cartels. A former Juarez police commander told NPR in May that "the intention of the army is to try and get rid of the Juarez cartel, so that [Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman] Chapo's [Sinaloa] cartel is the strongest."
The cosy relations among the world's biggest banks, drug trafficking organizations and the U.S. military-intelligence apparatus is not however, a new phenomenon. What is different today is the scale and sheer scope of the corruption involved.
10 nations join Mexico in protest of Arizona law.
http://www.kold.com/Global/link.asp?L=450047
Quote from: Doktor Charley Brown on July 22, 2010, 02:50:46 PM
10 nations join Mexico in protest of Arizona law.
http://www.kold.com/Global/link.asp?L=450047
Don't see how Mexico is fail in this instance. :?
Quote from: Mistress Freeky, HRN on July 22, 2010, 09:00:58 PM
Quote from: Doktor Charley Brown on July 22, 2010, 02:50:46 PM
10 nations join Mexico in protest of Arizona law.
http://www.kold.com/Global/link.asp?L=450047
Don't see how Mexico is fail in this instance. :?
Didn't mean it in that context, sorry.
Quote from: Mistress Freeky, HRN on July 22, 2010, 09:00:58 PM
Quote from: Doktor Charley Brown on July 22, 2010, 02:50:46 PM
10 nations join Mexico in protest of Arizona law.
http://www.kold.com/Global/link.asp?L=450047
Don't see how Mexico is fail in this instance. :?
Well, its a fail because the nations "opposing" dont have much -if any- leverage, and its gonna take personal action from the Obama cronies to stop such outrageous racism.
Guatemala: Racism ish bad :cry:
Neonazi militia: :eek: :mrgreen:
Quote from: http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/primera/35447.html
He narrated that the criminals offered them jobs as assasins, and that they would get paid $2,000 each month. They all resisted and with the rejection the massacre started.
One by one, the 58 men and 14 women, some of them not adults, were put against a wall inside a storage room of a ranch, point out the first invetigations. Then, they were forced to keep their heads down, and were executed with high caliber weapons. Then they were given coups de grace.
Between those executed was Luis Freddy, from Ecuador, which pretended to be dead. His grace shot passed thru his neck and came out thru the jaw. He waited, laying on the floor, until the Zetas left and he could escape. He was the only survivor. It is still a mystery of how he walked 14 miles towards an outpost of the Mexican Armada where he asked for help.
If that guy actually survived, that makes 71 dead in a single night.
16 de septiembre, celebration of 200 years of "independence" anyone?
Quote from: http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/705115.html
The Conference for the Mexican Episcopate considers that it would be a sin of omission to be at the margin and to be "silent" at the celebrations of the Bicentennary of the Independence and the Centenary of the Mexican Revolution.
Because the populace has many civil groups promoting "silence" during the typical "Grito" prompted by the President.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11132589
QuoteThe federal police force in Mexico says it has sacked almost 10% of its officers this year for corruption, incompetence or links to criminals.
Commissioner Facundo Rosas said 3,200 officers had been fired.
More than 1,000 others were facing disciplinary action and could also lose their jobs, he added.
In a separate development, a shoot-out between troops in Veracruz state and a suspected drugs gang has left six gunmen and one soldier dead.
The firefight, in the town of Panuco, started when the soldiers went to investigate a house used by the alleged drug traffickers.
Quote from: Cain on August 31, 2010, 02:09:49 AM
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11132589
QuoteThe federal police force in Mexico says it has sacked almost 10% of its officers this year for corruption, incompetence or links to criminals.
Commissioner Facundo Rosas said 3,200 officers had been fired.
More than 1,000 others were facing disciplinary action and could also lose their jobs, he added.
In a separate development, a shoot-out between troops in Veracruz state and a suspected drugs gang has left six gunmen and one soldier dead.
The firefight, in the town of Panuco, started when the soldiers went to investigate a house used by the alleged drug traffickers.
Niiiice. Fuckin' finally. But, probably too little, too late.
Last I read, it was estimated one in three federales was on the take. This hit was against the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes Organization (Juarez Cartel) specifically.
More importantly, where do you think all this corrupt, dirty, ex-cops are going to in order to find work now?
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/30/world/la-fg-mexico-mayor-20100831
QuoteReporting from Mexico City — For the second time in two weeks, the mayor of a Mexican city has been slain by purported drug traffickers, authorities say.
Marco Antonio Leal Garcia, the mayor of Hidalgo in the violent border state of Tamaulipas, was shot to death Sunday. His young daughter was wounded in the attack.
Tamaulipas, which borders Texas, is the same state where a drug gang is suspected in the massacre last week of 72 migrants and where the battle between rival cartels has left a bloody trail of death, cowed authorities and terrified citizens.
President Felipe Calderón condemned the killing of Leal Garcia, who was ambushed as he drove with his daughter on the outskirts of Hidalgo.
"This cowardly crime and the reprehensible violent acts that occurred recently in this state strengthen the commitment of the Mexican government to continue fighting the criminal gangs that seek to intimidate the families of Tamaulipas," Calderon said in a statement released by his office.
The motive for the mayor's slaying was not immediately clear. Traffickers often kill local authorities who refuse to cooperate or whom they perceive as being sympathetic to rival gangs.
Tamaulipas and the neighboring state of Nuevo León have recently become a battleground between the powerful Gulf Cartel and its onetime ally, the especially vicious Zetas paramilitary faction.
The motivation seems pretty clear to me.
And while I'm here
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/27/mexico-massacre-investigator-migrants
QuoteThe body of an official investigating the massacre of 72 Central and South American migrants killed in a ranch in the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas was found today dumped beside a nearby road alongside another unidentified victim, according to local media.
Earlier, two cars exploded outside the studios of the national TV network Televisa in the state capital, Ciudad Victoria. There were no casualties, but the blasts added to a growing sense of fear in the aftermath of the worst single act of violence in the country's raging drug wars.
Meanwhile, investigators under armed guard continued the process of identifying the victims, with 20 named by midday on Friday, local officials said.
Quote from: Cain on August 31, 2010, 11:32:16 AM
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/30/world/la-fg-mexico-mayor-20100831
QuoteReporting from Mexico City — For the second time in two weeks, the mayor of a Mexican city has been slain by purported drug traffickers, authorities say.
Marco Antonio Leal Garcia, the mayor of Hidalgo in the violent border state of Tamaulipas, was shot to death Sunday. His young daughter was wounded in the attack.
Tamaulipas, which borders Texas, is the same state where a drug gang is suspected in the massacre last week of 72 migrants and where the battle between rival cartels has left a bloody trail of death, cowed authorities and terrified citizens.
President Felipe Calderón condemned the killing of Leal Garcia, who was ambushed as he drove with his daughter on the outskirts of Hidalgo.
"This cowardly crime and the reprehensible violent acts that occurred recently in this state strengthen the commitment of the Mexican government to continue fighting the criminal gangs that seek to intimidate the families of Tamaulipas," Calderon said in a statement released by his office.
The motive for the mayor's slaying was not immediately clear. Traffickers often kill local authorities who refuse to cooperate or whom they perceive as being sympathetic to rival gangs.
Tamaulipas and the neighboring state of Nuevo León have recently become a battleground between the powerful Gulf Cartel and its onetime ally, the especially vicious Zetas paramilitary faction.
The motivation seems pretty clear to me.
Thats the 10th governor within 4 months.
...you mean "mayor"?
Gobernador estatal = Governor
Gobernador municipal = Mayor
So, yes. :D
or :?
Oh, I figured it was a translation error on some level, just wasn't sure whose... ;)
I need a decent source on the cartel/political links that are almost certainly going on in Mexico. I know the PRI almost ran the entire country at one point, rather like the Communist Party in the Soviet Union or the Liberal Party in Japan, and in the 80s they started to lose some of that overwhelming dominance. That could have been due to an influx of cartel money to the opposition, or they may have turned to the cartels and their money (and muscle) to try and undermine the opposition. Or something else entirely.
