Mexico

[Caligastia Lanonandek]

Another place where a lot of retirees go because they can live well on a social security check is Poland.

[walompio]

Sorry if this so longwinded, but I think it shows that Mexico is on the verge of something slamming the fan pretty hard.

On January 23, 2009
Michael Webster from the American Chronicle wrote this.

Mexico´s Drugs, Violence and corruption and all of its related ramifications will bring the country down through revolution by its people.

According to a spokesperson for a new radical group calling itself the Juárez Citizens Command is threatening to strike back against lawlessness that has gripped Mexico for a long time, they say that they are going to strike back by killing one criminal a day until order and piece is restored. Similar groups are popping up all across Mexico.

Over the years, with the help of corrupt Mexican officials and corrupt or myopic American officials, and with American politicians nurturing a lack of foresight and discernment therefore developed at the very least a narrow view of what´s actually happening in Mexico and are now in denial of a failed state. As a result of this corruption the failed state of Mexico has become one of the most dangerous places in the world where violence runs rampant and Citizens wake up to executed headless bodies in their streets. The spokesperson stated.

Juan Lopez a shop keeper in the border town of Nogales says “The people of Mexico feel that the government is losing the war against the Mexican Drug Cartels bloody violence and that the government is unable to protect us.”

The Mexican border towns are like ghost towns with no tourist and no customers to buy their goods. Tourist mainly Americans have stopped shopping in Mexico because of that violence. To make things even more untenable the cartel gangs are demanding protection money from the small Mom and Pop shop owners in Mexico City and throughout the country and it seems the current Calderon government cannot or will not stop it.

Other industries big and small including rich drug traffickers are believed to spend millions buying politicians in the failed hope of government protection as the Calderon administration turns a deaf hear and appear to be in lock step with the U.S. Some say it is because the U.S. is willing to pay more.

Mexico has become the drug capital of the world and the drug superhighway to the United States, delivering its poison of heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana to the drug hungry U.S. market.

According to a DEA undercover operative the Mexican drug cartels have gained more and more of the American market. They have grown bolder in their attempts to expand their operations in Mexico and the United States. They now control the ruling party in Mexico and operate the biggest drug business on earth right here in the USA, right under our noses.

Law enforcement on both sides of the border say this is being done through the cartels surrogates Mexican and American gangs. These surrogates smuggle drugs from Mexico to the states and sell or front the drugs to American gang leaders who in turn sell or front the drugs to its members who move the drugs to local dealers and drug addicts for distribution and sales on the streets of America. These same surrogates, conduct murder for hire on behalf of the cartels interests, kidnap and transport victims to Mexico for executions and enforce the cartels will. Many of the drive by and other gang shootings are the result of orders from Mexico.

The Laguna Journal has reported in the past that large amounts of cash from the Mexican drug cartel gangs whom are selling drugs on the streets of American cities are being smuggled back into Mexico.

In its last report, the US Department of Justice disclosed that 17.2 billion dollars in cash entered Mexico in only the past two years as a result of money laundering operations in their country. The report advised that Mexico and Colombia are the principal destinations of narco resources that operate in the US and that “the laundering of drug money is a global industry” with transnational organizations present in various countries.

General Barry McCaffrey, ex-US anti-drug czar, urged a halt to the “hundreds of millions of dollars” smuggled into Mexico since, with those resources, the drug cartels acquire more force and power. He warned that Mexico is in a national emergency. The report, drawn up by the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), said that smuggling cash is a method used by traffickers to move profits from drug sales from the US market to the foreign supplier, mainly Mexico and Colombia. It is estimated that those two drug countries launder between 18 and 39 billion dollars annually. “a large part is smuggled in bulk from the US over the southwest border,” the report said.

The Mexican Drug Cartels begin their take over of the Mexican Government by infiltrating the 71-year reign of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) by buying its officials and by contributing huge amounts of cash to their cause. When that didn´t work as well as they liked they went after the ultimate control of government by causing to be formed the new National Action Party, or PAN they than looked for and found a likely candidate that they felt they could control and as a result President Vicente Fox of the PAN, finally ousted the PRI in 2000.

As most new Mexican administrations in March, Fox declared that his administration was in a “head-on battle against corruption.”

“Together, we work for a Mexico full of justice, legality and democratic opportunities,” the president said.

Some recent photo´s were published in the magazine Quien which gave insight into the before and post-presidential life style and it has sparked outrage among many Mexicans.

“The photos show that he got rich during his six years in office, in a very shameless and cynical way,” Lino Korrodi, Mr. Fox’s former chief campaign fundraiser, said in one interview of the former president. Leading the chorus of disapproval, Mr. Korrodi claims that as a candidate Mr. Fox was a terrible businessman, permanently in financial straits and keeper of a simple house with servants paid for out of campaign funds.

