Article was forwarded by NAFBPO
Today’s NAFBPO M3 Foreign news report:
Little protection for witnesses in Mexico
Posted: 02 Dec 2009 07:03 AM PST
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FORMER BORDER PATROL OFFICERS Visit our website: http://www.nafbpo.org Foreign News Report
The National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers (NAFBPO) extracts and condenses the material that follows from Mexican and Central and South American on-line media sources on a daily basis. You are free to disseminate this information, but we request that you credit NAFBPO as being the provider.
Little protection in Mexico
El Universal and La Jornada (both Mexico City) 12/1/09
Protected witness assassinated
A man under witness protection of the Mexican Department of Justice (PGR) was assassinated in a Starbucks in Mexico City today. Edgar Enrique Bayardo del Villar, who had testified in a major political corruption scandal in 2008 was gunned down in the fashionable coffee shop by two men dressed in business suits who entered from a waiting SUV, killed Bayardo and wounded his bodyguard and an unidentified woman. Bayardo was the second protected witness to die in the past few days in connection to the investigation of the Sinaloa drug cartel run by Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada. The other death, attributed to suicide by hanging, was of a nephew of “El Mayo” who was in protective custody of the PGR. [Photo relates.]
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El Financiero (Mexico City) 12/1/09
Panama strengthens efforts in drug war
Panama, a country that seizes about five percent of the world’s cocaine production, inaugurated the first of 11 naval air stations to be dedicated to combat narcotraffic. This first station is located on an island in the Gulf of Panama. A joint task force made up of 55 members of the National Police, Border Service and Naval Air Service began their initial operations on Chapera Island, some 50 miles south of Panama City and one of the “hottest” in the Las Perlas Archipelago for drug trafficking from Colombia to the US. In addition to Chapera Island, the government will have naval air stations at Piña, Punta Coco, Mensabe, Coiba and Quebrada de Piedras on the Pacific side and Chiriqui Grande, Isla Colon, Sherman, El Porvenir and Puerto Obaldia on the Atlantic.
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Cuarto Poder (Chiapas) 12/1/09
Casual border enforcement
[Quoting] “Everything crosses the Mexico-Guatemala River. No one crosses through the international ports of entry. Before the eyes of the Customs, Immigration, Mexican Army and police from one side of the border to the other, everything crosses.” The article goes on to describe the dozens of inner-tube rafts that forge across the Suchiate River every day and every hour, bringing diverse products. Nobody crosses through the official ports because this way they avoid being subjected to “severe inspection” by the authorities. Other than the ports, the rest of the southern border is “highly porous” and contraband crosses brazenly in sight of everyone and then with the protection and permission of authorities. [Photo relates.]
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La Jornada (Mexico City) 12/1/09
Remittances drop
Remittances sent from Mexicans living abroad to their families in Mexico fell 35.82% in October 2009 compared to October 2008, according to the Bank of Mexico. The remittances, one of the most important sources of currency in the country, amounted to nearly 1.7 billion US dollars in October. The estimated 10% drop in remittances for the year is believed due to the effects of the economic recession in the US where most of the Mexican migrants live. ——————–
-end of report-
Mexico is the Taliban with a little pagan version of Catholicism thrown in for respectability.
They also have the BIGGEST egos.
One of the dentists in the border town below us was kidnapped last Thursday and is feared dead, the mayor was murdered a few months ago.
Mexico is a wasteland. Tons of natural resources and all of it being exploited and used for self serving purposes thanks to their thug government.
Too bad Cancun isn’t on my list of vacation destinations so I could scratch it off.
The connection between these locations raises a question. The cities are separated by large distances. Mexicali, Juarez, and Cancun are nowhere near each other. I’m not saying I’d like to go to Mexico any time soon, but linking these crimes together in an article stretches imagination.
More than a few fellow Freepers have posted that they still feel safe in the resort areas. I work throughout the year in Mexico and IT AIN’T SO.
Be alert, everywhere.
Prepare as if you were in Chicago.
New signs at all border crossings: “Welcome to Mexico...land of the rolling heads”
Another article sent by NAFBPO
Govt. report: Air cargo still vulnerable to terrorists
Updated 11/25/2009
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-11-24-air-cargo_N.htm
[snip]
The report shows the TSA does not have enough personnel to handle new rules for screening cargo, he said. Passenger planes carry everything from produce and medical supplies to computers and auto parts.
Unlike luggage, airplane cargo is not screened by the TSA. The agency oversees airlines, freight handlers and manufacturers who pack and transport cargo, and ensure its security.
The oversight process “has not effectively ensured” that those companies comply with TSA regulations, the inspector general said. The report noted that the TSA’s own inspectors had found repeated violations of agency rules but said “there are repeat patterns of violations that the TSA has been unable to resolve.”
Auntie, I’d love to go to Cancun again. And in that I am 1) not a prostitute and 2) not having a relationship with a murdered policeman and 3) not going to any sports stadia there, I think I would be safe. Tourists who keep their noses clean, stay in the tourism zone, stick to hotel beaches (I recommend the Fiesta Americana Grand Coral Beach or the Ritz-Carlton, Fiesta Americana has the best beach) and use only taxis recommended by their hotels are fairly safe. Go off the beaten path, anywhere in Mexico, and you are in danger. Same goes for Washington, DC, unfortunately.
Ain’t diversity grand?
Ping!
If you want on, or off this S. Texas/Mexico ping list, please FReepMail me.
I won’t be heading to Mexico anytime soon even though I live less than 125 miles from the border.