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Showing posts with label Mexico. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mexico. Show all posts

Donald Trump Admits He Was Lying About Building Fence on the Border With Mexico

Photo by Tony Webster.
Photo by Tony Webster.

By Bethania Palma Markus
Donald Trump admitted that he brings up the implausible idea of building an even bigger “wall” between the United States and Mexico than the one that already exists just to get applause from a sleepy audience.diss

The GOP front runner, real estate tycoon and television reality star told the New York Times‘ editorial board he uses the line to wake up an audience that starts looking a little bored. The Times slammed Trump in a Saturday editorial that called Trump and his main rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, “objectionable for different reasons.”

“You know,” he told the Times writers, “if it gets a little boring, if I see people starting to sort of, maybe thinking about leaving, I can sort of tell the audience, I just say, ‘We will build the wall!’ and they go nuts.”

Trump’s candid admission is yet another in which he seems to allude that his supporters are, at best, uncritical.

Last week, Trump said he could murder someone in cold blood and not lose any of his loyal followers.

“They say I have the most loyal people,” Trump at a rally in Iowa, “Where I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay? It’s like incredible.”

While the Times notes that Trump’s supporters don’t care what he says, “[w]hat they may not know is how deliberately he is currying their favor.”

This week, Trump supporter Karen Bruno said that she is so angry with politics in this country that no matter what Trump says, she will support him.

Read More


ISIS Threatend With 'Elimination' by Mexican Drug Cartel Leader — For Interfering With Drug Shipments

Virtually every brutal act committed by ISIS was virtually invented by the drug cartels of Mexico. There's no level of savagery that ISIS would bring to the game that couldn't be outdone by the cartels.—Ronald David Jackson

Is A Battle between Mexico's drug cartels and ISIS being engineered by CIA spooks?: Drug kingpin Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, who escaped from a Mexican high-security prison in July 2015.
Is A Battle between Mexico's drug cartels and ISIS being engineered by CIA spooks?: Drug kingpin Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, who escaped from a Mexican high-security prison in July 2015.

______________


Drug Kingpin El Chapo Guzmán Reportedly Threatens To Retaliate Against ISIS

By Dolia Estevez
Fugitive Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán has reportedly threatened to eliminate ISIS if it continues to destroy his drug shipments to unspecified Middle East countries that go through the terrorist group’s so called “caliphate,” a website called cartel.blog reported Thursday.
RELATED STORY: Mexican Cartels Are Worse Than ISIS - Big Media Hides This — To Demonize Muslims And Cover up What's Happening On America's Border
In a harshly-worded encrypted email addressed to ISIS head Abu Bakd Badhdadi, the head of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel reportedly said: “My men will destroy you. The world is not yours to dictate. I pity the next son of a whore who tries to interfere with the business of the Sinaloa Cartel. I will have their heart and tongue torn from them.”

Women and men are prepared for beheading before they are chopped
up and thrown into vats of acid. Just like ISIS, the cartels force victims
to give a speech before they are killed —Ronald David Jackson (Screen
capture from video)
He added: “You [ISIS] are not soldiers. You are nothing but lowly p *ssies. Your god cannot save you from the true terror that my men will levy at you if you continue to impact my operation.”

News of the alleged threat, purportedly issued by El Chapo through one of his sons, was first reported in the U.S. by cartelblog.com. Cartel.blog, a little known website created last year to report on the Mexican cartels and the “failed war on drugs,” claims the email was leaked by an unnamed “Mexican blogger” with “intimate ties” to the Sinaloa Cartel.

ISIS, a fanatical messianic group, opposes drug consumption and apparently has been destroying
shipments found passing though territory it controls in Iraq and Syria.

The e-mail has not been authenticated. DEA spokesperson Rusty Payne told me via e-mail: “I don’t have any information to weigh in either way.”

Guzmán, who DEA has called the world’s #1 drug criminal and greatest criminal drug threat to the U.S., escaped in July from a Mexican high-security prison through a hole in his shower connected to a clandestine tunnel. The 17 months Guzmán was in jail (he was arrested early 2014) did nothing to diminish his prominence in the global illegal drug market.

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Mexico Outdoes the United States When it Comes to Deporting Central Americans

The United States is funding a “ferocious crackdown” on Central Americans migrating through Mexico. (Sdp Noticias)
The United States is funding a “ferocious crackdown” on Central Americans migrating through Mexico. (Sdp Noticias)

By Sabrina Martín
Mexican authorities have deported at least 107,814 Central American immigrants in the last year. Thousands of Salvadorans, Hondurans, and Guatemalans have been forced to abandon North American soil after Mexico joined the United States in this endeavor.

According to the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), Mexico has surpassed the United States in its number of deportations of Central American migrants: in the past 12 months, the United States deported 70,448, while Mexico sent back more than 2,000 migrants every week.

Last Friday, for example, Mexican authorities found 41 Central American immigrants in a house in northern Mexico, and promptly handed them over to the National Institute of Migration (INM).



In August 2014, Mexican authorities put forth their Southern Border Plan, which seeks to prevent Central American immigrants from risking their lives on “La Bestia” (The Beast), the network of freight trains migrants use to travel through Mexico.