There have to be links, people with as much power and influence as the cartel leaders do not just stay out of of politics. and I know some members of the PRI were implicated in corruption involving the cartels in the mid-90s, but beyond that, finding out anything is almost impossible.
Im not sure its possible - i think theres even an accusation from multiple civil organizations to the UN in respect of the lack of protection for journalists and the harrasment from police. A very renowned and famous journalist named Lydia Cacho runs a shelter for abused spouses, and the wife of an officer took asilum in there, and they were one step from invading it. Imagine the treatment that any mortal journalist can and will receive.
The best method i would say to approach it is deduction from facts derived from multiple sources. Much of the stuff i post here is from "El Universal" which is a right wing newspaper, then theres "Reforma" which is also right wing, "La Jornada" is run by the UNAM (national autonomous university of mexico) which has a leftist bias and theres another important one which i cant recall the name right now...
What im getting at is: no group has enough power to control all the newspapers at the same time, so if two newspapers say that there were 20 dead at any given confrontation while a third paper says it was 3 dead, most likely is that there were 20 dead. And while some newspapers will make omission about the "escape from prison" of important traffickers, chances are, the rest of the others wont make that omission. Of course theres not gonna be any article stating what is their perception of the behind the scenes actions, but based on the previous method you can get a pretty good idea.
Theres also a couple of best sellers that analyze this issue you speak of, but im sure that the grain of salt needed for such information would be cross reference digging of articles.
Ill come up with a list of newspapers and said kinds of books.
Cain, do you know spanish? I dont think there's english versions.
That's pretty much the approach I have to the UK press: the Times is a Murdoch-owned enterprise, but even Murdoch can sometimes be right about his opposition (plus the Times has excellent geopolitical reporting, if you can read between the lines - they were some of the only people to take Sibel Edmonds seriously, which is more than can be said of the US press), the Guardian watches Murdoch, the Telegraph watches the Guardian and the Indepdent....well, they're only half-decent, but I know the journalists to trust there, since my best friend's brother works there and I have an inside scoop on some of their biases.
The only problem is the blind cultural assumptions they all buy into...but I'm used to seeing past them by now, so I can probably do the same for the Mexican press, if not actually perform slightly better, coming at it as an outsider.
I can speak Spanish....I'm by no means fluent anymore, but I used to be pretty good. This will be good practice, at least, since I've been meaning to get back into it. I'll look up those three papers and see what I find. Cheers!
Quote from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Fernandez_Menendez
Jorge Fernández Menéndez is a journalist, and in 2004 was editor and columnist for the daily newspaper Milenio) en Monterrey, N.L.,(México) in A.M., daily newspaper in Guanajuato, Gto.,(México) and also Excelsior, daily newspaper in México City. Jorge Fernández Menéndez, a specialist in subversive movements has written the books: Asesinato de un cardenal: ganancia de pescadores; El otro poder: Las redes del narcotráfico, la política y violencia in México City; De los maras a los zetas: Los secretos del narcotráfico de Colombia a Chicago; Nadie supo nada: La verdadera historia del asesinato de Eugenio Garza Sada; Calderón presidente: La lucha por el poder.
Jorge Fernández Menéndez has an important program in Imagen radio station located in 90.5 F.M. in México City.
Very ironic, an article about him in english, but none in spanish, anyhow, some of his bibliography related to narco (i cant say if its a good read or not, but he seems informed on the subject):
"El otro poder: las redes del narcotrafico, la politica y la violencia en Mexico" (2004)
"De los Maras a los Zetas: los secretos del narcotrafico, de Colombia a Chigago" (2007)
"Las FARC en Mexico: de la politica al narcotrafico" (2008)
I have a skull-smasher size best-seller type book about narco, but i cant remember the author or title, but its in another city, ill tell you the specs by next week.
TRANSLATION OF OVERVIEW ARTICLE------------------------------------------
QuoteMARIA IDALIA LOPEZ AND DARIO FRITZ
"NOTHING IS AT IT SEEMS, THE INVESTIGATION ON DRUG TRAFFICKING IN MEXICO"
by: María Idalia Gómez y Darío Fritz
27 – January – 2006
Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas
We will begin this conversation about what it was to do "Con la Muerte en el Bolsillo", the book about drug trafficking that we published several months ago. How to make a book that wasnt boring, that would interest the common and vulgar public, that it would be informatively solid and well written. And that we wouldnt put our lives at stake while at it.
The making of this book was cross referencing information. That which gave us testimony, with the judicial reports and the collegues that had published. It was corroborating to come to a truth, which obviously is not the absolute truth.Working the subject of drug trafficking in Mexico has become a cyclopean task for the press. Because of reasons from the reporters and for others.
There are no trustworthy or accurate sources. The confusion is permanent: the non-stop crimes don't allow to distinguish groups or reasons, the corpses pile up day by day in the pages and they don't allow to see the forest.The ignorance in many cases from the authority itself about what is happening in the streets makes it even more complex to understand.
The reporter must have to deal with the vague official information, biased and in more than one case, hidden. The reporter must also deal with the lack of interest from the media and the lack of support for their investigation work. This makes for the coverage of information about trafficking to become a task over the capability of reporters.
The coverage of trafficking has become a mere enumeration of corpses and executions. A numeration of death. Trafficking today is the red note – police section. It is true that with this you can excite people, agitate them, creates opinions and calls for attention. But I think that can be our worst enemy. We are floating at the surface, or they don't allow us to go deeper and we don't realize it.
An important problem to understand this orphanage in Mexico is the lack of existence of investigation teams in newspapers or support from corporations so that reporters can dedicate themselves exclusively to it.
It must also be referenced that the problem of trafficking does not form part of the agenda of medium term work of periodistic enterprises, excepting the zones of higher influence and weight in organized crime.
In the newspapers of the Federal District, that have a greater impact than those on the states, trafficking is approached from the optic of daily information, but it is not done, in a greater scope, works looking into the depths of the thematic.
The information that gets to the readers is the mask of the problem: theres dozens of dead, totally out of context one from another. Seizure of cargo, arrests and gunpowder. No more. Nevertheless, there is no information about the subjects that would explain and tie together what is and who is in trafficking.
We can enumerate some of the subjects that would throw some light: drug consumption, the moneys that are laundered in real estate or bank operations, the judicial and political relations, the lack of social interest in testifying/denouncing, who are the victims of trafficking – Kapuchinsky wrote that covering the war was essentially for him, describing the situation of children, women and elderly-.
Periodism must investigate the relations with the business of soccer, with priests that accept alms, the losses of a city from exodus of investment and population or the corruption of customs, for example.
The task is complex. It is not easy. Approaching trafficking from within Mexico is practically imposible. Whom enters the line of fire, in zones like this city or other where different groups operate, its like detecting a tumor in metastasis. Life has its hours counted.
Coverage of guerrilla conflict and the wars seems like a subject for greenhorns if its compared to trafficking. Whom wishes to cover these subjects, will have access sooner or later the point of view of an armed group or the other side of armies in combat. But a reporter cannot try to approach a trafficker for an interview in his ranch, house, airplane, corporation or whore-house.
To make it more graphical. To know a trafficker from within is to pretend that someone would receive them with open arms the winds of a hurricane in the middle of New Orleans. Without pretending to be a hero and even if we were the most professional ones, the minimal common sense that forms part of our olfaction to detect information, tells us that there is no way to get there.
An interview in prison is the most we can aspire for. This takes us to the law of the funnel: it exists, for better or worse, only one version, the official. We can doubt it, distrust it with persistence, but it will be difficult that if several deaths in one day be attributed to a gunman or a group, that we can refute them. Even though we know that for those cases there's counter-intelligence operations of groups to deviate the direction of a police investigation. Nothing is at it seems, says the jargon of intelligence agents. That's the reason one has to search, scratch, knock on stones, until we get close to truth.
