Fourteen killed in Mexico drug battle

[ohio2007]

Source: Australian

FOURTEEN Mexican drug gang members were killed and eight others were injured in a gun battle near the US border on Saturday, one of the bloodiest shootouts in Mexico's three-year-long narco-war.Rival factions of the local Arellano Felix drug cartel in Tijuana on the Mexico-California border fought each other with rifles and machine guns in the early hours of the morning, police said.

The bodies lay in pools of blood, strewn along a road on the city's eastern limits, surrounded by hundreds of bullet casings. Many of the victims' faces were destroyed. "By the way this happened and the guns used, we believe the men are from the same cartel, the Arellano Felix gang," said a senior police officer in Tijuana who declined to be named.

Two men were arrested but the remaining survivors escaped, the officer said.

The Arellano Felix gang was long the dominant drug-trafficking organization in Tijuana, smuggling drugs into California. Recently the group has been under attack from a rival gang from the Pacific state of Sinaloa, led by Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman. Some 190 people have been killed in Tijuana so far this year, as the military steps in to try to quell the violence.President Felipe Calderon has been locked in a war with the drug cartels since taking office in December 2006, sending some 25,000 soldiers and federal police to fight cartels in drug hot spots across Mexico.

Last year, there were more than 2500 drug killings and there have been more than 900 this year.


Read more: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23604895-12377,00.html

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No reports in the US about such an incident ? 190 deaths so far this year ? The math suggests and projects a death rate of 600 a year across the border.

Why is the US MSM so hush hush ?
hmmmm
no wonder there is such outrage by the rose colored glasses types for those on our side of the fence watching the border.


http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=322_1177450067

[mac2]

1. They don't want to talk about the problems at the border

because it might delay their Americas Union and open borders. The Mexican trucks are ready to roll to Canada. Americans and their children left behind..nor asked. Heck even Mexican and Canadian citizens not asked.

[OhioChick]

2. You're absolutely right. n/t

[High Plains]

3. It's silly to portray this as some sort of conspiracy by the NAFTAites.

First, Chertoff and lots of others have talked a lot about border violence.

Second, some US newspapers have provided pretty good coverage of all this, including the Dallas Morning News, the Houston Chronicle, and the LA Times.

Third, this is a Reuters report, so someone covered it. It would be up to news editors at various media outlets as to whether this was a newsworthy story.

Fourth, this doesn't really have anything to do with NAFTA, except in the minds of people who want to use anything bad that happens in Mexico to grind their particular axes.

[High Plains]

4. I happen to be sitting in Culiacan, Sinaloa, as I write this.

Home of the Sinaloa cartel. Sinaloa has been a drug producing state for decades, and that has now evolved into the Sinaloa cartel, which is involved not only in battles with the Tijuana, Juarez, and Gulf cartels for control of drug-running in various localities (this is called "la plaza," or the franchise), but also in an on-going low-level war with Mexican cops and soldiers. President Calderon has deployed about 30,000 troops in various hot-spots here in Mexico, raising serious human rights issues as the soldiers gun down people at roadblocks, search houses without warrants, and rape and beat and steal.

To a very large degree, this is Mexico paying the price for America's war on the drugs we love to hate (or hate to love). Soon, US citizens, too, will be paying part of the price, as Bush and a compliant Congress will undoubtedly pass the multi-billion dollar Plan Merida to aid the Mexican government. If you liked Plan Colombia, you'll love Plan Merida.

[lonestarnot]

12. Hoy boy! Just can't wait!

Burning :sarcasm:

[OhioChick]

5. Border violence has gotten so bad

and is hushed by the media for some reason. A friend of mine lives in New Mexico and has recently put her home up for sale. She said the violence is so bad there that she fears for her life. I guess most wouldn't understand unless they've lived there.

[High Plains]

7. Again, I don't know that it's right to say it's been "hushed."

There has been lots of coverage of this in the newspapers I mentioned above, as well as others. It does occasionally break through onto the network news, and our buddy Dobbs is always happy to talk about it.

While the Mexican drug war has turned bloody for the past three years (2000 dead in 2006, 2000 more in 2007, and it looks to go even higher this year), it rarely bleeds over to this side. It's kinda weird: Sometimes officials or the media hype the violence and make it look really scary, but it really is very localized. Kind of like last weekend's wave of shootings in Chicago; you can hype all that and be really scared, but the reality is people are just going about their lives, in Tijuana and Chicago.

[OhioChick]

10. "Hushed" was the wrong term to use...