Mexican migration officials launched the plan last year, after the Mexican and US governments agreed to cooperate in the face of a severe crisis of child migrants from Central America looking to cross the border on their own. Since then, arrests have increased by 25 percent, and migration checks have increased by 200 percent.

In September 2015, the MPI published a report which calls for the United States, Mexico, and Central American countries to develop more comprehensive migration policies “with workable enforcement and humanitarian protection.” The report further recommends that these polices “address poor standards of living, improve citizen security in the Northern Triangle, and facilitate the reintegration of deportees.”

The MPI study also demonstrates that the majority of those deported are young men with “low educational-attainment levels, most having experience in low-skilled jobs.” Moreover, nearly 40 percent of them were unemployed in the 30 days prior to leaving their home country.

“Ferocious Crackdown”

In June 2015, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto stated that the immigration-related measures taken in Mexico have allowed the country to achieve a 0 percent illegal-immigration rate.

Meanwhile, US-based daily the New York Times (NYT) published an article that assures the United States is paying Mexico to enact a “ferocious crackdown” against migrants from Central America.


Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sonia Nazario writes: “The United States has given Mexico tens of millions of dollars for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 to stop these migrants from reaching the United States border to claim asylum.”

Further, the journalist states that “Beginning in July 2014, Mexico redirected 300 to 600 immigration agents to its southernmost states, and conducted over 20,000 raids in 2014 on the freight trains migrants ride on top of, and the bus stations, hotels, and highways where migrants travel.”

Nazario contends that Mexican authorities allow detainees to apply for asylum. However, during the wait time, they remain locked up in cells where “rats roam by day and worms infest the food migrants get.” She further explains that only 20 percent of these migrants receive asylum status.

In May 2015, social-media users shared a controversial video in which alleged Mexican migration authorities mercilessly mistreat a handicapped Honduran immigrant. Both the NMI and the National Discrimination Prevention Council (Conapred) opened investigations into the alleged discriminatory action.

In addition to the mistreatment migrants allegedly receive from Mexican authorities, many of these people are also victims of other serious crimes, such as kidnappings, rape, and murder. According to the Migrant Defense Organizations Documentation Network, the majority of these abuses go unpunished.

Reprinted with permission from PanAm Post

The 'First Free African Town' in the Americas? — It's In Mexico

Statue of Gaspar Yanga.  Photo by Erasmo Vasquez Lendechy via Wikipedia.
Statue of Gaspar Yanga.
Photo by Erasmo Vasquez Lendechy via Wikipedia.
By Lupita Peimbert
It is called Yanga. In the middle of intense vegetation in southeastern Veracruz, a state along the Mexican Gulf, the town of Yanga is evidence to the presence and settlement of Africans in Mexico.

On our way to the Port of Veracruz, we stopped at Yanga and saw the agricultural fields full of caña and corn surrounding the area, also rich in coffee plantations; the tropical weather invites you to be outside, under the sun's open arms.

Yanga claims to have been the first free African town in the Americas, proclaimed on October 3, 1631. Afro-Mexicans proudly share the story of “El Yanga,” apparently an enslaved prince from the Yang-Bara tribe from Gabon, who helped slaves to be free from the Spanish around 1570.

One of the town’s plazas shows his statue, presenting El Yanga as a defiant, proud man.

The main plaza, the portales, and the main church are as typical as in many other Mexican towns inviting serene strolls. Yanga is peaceful and emanates longevity. Many centuries and people have lived and died there, perhaps oblivious to history, yet making history themselves.

Reprinted with permission from Global Voices.

Trump's Gulf Course Dumped: ESPN Yanks Golf Tournament From The Chump


The Trump “Brand” is taking a beating.
Perhaps Trump is not such a “brilliant
business man” after all.
By David Wharton
The furor over Donald Trump's comments about Mexican immigrants shows no sign of diminishing as ESPN decided to pull its charity golf tournament from his Palos Verdes course.

The ESPY Celebrity Golf Classic was scheduled for Trump National Golf Club on July 14 but has been switched to Pelican Hill near Newport Beach.

The decision reflects a "support for inclusion of all sports fans," the network said in a statement this week. "Diversity and inclusion are core values at ESPN, and our decision also supports that commitment.”

Read More

Donald Trump Attack's Jeb Bush's Mexican Wife — GOP Clown Car Turns Into Pig Show

Trump finally deletes offensive ‘illegals’ tweet attacking rival Jeb Bush’s Mexican wife

Illustration by DonkeyHotey.
Illustration by DonkeyHotey.

By Tom Boggioni
Showing that he sometimes is made aware that he has gone too far, 2016 GOP presidential contender Donald Trump deleted an offensive tweet aimed at rival Jeb Bush’s wife who was born in Mexico.

On July 4th, Trump retweeted a Twitter comment reading: “@RobHeilbron: @realDonaldTRump #JebBush has to like Mexican illegals because of his wife.”

The tweet stayed up for 24 hours before Trump deleted it.

Bush’s wife, Columba, was born in León, Guanajuato, Mexico, and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1979.