Lets remember. The jailhouse of La Palma seemed the most peaceful of the world until mid 2004. In an opportunity, one of the sources we worked with for ou book, told us that the PFP had a huge problem in prison. That Osiel Cardenas made business with his cell phones, that he had made business with Benjamin Arellano and almost had him under his command. The problem was that in the Cisen, the PGR and the army knew it, but couldn't get involved because of inner struggles within the Fox cabinet. The heads of these organisms didn't want to know either way.
In very short time, everything went wrong, crime began in the jailhouse and even Osiel Cardenas gave an interview to a television chain from his cell phone, the state had to intervene and outside began the war. Nothing was as it seemed. La Palma wasn't peaceful, nor the cartels were paralyzed.
Theres a dictatorship of information, even do it posits itself as democratic. We all know how little we can know, simply because of the origin of information is one: an authority, so be it federal, state or municipal. And the criminal organizations respond only to their interests.
A Colombian reporter said some years ago in a simosium about press and traffick in Buenos Aires, that with trafficking one always has to deal with the illegal sources of information. And it is true. No one gives name, the intelligence reports barely can be quoted – we depend on the benefactor informant that approves it- some tips or data for further investigation are given, and rarely lead anywhere, they try to manipulate us with partial information.
Perhaps one of the best ways to know what to do, how to learn how to unmingled trafficking and its tentacles, is to see how they see us. What does a trafficker think of reporters, do we serve any purpose for them, do they fear us, do they respect us even, they laugh at us, they don't care.
We interviewed one of them whom was detained some time ago and that the information that he declared allowed authorities to arrest and subjugate to trial to several drug lords. This anonymous character, tells us several truths, some like the kidney punch of the best times of Julio Cesar Chavez. Really fatal.
This was four years ago. Cartels only keep growing in size and influence. Now you would have to delve into innumerable international connections. Its like motherfukkin McDonalds :lol:
http://noticias.prodigy.msn.com/internacional/articulo-bbc.aspx?cp-documentid=26789394 (http://noticias.prodigy.msn.com/internacional/articulo-bbc.aspx?cp-documentid=26789394)
Mexico turns its back to culture, says poll
Closet o half of mexicans have never stepped in a library or visited an arquelogical site, points oout the study, that reveals a lack of interest for cultural activity.
Mexicans are rarely interested in culture. At least that's what is suggested by an official poll, according to which half of those consulted have never stepped in a library, while 86% have never assisted a plastic arts/visual exposition.
In contrast, 90% of the polled recognized that they daily watch television.
The data reveals historical deficiencies in education and culture in Mexicans, as well as the lack of interest of authorities to remedy the problem, warns poet Hugo Gutierrez Vega.
"It shows the failure of the education system which is one of the worst in the world according to statistics" says in conversation with BBC World.
The poll is named "Encuesta Nacional de Habitos, Practicas y Consumo Culturales" and was sponsored by the government's Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (CONACULTA).
It will help, says the presidentess of the Council, Consuelo Saizar, to evaluate and oriéntate the public politics in matter of culture.
"So we know in what to invest the money of the Mexicans" said to local media.
It's a necessary thing, agree specialists. According to the poll, more than 41 millons of Mexicans have little to no interest in culture.
The poll about cultural habits was applied personally to 32,000 people over the age of 13 in all of the country. It is the most extensive in this kind which has been applied in Mexico, says Conaculta.
The study engaged the interest on film, dance, music, theater, arqueological zones, museums, visual arts, libraries, bookstores and lecture, as well as the visits to cultural centres, historical monuments and exposition to mass media.
The result is a detailed map of the musical preferences and cultural level of Mexicans.
For example, the third part of the polled affirmed to have assisted in the last year to a live musical concert, but 2% only went to a opera.
48% of whom went to musical events preffered banda/grupero, in which frequently theres performance of narcocorridos.
Also, 79% of Mexicans have not bought a book iin the last year, and of these, the majority said they aren't interested in reading. More than half of the polled recognized never have been inside a bookstore.
Whom was interested in books, preferred the subjects of personal growth and soaps.
In Mexico there are 176 arqueological sites open to the public. But 53% of Mexicans have never visited one of them, and close to half don't know a museum.
The poll also reveals that 75% of polled goes to the movies, but to see action or kids movies. In the moment in which the poll was made, the most seen movie was Toy Story 3.
That's interesting.
I wonder what the similar stats are for USA.
Is that a very visible trend in Mexican society (Have you seen it yourself)? Or are you trusting the poll?
Vega is right; those statistics are really more reflective of endemic poverty and lack of education than of a lack of interest in culture. "Culture" as a museum is an interest only to those with the luxury of free time; the impoverished and uneducated don't tour culture, they live it.
Im sure there are studies within these parameters in the USA and shouldnt be that hard to find.
I would dare to say that there's an interest within the USA for novels and self growth books too, but with added interest to "best sellers" type fiction.
I think that i can agree empirically on my day-to-day experience with the poll's findings; i really dont think its a put-down when i say that most of the population cant go beyond a concrete level of thinking, and most of my "comrades" that have a university education that do actually study instead of cheating their way thru seem to agree with that. Im not even sure how to answer the question, theres so many angles to it...
It goes along with what Nigel is pointing out: is people's lack of interest in books and culture due to poverty and education? I think it is so, for example, Russia is as poor as us or worse (im not sure), but they seem to have "higher" interests which might be derived from a difference in their education perhaps?
Quote from: Joh'Nyx on December 17, 2010, 08:55:12 PM
It goes along with what Nigel is pointing out: is people's lack of interest in books and culture due to poverty and education? I think it is so, for example, Russia is as poor as us or worse (im not sure), but they seem to have "higher" interests which might be derived from a difference in their education perhaps?
I don't know. Mexico has never been rich artistically, even in good times. Pretty sure this has to do with the national insecurity complex that has resulted from everyone and his dog invading or otherwise leaning on Mexico since day one.
I have a novel at home, though, and I can't remember the name, about the "finger generals" of the Mexican revolution. Damn good read, but IIRC, the author was killed in some fashion before he wrote anything else.
But if I had to put a finger on the one thing that really knocked Mexico sideways, I'd have to say it was when Henry Wilson and General Huerta bumped off Madero and Suarez.
could be a lot of them just don't like tourists. I heard that a lot when I was down there. If they go in the summer, it's 300 fucking degrees out. If you go in the winter, it's a mob of european, chinese and american tourists flooding the place.
miss that damn country. going back to Veracruz in May for a visit. Might even hop a bus to D.F. for a weekend.
A certain disturbing pattern of behaviour, besides the concrete level thinking is the "day by day" mentality.
Here's a list of non-hypothetical hypotheticals:
Your car's tires have barely any grip left on it? Well who cares, it isnt raining season yet, dont even mention the breaks.
Your diabetes sugar is perpetually high? Its ok, as long as i dont need an amputation.
School project is due in 3 months? Well fuck it, we can always make it in 5 days.
That tree is on the verge of collapsing? Well, the day isnt windy is it?
Theres a big hole in the highspeed lane at the freeway? No one has died yet.
All in all, since anything can happen anytime, why even make a plan? The "circumstance" is just gonna automatically scrap it anyhow.
So whats left is the common denominator and predatorship of others attempts at planning.
Lets work together? Ok, but you first.
Quote from: Joh'Nyx on December 17, 2010, 10:00:53 PM
A certain disturbing pattern of behaviour, besides the concrete level thinking is the "day by day" mentality.
Here's a list of non-hypothetical hypotheticals:
Your car's tires have barely any grip left on it? Well who cares, it isnt raining season yet, dont even mention the breaks.
Your diabetes sugar is perpetually high? Its ok, as long as i dont need an amputation.
School project is due in 3 months? Well fuck it, we can always make it in 5 days.
That tree is on the verge of collapsing? Well, the day isnt windy is it?
Theres a big hole in the highspeed lane at the freeway? No one has died yet.
