Mexican drug cartels: Can journalists escape their violence?
Mexican drug cartels are assaulting the press, and so journalists are banding together to ask the Mexican government for protection.
Mexico City
The Mexican press has been subject to assault and attack at the hands of suspected drug traffickers including grenades launched into high-tech broadcast stations and dingy newspaper offices for years.
Even as media watchdogs have declared Mexico one of the world's most dangerous places to report from, each outlet has had to act individually to protect its staff. Mostly they omit writer bylines and leave out crucial details of shootouts and kidnappings if they cover the mayhem at all.
But now the Mexican media is demanding more protection, working together to draw attention to the threats the job is generating.
. Mexico's National Commission on Human Rights says that 65 media workers have been killed in the past decade. The Committee to Protect Journalists says more than 30 reporters have been killed or have disappeared since December 2006, when Mexican President Felipe Calderón took office and dispatched the military to tackle organized crime. In that time, more than 28,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence.
Four journalists were briefly kidnapped in July, when they were inquiring about a mass murder in Torreon. In January 2009, gunmen launched a grenade at a popular television station during its nightly broadcast.
Some of them have been showing up in the US asking for help. Jorge Luis Aguirre, the editor of an online news site in Ciudad Juárez, was granted asylum just days ago, after fleeing to the US in the face of a death threat. He is the first journalist believed to be granted asylum by the US in the past four years, and it could have repercussions for other journalists seeking haven on American soil.
Since the majority of the cases against journalists are unsolved as is crime in general in Mexico it is sometimes hard to distinguish between cases in which journalists are killed for personal reasons, including for being on the payroll a certain group and killed off by a rival, and when it is their reporting that puts them in danger.[snip]
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2010/0924/Mexican-drug-cartels-Can-journalists-escape-their-violence
Damn!! It must be an election year.
How was your nap, Dick? I hope Gov. Brewer’s shouting didn’t wake you up!
I thought we tea partiers and Viet Nam vets were the biggest threats. s/
More of the same:
Napolitano to McCain: Yes, Mexican Cartels Pose Terror Threat to U.S.
(McLiar is pushing Nappy to say the violence is only a problem in the last couple years...he’s looking to cover his pandering butt again)
[snip]In 2009, the U.S. Justice Department declared in its annual National Drug Threat Assessment that the Mexican drug cartels were the greatest organized crime threat to the United States, but the U.S. State Department has not listed those cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
The 2010 National Drug Threat Assessment said that 900,000 criminally active gang members representing approximately 20,000 street gangs distribute drugs for the Mexican cartels in more than 2,500 American cities.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/75789
It's for the children.
Gosh, where's he been the last 10 20 30 40 years?
I still think the domestic terrorists in Congress are a greater threat.
The November elections may change my attitude.
.. but their value to the Democratic Party is up by 500%.
THAT is what matters.
.. but their value to the Democratic Party is up by 500%.
THAT is what matters.
(Somewhat like what happened to Rome - before it fell.)
Lugar is a Republican?
I forgot. Sorry.
It is said in Portland's free routes being the choice of transportation for dealers/users.
That being typed above I thought about the Cartels running the pot farms in our mountain ranges when I read an article in the local paper.
Seems a 15yr long dream to make a hiking trail from Ona Beach (Seal Rock/Waldport area) over the coast range to Corvallis is going to come true.
I thought wow what an adventure for those able bodied, then I thought about it being a possible corridor for nefarious uses.
Not good. Possibly making forest access easier for the Cartel Pot Farms or other evil intentions.
We should condition Mexico’s on letting Delta Force move in MX to deal with this scum.
So it doesn’t seem as bad, we can agree on xxx soldier limit.
I am pretty sure that the flow of drugs would slow down a lot.
Also any mexican drug growing operation discovered within the USA, especially within the national parks, will result in a fully publicized execution of ALL perps caught. NO TRIAL, NO APPEALS.
Make the punishment so harsh it will make those thinking about doing so think twice or thrice...
Lugar....one of obama’s biggest a@@ kissers from day one.
Senator is in error. America’s greatest enemy resides in the White House
Lugar is a disgrace and should be primaried in 2012.
Did he decide this before or after he co-sponsored the DREAM act?