StormWarning’s Counterterrorism

The siege in Mexico in the war between Calderon’s government forces and the drug cartels has taken a new turn with the Gente Nueva posting lists of 21 police officers marked for death. These banners appeared on bridges across the border near El Paso Texas.

An unusual chill has fallen Chihuahua City, just across from El Paso on the Texas border, after authorities said they found banners attached to bridges displaying a list of 21 police officers targeted for assassination, reportedly written by a gang called Gente Nueva (New People).

The fight for the US-Mexico border rages on. The limited effort to stop the drug trafficking coupled with the increased boldness of the Mexican drug cartels should make a vacation “down Mexico way” a thing of the past (I know people who still drive across the border to go shopping…I don’t understand how they could take their lives in their hands like that).

Calderon, Chihuahua, El Paso, Gente Nueva, Merida Initiative

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Its been subrosa for a while, but now revealed, that a group of Catholics named Grupo Romo is working to address what thet call “the increasingly toxic anti-immigrant atmosphere” by turning the Alamo City into a sanctuary for unauthorized immigrants. These are “faith-driven” activists providing shelter, food and medical care for what this article refers to as “unauthorized immigrants” (this is political correctness carried to a ludicrous extreme!)…call these people what they are! They are “illegal aliens” who enter this country illegally by surreptitiously sneaking across holes in our border with Mexico (along with G-d knows whoever else).

The encouragement offered by this “well meaning” Grupo Romo is contrary to anything that any law-abiding citizen of the United States should countenance…residents of Texas where the population is 36% Hispanic (counting only the legal residents) and in San Antonio, where the legal Hispanic population is nearly 58% is astounding. Grupo Romo, despite their “faith base” and religious cloak, are aiding and abetting law breakers.

“We are the new Sanctuary Movement in San Antonio,” said group member Víctor Ruiz, 63, who works for the immigration division of Catholic Charities and previously was with the Defense Department in Corpus Christi. “If immigrants need help, we will do all we can to help them out.”

The original “Sanctuary Movement” was a religious effort in the 1980s that created an underground railroad for Central Americans fleeing the region’s bloody civil wars, whose trail crossed South Texas…

…Offering sanctuary to the undocumented is controversial even within immigrant-heavy congregations…

Despite their religious basis, Grupo Romo and other like them are breaking the law! This whole “New Sanctuary” movement is contrary to the Law of the Land!

● Jim “Hoot” Gibson, a San Antonio teacher and member of U.S. Border Watch, a Houston-based immigration-restriction group, said he and others stand ready to protest the Romo group. The law is unequivocal, Gibson said: They’ll be aiding and harboring undocumented immigrants.

● local ICE Director, Jerry Robinette says that “He’s all for people acting on political and religious convictions, and he’s got nothing against helping needy folks, but he can’t look the other way if they break immigration laws.” and “I’d caution them that good intentions could make them criminally liable,” Robinette said. “They have to make the decision whether they want to violate the law or not.”

Movements like the New Sanctuary Movement work against our National Security in the name of “faith.” Groups like these must be stopped. While their ideals a correct, the fact that they encourage law breaking is something I cannot support.

FYI, check out Right Truth’s Memorial Day Weekend Reading Assignment.

Grupo Romo, New Sanctuary Movement, San Antonio

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You’ve got to say that is about time that the Mexican government did something to quell the violence.

A donkey is doing time in southern Mexico for assault and battery.
The animal was locked up at a local jail that normally holds people for public drunkenness and other disturbances after it bit and kicked two men near a ranch in Chiapas state, police said Monday.

Officer Sinar Gomez said the donkey will remain behind bars until its owner agrees to pay the men’s medical bills.

Ask why our gasoline prices are so high?

Average output for the first four months of the year was 2.875 mbd, down from 3.164 compared with the same period last year, according to Pemex.