All in all, since anything can happen anytime, why even make a plan? The "circumstance" is just gonna automatically scrap it anyhow.
So whats left is the common denominator and predatorship of others attempts at planning.
Lets work together? Ok, but you first.
The "Don" mentality has plagued Mexico since Cortez, and Spain even longer.
Im not sure what you mean by "Don mentality" care to elaborate?
I perceive it as a weird mix between the expectation of handouts, opportunistic leeching, and the habit of back-breaking physical labour.
It has a lot to do with a lot of things, and im not sure i have the mental tools yet to do so, but it has to do with some main things:
-Catholic doctrine with its synchronic mixings with native religion
-The violence exerted in the Conquista
-Constant interventions and the submissive role towards the USA
-Poverty
-Education
-Parenting and its roles
Quote from: Joh'Nyx on December 17, 2010, 08:55:12 PMIt goes along with what Nigel is pointing out: is people's lack of interest in books and culture due to poverty and education? I think it is so, for example, Russia is as poor as us or worse (im not sure), but they seem to have "higher" interests which might be derived from a difference in their education perhaps?
Entirely possible. I know that Soviet education, vulgar Marxist propaganda and general chauvinism aside, was among the best in the world. Their history cirriculum
alone makes me green with envy.
I don't know how much of that has passed down to the Russian Federation, especially with the budgetary cuts Russia has suffered since the days of the USSR, but there are bound to be elements of that rather excellent system still around - either teaching or preparing the next generation of teachers.
El Brad Pitt has been arrested
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2011/06/el-brad-pitt-arrested.html
QuoteFederal police arrested a drug cartel operative accused of attacking a police station with a car bomb and participating in the killing of a man that was then posted on the Internet, authorities said Thursday.
Marco Antonio Guzman Zuniga, nicknamed "Brad Pitt," was identified by police as a leader of La Linea, the Juarez cartel's enforcement arm. He was arrested Wednesday in the city of Chihuahua.
The state of Chihuahua had offered a reward of up to half a million pesos ($42,000) for information leading to his arrest.
Guzman Zuniga, 34, coordinated drug operations in several cities, including Chihuahua and the violent Ciudad Juarez, the Ministry of Public Security said in a statement. He is also accused of being involved in other criminal activities, including car theft and the murder of rivals and police who did not collaborate with the cartel, the ministry said.
He is an ex-policeman, authorities said.
Among the crimes that Guzman Zuniga is accused of carrying out is the July 15, 2010 attack on a police installation in Ciudad Juarez with a car bomb.
He is also accused of taking part in the killing of a man whose death was recorded and the recording distributed on the Internet.
There is this strange theme of guerrilla leaders, warlords and organised crime lords giving themselves strange nicknames. In the Tajikistan Civil War, one leader went by the nickname of "Hitler" and another "Schwarzenegger". In the Congo some called themselves "Chuck Norris" and "Rambo", which played havoc with the human rights organisations attempts to look serious.
They think he looks like Brad Pitt?
Those guerillas need better vision care, man.
He skins people alive.
You like where your skin is, right? You wanna disagree with him?
:lulz: Point. I just read the bottom of the article where it said his "friends" or whatever "associates" think he looks like Brad Pitt. NOTSOMUCH.
Last night in the nation's capitol, they hanged a person from a bridge (Huixquilucan), right in front of the main hospital of the city up-north (De los Angeles).
Also, when i was interviewing high-school students a month and a half ago, some girl told me about how near the school, they found a body chopped up in pieces, thrown in a terrain in between houses. (this is at the east of the city, La Paz)
No citation cz the news are too busy talking about budget cuts and new laws for billboards. :argh!:
Get that shit cleaned up, Mexico is my escape plan dammit.
Quote from: Charley Brown on August 16, 2011, 03:05:36 PM
Get that shit cleaned up, Mexico is my escape plan dammit.
THIS!!!
If you don't we'll end up in Canada and you know what will happen then......
Quote from: Khara on August 17, 2011, 09:08:52 PM
Quote from: Charley Brown on August 16, 2011, 03:05:36 PM
Get that shit cleaned up, Mexico is my escape plan dammit.
THIS!!!
If you don't we'll end up in Canada and you know what will happen then......
The earth will get too top heavy and flip over, rendering Australia right-side-up?
Quote from: Joh'Nyx on August 16, 2011, 12:24:03 PM
Last night in the nation's capitol, they hanged a person from a bridge (Huixquilucan), right in front of the main hospital of the city up-north (De los Angeles).
Also, when i was interviewing high-school students a month and a half ago, some girl told me about how near the school, they found a body chopped up in pieces, thrown in a terrain in between houses. (this is at the east of the city, La Paz)
No citation cz the news are too busy talking about budget cuts and new laws for billboards. :argh!:
Priorities, and all that.
Are billboards such a big deal there?
Either that or the cartels are using them to recruit.
"Are you unemployed? Down on your luck? Looking to earn some extra pesos? Handy with a gun?
Then we may have just the opening for you!
Call 1-800-LOS-ZETAS for more information. Don't delay!"
Quote from: Cain on August 17, 2011, 09:52:35 PM
Either that or the cartels are using them to recruit.
"Are you unemployed? Down on your luck? Looking to earn some extra pesos? Handy with a gun?
Then we may have just the opening for you!
Call 1-800-LOS-ZETAS for more information. Don't delay!"
I never thought of that. Damn. Now that you say that I should pay more attention to the ones that change, who knows what may be flashing on and off quickly. We have one that changes really fast near the house and I never realized I knew what it even said till the kids started talking about it.
Ironically, that seems to work as a real phone number with my Skype add-on. No, I am not going to call it.
In other news
http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_18608410?source=most_viewed
QuoteU.S. federal agents allegedly allowed the Sinaloa drug cartel to traffic several tons of cocaine into the United States in exchange for information about rival cartels, according to court documents filed in a U.S. federal court.
The allegations are part of the defense of Vicente Zambada-Niebla, who was extradited to the United States to face drug-trafficking charges in Chicago. He is also a top lieutenant of drug kingpin Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman and the son of Ismael "Mayo" Zambada-Garcia, believed to be the brains behind the Sinaloa cartel.
Please note:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126890838
QuoteLast month, gunmen killed six federal police officers and left a message painted on a public wall: This is what happens to officers "who ally with Chapo and all those mother- - - - - - - who support him. Signed — La Linea."
NPR spoke to a former Juarez city police commander who confirms the story.
"The intention of the army is to try and get rid of the Juarez cartel, so that Chapo's cartel is the strongest," says the ex-commander, who asked that his name not be used because of death threats he says he received in Juarez.
He was on the force when the Sinaloa cartel came to town, and he says his entire police department worked for the local cartel. He is now seeking asylum in El Paso.
"When the army arrived in March 2008, we thought, damn, now all this violence is going to end," he says. "The number of deaths did drop for about three weeks. But during those three weeks, Chapo's people contacted the army and figured out what they were doing and how much money they wanted. They started to pay them off, and the Sinaloans just kept working."
Testimony: Military-Sinaloa Cartel Ties
Collusion between the Mexican army and the Sinaloa mafia in Juarez is further corroborated by sworn testimony in U.S. federal court, where two top Sinaloa traffickers went on trial in El Paso in March.
One of the government's main witnesses was a convicted former Juarez police captain, Manuel Fierro-Mendez, who went on to work for the Sinaloans. He testified that he regularly provided intelligence on La Linea to an army captain, after which the military would go arrest people and seize weapons and vehicles.
In an exchange with lead prosecutor Russell Leachman, Fierro-Mendez described the need to have control over local, state and federal agencies "and have free rein to continue trafficking drugs without any problem."
Later in the day, Leachman asked Fierro-Mendez: "And was the influence with the military an important factor?"
"Very important," he replied.
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Matthew Sandberg testified at the trial, confirming the contact between Fierro-Mendez and a Mexican army officer, code-named Pantera, the Panther.