Read More


'White Supremacist, Hispanic Surname' — Ted Cruz Courts the Bigot Vote: And Won't Criticize Donald Trump

Everything Ted Cruz said about Donald Trump and immigration this weekend was hot, flaming garbage
Illustration by DonkeyHotey.
Illustration by DonkeyHotey.
By Simon Maloy
Last week I expressed my bemusement at the fact that none of the 2016 Republican presidential candidates had forcefully denounced billionaire racist and shriveled apricot Donald Trump for calling Mexican immigrants criminals, drug dealers, and “rapists.” For a party looking to boost its pathetically low share of the Latino vote in presidential years, it seemed like a layup – disagree with the frizz-topped bigot and demonstrate that, at a minimum, not all Republican presidential candidates view undocumented immigrants as dangerous criminals.

A number of those candidates apparently came to the same conclusion, and over the last few days they’ve attacked Trump and gone to great pains to say that he doesn’t represent the mainstream of the party. Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Rick Perry, and Mike Huckabee all hit back at The Donald’s grossly insulting remarks. Even George Pataki got in on the action.

There was one 2016 Republican contender, however, who pointedly refused to criticize Trump and even celebrated him for what he said – Ted Cruz. He appeared on “Meet the Press” this weekend and stood by Trump’s remarks, arguing that they’d had the beneficial effect of focusing people on immigration issues.
CRUZ: When it comes to Donald Trump, I like Donald Trump. He’s bold, he’s brash, and I get that it seems the favorite sport of the Washington media is to encourage some Republicans to attack other Republicans. I ain’t going to do it. I’m not interested in Republican on Republican violence.

CHUCK TODD: But rhetoric matters? Doesn’t rhetoric matter?

CRUZ: I salute Donald Trump for focusing on the need to address illegal immigration. The Washington cartel doesn’t want to address that. The Washington cartel doesn’t believe we need to secure the borders. The Washington cartel supports amnesty, and I think amnesty is wrong and I salute Donald Trump for focusing on it. He has a colorful way of speaking. It is not the way I speak. But I’m not going to engage in the media’s game of throwing rocks and attacking other Republicans. I’m just not going to do it.

Every syllable of every sentence of that response is hot, flaming garbage.

First of all, Cruz is joining in on what is apparently the new, fun game for prominent conservatives – credit Trump for saying things he didn’t actually say. Nothing about Trump’s comments bring any focus or clarity to the immigration debate. He called undocumented immigrants rapists. Trying to argue that he did anything else is making excuses for bigotry.

Read More




Donald Trump Has Some Enthusiastic New Admirers: White Supremacists — Who'd A Thought?

Illustration by DonkeyHotey
Illustration by DonkeyHotey
By
The Donald” may have lost millions in high profile contracts after major television networks cut ties with him over racist remarks about Mexicans. But he gained some new fans: the Nazis and other racists.

While announcing his 2016 run for the presidency two weeks ago, billionaire and reality television mogul Donald Trump took the moment to say immigrants from Mexico are rapists and drug runners, While rejected by many, white supremacists say he’s speaking their language, according to Vocativ.

After a firestorm of criticism that saw his television shows – including Celebrity Apprentice and Miss America pageant – cancelled on NBC and Univision, he doubled down on the comments yesterday, calling them “totally accurate,” according to MSNBC.

And now he has some new fans.

“I do not believe he would solve all or even most of the problems we are facing, but he is absolutely the only candidate who is even talking about anything at all that matters,” gushed Andrew Anglin, blogger for the neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer. Trump is “willing to call them out as criminal rapists, murderers and drug dealers.”

Anglin affectionately refers to Trump as “The Don.”

Trump also has the support of white supremacist Kyle Rogers, who is a member of Council of Conservative Citizens, the group credited by Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof for radicalizing him. Activist Shaun King says Rogers deleted his Twitter account after the June 17 massacre at historic Emanuel AME left nine dead, but a screenshot shows Rogers hawking “Donald Trump 2016″ tee shirts to his nearly-40,000 Twitter followers the day before.

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Macy's Dumps Donald Trump — Will No Longer Sell His Clothes

Illustration by Mark Rain
Illustration by Mark Rain

By Benjamin F Mitchell, Paul Singer and Maria Puente
Macy's said Wednesday that the Trump menswear collection — and the man behind the brand — are no longer a good fit for its stores.
RELATED STORY: Football Legend Emmitt Smith Drops Out of Miss USA Pageant - Will No Longer Serve as a Judge
In a statement, the retailer denounced recent derogatory comments about Mexican immigrants made by real estate mogul and GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, saying that they have "no tolerance for discrimination in any form.

"We welcome all customers, and respect for the dignity of all people is a cornerstone of our culture," the Cincinnati-based company said in a statement. "We are disappointed and distressed by recent remarks about immigrants from Mexico. ... In light of statements made by Donald Trump, we have decided to discontinue our business relationship."

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Donald "The Chump" Trump Gets Dumped: NBC Heeds the Request of Univision and Severs Ties

Trump issued a vicious tirade against Latinos when he announced he was running for US president. The "brilliant businessman" apparently forgot that his beauty pageant was to be aired by Univision, a Latino-run mega media company.