So, Mexico remains a simple (no!, complex) contradiction.

assault, Donkey, oil prices

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America is known as the melting pot. People of all sizes, shapes and colors come here to take advantage of all of the benefits of freedom. A new study by a Duke Univ. economist shows that newcomers are assimilating more quickly than their predecessors did 100 years ago — especially Cubans, Vietnamese and Filipinos — but not Mexicans!

Mexicans — by far the most numerous nationality — lag significantly behind other big immigrant groups, possibly because a lack of legal status keeps many Mexican immigrants from advancing.

Why? Its obvious:

● lower rates of citizenship
● higher incidences of teenage pregnancy
● higher incidences of incarceration.

Sorry to say that its a vicious circle, and one that generally validates at least one stereotype.

assimilation, Mexican immigrants

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Just the other day we read about the gunning down of Mexican top cop Edgar Eusebio Millán Gómez as he entered his home. Yet on Friday, another high level Mexican law enforcement officer was killed, the 4th since May 1.

Esteban Robles, the former head of the capital’s anti-kidnapping squad, was leaving his apartment early Friday when drive-by shooters opened fire with AK-47 assault rifles.

Robles’ killing came a few hours after the funeral of Señor Gómez (there is some belief by Mexican intelligence that the assassination of Gómez was an inside job since the killers had keys to his apartment - a sure sign I think). But in addition, yesterday afternoon, on Saturday, Juan Antonio Roman Garcia, the #2 law enforcement officer in Juarez was killed when his car was sprayed by machine gun fire.

His death has plunged the city into mourning because he was an exemplary officer with an impeccable 20-year record who fulfilled his duties until his last breath, despite the dangers,” said Ciudad Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz.

If that isn’t enough to stop you from spending time in Mexico on vacation (OKAY, you’re not a law enforcement officer, so you aren’t at the top of anyone’s hit list, but the chances are that you are an American), you have this…attacks on Mexican ranchers in which 17 people were murdered and the daughter of the rancher was kidnapped.

A prominent cattle rancher hid Monday from gunmen who killed two of his sons and kidnapped his daughter in weekend attacks that left 17 people dead in southern Mexico, relatives and authorities said.

Men with assault rifles forced victims into a line and sprayed them with bullets Sunday at Rogaciano Alba’s ranch in Petatlan, a town in southern Guerrero state, investigators said. Five people were killed and five others died at a hospital, State Attorney General Eduardo Murueta said Monday.

Will the $1.4 billion Merida Initiative to fight the drug violence be enough? I think not. Don’t fool yourself, this is not just an internal problem for Mexico.

As my “regular” readers know, I’ve been on the case of the emerging threat of Mexican violence from almost the beginning of this blog (the Mexican Tourist Board doesn’t like me). See additional stuff on this in Snooper’s post, War in Mexico.

Edgar Eusebio Millan Gomez, Esteban Robles, Juan Antonio Roman Garcia, Juarez, Merida Initiative, Mexican ranchers

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It is time that we wake up America!  The Rio Grande Valley along the Texas-Mexican border is a war zone…and it is going to be a battlezone for freedom if we are not careful. If the battles between the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels aren’t enough to scare the crap out of you (along with the viciousness of the Gulf Cartels’ henchmen, Los Zetas), then examine more closely the gunning down of Edgar Eusebio Millán Gómez. As the public face of the Mexican government’s war on drugs, his being killed on the doorstep of his apartment in Mexico City, no less, holds in it the risk that the cartels will be emboldened (see Washington Post article). We are witnessing the first real protracted battles of the War on Terrorism in our Hemisphere.

“This could have a snowball effect, even leading to the risk of ungovernability,” Luís Astorga, a Mexico City-based sociologist and drug expert, said in an interview. “It indicates terrible things, a level of weakness in our institutions — they can’t even protect themselves.”

Already, there have been more than 6000 deaths in this Drug War within the country that lies to the south of our porous border. Millán Gómez’s murder is not the first high level (and visibility) murder.