Mr. Korrodi claims he raised millions for Fox through the very rich and known drug traffickers. His accusations have prompted calls by many for a congressional investigation into Mr. Fox’s apparently lavish new found wealth.

Hailed as a hero of democracy when he defeated 71 years of one-party rule in elections in 2000, Mr. Fox left the presidential office vilified by much of the press.

At best, he was accused of living in a fantasy world dubbed Foxilandia and of ignoring the need to shore up democracy. At worst he was charged with orchestrating an electoral fraud favoring his personal choice and colleague, the current president, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa who was to carry on the Fox traditions.

But the latest measurement of corruption by Berlin-based Transparency International found that more than 50 percent of Mexicans remain pessimistic about corruption and believe it will get worse. That number is believed to have risen to as much as 75 percent today.

Even the U.S. military recognizes that Mexico is in danger of a “rapid and sudden collapse” due to criminal gangs and drug cartels, according to a troubling new report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command on worldwide security threats.

Bernard Wasow reported that it is no secret that law enforcement in Mexico is a “for-profit” business. Scenes of Mexican policemen taking bribes from tourists and locals alike are commonplace throughout the country. It is hard to view such an experience as many businessmen are said to view corruption: bribery is just another cost of doing business.

In a series of papers, Shang-Jin Wei, formerly of the Kennedy School at Harvard and the IMF, explored the economic effect of corruption. Contrary to the notion that corruption is a relatively minor cost of doing business, Wei found that corruption has a stifling effect on foreign investment and economic growth. That may be much of the reason that the economy of Mexico just never seems to get going. Corruption in Mexico has been a force in public life there since colonial times, said Claudio Lomnitz, a Professor in History at U of M.

In Mexico, corruption consists of an intricate system of exchanges in which support for public officials is given in return for certain privileges. Payments of money to ensure that routine services are rendered are also part of the mix, as are elaborate public ceremonies in which hosts extract favors from their politician guests in return for support. “Corruption as a series of phenomena has played an important role in social change and in social reproduction in Mexico,” Lomnitz writes in this environment, the police are expected to resist a combination of deadly threats and bribes that can run to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

” It’s kind of like this,” says Robert Nieves, a former chief of International Operations for the DEA. “You’re offered a bribe. If bribery doesn’t work, you’re offered violence. And that violence will be exacted against you or your family members.” In Mexico, the choice is called “plata o plomo,” silver or lead.

The result is a breathtaking level of corruption. A large percentage of Mexico’s federal law enforcement has been fired for corruption by the Calderon administration or killed by the Mexican drug cartels. In the last year alone, the federal government has fired hundreds if not thousands of Federal Judicial Police and local police for suspected offenses that included theft, extortion, guarding drug shipments–and even murder. ” But everyone involved in the effort against the Mexican drug trade says there remains massive corruption.

One DEA agent whom was asked about corruption in Mexican law enforcement pulled out a thick file full, he said, of information about commanders still in power who are suspected by the U.S. of facilitating the transport of drugs into this country.

Former Mexican Attorney General Antonio Lozano said drug money fuels industries and distorts competition. It is not an equal trade partnership when American business people are competing against enterprises that have extraordinary access to illegal capital. Corruption is so deeply embedded in the society that there’s no prospect of eliminating or even curbing it anytime soon.

“Unfortunately, corruption seems to be part of our DNA,” said political analyst Jorge Chabat.

“What we have discovered … is that this is not endemic,” said Eduardo A. Bohorquez, executive secretary of Transparencia Mexicana, or Mexican Transparency. “It’s more epidemic.”

For Bohorquez, whose agency measures corruption in Mexico, “Corruption is the abuse of the public trust to gain a private benefit. You take a mandate from a public group and act on your own behalf.”

But other experts say the problem goes far beyond that, extending from the ordinary citizen to high reaches of government. They say most Mexicans have become accustomed to paying bribes and to the notion that the average police officer will try to shake them down in some way.

“The state has come to be seen as a giant pyramid with the most influential people at the top and everyone else below them also benefiting from bribes, tips, patronage or misappropriations of funds and resources. This particular version of ‘trickle-down economics’ developed its own set of norms and public expectations,” he explained.

Presidential corruption in Mexico is nothing new all Mexican presidents have been charged or suspected of corruption.