NPR Looks At Arrest Data
In an effort to get a more precise picture of who the authorities are pursuing in Juarez, an NPR News investigation analyzed thousands of news releases posted on the website of Mexico's federal attorney general's office, the Procuraduria General de la Republica. The news releases document every arrest of a cartel member charged with organized crime, weapons or drug offenses.
Juarez is the murder capital of Mexico, and now the most patrolled and policed city in Mexico. The NPR analysis found that since federal forces arrived in the state of Chihuahua in March 2008, there have been 104 arrests involving suspects identified as cartel members. Of those arrests, 88 were affiliated with the Juarez cartel, and 16 with Sinaloa.
Quote from: Cain on August 18, 2011, 05:19:23 PM
Ironically, that seems to work as a real phone number with my Skype add-on. No, I am not going to call it.
In other news
http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_18608410?source=most_viewed
QuoteU.S. federal agents allegedly allowed the Sinaloa drug cartel to traffic several tons of cocaine into the United States in exchange for information about rival cartels, according to court documents filed in a U.S. federal court.
The allegations are part of the defense of Vicente Zambada-Niebla, who was extradited to the United States to face drug-trafficking charges in Chicago. He is also a top lieutenant of drug kingpin Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman and the son of Ismael "Mayo" Zambada-Garcia, believed to be the brains behind the Sinaloa cartel.
Please note:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126890838
QuoteLast month, gunmen killed six federal police officers and left a message painted on a public wall: This is what happens to officers "who ally with Chapo and all those mother- - - - - - - who support him. Signed — La Linea."
NPR spoke to a former Juarez city police commander who confirms the story.
"The intention of the army is to try and get rid of the Juarez cartel, so that Chapo's cartel is the strongest," says the ex-commander, who asked that his name not be used because of death threats he says he received in Juarez.
He was on the force when the Sinaloa cartel came to town, and he says his entire police department worked for the local cartel. He is now seeking asylum in El Paso.
"When the army arrived in March 2008, we thought, damn, now all this violence is going to end," he says. "The number of deaths did drop for about three weeks. But during those three weeks, Chapo's people contacted the army and figured out what they were doing and how much money they wanted. They started to pay them off, and the Sinaloans just kept working."
Testimony: Military-Sinaloa Cartel Ties
Collusion between the Mexican army and the Sinaloa mafia in Juarez is further corroborated by sworn testimony in U.S. federal court, where two top Sinaloa traffickers went on trial in El Paso in March.
One of the government's main witnesses was a convicted former Juarez police captain, Manuel Fierro-Mendez, who went on to work for the Sinaloans. He testified that he regularly provided intelligence on La Linea to an army captain, after which the military would go arrest people and seize weapons and vehicles.
In an exchange with lead prosecutor Russell Leachman, Fierro-Mendez described the need to have control over local, state and federal agencies "and have free rein to continue trafficking drugs without any problem."
Later in the day, Leachman asked Fierro-Mendez: "And was the influence with the military an important factor?"
"Very important," he replied.
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Matthew Sandberg testified at the trial, confirming the contact between Fierro-Mendez and a Mexican army officer, code-named Pantera, the Panther.
NPR Looks At Arrest Data
In an effort to get a more precise picture of who the authorities are pursuing in Juarez, an NPR News investigation analyzed thousands of news releases posted on the website of Mexico's federal attorney general's office, the Procuraduria General de la Republica. The news releases document every arrest of a cartel member charged with organized crime, weapons or drug offenses.
Juarez is the murder capital of Mexico, and now the most patrolled and policed city in Mexico. The NPR analysis found that since federal forces arrived in the state of Chihuahua in March 2008, there have been 104 arrests involving suspects identified as cartel members. Of those arrests, 88 were affiliated with the Juarez cartel, and 16 with Sinaloa.
This reminds me of Prohibition when we had it.
It makes me wonder if there is any way of legally investing in the Sinaloa Cartel. Can we float them on the Nasdaq or something?
Quote from: Cain on August 18, 2011, 05:30:27 PM
It makes me wonder if there is any way of legally investing in the Sinaloa Cartel. Can we float them on the Nasdaq or something?
Interesting concept.
They're going to win, with two governments backing them. Might as well make some money off it. I'm sure there are points in the Sinaloa business cycle where they become a little cash-strappped...allow investors to buy into the Cartel and you'll ensure more funds for those times.
Quote from: Cain on August 18, 2011, 05:35:16 PM
They're going to win, with two governments backing them. Might as well make some money off it. I'm sure there are points in the Sinaloa business cycle where they become a little cash-strappped...allow investors to buy into the Cartel and you'll ensure more funds for those times.
I agree, S&P would rate it AAA+ I am sure of it.
I give it 10 years until a Cartel pulls all the strings of the government. Not saying it would be for better or for worse, just interesting how things would configure...
Say, the powers that be are normally "old money" and what one would call dynasty-like, but most Cartel leaders were poor at one time...
What implications would there be with the existance of a narco-government? Would it entail foreign intervention? Would narco even want to govern, or are they just comftable pulling the strings like transnational companies?
Quote from: Joh'Nyx on August 18, 2011, 05:53:07 PM
I give it 10 years until a Cartel pulls all the strings of the government. Not saying it would be for better or for worse, just interesting how things would configure...
Say, the powers that be are normally "old money" and what one would call dynasty-like, but most Cartel leaders were poor at one time...
What implications would there be with the existance of a narco-government? Would it entail foreign intervention? Would narco even want to govern, or are they just comftable pulling the strings like transnational companies?
By nature they will have to govern. They would probably even go as far as to redraw the separate states to indicate cartel territories.
Quote from: Joh'Nyx on August 18, 2011, 05:53:07 PM
I give it 10 years until a Cartel pulls all the strings of the government. Not saying it would be for better or for worse, just interesting how things would configure...
Say, the powers that be are normally "old money" and what one would call dynasty-like, but most Cartel leaders were poor at one time...
What implications would there be with the existance of a narco-government? Would it entail foreign intervention? Would narco even want to govern, or are they just comftable pulling the strings like transnational companies?
I think, so long as their business wont be interrupted, they'll prefer to operate in a zone of weak governance.
I think everyone learnt from the lesson of Pablo Escobar. Except Pablo himself, obviously, though he may have had a short time to reflect on his choices before US Special Forces shot him in the head.
I suppose it would be an Anarchy, you think?
Not really.
Governance costs money, it is something you have to invest in. The Sinaloa Cartel are businessmen, first and foremost and they care more for profits than taking on additional burdens.
I don't doubt they'd use strategic bribes and assassinations in order to create a suitable business environment, but they'd want to leave that to someone else.
The ideal world for any cartel leader would be one where every other cartel is killed off and the government returns to busting low-level competitors and users. The Drug War is actually a massive failure for everyone involved.
Quote from: Cain on August 18, 2011, 06:29:01 PM
Not really.
Governance costs money, it is something you have to invest in. The Sinaloa Cartel are businessmen, first and foremost and they care more for profits than taking on additional burdens.
I don't doubt they'd use strategic bribes and assassinations in order to create a suitable business environment, but they'd want to leave that to someone else.
The ideal world for any cartel leader would be one where every other cartel is killed off and the government returns to busting low-level competitors and users. The Drug War is actually a massive failure for everyone involved.
This makes sense.
It begs the question that if the cartels were openly in charge of the country (I say openly because I think they probably are running it behind the scenes now anyway) would they go legit? Would it improve the welfare of the country?
I wonder this because we elect criminals every day, put them in positions of corporate power and so forth. At least in Mexico they are a bit more honest about it.
Just random tangent thoughts this line of conversation has led me too....
Either Los Zetas or the Gulf Cartel, the former's former employers, set fire to a casino in Monterry, killing dozens.
Just came up on the BBC breaking news feed.
53 so far, sure theres more.
But eh, it pales in comparison to the narcofosa of San Fernando with 500 corpses...