Before Millán Gómez was slain, assassins also killed Robert Velasco Bravo, the head of the federal police agency’s organized crime tactical analysis office, as well as two other top police officials, all of them in Mexico City. One of the killings was in Coyoacan, an old-money haven popular with tourists.

The message seems clear. The Drug Lords and their cartels reign supreme in Mexico. I don’t care about the Merida Initiative! It won’t work (IMO of course). Merida is the appropriation of funds for the U.S. to help Calderon quell the violence and stop the drug trade. Who the hell are we kidding? The problem is that the problem is going to become more difficult to stop.

The worst part of all of this is the International connections to the Mexican Drug War…the first battles on the War on Terrorism in the Western Hemisphere are being fought today in Mexico. In his post on the Counterterrorism Blog, Doug Farah connects the dots for those who cannot or do not already see (anyone who has a familiarity with counter-narcotics issues already knew this).

It is worth remembering that the chaos the traffickers are wreaking in Mexico is not just aimed at the Mexican state, it is also aimed at undermining the already-battered viability of our southern border. The hundreds of dead across the border states of Mexico show where the battles are being fought.

The easier it is to cross dope, weapons, illegal aliens from around the world, the higher the profits for the traffickers.

And the FARC rebels in Colombia are now in a direct business relationship with Mexican trafficking organizations, according to the recently-captured FARC documents resulting from the raid that killed rebel leader Raul Reyes.

The FARC, in turn, is allied with Nicaragua (Ortega) and Venezuela (Chavez), who in turn are allied with Iran, which in turn runs Hezbollah, which in turn is actively working to expand its beach head in Latin America.

Remember Monkey Point? StormBlog is one of the only places, I dare say, that discussed the Iranian foothold in South America. Its been quiet down there recently. No news, but its there!

In his own blog, Farah connects the dots for those who do not already see them!

It is not a conspiracy to see all these developments as inter-connected. As I often tell military audiences and others, every piece of the mosaic, looked at individually, is serious but not alarming. But when the tiles of the mosaic are assembled into a picture, even if the picture is a bit blurry, it is astonishing and dangerous.

Wake up America! The battles along our border are alot more important than keeping all of those Mexicans from swimming across the Rio Grande! or walking through the desert. We need to worry about the so-called, “Other Than Mexicans.” Our Southern Border with Mexico is indeed and battlezone. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the Battle of the Rio Grande will soon expand.

As my “regular readers know, I have been writing on the brewing invasion of the U.S. related to the war in Mexico for quite some time now. A different view can be found here. Also see a more recent view of this issue written by Snooper.

[I needs ta git me a "posse"]

counter narcotics, Edgar Eusebio Millan Gomez, FARC, Los Zetas, mexico drug cartels, Monkey Point, Washington Post

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Ambushed at his home in the Guerrero neighborhood of Mexico City with the audacity of the drug cartels, Edgar Millán Gómez died a few hours after being hit by ten shots.  The gunmen met him as he opened his apartment.  U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza commented that Gomez was a Mexican hero.

Mexican intelligence (oxymoron?) says that this killing may have been over the January 21st arrest of Alfredo Beltrán Leyva, one of the leaders of the Sinaloa cartel.

René Jiménez Ornelas, a criminal justice expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico: “We are seeing a worsening of the violence carried out by organized crime.”

“South of the Border, Down Mexico Way.” This happened in Mexico City. Let’s go on vacation!

alfredo beltran leyva, Edgar Millan Gomez, kidnapping, Sinaloa Cartel, U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza

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According to the Homeland Security undersecretary for intelligence and analysis, Charles Allen, even though there are indications of clear intent, there is no sign of al Qaeda actually trying to move jihad terrorists into the United States from Mexico (not just yet, at least). Let us hope this revelation does not reduce our vigilence on the southern border and our efforts to stop illegal immigration.

“We do know that going back to 2004, the southern border is something that al Qaeda’s central leadership has looked at. But we know of no specifics of where al Qaeda has really endeavored to cross our borders in the south,” he said.