Most get their news "clips" from the MSM. They don't talk much about job loss, NAFTA, CAFTA, Outsourcing/Offshoring (except Dobbs) etc. If they don't address these issues in their "clips" then how is one to know what is going on along the border?

It may be "localized" however my friend is in one bad area. Regardless, I assume that one would have to live there to see for themselves.

[High Plains]

11. Perhaps your friend is right on the line. I don't know...

...and I wouldn't presume to question her feelings. But there are millions of Americans living in close proximity to the border (San Diego, El Paso, Laredo, Brownsville-McAllen), and they aren't going anywhere.

But in my view, this isn't really a NAFTA issue or a Mexico issue, it's a US drug policy issue. What we're seeing in Mexico now is the Mexicans paying the price for enforcing US drug prohibition. There's always been smuggling on the border, but things went apeshit back in the early '80s, when Reagan sent Bush Sr. to head up a task force cracking down on the cocaine being smuggled from Colombia across the Caribbean to Miami. The Colombians then started working with Mexican trafficking groups, who have grown hideously violent, powerful, and wealthy supplying us with the drugs we love to hate. Hmmm, something about the law of unintended consequences here.

[Acadia Blue]

22. Really barely reported. Paris and Brittany get more pressl

[ihavenobias]

6. You're forgetting one critical point

74% of Americans get their news from television.

Pointing out that a bunch of newspapers cover this IS relevant, but only to the 26% of people who bother to read them, and that assumes these stories were front (or near the front) page.

The MSM is about CNN, MSNBC, etc.

[High Plains]

9. Well, that's true, but I'm not sure what it means.

Dobbs is happy to scream about this whenever he can, so we can count on some distorted CNN coverage that fits into Dobbs' eternal theme of dangerous, scary Mexico.

I can't speak to the news judgment of other TV news channels. It's been a lot of Obama/Hillary, plus they have to get their fluff in.

You can't really blame the media if the citizens don't care enought to read newspapers.

The point is, the information is out there if you are interested enough.

[ihavenobias]

13. True on Dobbs but

People either love him or hate him. In other words, the people that love him know this stuff already and the people that hate/distrust him don't watch him, which again leaves the rest of the MSM to pick up the slack (except they don't).

It's a tough call on information. Ideally everyone would be searching it out but in reality it just doesn't happen that way.

[YvonneCa]

15. They ought to talk about this...

... http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080426/news_1...

[Acadia Blue]

21. They will do anything to Americans so corps can make more money.

[High Plains]

8. This story just led the news on CNN en Espanol.

For what that's worth.

[killbotfactory]

14. I suppose it's too much to ask to legalize and regulate drugs

Making them illegal doesn't mean they go away. There is, and always will be, a demand for currently illegal drugs. All we have done is give control of these drugs to ruthless criminal enterprises that run themselves just like corporations, only with a lot more violence.

[High Plains]

16. There's going to be a conference on that very topic here in Culiacan...

...this week. I'm here to cover it, as well as look into abuses by the military in the drug war.

The Sinaloa Civic Front, the local human rights group, just filed three cases demanding soldiers accused of crimes against civilians be tried in civilian, not military, courts.

The illegal drug trade, supplying us with the drugs we love to hate (or hate to love), pumps tens of billions of dollars into the bank accounts of the cartels each year. That buys a lot of guns and lot of bribes.

[killbotfactory]

17. I would expect the two main proponents of the drug war would be

the police/government authoritarians and the drug cartels. That should be a big red flag to the public that current drug policies don't benefit us.

[High Plains]

18. That's the old political science question: Cui bono?

Who benefits? Pretty obvious, ain't it?

[Turbineguy]

19. Drugs are a great way

to send money up the societal food chain.

Doper wants dope. Steals car stereo. Sells stereo cheap. Buyer gets better car sound than he could otherwise afford. Victim pays insurance premiums. Victim buys new car stereo, latest model. Evertbody in the chain sees economic benefits of this.

For some time I was thinking that technology advancements in car sound were being driven by this process. Then came the "rip-off proof" password protected sets. Theft dropped. One of the biggest outfits selling car stereo in our area has ceased to do so.

If you don't spend money on illegal drugs you are on the benefit side of the curve. It's that simple.

In Dutch, the word for drug addiction is tranlated as "enslavement". Addiction is such a nice clinical term. Enslavement puts things in a better perspective.

If we ignore the harm done to those who use drugs, things look great. The theory is that those who use drugs do so based on "free will".

[Trillo]

20. Well. That settles it. Better let Blackwater

have their near Mexican border offices, shooting ranges, and bases. /sarcasm