Quote
After alerting clients in the lower floor, they doused the place in gasoline, shot their weapons and threw an IED which provoked the fire.
"They arrived and told people to leave because they were gonna set the place on fire"
"All the emergency exits were locked" said another witness that managed to escape"
So the objective wasnt doing a massacre, it was a payback for not paying their dues and bribes.
It
did turn into a massacre because the fire exits were closed by the establishment; earlier that month the casino was closed by the State for failing security measures, but they used an "amparo" a legal recourse to keep the business going while the trial went on.
ETA: seriously, i would even call the narcos "decent" in this ocassion by their track record, fucking casino with its fire exits.
I did think a casino was a slightly unusual site for a massacre. I mean, obviously it depends on the casino, but as a rule I'd expect that kind of place to be off limits to everything except, as you say, shakedowns for protection money.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-15037535
QuoteIn his speech to the UN General Assembly in New York this week, Mexican President Felipe Calderon defended his policy of using the army to aggressively disrupt the drug cartels who are at war with each other and the state.
Some in Mexico are critical of Mr Calderon's stance, not least political cartoonists Jose Hernandez and Antonio Helguera, who use their drawings to pillory the president.
Shannon Young, a Mexico-based reporter for The World progamme on American public radio - a co-production of the BBC World Service, Public Radio International, and WGBH in Boston - explains the meaning behind some of the images being used to attack Mr Calderon.
The "no more violence" stickers spread all over the city are as meaningful as the american flags in SUVs after 9/11.
BTW i forgot to mention 2 weeks ago on the eleventh:
Its funny how 3000 dead at the towers fosters all kinds of things like group cohesion, loyalty and submission as long as the enemy is external.
But what does 40,000 dead over 5 years do to a nation when the enemy is ourselves? Fear, angst, uncertainty...
Quote from: Joh'Nyx on September 25, 2011, 09:18:02 PM
The "no more violence" stickers spread all over the city are as meaningful as the american flags in SUVs after 9/11.
BTW i forgot to mention 2 weeks ago on the eleventh:
Its funny how 3000 dead at the towers fosters all kinds of things like group cohesion, loyalty and submission as long as the enemy is external.
But what does 40,000 dead over 5 years do to a nation when the enemy is ourselves? Fear, angst, uncertainty...
those flags were meaningful, they signalled widespread acceptance of giving up freedom for security.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/09/cartels-snuff-social-media/
QuoteA scrawled sign was placed next to a decapitated body near a main road in the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo. Its message was simple: Stop talking about drug cartels on the internet — or anywhere else. "Nuevo Laredo en Vivo and social networking sites," the sign read, "I'm The Laredo Girl, and I'm here because of my reports, and yours."
The execution of Marisol Macias Castaneda — known online as "The Laredo Girl" and as "Nena de Laredo" — is the latest in a series of attacks against Mexicans who go online to discuss drug violence. It's an epidemic which a new report describes as "so horrific as to approach a civil war."
The report, released Monday by the Texas Department of Agriculture and authored by retired Major General Robert Scales and retired General Barry McCaffrey, describes a conflict in which drug cartels have forced the "capitulation" of Mexican border cities, killed more than 40,000 people and have fueled "an internal war in Mexico that has stripped that country of its internal security to the extent that a virtual state of siege now exists adjacent to our own southwestern states."
Residents in towns along drug trafficking routes have been forced out by cartels, leaving them abandoned. Throughout northern Mexico, civil society has "severely deteriorated."
The authors go on to claim Mexican cartels have moved into Texas border counties to use as safe havens: hiding out from Mexican authorities under the nose of U.S. law enforcement, directing drug shipments into the United States interior and engaging in kidnapping. Cartels have built command centers in Texas comparable to brigade-level headquarters.
Cartel operatives are also becoming more confident. The authors note pickup trucks emblazoned with large "Z" stickers and Ferrari logos — symbols used by the Zetas cartel — are an increasingly common sight in Texas. Drug traffickers have also been spotted in uniform and have shown willingness to confront U.S. law enforcement.
During a press conference Monday, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples even warned that without adequate U.S. assistance to Mexico, the Mexican government may be forced to negotiate with the cartels following presidential elections next year. The Mexican government strongly denies any consideration of negotiating with criminals.
Sheeit. Fuuuuck.
Well, I'm wondering how our local media are faring...we have quite a few border-crossing reporters who regularly report on the shit going down in TJ and environs.
jesus.
Quote from: Cain on September 29, 2011, 01:37:40 PM
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/09/cartels-snuff-social-media/
QuoteA scrawled sign was placed next to a decapitated body near a main road in the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo. Its message was simple: Stop talking about drug cartels on the internet — or anywhere else. "Nuevo Laredo en Vivo and social networking sites," the sign read, "I'm The Laredo Girl, and I'm here because of my reports, and yours."
The execution of Marisol Macias Castaneda — known online as "The Laredo Girl" and as "Nena de Laredo" — is the latest in a series of attacks against Mexicans who go online to discuss drug violence. It's an epidemic which a new report describes as "so horrific as to approach a civil war."
The report, released Monday by the Texas Department of Agriculture and authored by retired Major General Robert Scales and retired General Barry McCaffrey, describes a conflict in which drug cartels have forced the "capitulation" of Mexican border cities, killed more than 40,000 people and have fueled "an internal war in Mexico that has stripped that country of its internal security to the extent that a virtual state of siege now exists adjacent to our own southwestern states."
Residents in towns along drug trafficking routes have been forced out by cartels, leaving them abandoned. Throughout northern Mexico, civil society has "severely deteriorated."
The authors go on to claim Mexican cartels have moved into Texas border counties to use as safe havens: hiding out from Mexican authorities under the nose of U.S. law enforcement, directing drug shipments into the United States interior and engaging in kidnapping. Cartels have built command centers in Texas comparable to brigade-level headquarters.
Cartel operatives are also becoming more confident. The authors note pickup trucks emblazoned with large "Z" stickers and Ferrari logos — symbols used by the Zetas cartel — are an increasingly common sight in Texas. Drug traffickers have also been spotted in uniform and have shown willingness to confront U.S. law enforcement.
During a press conference Monday, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples even warned that without adequate U.S. assistance to Mexico, the Mexican government may be forced to negotiate with the cartels following presidential elections next year. The Mexican government strongly denies any consideration of negotiating with criminals.
I really find it hard to believe that fascist-war-monger USA authorities would allow 3,000-5,000 (brigade?) strong cartel command posts within texas.
Anyhow, i restate that, cartels are a consequence of poverty and the moral-pushing that "drugs are bad", this is all Bush's fault and Calderon's policy of dick sucking and right-wing politics.
I think they mean brigade level in terms of importance/how many people overall they command, rather than how many people are actually present.
Either way, it is awkwardly phrased. Anyway
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-15104022
QuoteMexico's Supreme Court has upheld an amendment to Baja California's state constitution that stipulates life begins at conception, in a move hailed by anti-abortion campaigners.
Although seven of the 11 justices deemed the measure unconstitutional, eight votes were needed to overturn it.
More than half Mexico's 31 states have enacted right-to-life amendments that severely restrict abortions.
However, Mexico City allows abortions in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
Anti-abortion campaigners cheered after hearing the Supreme Court ruling.
"We have to continue working so that life may triumph," Jorge Serrano, leader of an anti-abortion organisation Pro-Life, told Reuters.
The Supreme Court is due to consider a similar amendment in the state of San Luis Potosi, where the law also says that life begins at conception.
Justice Fernando Franco proposed the motion to declare Baja California's law unconstitutional but the opposition of four judges sank the measure.
Giving their ruling, the justices said they based their analysis "strictly on constitutional issues. That is, the issue under debate was the power of states to legislate on topics that are not expressly determined by the federal constitution".
However, some women's rights activists fear that allowing individual states to decide their own rules may create a divide between those able to go to Mexico City for a legal abortion and those living in states where it is largely restricted.