Illustration by DonkeyHotey.
By Brian Stelter and Frank Pallotta
The Miss USA pageant, scheduled for July 12, will no longer air on the network. Nor will the Miss Universe pageant, scheduled for next January. Both pageants were, until now, jointly owned by NBC and Trump.
RELATED STORY: Trump says he'll do well with Hispanic voters; outside, protesters call him racist
"At NBC, respect and dignity for all people are cornerstones of our values," the company said in a statement on Monday. "Due to the recent derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants, NBCUniversal is ending its business relationship with Mr. Trump."

Speaking to reporters after a campaign event in Chicago, Trump said he had enjoyed a "great" relationship with NBC but would not back down on his views about immigration. Trump told CNN correspondent Athena Jones that he may sue NBC.

NBCUniversal, which is owned by Comcast, had no comment on the lawsuit possibility. It is unclear whether NBC will seek to sell its stake in the Miss Universe Organization to Trump, acquire Trump's stake from him, or seek another buyer.
RELATED STORY: Donald Trump refuses to release birth certificate and passport records — Racist birther had demanded that Obama release his original birth certificate
It is also unclear where, if anywhere, the Miss USA pageant might be televised instead of NBC. Contestants from across the country have been preparing for months for the annual event.

The other major television broadcaster of the pageant, Univision, cancelled it last week due to Trump's involvement.

Read More

US Imperialism in Haiti. Criminality of the Michel Martelly Regime

Ezili Danto
Ezili Danto
By Ezili Dantò
In 2004, the US brought Mauritania, which actually still enslaves Black Africans to participate in the UN “peacekeeping” forces in the land that abolished European slavery in combat in 1804.

In 2015, to flaunt their terror closer, the US is reportedly deploying Mexico as “peacekeepers” to the mix in Haiti.

Mexico, a US colony where tens of thousands are force to flee the imperial violence there, described as the ongoing drug war, kidnapping/human trafficking epidemic, and violent corruption. There ‘s no need then to explain what UN “peacekeeping” missions around the globe are all about.

Eleven years after the UN mission began in Haiti, it brought dictatorship, a virulent cholera epidemic, tens of thousands of deaths, rapes of women, men and children and more jails than ever before in Haiti’s 200 year old history.

UN "peacekeeper" in Haiti - They won't leave. (Photo by Global Panorama)
UN "peacekeeper" in Haiti - They won't leave. (Photo by Global
Panorama
)
But, we fight back and not being a full-fledged US-Euro colony, the Haitian people still control more lands, more offshore islands and Haiti is still less violent than all the other 14 colonized countries in the Caribbean. The Obamas, Clintons and Bushes aim to fix that problem.

Haiti is the colonial marketplace these world powers amuse themselves with, by apportioning it off, at will, to various nations and commercial allies. They don’t understand this collective soul that refuses to lose its innocence. Haiti’s innocence terrifies the psychopaths. They’ve got to create a travesty like Martelly to comfort themselves about Haiti’s corruptibility. The New York Times needed to write that article for the US vampires to sit back and believe their hype.

The truth reveals madness. That the plantation called Haiti is where brutal, modern-day feudal pillage and European rape are masked as foreign aid and NGO benevolence. Mexico is sending “peacekeepers” to Haiti? A Mexico known for awful treatment of its people, for drug traffic and kidnapping epidemics. A Mexico destroyed by US imperialism and unfair trade. The question for Haiti to ask, is how is Mexico connected to the Bill and Hillary Clinton Foundation -(ie. privatizing US government assets for personal use)? Here’s a possibility:

“Vancouver mining financier Frank Giustra is teaming with former U.S. president Bill Clinton and Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim to create a $20-million (U.S.) fund that will finance small businesses in earthquake-ravaged Haiti.”

Soooo, former narco-trafficker Carlos Slim, a Clinton Foundation donor and the riches man in the world, just got a few jobs for Mexican soldiers in Haiti? The cost to him is perhaps just a mere $100 million donation to the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative or $20 million to the Clinton, Guistra, Slim Fund, uhm “for Haiti?”. But for that and other such “corporate investments”, Mr, Slim and others in his financial echelon are probably also getting the use of UN logo on helicopters, ships and tanks for the CIA’s old drug trade, no? Giustra is known for getting his pal, Bill Clinton to help with getting state mining deals and concessions. The story of Larry Rodham’s Haiti gold mine and the roles of Eurasian Minerals, Newmont Mining, Frank Guistra, Barrick Gold, VCS and St.Genevieve mining won’t be written by the New York Times in time to stop mining on the quake fault line in Haiti’s Northern resource belt. Vancouver mining magnate, Frank Giustra owns a part of the NYT. (See F. William Engdahl’s “Hillary: The New York Times Will Never Tell Us This | New Eastern Outlookhttp://bit.ly/1IcZa7L .)

The ugly destruction of the planet is played out straight in our faces. But it’s legal to lie now according to new Obama US laws, so the misinformation swirls more overtly.