Of course, the contrast is that at least one Islamic militant has been caught trying to enter the United States from Canada by land to attempt an attack…before 2000.

al Qaeda, illegal immigration

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Again?  More like still!%@#*&!.  In Ciudad Juarez, just over the El Paso Texas border, 200 people have been murdered this year alone (22 on Easter Weekend).  Behind all of this violence in ”El Chapo,” the head of the Sinaloa drug cartel.  In total, the murder count is over 700 in 2008.  All of this is happening in spite of the Calderon anti-drug initiative, proving, perhaps that nothing will stop the drug lords from continuing to kill each other and innocent bystanders along with law enforcement officers in their insane spree of violence.

Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is such a nice guy though.

Police say Mexico’s most wanted man, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who leads a consortium of traffickers from the Pacific state of Sinaloa, has taken his fight for control of smuggling routes to Ciudad Juarez, targeting the dominant Juarez cartel amid a much lighter army presence there than in other cities.

Look at that face!

WANTED

(Aliases: El Chapo, Chapo Guzman, El Rapido)

DOB: December 25, 1954
POB: Mexico
Nationality: Mexican
Citizenship: Mexico
Height: 5 feet 8 inches
Weight: 165 pounds
Hair Color: Black
Eye Color: Brown

Of course there is hope along with unsubstantiated speculation that El Chapo has been killed in Guatemala during a gunbattle outside a water park in Teculutan, a drug-trafficking stronghold in northeastern Guatemala.

Let is be so, but as with other terrorists, the likelihood of the terror ending even if the head of this snake is chopped off is limited.

Ciudad Juarez, El Chapo, El Paso, pipsqueak

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Well, I was busy for alot of the day, and never got to write this.  Doug Farah at CTBlog (and his own blog) beat me to it.  Its time for all of the people arguing to relax the border wake up to the very real danger.  I’ve written about this so many times before!  In this case, 3 Afghan men with legal Mexican passports tried to enter the U.S.

Three Afghani Muslim men caught posing as Mexican nationals last month while en route to Europe were part of a human smuggling operation and carried what are now believed to be altered but genuine Mexican passports for which they paid $10,000 each, Indian investigators told The San Antonio Express-News.

The key point is this: “At issue to some U.S. national security experts is whether another of Mexico’s embassies and consulates abroad might be implicated in selling travel documents to people from countries like Afghanistan where terrorist organizations are active…”

Here’s more for the disbelievers and those who want to have an open border!

Travelers from Islamic countries carrying passports that are valid but altered with fake names and photographs are among the most difficult to detect, he said. In the black markets of human smuggling, real national passports with embedded security bar codes rank among the most valuable travel documents because they enable their bearers to more easily slip through airport inspections.

“If you’ve got a Mexican passport you’ve already crossed the bridge,” Conway said. “And you can become part of the flood of people who cross into the U.S. If terrorists wanted to exploit the infrastructure in place, they can. It’s there.”

We are dealing with a very persistent enemy…they have multiple faces and skin colors…they come from many different countries…

So, here is the question for the moment: HAVE TERRORISTS CROSSED? (the U.S.-Mexican border). Of course they have!…Border security critics assert no terrorist has ever crossed; they would be wrong.

…the heart of a central question regarding just how much of a national security threat is posed by a small category of border-jumping migrants known in homeland security agencies as “Special Interest Aliens.”

Terrorists across the border???

According to unearthed intelligence reports, court records, interviews with federal agents and a variety of open sources, other border jumpers that can be publicly tied to terrorism since Al-Qaeda began its international bombing campaign against American targets in the mid-1990s are:

– Kuwaiti national Nabil al-Marabh. Listed as number 27 on the FBI’s list of Most Wanted Terrorists for alleged links to the 9-11 hijackers and other plots…

– Palestinian Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer. Found guilty of conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction after authorities uncovered his 1997 plot to bomb a New York City subway…

– Ahmed Ressam. Convicted of plotting the 1999 “millennium” bomb attack on the Los Angeles International Airport after he was caught trying to cross into Washington State in a car loaded with explosives and bomb components…