Mexico City government's Human Rights Commission said the court's stance would worsen the serious public health problem of clandestine abortions.
At the risk of over generalization, the populous at large is still pretty heavily catholic, so that doesn't really surprise me very much.
The spanish really did a number on em with that.
Aren't the schools over there pretty much parochial still?
Quote from: Jenne on September 30, 2011, 03:21:16 PM
Aren't the schools over there pretty much parochial still?
The good ones are, certainly. I'm just going to have to deal with that reality for the kid as I won't public school him in Mexico. Hopefully I'll have him out of there by then but who knows.
Going to have to have a long talk with him about that one day.
Zetas got some competition
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204226204576599161405735224.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsThird
QuoteMEXICO CITY-A self-styled drug-trafficking group calling itself the "Zeta Killers" claimed responsibility this week for the recent murders of at least 35 people believed to belong to the Zetas, Mexico's most violent criminal organization.
The claim by the "Mata Zetas" has stoked fears that Mexico, like Colombia a generation before, may be witnessing the rise of paramilitary drug gangs that seek society's approval and tacit consent from the government to help society confront its ills, in this case, the Zetas.
On Wednesday, Mexico's national security spokeswoman Alejandra Sota vowed in a statement that the government would "hunt down" and bring to justice any criminal group that takes justice into its own hands.
...."Our only objective is the Zetas cartel," said a burly, hooded man who said he was a Mata Zetas spokesman, in the video. The man said that unlike the Zetas, his group didn't "extort or kidnap" citizens and were "anonymous warriors, without faces, but proudly Mexican" who would work "clandestinely" but "always to benefit Mexico's people."
The mysterious group appears to be part of the New Generation drug cartel, which operates in the northwestern state of Jalisco, according to an earlier video that showed some three dozen hooded men brandishing automatic rifles as a spokesman vowed to wipe out the Zetas in Veracruz. In that video, the spokesman lauded the work of the Mexican armed forces against the Zetas, and urged citizens to give information on their location to the military.
For those wondering, the New Generation are linked to the Sinaloa Cartel.
BC is my home-state, and this saddens me a little. What i love(d?) about it was how much i learned on moral/cultural relativism from the intermingling of societies on my early years, but with the good things, also comes the bad influences...
Quote from: Disco Pickle on September 30, 2011, 02:54:48 PM
At the risk of over generalization, the populous at large is still pretty heavily catholic, so that doesn't really surprise me very much.
The spanish really did a number on em with that.
Non-practicing catholics. Pretty much all would consider themselves catholics, they too follow the rituals (1st communion, confirmation, marriage), but not all attend services frequently (i dont have an exact figure). What do i mean by this? The ideology isnt strictly catholic, its more of a right-wing stance based on a sense of universal-morals represented by tradition.
Quote from: Jenne on September 30, 2011, 03:21:16 PM
Aren't the schools over there pretty much parochial still?
I dont think so, its secular-nationalistic by a central agency, the SEP. Now regarding privates: theres both secular and religious.
Not fail: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/29/us-mexico-marriage-idUSTRE78S6TX20110929
Well, the presidential elections are coming, I for one, dont intend to vote, not because all of them have the same exact agenda (like in the USA), but because all their agendas are extremist, dangerous and damaging.
Case #1 (PRI - Institutional Revolutionary Party) Peña Nieto: son of a politician, has led the playboy lifestyle, has been involved in covering up a murder, does not know the minimum wage, hired a ghost writer to make a book, misquoted and misnamed several books that "influenced him" to great outrage of everyone, is married to a soap opera actress, his daughter tweeted something about "stop critizicing my father you proles" (mob or "low class scum"); also, PRI held power from 1929 to 2000 through massive electoral fraud.
Case #2 (PAN - National Action Party) Josefina Vazquez Mota: dont know much about her, but i know some of her party. Basicly the PAN has ties to most prominent ultra conservative groups that fight against woman and reproductive rights, the current jackass that has the presidency is PAN and hes the retard that started the War on Drugs (40,000 dead on records, i keep losing track, im sure its way more)
Case #3 (PRD - Party of the Democratic Revolution) Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador: a fucking messianic proto-fascist that makes allusions to leading the country properly "better than Lula (Brazil)" and has sympathy for all south american socialist dictatorships.
So lets see, should we vote for the old autocrats that stole like 15% of the GDP back in the 1990s? Should we vote for the ultra-conservatives and keep up the good fight in the War on Drugs? Or do we want a socialist dictatorship?
I dont want any of them, fuck off.
Stratfor have suggested that PAN may have a major cartel leader under wraps, and are preparing to do a show and tell before election day to try and swing the election.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/in-mexicos-murder-city-the-war-appears-over/2012/08/19/aacab85e-e0a0-11e1-8d48-2b1243f34c85_story.html
Good news! Murders in Cuidad Juarez, the "murder capital of the world", are finally declining.
Bad news: this is probably because the Sinaloa Cartel has taken control of the city.
QuoteWhen this city was among the most murderous in the world, the morgue ran out of room, the corpses stacked to the ceiling in the wheezing walk-in freezers.
Medical examiners, in plastic boots, performed a dozen autopsies a day as families of victims waited outside in numbers sufficient to require a line.
For all this, Mexico has not made much sense of one of the most sensational killing sprees in recent history, which has left 10,500 dead in the streets of Juarez as two powerful drug and crime mafias went to war. In 2010, the peak, there were at least 3,115 aggravated homicides, with many months posting more than 300 deaths, according to the newspaper El Diario.
But the fever seems to have broken.
In July, there were just 48 homicides — 33 by gun, seven by beatings, six by strangulation and two by knife. Of these, 40 are considered by authorities to be related to the drug trade or criminal rivalries.
Authorities attribute the decrease in homicides to their own efforts — patrols by the army, arrests by police, new schools to keep young men out of gangs and in the classroom.
Yet ordinary Mexicans suspect there is another, more credible reason for the decrease in extreme violence: The most-wanted drug lord in the world, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, and his Sinaloa cartel have won control of the local drug trade and smuggling routes north.
Whatever happened with that suspected serial killer in Juarez in the late 90s? The one preying on women. I know the police did a complete botch-job on the case, but did more ever occur, or have those particular killings stopped?
Im not sure about which serial killer you mean, ill have to look into it.
Regarding the news:
1) Mexico is non-transparent and is well known to give false numbers on everything. Ill give one recent example: Teachers supposedly get paid between $20,000-40,000 USD each year, the reality (verified by painstakingly searching thru it) shows that they get paid in average $6,500 USD... apply that principle of false data to EVERYTHING.
2) The official overall tally of deaths according to Mexican media and government is running at about 55,000 but some guy from the USA (i cant remember, he was from the government) gave figures of about 150,000.
Therefore, we have a margin of error of AT LEAST 300%... applying this trend to the new figures for homicides in Juarez, which say about 40 per moth, we have: 120.
Also, the "40" spoken of are just the figure of one month, we would have to see how other months were doing.
I cant find the exact figures broken down by month. (SHOCKING)
But i did find 653 as the number of deaths in Juarez for the first semester of 2012, compared to 1,322 of 2011; thats still about 115 a month versus 2011's 220 a month. (Remember that 300% margin of error?)
http://latinocalifornia.com/home/2012/08/resurge-la-violencia-en-ciudad-juarez/ (http://latinocalifornia.com/home/2012/08/resurge-la-violencia-en-ciudad-juarez/)
Now, nationwide, we have numbers that ammount to 7,000 in the first semester of 2012, which is 10% higher than last year
http://noticias.univision.com/narcotrafico/noticias/article/2012-08-16/ong-piden-a-mexico-cifras-vioolencia-del-narco#axzz24B8ASObh (http://noticias.univision.com/narcotrafico/noticias/article/2012-08-16/ong-piden-a-mexico-cifras-vioolencia-del-narco#axzz24B8ASObh)
What's more, the government has stopped publishing figures due to "methodology problems" and the numbers actually come from newspapers, and well, we know that media cant be influenced by government, right? right? (recently the star reporter of MVS, Carmen Aristegui, was fired at the request of President Felipe Calderon, in exchange for some media legislation)
In conclusion, nobody knows for sure, but if the history of falsifying information is anything to go by, the general situation is the same, or worse.
