--- On Sat, 8/30/08, grbhfng wrote:
> From: grbhfng
> Subject: Re: [DSN_KLR650] More BAD news from Mexico
> To:
DSN_KLR650@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Saturday, August 30, 2008, 5:26 PM
> Mexico's problem is that anybody working for the
> government, in any capacity,
> is corrupt.
>
> Never gonna solve their problems.
>
> So, let's let them all come across the border, after
> all, they just want to pick vegetables, and feed their
> families, right ?
>
>
>
>
> --- On Sat, 8/30/08, martin glazer
> wrote:
>
> From: martin glazer
> Subject: [DSN_KLR650] More BAD news from Mexico
> To:
DSN_KLR650@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Saturday, August 30, 2008, 1:57 PM
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
http://www.latimes com:/news/ nationworld/ world/la-
> fg-mexdrugs30- 2008aug30, 0,1838709, full.story
>
> From the Los Angeles Times
> MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
> Drug war bodies are piling up in Mexico
> The heap of 11 decapitated bodies found in Yucatan shows
> that the battle to control the multibillion- dollar drug
> trade knows no boundaries.
> By Ken Ellingwood
> Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
>
> August 30, 2008
>
> MEXICO CITY The sickening discovery this week of 11
> headless bodies heaped like broken dolls near the colonial
> city of Merida underscored a bitter lesson for Mexico: The
> battle to control the multibillion- dollar drug trade knows
> no boundaries.
>
> The bodies are piling up nationwide, even in normally
> tranquil and touristy spots such as Merida, not far from the
> Maya ruins of Chichen Itza.
>
> During a seven-day period ended Friday, more than 130
> people died violently throughout the country. Headless
> bodies turned up in four states, including Baja California.
>
> The Yucatan peninsula, strategically close to smuggling
> routes through Central America, tallied 12, after another
> decapitated body was found a few hours later Thursday about
> 80 miles east of the carnage near Merida.
>
> Mexico's drug wars used to play out mainly in smuggling
> battlegrounds along the U.S. border, such as Tijuana and
> Ciudad Juarez. But a crackdown launched 21 months ago by
> President Felipe Calderon has exacerbated feuding among drug
> traffickers for control of smuggling routes.
>
> As a result, the country convulses with daily violence that
> shows a new and disturbing geographic reach and viciousness.
>
> "The bottom line is you've got a major internecine
> battle, a kind of civil war among drug cartels," said
> Bruce Bagley, a security and drug-trafficking expert at the
> University of Miami. "It has intensified because the
> stakes are high. There's a great deal of money to be
> made."
>
> But traffickers are keenly aware of the psychological
> effect on enemies and ordinary Mexicans when they chop off
> rivals' heads and leave threatening notes with the
> remains.
>
> Some analysts say tactics such as beheadings, once unheard
> of in Mexico's drug underworld, are akin to terrorism
> because part of the goal is to scare civilians so that they
> will press the government to back off. Calderon has sent
> 40,000 troops and 5,000 federal police officers into the
> streets as part of the campaign against organized crime.
>
> "You're sending a signal to the Calderon
> government, to the police, that you mean business,"
> said Fred Burton, vice president for counter-terrorism at
> Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based intelligence firm. "
> 'This is the result when you don't play ball with
> us.' "
>
> Last week, the Calderon government announced a broad new
> blueprint for fighting crime, including better coordination
> between federal and local authorities, new federal prisons,
> improved tracking of cellphones and tougher steps against
> money laundering.
>
> Calderon administration officials said Thursday night that
> the Yucatan beheadings and other spectacular displays of
> violence show that arrests and drug seizures have hurt the
> cartels, prompting them to lash out with increasing
> savagery.
>
> "They have to respond in a symbolic way that creates
> uncertainty in the public -- this is what they have been
> doing during the last months," Atty. Gen. Eduardo
> Medina Mora said late Thursday during an interview on
> Mexican television.
>
> Since Saturday, Mexico has tallied at least 136 killings
> across 18 of its 31 states, according to Mexican news media
> accounts. They included especially brazen attacks:
>
> * On Thursday, the day the headless bodies were found near
> Merida, gunmen stormed a house in the Pacific state of
> Guerrero, killing two women and two girls, ages 8 and 12.
> Two police officers were ambushed and slain in a gun battle
> as they raced to the home.
>
> * An armed group battled Mexican troops Wednesday in the
> central state of Guanajuato. Four gunmen died and two
> soldiers were wounded.
>
> * Four decapitated bodies turned up Tuesday in Tijuana.
> Those killings appeared to be linked to a power struggle
> between drug traffickers who once collaborated as part of
> the Arellano Felix gang. Headless bodies also were found in
> Sinaloa and the northern state of Durango.
>
> Two weeks ago, a hit squad killed 13 people, including a
> 16-month-old boy, at a family gathering in the northern town
> of Creel, a tourist gateway to the scenic Copper Canyon
> region.
>
> Hardly a day goes by without new accounts of violence.
> Unofficial tallies by Mexican news outlets put the death
> toll from drug violence this year at more than 2,600. By
> some counts, it has already exceeded the total for 2007,
> which set a record.
>
> Police officers have died at an alarming rate. The daily
> Milenio newspaper reported Friday that 71 officers had been
> slain nationwide in August -- the highest monthly toll since
> Calderon launched his crime offensive in December 2006.
>
> Some of Mexico's more than 300,000 local and state
> police officers have been killed by drug hit men while
> carrying out their duties. But others have worked as hired
> gunmen for drug smugglers, and become targets of rival
> gangs. when one gang takes on another.
>
> The violence has left Mexicans increasingly unsettled. They
> are unnerved by the steady stream of bloody news and
> pessimistic about the government's odds of winning,
> polls show. Many Mexicans tend to view the drug killings as
> largely a matter among criminal gangs, but the violence is
> increasingly claiming innocents, and showing up in new
> spots.
>
> The Yucatan peninsula, though part of an important coastal
> smuggling corridor for cocaine shipped from Colombia, has
> not traditionally been a place where drug traffickers have
> battled.
>
> But it has become an increasingly important transit route
> for narcotics relayed by land from neighboring Guatemala.
> That, and a growing local market for illegal drugs, has
> heightened competition for control, Bagley said.
>
> Traffickers have resorted to decapitating rivals during the
> last two years.
>
> Thursday, a young farmer came upon the heap of bodies,
> which according to some Mexican news accounts were covered
> with tattoos and bore signs of torture. Some of the accounts
> speculated that the killings might have been the work of the
> Zetas, a group of paramilitary- style hit men for the Gulf
> cartel who are known for extreme violence.
>
> Gov. Ivonne Ortega Pacheco said in a television interview
> that anonymous callers had been demanding that authorities
> remove road checkpoints "and let them work."
> Ortega said the callers became more menacing about two weeks
> ago, threatening that bodies would start to turn up.
>
> But Ortega said the roadblocks would remain in place. In a
> separate broadcast message, she sought to reassure
> Yucatan's residents.
>
> "Yucatan is a peaceful state of hardworking
> people," she said. "We can't let any
> lawbreakers affect our families' tranquillity. "
>
> As Ortega spoke, news reports were circulating of the
> discovery of four bodies, 1,500 miles away in the northern
> border state of Sonora. Three had been beheaded.
>
> ken.ellingwood@ latimes.com
>
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