– Algerian Abdelghani Meskini and Abdelhakim Tizegha. Convicted of charges related to the thwarted 1999 “millennium” plot…

– Mohmoud Khalil and Ziad Saleh. Among a group of men, including members of the designated terrorist group Hamas, arrested in January 2005 in connection to a wire fraud, trademark violations and alien smuggling investigation…

– Ahilan Nadarajah and Saluja Thangaraja. Reputed members of the Tamil Tigers caught at the Mexico border in 2001 after being smuggled through Thailand, South Africa and Brazil en route to Toronto Canada…

Close the freakin’ border! Control the documents…make them more secure than they are…or will be under the current regulations and guidelines.

And here is the point…

One territory where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet, known as the “Tri-Border” region, home to tens of thousands of Arab immigrants, has been under unrelenting scrutiny by American intelligence services since 9-11.

The U.S. Treasury Department in December designated nine people and two organizations in the Tri-Border region it says “provided financial and logistical support to the Hezbollah terrorist organization.” A department fact sheet accuses some of the men of trafficking in weaponry, another of running Hezbollah front businesses in Chile. Another man is named as an expert in illegally acquiring Brazilian citizenship and bogus Paraguayan travel documents.

I don’t know how many times I have written about the Tri-Border region…or about so many of the other issues relating to illegal immigration. We’ve got a problem here, and now, more than 6½ years after the attacks of September 11th, we are still playing politics with immigration.

I’ve written about this many times before:
Terrorists Have Been Arrested at Texas Border
Breaching America: Iraqi Chaldean Christian Granted Asylum
Chaldean Christians - Aliens in Search of Religious Freedom
Border Security - The Danger of Illegal Immigration from Islamic Countries - Part 4
Border Security - The Danger of Illegal Immigration from Islamic Countries - Part 3
Border Security - Breaching America: The Latin Connection

border security, Hezbollah, immigration, State Department, Tri Border region

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Its hard to figure out which side of the fence Rick Perry is on.  He’s for it, he’s against it.  He’s got video cameras watching people cross the Tex-Mex border, and now, he states that coordination and that a fence from El Paso to Brownville is not is the answer.  Its called pandering to the audience.

Perry’s comments before the Greater Dallas Hispanic Chamber of Commerce came less than two weeks after he told reporters in Austin that “there is some strategic fencing that we support” and “that you can use strategic fencing to help control the flow of illegal activities.”

The governor’s speech on Monday, which drew applause from the audience, made no mention of “strategic fencing.”  

Perry’s spokesman, Robert Black claims that there is no contradiction. 

Antonio Gil Morales, an opponent of any sort of border wall…[skip]…suggested that Perry’s comments were tailored to his audience. “Everybody’s trying to play the middle road without [upsetting] anybody,” said Morales, of Fort Worth.

Morales has Perry pegged.

First Rick was a supporter of Giuliani, now he supports McCain (I support McCain).  I support strong border security.  I don’t think that Gov. Perry does.  Its all too transparent for me.

border fence, border security

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Sad.  Its just another job that no American (or Texan) is capable of doing!  The Dallas Morning News has declared that the illegal immigrant is the Texas Man of the Year.  IMO, even Governor Rick Perry is more worthy; frankly, so is Kinky Friedman is more worthy.  Shame and sadness falls upon the great State of Texas for willingly succumbing, and “tossing in the taco.”

He breaks the law by his very presence. He hustles to do hard work many Americans won’t, at least not at the low wages he accepts. The American consumer economy depends on him. America as we have known it for generations may not survive him. We can’t seem to live with him and his family, and if we can live without him, nobody’s figured out how.

I can’t believe this.

●  Texas’ immigrant population has increased by nearly 33 percent since 2000, according to an analysis of government data by the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies.

●  Half the immigrants in Texas — about 7 percent of all Texans — are here illegally.