A show of wealth snares ex-president Fox recently, he entered Mexican politics´ with little money and left as the former president as a wealthy man. In a picture of self fulfillment as well as romance, Vicente Fox and his wife, Marta Sahagun, gaze at each other beside a new lake constructed in their extensive remodeled estate and grounds. Behind, their ranch-turned-mansion shows off gilded carpets, a desk with hand carved stone horse heads for legs, and life-sized portraits of themselves on the walls. They say when Fox took office his ranch was modest at best and after office the same ranch became opulent mansion. Many believe it was paid for by the Mexican drug cartels.

One of Fox´s predecessors former Mexican President Mario Villanueva Madrid, was reported to be under investigation for his helping to facilitate the smuggling of drugs, particularly cocaine, up from Columbia, up to the Yucatan peninsula, then into the USA.

The United States has a long history of supporting crooked regimes in Mexico, praising their efforts to cooperate with our drug eradication programs, while our corporate interests loot the country’s coffers, hand in hand with Mexico’s elite.

Of course the rumors and charges of corruption and complicity in the drug trade by the Salinas government become well known even though there were hushed up, brushed aside by US officials in the Bush (the first) and Clinton administrations. As one Mexican paper, The daily El Financero, reported, “…up to 95 percent of the people working in the attorney generals office had been bribed by the Gulf Cartel, run by Juan Garcia Abrego.”

By the time Carlos Salinas left office, he and his brother Raul had looted the country of all the money they could get their hands on. Using the recently bailed out and US owned Citibank to launder massive amounts of illicitly gained drug profits; the two brothers amassed an estimated $6 billion dollar fortune between them both.

Raul Salinas was arrested in Mexico City for murder in February of 1995. While his brother Carlos enjoys the life of a jet- setting playboy, enjoying the plunders he accrued while in office.

However it was not long after Calderon took office he started responding to the unlimited amounts of U.S. government money available to his country should he cooperate and become a puppet of the CIA. It boiled down to the U.S. could offer more than the Mexican Drug cartels could so Calderon was groomed to get the Mexican government certified so the U.S. government could funnel hundreds of millions into the Calderon government coffers in the form of the Merida Initiative.

Just today according to the National Association of Former Border Patrol officers government leaders reached a new stage in the narco-war. The leaders of Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia and Panama agreed to create a united front against narcotrafficing drug cartels. In a four-hour summit meeting, the presidents of those countries stressed that organized crime represents a danger to social stability and democratic government. They resolved to compile the existing bilateral and multilateral agreements for combating organized crime and, in the near future, to shape them into a unified legal instrument open for signing onto by other countries in the region.

Responding to this story, one reader ventured the opinion that it was lamentable that those countries feel the need to organize against narco bands which already have a higher level of organization than the affected countries. He asserted that the real risk to those countries is the internal corruption of each.

[dfurda18]

Hello guys,

Malak is right about more good mexicans than bad mexicans, but the problem is that, like any other movement in mexico, the bad guys are willing to grab a gun and kill and the good guys arent. Same happened in the UNAM strike; more students were against the strike, but they were not willing to risk their physical integrity to fight the guys who wanted the strike.

I think Calderon is gaining a little terrain in this war, since he is widrawing(need to check spelling for that word) the drug dealers towards the south. About 1 year ago most drug problems were north in Sinaloa and Sonora. Now we've seen a lot of this in Oaxaca (I say Oaxaca cause this is where I travel the most and have a lot of chats with locals). The organization called "Los Zetas" claim to be like an enterprise of crime, killing any drug dealer that dont want to pay them a "tax" and leaving the "good" people alone. I found out about this cause this Zetas thought some of my friends were drug dealers cause of a missguided advise they got from one of theirs (I guess some good people get caught once now and then). They released two of my friends cause they could proove they weren't drug dealers, but kept the third one, he just came back from LA and didn't have a job at that time. They ended up paying all the money they have and don't have (had to ask borrowed) giving up all their cars and finally got him back. They also couldn't proove he was a drug dealer. Kidnappings like this have been known trough locals, theres fear on this area, cause this has never been this bad around here. But its the consequence of the goverment putting more preassure in the north.
It's one idea to add death penalty to kidnapping here, but still not legalized, I think it will help to reduce the Zeta's member numbers a little bit. They mentioned to my friends that they dont go to the USA cause of death penalty, so it might work. Its a hard thing to aproove though, politicians know how criminals they are, and are afraid that they have now a legal way to kill each other.
On the other hand, this is not about drugs, this organization is not there cause people consume drugs, is all about power and money. Sadly it looks like the only solution will be a physical fight with the military, which means a lot of inocent people will die.

Cause as I said, the good people don't organize like the bad people do. They are good and "have nothing to fear" maybe the fear of this Zetas-like organizations can encourage us to join hands against them, cause as Malak said, we are definitely more.

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