Here’s the NYT times, a day late, a dollar short reporting (http://bit.ly/1IcKdCS) on the criminality of the Michel Martelly regime. Notice it comes, not when Haitians where daily protesting against Martelly, the legal bandits and rejecting the murders, fraud and ascendancy to formal dictatorship. Oh no. It comes after the formal neo-Duvalier dictatorship begins. After Samantha Powers, Pamela White, Susan Rice, Hollywood and the Clintons have solidified Obama’s strongman in Haiti. Why? Because mainstream media, like the NYT, are also part of the organized syndicate working against the well being of the people of Haiti. Their part and parcel of the imperial mafia. The NYT article exposes the crimes of the lowly soldier for empire, Michel Martelly. It’s like reading a police crime blotter sheet on Martelly.

It’s all true and Haitians in our circle have been naming these crimes and fighting this corruption daily. The misinformation part is that Michel Martelly, Laurent Lamothe and the rest of the US thugs were not put in power by a free Haiti. They’re mere employees of the US bosses who put them in power and keep them in power against the Haitian people’s constant dissent and struggle. The New York Times did not point out that Michel Martelly has been ruling by decree since before Parliament was officially dissolved. It did not list the deep politics and crimes of the top US-Euro bosses in Haiti that orchestrated this travesty. Never mentioned the respondeat superior - how Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama finished the Bushes’ project to destroy democracy and installed outright dictatorship back into Haiti.

The Haiti struggle is the greatest untold David vs Goliath battle being played out on planet earth. But, we who don’t assimilate are Haitians, from the womb to the tomb and Desalin is always rising. Desalin taught us how to stand alone against the greatest evils on planet earth and say no.–

____________
Ezili Dantò, HLLN/Free Haiti Movement, March 21, 2015


Reprinted with permission from Center for Research in Globalization.

What Do ISIS and Drug Cartels in Nearby Mexico Have in Common?

In key ways, the failed drug war in the U.S. and the billion dollar cartels have created an ISIS-like reality right across the border.

Illustration provided by Christopher Dombres.
Illustration provided by Christopher Dombres.
By Rebecca Gordon
They behead people by the hundreds. They heap headless, handless bodies along roadsides as warnings to those who would resist their power. They havepenetrated the local, state, and national governments and control entire sections of the country. They provide employment and services to an impoverished public, which distrusts their actual government with its bitter record of corruption, repression, and torture. They seduce young people from several countries, including the United States, into their murderous activities.

Is this a description of the heinous practices of the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria? It could be, but as a matter of fact it’s not. These particular thugs exist a lot closer to home. They are part of the multi-billion-dollar industry known as the drug cartels of Mexico. Like the Islamic State, the cartels' power has increased as the result of disastrous policies born in the U.S.A.

There are other parallels between IS and groups like Mexico's Zetas and its Sinaloa cartel. Just as the U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya fertilized the field for IS, another U.S. war, the so-called War on Drugs, opened new horizons for the drug cartels. Just as Washington has worked hand-in-hand with and also behind the backs of corrupt rulers in Central Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, so it has done with the Mexican government. Both kinds of war have resulted in blowback -- violent consequences felt in our own cities, whether at the finish line of the Boston Marathon or in communities of color across the country.
RELATED STORY: Mexican Cartels Are Worse Than ISIS - Big Media Hides This -- To Demonize Muslims And Coverup What's Happening On America's Border

In Mexico, the U.S. military is directly involved in the War on Drugs. In this country, that "war" has provided the pretext for the militarization of local police forces and increased routine surveillance of ordinary people going about their ordinary lives.
RELATED STORY: Narco Terrorists Now Using Drones To Bring Drugs Into US: Drone Crashes With 6 Pounds of Cyrstal Meth Near Border

And just as both the national security state and the right wing have used the specter of IS to create an atmosphere of panic and hysteria in this country, so both have used the drug cartels' grotesque theater of violence to justify their demonization of immigrants from Latin America and the massive militarization of America’s borderlands.

Read More





Narco Terrorists Now Using Drones To Bring Drugs Into US: Drone Crashes With 6 Pounds of Cyrstal Meth Near Border

Screen capture from CNN video.
By Nick Valencia
A smuggler's drone flying from Mexico crash-landed just south of the U.S. border city of San Ysidro, California, in a failed drug delivery this week, the Tijuana Municipal Police said.

The incident showed that smugglers aren't just going underground any more, using tunnels beneath the U.S.-Mexico border to transport drugs and migrants.

Now the smugglers are trying to do business by air, too, in unmanned aerial vehicles.

The drone was loaded with more than 6 pounds of the synthetic drug crystal meth, Tijuana police said.
RELATED STORY: Mexican Cartels Are Worse Than ISIS — Big Media Hides This -- To Demonize Muslims And Coverup What's Happening On America's Border
The drone crashed Tuesday night in a supermarket parking lot in Tijuana.

Apparently the smugglers became too greedy, authorities said.

The silver and black, six-propeller Spreading Wings S900 model was not able to withstand the weight of the load and crashed, police said.

Read More

Things Everyone Needs to Know About Mexico's Drug War Violence: America is Protecting, Arming and Abetting Drug Cartels

Among the issues: the U.S. military and intelligence collaborates with and empowers a corrupt narco-state in Mexico.

A former Juarez police officer lies dead behind the wheel of his car in morning rush hour after gunmen assassinated him along a main road in Juarez, Mexico.