●  Texas’ immigrant population has jumped a whopping 32.7 percent since 2000

The myth of the “job American’s won’t do.”

“There is no such thing as a job that natives won’t do,” Dr. Borjas, an immigrant from Cuba, wrote last year. “Instead, there are jobs that natives aren’t willing to do at the going wage.”

The state comptroller’s office had a different take on Texas, reporting in 2005 that illegal immigrants provided a net economic boost of nearly $18 billion that year. While the state government took in more taxes from illegal immigrants than it paid out in services for them, the comptroller said, the opposite was true for Texas’ local governments.

Is this still the United States?

The importance of immigrant labor to Texas was underscored this year with formation of a new political alliance – big business and the Legislature’s Mexican-American caucus. They threatened to cripple the lawmaking machinery if legislative leaders allowed a slate of “anti-immigrant” bills to advance. The tactic worked.

And so it goes…[I'll add more to this later when I have finished some other work].

illegal immigration, Texas Man of the Year

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Catchy tune, huh?  They sing about Kalashnikovs and cocaine alongside their traditional ballads of hard work and lost love.  These are the drug ballads or narco corridos.  In November 2006, the singer of “Contraband in the Border,” Valentin Elizalde was killed in ambush outside a cockfighting ring in the border city of Reynosa.  In all, at least 13 musicians have been killed since June 2006.

The indiscriminate killings of the narco-terrorists is astounding…especially when it starts to take entertainers (no type of music bias - all types killed).

Investigators have yet to solve any of the 13 musician killings. Nor have they revealed any suspects, although they have said that drug gangs could be responsible. The same murkiness clouds most of the 2,500 slayings in Mexico this year that have been tallied by the leading Mexican newspapers in what they call “execution-meters.” Those killings involve ambushes or abductions and appear to bear to marks of organized crime.

All of this at a time when El Presidente Felipe Calderon insists that the war vs drug trafficking and the cartels in being won - record cocaine seizures - extraditing lords to the U.S. - using the military to patrol drug ravaged towns (he doesn’t have to deal with Posse Comitatus). Targeted or simply coincidence…Mexican drug violence continues.

Sergio Gómez was kidnapped on December 2 in Morelia, Mexico and found dead the next day.  While there is no proof, there are suggestions that Gómez might have been “supported” by one of the drug cartels.

“The narcos are completely involved in the business,” Lucio Tzin Tzun, who has been a concert promoter here for 20 years, said in an interview. “They control everything. It’s like a mafia…”

…In Mexico, the musical celebration of counterculture figures is in the country’s DNA. An array of homages are still sung to Pancho Villa — a bandit turned revolutionary-era folk hero. The new bandit heroes are drug traffickers, celebrated in songs known as narcocorridos and written by artists who are “essentially court poets for the drug world,” said Elijah Wald, author of the book “Narcocorrido: A Journey Into the Music of Drugs, Guns and Guerrillas.”

For lack of a better term, the drug lords become benefactors of the arts (read that as an easy way to launder money).

You can vote for this article at Real Clear Politics (if you wish, of course).

border, drug wars, Morelia, narco corridos, Sergio Gomez, Valentin Elizalde

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Violence in Mexico.  Last year’s killing of Brad Will, an Indy journalist covering the uprising in Oaxaca, remains unsolved, but evidence now suggests that he was shot at close range raising the question of execution, even though typically, the Mexican authorities’ investigation is not done.  This article discusses the public prosecutor’s investigation.

The Oaxaca teachers conflict, which is still simmering, pitted teachers and left wing groups against the state government. They demanded but didn’t get the resignation of Gov. Ulises Ruiz.

About a dozen people died in the conflict. It’s not entirely clear who is responsible for the deaths but pro-government thugs — possibly police officers out of uniform — were involved in much of the violence, which was only quelled with the intervention of federal troops.

Now more than a year later, and despite ample evidence—including Will’s own videotape (as he was shot, even though the footage does raise question about the range from which he was shot)—implicating local police and state officials in the shooting—Will’s killers remain free. 

