6 Mexico Police Officers Killed in Ambush

[High Plains]

Source: Los Angeles Times

Armed men surround their vehicle in the marijuana-rich state of Sinaloa.
By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 28, 2008

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's raging drug war claimed the lives of six more police officers, ambushed on patrol in the marijuana-rich state of Sinaloa, authorities said Friday. The attack followed the slaying Thursday of a senior police commander, part of a long string of killings apparently aimed at eroding public confidence in the government's ability to challenge drug gangs.

The six officers were killed when two carloads of heavily armed men cut off their vehicle in the Sinaloa capital of Culiacan, an official with the state attorney general's office said by e-mail.

More than 4,400 people have been killed in drug violence in Mexico, among them hundreds of police officers, since President Felipe Calderon launched an all-out offensive against drug cartels after taking office in December 2006.

Calderon says the surge in killings and gun battles is a sign of his government's success in cracking down on drug-trafficking networks.


Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-mexico28-2008jun28,0,7214898.story

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Gotta love Calderon's take on all this: The surge is working.

One note: The story refers to "drug violence." Gotta call it what it really is: "prohibition-related violence."

And now Congress is passing a $1.6 billion Mexico anti-drug aid bill to buy neat helicopters and stuff. Your tax dollars at work.

[High Plains]

1. A bit more from the article:

But several analysts suggest that the high-profile killings in particular make the government and its main law enforcement agencies appear vulnerable.

The assassinations, along with the gangs' growing propensity for decapitating their victims and issuing threats using posters and the Internet, "have a clear objective to intimidate, frighten, paralyze society and, with that, force the federal government to retreat," Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mourino said Friday.

Inspector Igor Labastida, a senior officer in the federal police, was the fifth top commander slain in 13 months. A man armed with an Uzi killed him and one of his bodyguards as they ate lunch Thursday at a small, busy restaurant in Mexico City. The gunman fled in a waiting car while a second man videotaped the bodies and calmly walked away, witnesses told the Mexican daily El Universal.

<snip>

The Mexican government on Friday applauded U.S. Senate approval of a $400-million aid package for Mexico's drug war that will provide the Calderon government with training, telecommunications, aircraft and other equipment. Mexico earlier objected to portions of the bill, known as the Merida Initiative, that would have required it to change the way human rights violations are investigated. Congressional officials agreed to ease those conditions.

<snip>

Mexico has long complained that it endures the ravages of the war while the U.S. has done little to stop the flow of guns southward into the hands of the cartels. Mourino said he believed that was changing and that U.S. authorities had begun to track and stop weapons more efficiently.

[lib2DaBone]

7. Things will get better.....

When Mexico receives the $400 Million in anti-drug money CONgress just approved.

[havocmom]

2. R'ed for this line alone: Gotta call it what it really is: "prohibition-related violence."

:thumbsup:

[Liberal_in_LA]

3. Things are getting out of control in Mexico

[madrchsod]

4. this was on a gala vision last night

there was at least a half hour maybe more coverage of assassination of these men....they did`t have a chance.

the drug lords are tearing mexico apart...

[balantz]

5. Must be time to loan them one of our private armies.

Oh, wait, maybe they're already there?

Hard to say what's REALLY going on isn't it?

[balantz]

6. Here's more:

-snip

"These facts, when considered together with the news that military contractors will be used to train Mexican law enforcement officials as part of the Merida Initiative, or Plan Mexico, draws a narrow bead on Blackwater as a likely candidate for a bidding process that will award the contract to train Mexicans how to fly the surveillance helicopters used to patrol the Mexican side of the border.

If this is the case, we should consider two more questions. First, how will the Mexican government react to Blackwater's presence so close to their border and on Mexican soil to train Mexican law enforcement officials. Second, in the long run, how involved will companies such as Blackwater become in protecting the US-Mexico border? As we've seen in Iraq, mission creep is tough to avoid."

http://samuellogan.blogspot.com/2007/12/digging-into-blackwater-usa.html

[otherlander]

8. Three things

1. This is why marijuana should be legalized. As soon as I turn 18 I'm joining NORML.

2. I know marijuana makes a lot of people act friendly and peaceful, but if it's not obtained by peaceful means, maybe we shouldn't be buying it? I know that's DU blasphemy. But I'm not saying it because it's illegal, it's just like there are a lot of legal things we should avoid buying, like Exxon gas or Chiquita (United Fruit) bananas or clothing from China, because they fund war and assassinations and sweatshops and such.

3. A possibly dumb question. From what I understand: The Zapatistas and other social justice/civil liberty groups throughout Mexico are engaged in a struggle against the corporate government agenda, and against rightwing drug-funded paramilitaries. Ok, dammit, I don't even know what to ask exactly. The government of Mexico is fighting the drug-funded... armed people. Okay. Back during the Oaxaca uprising, (By the way, what's the state of things in Oaxaca now? I can't find any info on it. What ever happened to all those people who were arrested? Were they released? Did they disappear?) the anti-government protesters were fighting police. It was the rightwing paramilitaries who killed Bradley Will. My question, I guess, is: What's the difference between the people who the Mexican government is fighting against and the people who they're working with?

[razors edge]

9. First of all

one should only buy American grown pot. We make the best. That may sound a little harsh, (pardon the pun) but after four years in Hawaii and the remainder of my life in Appalachia, I speak from experience.

Don't join NORML. Not unless you want to be denied jobs in the future over BS discrimination for having done so. I have several guns, but I wouldn't think of joining the NRA, I think the Canadians have been preparing a gun registry that cost the goverment around 25 million dollars. We gullible Americans pay to put ourselves on one.

And watch what you post on the internets, prospective employers do look that shit up, and as the internet becomes more commercialized the owners will offer "premium services" such as identity of posters for a fee.

As for the Oaxaca thing, I remember reading a lot about it at the time, bad situation for the people trapped in the middle of it, street fighting is never pretty. I haven't heard much mention either in the alternative media, I just assumed they were mostly disappeared by the state, as states like to do.

You got a good heart kid, stay safe.

[otherlander]

10. Ok, just one question:

When you buy pot, how do you know where it comes from?

Peace.

[razors edge]

11. I have mostly had the benifit

of knowing the farmer.

Other than that, I can sometimes tell how far it traveled by how dried out it is.

Most Mexican won't have purple hair by the time it gets up north. Now don't get me wrong, I don't believe in wasting anything, I just prefer to look for the union label. ;)