Nuevo Laredo: Murder Capital of Texas Border Towns

You may or may not have heard of the many journalists and others murdered just across the border from Texas in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. Between bribes, governmental blind eyes, and the pressure from drug cartels, people are being killed in an effort to use the conduit of Laredo, Texas as a primary point of entry into the the United States. Unlike American journalists, these Mexican papers and reporters are risking their lives and their offices to get the word out, in the face of lip service from both sides of the border. It is failing miserably. Below is an extended excerpt from IPS on the matter. I recommend you keep a closer eye on the situation, as an example of the Mexican government's nonchalant approach to the smuggling of drugs and arms into our own country:

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MEXICO:
Reporters Targeted by Drug-Related Violence
Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Feb 7 (IPS) - The most dangerous place in Latin America to work as a journalist is northern Mexico, along the U.S. border, where drug traffickers threaten, kidnap and even murder reporters with impunity, according to the Inter American Press Association (IAPA).

The latest incident occurred Monday evening, when several masked gunmen stormed the offices of the El Mañana newspaper in the city of Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, Texas, firing assault rifles and tossing a grenade. One reporter, Jaime Orozco, was seriously injured and is in critical condition.

"What happened in El Mañana went beyond the pale and it is clear that the government is unable or unwilling, or does not know how, to confront this wave of violence against reporters and freedom of the press," Eréndira Cruz, director of the non-governmental National Centre for Social Communication, told IPS.

In its Tuesday edition, the newspaper, whose editorial director was murdered in 2004, stated in an editorial that Monday's attack was "one more page in the violence that reaches the level of terrorism." It added that "the drug trafficking problem has gotten completely out of the hands of the authorities."

The attack on El Mañana occurred in the midst of a turf war between drug trafficking gangs that has left more than 100 dead so far this year and claimed around 1,500 victims in 2005.

Twenty reporters have been murdered in Mexico since 2000, when President Vicente Fox took office, according to the Federation of Associations of Mexican Journalists and the Federation of Latin American Journalists. Nineteen journalists were killed during the term of Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000), and 57 under the administration of Carlos Salinas (1988-1994).

Copyright 2006, IPS - Inter Press Service. All rights reserved.

Full text: Reporters Targeted by Drug-Related Violence

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You'll find the link to IPS at HMonk: Sites Worth a Vist

"Goddamn the Pusher Man"*

Some of us still remember those lyrics from Steppenwolf's classic, *"The Pusher." I believe it was the first time we'd heard "goddamn" on a record! Well, it seems a fitting assessment of an administration full of oil barons that have brass balls big enough to tell America that we're all "addicted" to fossil fuels. How much bullshit can one people take, I ask you?

By now, I imagine that almost everyone has seen through the astounding absurdity of a failed oilman, surrounded by oil and other corporate predators, looking straight into the camera and telling us:

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"America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world."

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I haven't found a word yet that best describes the moment when absurdity passes its peak and simply becomes pitiful, but there it is. The pusher blaming the addicts for their addiction that he's promoted, and continues to promote day in and day out. Remember way back when, that extree warm and ozoney alerty day when The Boy decided that global warming needed "further study?" And who can dare wag their finger at an administration hellbent on lowering environmental protection standards, putting forth programs and then not funding them, and sending a crony from South Carolina to Canada as our ambassador? Canada - where we happen to get a helluva lot of oil. Is Canada unstable? Does it not make sense to tap into the best and brightest of both Canada and the US in order to invent and implement methods of actually weaning ourselves off of oil? Naw...let's send ol' David Wilkins up there and continue to play hardball with our neighbor to the north.

Hell, it's obvious that BoyGeorge's loving reference to ethanol was intended to help Republicans up for reelection in the farm belt, but this "Texan" from Connecticut can't even take a hint from Willie Nelson! BIODIESEL. I don't know...do The Dick and his Pumping Buddies have a stake in biodiesel? I'll have to check that one out...

But aside from the small laundry list of proposals, small because of the war in Iraq, the "mission creep" in Afghanistan, Katrina and the fumbling response that seems to get worse every day, huge - I mean HUGE tax cuts helping to drain the Treasury's coffers, and of course the "innovative" outsourcing of jobs which leads to the outsourcing of our own talent pool, Georgie tells us:

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"Tonight the state of our Union is strong - and together we will make it stronger."

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More than all of the political machinations, what disturbed me most about the speech was the last-minute wording of BoyGeorge's "tribute" to Coretta Scott King. It started off just fine:

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"Today our nation lost a beloved, graceful, courageous woman who called America to its founding ideals and carried on a noble dream."

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But in the definitive ending sentence of his opening words, he said:

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"...and we are grateful for the good life of Coretta Scott King."

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"Good?" Not "exemplary?" Not "inspirational?" But..."good." On the eve of Mrs. King's first wake, and the beginning of Black History Month, by golly, she led a "good life." Bush, you sorry sumbitch. Did your speechwriters struggle over how to remember Mrs. King without offending the bigots who voted for you? In my opinion, you don't deserve to sit in the back of the church, or up in the balcony at Coretta Scott King's funeral. Just stay away, won't you? Please! We don't wanna ruffle the feathers of all those grassroots UltraChristians who'd rather not mix with all the "mud people."

He may have appeared confident and cool, but come November, after people have absorbed the bumbling paper trail on Katrina first published by The Washington Post, and the Ken Lay/Jeff Skilling trial is distilled into a form that's not "too complex" for "regular folks" to understand, and all the dicey details of the Abramoff plea deal work their way through the Republican leadership, "cool" won't feel so cool. I predict an early winter this year, with "frigid" temperatures in early November, but that's just me...

Official text of the 2006 State of the Union Address.

And what "bipartisan" deficit-cutting bill passed the day after the speech? Why, The One Referred to By Rep. Waxman Right Here!

(please note: additional informational links may be added to this entry later)