The violence in Oaxaca had led to a travel advisory for Americans warning against travel to what was once a destination in Southern Mexico, and where, inexplicably, some American universities had been sending their students for study abroad.  At the time, U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza had said:

“Mr. Will’s senseless death, of course, underscores the critical need for a return to lawfulness and order in Oaxaca,” Garza said. “The fact that Mr. Will was a journalist attempting to report on the violence in Oaxaca so that the general public could be more aware of the situation there makes his death all the more lamentable.”

Yes, but one could argue that covering a war zone…and Southern Mexico, as many parts of Mexico continue to be, is an area prone to violence and unrest.  And yet, Oaxaca is hoping for a return to normalcy (see article promoting travel to a now “peaceful” Oaxaca).

The violence in Mexico continues.  Its not just drug related either.  Unrest caused by the economic divide in that country.  Was Brad Will’s death an accident or an execution?  We’ll probably never know for sure.  Given the levels of corruption throughout Mexican law enforcement, the chances are slimmer.  But the fact remains that Mexico is a dangerous country, and journalists are a prime target.  In Violence in Mexico - A dangerous trade it is discussed that:

MONTH after month, the cases mount up. On October 8th, three deliverymen working for El Imparcial del Istmo, a newspaper in the southern state of Oaxaca, were shot dead. All the paper’s journalists resigned the next day. In April and May, grenades twice exploded outside the offices of Cambio de Sonora in Hermosillo in northern Mexico. The newspaper suspended publication. A month before, a reporter for a weekly magazine in the same city was beaten with a rifle stock by two policemen.  

Mexico has become the most dangerous country in the Americas for journalists—and by one count the world’s second deadliest after Iraq. According to Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based group, nine were killed and three went missing last year. The Committee to Protect Journalists, a similar body in New York, says that at least five have been murdered so far this year. 

The murders are only the tip of an iceberg of intimidation.  

Yet, again, an article promoting cooperation between Houston and Monterrey seems to minimize the problem:

While still an investment magnet, the city’s image has been tarnished by a wave of narcotics-related violence that has claimed the lives of some 30 police officers this year.

The wave of violence also has included the slaying of a lawmaker and bystanders.

U.S. investors have not been deterred by the violence, but the American Chamber of Commerce in Mexico has said that companies spend about double what they would like on security.

Somehow I’m not quite ready to travel to Mexico, once the location of many vacations.  Travel to Mexico for business or pleasure?  Do it at your own risk.

Brad Will, execution, Oaxaca, Reporters Without Borders, The Committee to Protect Journalists

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“South of the Border, Down Mexico Way“…For months now, I’ve been writing about how U.S. National Security is threatened not just by the illegals flowing across the border, but also because of the drug cartel violence that persists and spreads.  This follows the Stratfor report last week of the spreading narco-violence and its spread across the Texas border with Mexico.

It said there were 1,543 drug-related killings in Mexico in 2005 and more than 2,100 in 2006, and that the more than 2,100 estimated since Jan. 1 will “certainly make this year the deadliest yet.”

Announced today is a new plan, called “Plan Mexico,” a plan for U.S.-Mexico Security Cooperation (that references the aid packaged discussed below):

…the $1.4 billion, two-year package to help the Mexican government combat organized crime. Dubbed “Plan Mexico” by the media, in reference to Plan Colombia, a multibillion dollar counternarcotics initiative, the aid package will provide funds for police training, equipment, and intelligence gathering. But some question whether such measures are enough to stem Mexico’s security troubles and shore up its weak institutions.

Despite the optimism expressed by the Council for Foreign Relations, there is now concern (no kidding) that this plan…not $1.4 billion but actually up to $8.4 billion if Mexico provides the $7 billion it says it will spend, could fall short because it could miss to cut-off cartel funding channels and fail to create the greater police authority and security that is needed (read that as eliminating corruption in the corrupt Mexican police):

The plan will improve Mexico’s range of anti-drug tools with new helicopters, aerial surveillance equipment and detection gear. Yet, experts say the approach is superficial.