By Michael Wilson
We need this list. In order to do anything, we need to know certain things, and our implication in them. But first, it is important to clarify that there's a lot more to Mexico than violence. Yes, it is in desperate need of a course reversal, but it would be problematic to construct it as a place that needs rescuing. Rather, we must think of it as a place with much cultural and ecological diversity and beauty, with much to offer the world. And like any other place, it is a place that deserves dignity and peace.

So, I think the question shouldn't be between, "Poor Mexico, when will the international community save it?" and "Damned neo-imperialism; won't they ever leave Mexico alone?" Rather, I think the point is to show that we are in the worst possible limbo somewhere in between, where:

(1) The Mexican and U.S. tax payers pay billions of dollars for the drug war, mainly to military contractors, to no avail and creating no improvement for either country’s national security. As Musa al-Gharbi wrote for Al Jazeera:

“In 2013 drug cartels murdered more than 16,000 people in Mexico alone, and another 60,000 from 2006 to 2012 — a rate of more than one killing every half hour for the last seven years. What is worse, these are estimates from the Mexican government, which is known to deflate the actual death toll by about 50 percent.”
(2) The U.S. military and intelligence collaborates with and empowers a corrupt narco-state in Mexico.
(3) The DEA collaborated with the Sinaloa Cartel, providing them with support such as visas and legal access to move drugs into the U.S., including inside of a cocaine-packed 747 cargo plane, in exchange for "intel” on the other cartels.

(4) The CIA distributed U.S. weapons to cartels (allegedly to "track" the guns, although it is believed this is meant to help it fight the rogue and ruthless Zetas cartel, which was started by former members of the Mexican army’s special forces also trained in counterinsurgency tactics by the U.S. army in Fort Bragg, Georgia).

(5) Corruption is not only in the public sector: even the giant Walmart allegedly bribed its way through the Mexican bureaucracy. Meanwhile, the world’s big banks help launder money for the cartels, who rack in profits to the tune of more than $40b each year.

(6) With that kind of money, the narcos can, and do, purchase police chiefs, entire departments, and higher levels of the state—both within Mexico and increasingly, in cities across the U.S. (not to mention, in scores of other countries: the narcos have at least attempted to infiltrate crime webs in places including Peru and Australia).

(7) The Mexican government does not prosecute more than 93.8% of reported crimes(perhaps because it is difficult to find a politician, at any level of government, in any part of the country, who is not in deep collusion with organized crime or at least with big business).

(8) And while the population gets scared to death at incessant violence, the state pushes the structural and economic reforms to open the country for business, such as removing protections and standards, as well as using the armed forces and other thugs to silence resistance.

(9) Which is partly why the immigration crisis only increases, flooding the U.S. labor market with easily exploitable labor and filling U.S. for-profit prisons.
(10) And finally: there's a lot that people in both Mexico and the US can do:  
  • When elections come around, make sure your would-be representatives know that your vote will be strictly conditioned on their concrete actions to pressure for a change (for example, through aid, trade, and diplomatic sanctions, etc.).
  • Organize collectively, wherever you are: talk to your neighbors, set up events, hold vigils and rallies, attend information sessions, gather speakers, host potlucks and letter-writing campaigns, distribute leaflets with calls to action, visit your government representatives, etc.
  • Boycott companies that benefit from the ongoing violence.
  • Share news and information about it to keep people engaged and organized.
What else do you think we can do? Please feel free to comment and share this.

Mexico’s First Lady of Murder Is on the Lam — She's Allegedly Behind the Disappearance of 43 Students

In a city where murderers tortured and killed with seeming impunity, Maria de los Angeles Pineda Villa was ‘the key operator’—and allegedly sealed the fate of 43 student teachers.

A poster advertising an event to celebrate the city's top killer. (Facebook)
A poster advertising an event to celebrate the city's top killer. (Facebook)

By Michael Daly
Tuesday saw Mexican security forces digging near a garbage dump, excavating yet another unmarked grave with the hope of finally finding 43 student teachers who went missing after a protest last month amid reports of a massacre carried out by the local police.

And the hunt was continuing for the most wanted woman in Mexico, the woman said to have given the Iguala police chief a fateful order when she mistakenly imagined the students might disrupt a party she was throwing in honor of herself.

“Teach them a lesson.”

The order purportedly came from Maria de los Angeles Pineda Villa, wife of the mayor of Iguala and by numerous accounts the person really in charge.

“The key operator,” Sidronio Casarrubias Salgado of the Guerreros Unidos gang recently said of her status in the town’s underworld.

[...]

As for the killing of the activists, the only response from the Mexican authorities was to contend that the mayor had constitutional immunity from prosecution. The message for the murderers was that they could torture and kill with seeming impunity.

And that appears to have been their operating assumption when the 43 student teachers went missing. But the killers clearly failed to anticipate the uproar that would follow.

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Enough! — Mexico Is Ready to Explode

Mexico has exploded a long time ago. America's corporate media has been asleep at the wheel.—Ronald David Jackson


A woman protests the then president of Mexico, Felipe Calderón. (Photo by Eneas De Troya)
A woman protests the then president of Mexico, Felipe Calderón. (Photo by Eneas De Troya)

By
Mexico has been profoundly shaken by atrocities and high-level corruption in Guerrero. The earthquake's epicenter is Iguala, the state's third largest city.