Still, it is worth noting that the Sinaloa Cartel are now in control of the city, regardless of the situation. Especially since the Sinaloa seem to have a comfortable relationship with the Mexican government (http://www.madcowprod.com/2012/08/10/mexican-president-facebookfriends-sinaloa-cartel-lieutenant/)*, and a less adversarial relationship with the American government (http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2011/07/us-court-documents-claim-sinaloa-cartel-protected-us-government) than Guzman's position of the FBI "Most wanted" list would suggest.
*See also: http://www.madcowprod.com/2012/08/12/mexicos-ruling-party-caught-rain-spain/ and http://www.madcowprod.com/2012/08/09/investigation-arrest-4-mexican-generals-began-downed-cia-drug-plane/
In regards to the murders, there were a specific set of serial murders in Juarez between 1993 and the early 2000s. The victims were women, of course, almost uniformly maquiladora workers. Many, curiously, had also done some kind of modelling before they were killed, a most disturbing scenario if true.
There are often discrepancies between the date of abduction and the dates of death for the women. Some of the bodies show evidence of ritualistic murder. Frequently, all that is found are clothes and bones. The bones are often mismatched, coming from more than one victim. Sometimes the person has not been missing long enough for the bones to be showing naturally. The bones sometimes show up in areas that had only recently been searched by the police.
The entire police investigation was a shambles. People were often tortured into confessing, yet the murders continued. The police infrequently claimed that gang members were being paid to continue the killings by the "killer" they had caught, but no evidence of this was ever produced. Witnesses frequently vanish after talking to the police, and evidence has been disposed of by the police. One woman, when interviewed by documentary makers for PBS, claims that police showed her photos of a woman being gang-raped, then doused in gasoline and burned alive.
Jorge Campos Murillo, a federal deputy attorney has claimed the murders are the work of individuals in well-connected Mexican families of some wealth and influence. The Observer agrees, noting that this group includes "landowners, major drug dealers, construction barons, energy suppliers—and officials in both government and the police."
In short, these are not typical narco-war killings. And, as far as I am aware, they were never solved.
Well i cant find information on it, and i myself didnt hear about those news when they happened, so i dont know where to look.
But you know, we are well known for transparency, so IM SURE its just
conspiracy theories at play.
Also, we are well known for the tactical and strategically superiority and sticking to human rights, and not shooting anything that vaguely resembles a drug czar. Nope.
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/866452.html (http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/866452.html)
QuoteIn their first declarations, the elements of the Federal Police that were detained last friday, after an attack on an SUV with diplomatic car plates in which 2 members of the U.S. embassy in Mexico alongside a captain of the Marine, said they confused the vehicle with one belonging to a network of kidnappers that operates in Morelos
The US embassy said <<the vehicle tried to escape, was chased down and suffered considerable damages. The passengers called for the assistance of the Mexican Army, which responded and arrived some minutes later arrived to the scene.>> Extraofficially it was said that the US diplomats injured were Jess Hoods Garner and Stan Dove Boss, which were doing activities related to the fight of organized crime.
Oh the lulz, you little embassy people coming to talk about how to fight organized crime, when the biggest crime organization is the government.
Im sure this incident doesnt reflect at all how the drug war numbers tally so high, i mean, only confirmed targets are engaged.
If this wasnt high ranking people traveling in that SUV theyd probably just say they were "kidnappers, LOL" and throw them into a narcofosa.
I see its being reported El Chapo was arrested today, in a joint US-Mexican operation.
Heh. Lets see exactly how long he stays in prison for this time. I give it 7 months, tops. Though perhaps I should say "prison", since by all accounts he lived like an Emperor last time he was in.
Quote from: Cain on February 22, 2014, 08:19:56 PM
I see its being reported El Chapo was arrested today, in a joint US-Mexican operation.
Heh. Lets see exactly how long he stays in prison for this time. I give it 7 months, tops. Though perhaps I should say "prison", since by all accounts he lived like an Emperor last time he was in.
You know what is tear-your-eyeballs-out-with-a-rusty-spork hilarious??? It suspiciously doesnt look like El Chapo, they seem to have captured a lookalike and done a lot of fanfare to divert attention. Pics upcoming.
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-INU4kP6f8-k/UwkwkuKzqsI/AAAAAAAAZhw/R_DNzefeLQg/s1600/1660628_738991249453932_1780160780_n.jpg)
(http://servingdope.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/chapo-e1361760053568.jpg)
What do you guys think?
Are those all supposed to be the same guy? I wouldn't peg them as the same guy, but the pics are very different.
Same guy, 13 years apart supposedly. (2001ish vs. 2014)
Hmmmm
There's no way to say anything conclusive about a person's identity from those photos, but it doesn't necessarily look like the same guy.
(http://mexico.cnn.com/media/2014/02/22/detenido-chapo.jpg)
Earlobes are different.
Of course, plastic surgery could account for that, but it does make him being a double much more likely.
I did wonder why they would move against the Sinaloa Cartel now, with the drug war still raging. I mean, Most-Favoured-Cartel-Status is, as far as I can see, still in effect. Of course, putting Guzman in a cell does allow for a level of control over his activities, while showing that the US and Mexico are apparently not playing favourites...but I suppose capturing a body double still achieves the latter goal without disrupting the Sinaloa much.
I noted the earlobes as well, but it only bumped the probabilities. Interesting...
One of my line cooks is a Mexican and all night last night he was just non-stop with the Chapo conspiracy theories. I'm'a have fun with this now. :lulz:
Well, with the shit the mexican government and the DEA are known to pull, im stuck at 50-50% chance.
Well, it looks like it might well be El Chapo.
Sinaloa are discussing their replacement leader. Odds on favourite is Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada-Garcia.
Worth noting his son is currently in US custody, and preparing to give up all kinds of juicy information to avoid prosecution - info about other cartels, of course. This is, of course, far more sophisticated than back in the old days when feudal lords would give their heir as a hostage to their liege because shut up it just is.
My problem with all that is this
No i did NOT look
Only wonder is it an EarthThing event????/
Probably some UF0's in the area causing 0ut.age
Quote from: The Johnny on November 12, 2009, 01:40:20 AM
This got dissolved:
http://translate.google.com.mx/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fes.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FLYFC&sl=es&tl=en&hl=es&ie=UTF-8
LyFC was a state-run electric company which got dissolved and assimilated by CFE (Federal Electric Commission).
There seems to be valid reasons for it not existing anymore, but my point is that all over the country theres manifestations and stuff, there were about a million people at least protesting just here in the capitol.
The telephone sindicate is going along with them too, and im not sure who else.
Quote from: The Johnny on February 23, 2014, 05:50:31 AM
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-INU4kP6f8-k/UwkwkuKzqsI/AAAAAAAAZhw/R_DNzefeLQg/s1600/1660628_738991249453932_1780160780_n.jpg)
What do you guys think?
01:58 pSt i thought i saw this GUY yesterday /97205 on SW 11th
Quote from: Cain on March 10, 2014, 10:52:07 AM
Well, it looks like it might well be El Chapo.
Sinaloa are discussing their replacement leader. Odds on favourite is Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada-Garcia.
Worth noting his son is currently in US custody, and preparing to give up all kinds of juicy information to avoid prosecution - info about other cartels, of course. This is, of course, far more sophisticated than back in the old days when feudal lords would give their heir as a hostage to their liege because shut up it just is.
:lulz:
That gets even funnier when you think about how hostages in those times were treated. Pretty well, until they weren't useful anymore. Or very well indeed if there was a chance of them ending up with a degree of power eventually.