“More helicopters won’t make a difference because you are only dealing with the armed side of the cartels. You’ve got to go after their finances and find out where their banks accounts are. That is the way to weaken them,” said Ernesto Mendieta, a security advisor and former Mexican anti-drugs prosecutor.

Its downplayed by the U.S. and denied by Mexico, but the role of the Mexican military in some of what is happening on the border is irrefutable…sometimes there are even suggestions that drug smugglers are actually Mexican soldiers in disguise.  One source contains the following:

●  A U.S. Department of Homeland Security document in 2006 reported 216 incursions of Mexicans into the U.S. in the period 1996-2006

●  There are 11 Mexican military garrisons on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexican border.  Moving from west to east, these garrisons are located at Tecate, San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonoyta, Agua Prieta, Ciudad Juarez, Ojinaga, Palomas, Ciudad Acuña, Piedras Negras, Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros.

●  According to the treaties of Guadalupe-Hidalgo (1848) and the Gadsden Purchase (1853), which established the current U.S.-Mexico border, each country reserves the right to fortify any part of its side of the border.

From a column written by Antonio O. Garza Jr. is U.S. ambassador to Mexico in the Dallas Morning News…

During my five years as U.S. ambassador, I have watched as narco-trafficking violence has rapidly spread in Mexico. Organized criminals have brazenly assassinated Mexican police, senior government officials and thousands of civilians caught in the crossfire. Last year, more than 2,000 drug-related murders took place; more than 2,000 have been reported this year. This challenge also dramatically affects us, as untold thousands have died or had their lives ruined by the corrosive impact of the drugs that Mexican cartels smuggle into the U.S.

Supply-Demand and Mexican Drugs (my title)

…a recent report from The White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy offered a comparable inversion of the status quo. Cocaine prices, which have been steadily dropping in the United States for the last 40 years or so, rose 24 percent in the second quarter of 2007, topping out at an average of US$118.70 a gram.  But questions are justifiably raised: The ONDCP’s release seemed in part to be an answer to a September report from the US Government Accountability Office, whose lengthy title included the phrase “Tons of Illicit Drugs Continue to Flow into the United States,” and was generally critical of the lack of cooperation between Mexico and the United States. Like virtually every other credible report written about the challenges drug warriors face, the GAO’s didn’t leave the reader thinking that success is right around the corner. And the GAO is strenuously non-partisan and objective, while The White House, to put it mildly, is not.

In the context of this news about Mexican drugs, we have today’s report in the San Antonio Express:

“Together, our countries can defeat criminal organizations that threaten our region, and we look forward to working closely with our neighbors to realize that goal,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

Bush administration officials are asking Congress to include $500 million of the Mexican aid package and $50 million for Central American nations in a $46 billion supplemental spending bill to finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan…

…The Bush administration hopes the $50 million for Central America will be the first installment on a larger initiative to fight international organized crime, said Thomas Shannon, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs…

…Bush and Mexican President Felipe Calderón have sought to hammer out an agreement that would provide U.S. aid and training since the leaders met this year in Mérida, Mexico…The agreement would provide helicopters, surveillance aircraft, communication equipment and other resources to help Mexican authorities disrupt drug trafficking and weaken the power of the cartels.

Things are bad enough on the Mexican border without some idiot reporting “news” of last year’s incursion…that was January 2006.  This is now, and frankly, even though the posting was nearly two years old, the problem remains.  And in fact, given the militarization of the Mexican side of the Texas border, why would it not surprise if there was a shooting outbreak?

Recently on Storm Blog:

Cutbacks in Mexico’s Intel Leads to Internal Terrorism

Border Security - National Guard Force Halved

Marxist Rebels Threaten Mexican Stability

Go and read about Mexico and the War on Drugs at Becky’s place.

Down Mexico Way, drug violence, Plan Mexico, South of the Border, U.S. Mexico Security Cooperation

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