Fifty thousand marchers thronged Mexico City's main avenues last Wednesday, and demonstrations took place all over the country. More than 80 delegates to the Inter-University Assembly have called for a nationwide halt to all educational activities on Nov. 5, and are asking other social groups to join them. Protesters set fire to state headquarters in Chilpancingo, Guerrero's capital, and are sacking supermarkets and shopping centers.

Here are the events that sparked the earthquake:

On Sept. 26, María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, wife of Iguala's Mayor José Luis Abarca, of the left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution, was in the main square giving a speech about her accomplishments as head of the municipal social services agency, and it was rumored that she would announce her candidacy to succeed her husband as mayor in next June's election, since she is also a state PRD official.

Just as she was beginning, two busloads of students from the notoriously radical rural teachers' college in nearby Ayotzinapa, who had come to town to raise money to supplement their meager 50 peso daily allowance, headed for Iguala's central square. According to the Federal Attorney General's Office, the mayor ordered the local police chief to stop them. After a minor clash with police the students "borrowed" three buses from the local bus station to return to Ayotzinapa and later travel to this year's march in Mexico City commemorating the October 2, 1968 massacre in Tlatelolco, and were driving out of town when they were sprayed with machine gun fire by police and gunmen from the Guerrero Unidos (United Warriors) cartel.

Three students died, as well as a soccer player in a bus bringing a third division team to town that was also fired on, a taxi driver and his female passenger. One student who panicked and ran off when his classmates were rounded up by police and gang members was later found dead, his eyes gouged out and face flensed with a box cutter, in an act of gratuitous violence. Forty-three students were bundled into police cars and have disappeared.

Pineda's family had been working with the Beltrán Leyva, Sinaloa and Guerreros Unidos cartels for years, two of her brothers were gunned down in gang violence, another served time in jail, and a recently captured leader of Guerreros Unidos identified her as "the key operator" of criminal activity in and around Iguala. The Abarcas have not been seen since the mayor hastily requested a leave of absence, and perhaps they are already in one of the burial pits.Official statements that the 38 bodies found so far in 10 makeshift mass graves are not the students have exacerbated rather than calmed public anger, as now the other question is, who are these trussed up, tortured, headless or charred corpses? Will there be an investigation to find the perpetrators? Or will time be allowed to pass until public indignation subsides, and these cases will join the roughly 98 percent of unsolved homicides in the country that have been swept under a rug as high as the Pico de Orizaba, Mexico's tallest mountain?

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The Faces of Mexico's Missing Students

Faces of Mexico's Missing Students


By BBC Trending
On 26 September, a coach of male students from Ayotzinapa teacher training college in southern Mexico were on their way to protest over school hiring practices. They were stopped by police who shot at their buses; three were killed. But there is a mystery around 43 others, who have not been heard from since - with speculation police may have handed them over to local militia or a drug cartel.

The story has moved the Mexican public, with protest marches by thousands, desperate to know the truth. Now, more than 200 artists from across the country have added their voices, and their talents, to those calling for answers. Using the hashtag #IlustradoresConAyotzinapa (#IllustratorsForAyotzinapa), they are painting portraits of the missing individuals. Many of these images are going viral, and the hashtag has now been used over 14,000 times.

Valeria Gallo's portrait
Valeria Gallo's portrait
Valeria Gallo is one of those artists disillusioned by her government's handling of the incident. She has a son, and told BBC Trending she does not want him growing up in a Mexico where kidnappings and murder are accepted by society. At random she chose one of the missing students, Benjamin Ascencio, drew him and posted it on a Tumblr page. She then called on her peers to follow suit . "I think when you paint someone´s portrait, he´s no longer an unknown," she says. "He has a name, a face. He becomes a person." In a country where reprisals are common, she says getting so many people to sit down and draw was not easy. "Some people were afraid," she says, "but now we can go out and shout, and demand answers".

Another illustrator, known by the name Bef, is one of those that heeded the call. He chose to draw 21-year-old Bernardo Alcaraz - and above the image he wrote: "I, Bef, want to know what happened to Bernardo Flores Alcaraz". He told BBC Trending it is his "obligation" to get involved because "government-run media outlets are helping to hide the truth". He says social media protests are now the "only option" and each drawing is making a "powerful statement".

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Mexican Cartels Are Worse Than ISIS: Big Media Hides This -- To Demonize Muslims And Coverup What's Happening On America's Border

Nothing you've seen ISIS do in Iraq or Syria is worse than what Mexico's drug cartels (narco-terrorists) have been  doing everyday in Mexico. In fact, one could argue that the ISIS madmen were taught everything they know by Mexico's cartels. From 2006 to 2012 the drug war has taken 60,000 lives in Mexico — 16,000 in 2013 alone. ISIS has done nowhere near that level of carnage - Yet.

A Crucified Man: Yes, the cartels do that in Mexico. Long before ISIS was doing it in Iraq.
A Crucified Man: Yes, the cartels do that in Mexico. Long before ISIS was doing it in Iraq.


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Mexico's Failed State: 43 Missing Students, A Mass Grave and A Suspect — Mexico’s Police

Mass grave in Mexico: It is believed to contain some of the missing students. (Screen capture from YouTube video)
Mass grave in Mexico: It is believed to contain some of the missing students. (Screen capture from YouTube video)


By Randal C. Archibold
They were farm boys who did well in school and took one of the few options available beyond the backbreaking work in the corn and bean fields of southern Mexico: enrolling in a local teachers college with a history of radicalism but the promise of a stable classroom job.

Leonel Castro, 19, the oldest of seven siblings, vowed to use his salary to help his impoverished family. Júlio César, 19, thought he could run a school one day and ensure the best for the next generation. Adán Abraham de la Cruz, 23, wanted to put his computer skills to good use in the classroom.


“He was just preparing himself to get ahead like any young person would do,” said Mr. de la Cruz’s father, Bernabé.

Now, they are among 43 students reported missing after deadly clashes with the police on Sept. 26, when at least six student protesters and bystanders were killed in the restive, rural state of Guerrero, one of the poorest in the country and long afflicted by political, social and criminal upheaval.

The state prosecutor investigating why the police opened fire on students from their vehicles has found mass graves in Iguala — the small industrial city where the confrontations occurred — containing 28 badly burned and dismembered bodies.

The prosecutors had already arrested 22 police officers after the clashes, saying the officers secretly worked for, or were members of, a local gang. Now they are investigating whether the police apprehended the students after the confrontation and deliberately turned them over to the local gang. Two witnesses in custody told prosecutors that the gang then killed the protesters on the orders of a leader known as El Chucky.

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Mexico’s Minimum Wage is Criminally Low: As Low as $5 for an 8-Hour Workday in Some Regions — Is It Constitutional?

A few of the items in an average family's food basket.  Photo courtesy of Juan Tadeo.
A few of the items in an average family's food basket.  Photo courtesy of Juan Tadeo.

By J. Tadeo, Translated by Victoria Robertson
In Mexico, the working minimum wage varies geographically. In regions designated “A” (like Mexico City and various towns in the border states of Baja California, Nuevo León, and Sonora), people earn 67.29 pesos (about $5 USD) for an 8-hour workday.

How many workers in Mexico must subsist on this kind of pay? Journalist Juan Pablo Becerra Acosta has the answer:
It's more than a few. According to the most recent data compiled by INEGI [the National Institute of Statistics and Geography], 6.7 million Mexicans earn minimum wage. This represents 15.1% of those employed in the country.
This statistic, incidentally, does not include people whose pay is off the books.

According to Article 123 of Mexico's Constitution, the country's minimum wage should be sufficient to provide the head of a household with the means to satisfy the family's material, social, and cultural needs and to ensure that any children receive an education.

In reality, however, what minimum wage salary afford Mexico's workers on a daily basis?
It turns out that 67.29 pesos is not enough to buy a single kilogram of average quality beef, the price of which is about 80 pesos (or $6 USD). On the other hand, the wage is enough to buy a kilo of tortillas, a kilo of eggs, and a liter of pasteurized milk—all of which are considered basic food items in the Mexican diet. With a somewhat happy belly, however, there is little money left over for other basic necessities, like transportation.

A one-way ticket on the Metro, one of the principal modes of transportation in the Mexican capital, runs 5 pesos. That means people in Mexico City spend at least 10 pesos a day—almost 15 percent of the minimum wage income—getting to and from work. In other words, after a full day of working for minimum wage, the average Mexican would not be able to buy a hamburger, french fries, and a beverage combo, the cost of which is closer to 70 pesos ($5.26 USD).

Fast food court in Mexico. Photo by Juan Tadeo, used with permission.

It is interesting to compare Mexico's minimum wage with the salaries paid to public sector employees. The average government employee earns 2,018.70 pesos per month (about $151 USD). Employees elsewhere along the public sector ladder, like the department head at the National Cancer Institute, make as much as 28,027.09 pesos per month ($2,107 USD). The country's President, Enrique Peña Nieto, receives 142,117.76 pesos, according to official sources, which works out to $10,685 USD per month.

One Twitter user made the following comparison:
[Caption reads, "$65 pesos for an 8-hour day would be $6 dollars in the U.S. vs $10 dollars for an hour of work would be 125 pesos in Mexico. But when Mexicans complain, they are told to stop being troublemakers and get back to work."]
Mexican Senator Alejandra Barrales of the leftist Party of the Democratic revolution recently shared the following data:
From 2000 to 2011 [during the PAN administrations], Mexico had one of the lowest wage growths of any Latin American country.
Barrales’ remarks responded to claims by the opposing National Action Party (PAN), which has positioned itself as a defender of Mexico's downtrodden workers. Commenting on the PAN's proposition to review wage rates, Twitter user Fher Garcia writes:
If members of the PAN really want to do something about the minimum wage, they should probably start by trying to live off it themselves.
If we consider what a person's salary ought to cover, based on the letter of the law, and contrast that with what a day's minimum-wage earnings actually buy, it raises serious concerns about how Mexico's current minimum wage fuels the profound class divisions that plague Mexican society today, perhaps violating the country's Constitution.


Reprinted with permission from Global Voices.


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