Mexican Gang Has A Warning For Bloggers

I was still a teenager when I started traveling abroad. My first trip was a harebrained decision to spend a summer hitchhiking to the North Pole with my lovely Alabama girlfriend Chris. We actually made it as far as Montreal. The next hitchhiking extravaganza was to Mexico City with my most adventurous school buddy, Robert. After all of our possessions were stolen by our host in San Antonio while we looked at the Alamo, we were assaulted by a knife wielding desperado at the Nuevo Laredo foot bridge who got Robert's watch. We still made it all the way to Mexico City!

I hadn't thought about that bridge, or Nuevo Laredo for that matter, in a number of decades... until this week. I just finished all the details of a trip to the Yucatán-- from renting a great house in Mérida to navigating the treacherous waters of airline booking. (I paid $540 directly on the Continental Airlines website after a Continental phone rep assured my-- several times-- that the cheapest tickets were $1,260.) This week something far worse than being robbed at knifepoint happened on that Nuevo Laredo bridge. The last time I wrote about Mexico on my travel blog it was to mention how safe the Mexican tourism bureau claims it is:

[W]e acknowledge there are some issues in some pockets, in some specific locations. To give you an example, Mexico has 2,500 counties. Eighty of those have issues. So does that mean that the entire country has issues? Of course not. Eighty of 2,500 is less than 5 percent. Ninety percent of Americans go to six destinations. The tourist destinations are very far from where we have these issues.

...For us in Mexico, when we talk about the U.S., we don’t say the U.S., we say Orlando, L.A., Washington. If something happened last week, if there was a shooting in East L.A., does that mean you can’t go to Washington? Of course not.

Apparently Nuevo Laredo is one of those pockets with issues.

Placards left with the tortured bodies of two people hanging from a Nuevo Laredo overpass warn that the same fate awaits social media devotees who keep information flowing by text, Twitter, blogs and other means as gangsters muzzle the news media in much of Mexico.

"This is going to happen to all the internet busybodies," said one of the notes signed with a Z, presumably for the Zetas gang that controls Nuevo Laredo. "Listen up, I'm on to you."

Many Mexican newspapers and broadcasters have self-censored under constant gangster siege. Reporters have been killed, newsrooms attacked. Government officials often prove less than forthcoming with timely and accurate information. Twitter, Facebook, blogs and text messaging all have filled the void, becoming primary news sources in scores of Mexican communities, even for family members in the U.S., as gangs battle cartel rivals and security forces.

The messages found in Nuevo Laredo on Tuesday, with the bodies of a man and a woman in their 20s, directly threatened two popular blogs that specialize in reporting gang-related violence.

A post on one of those blogs, Al Rojo Vivo, counseled readers on Wednesday, "Don't be afraid to inform ... It's very difficult that they know who is informing. They are only trying to frighten society." The blog is carried by the website of the Monterrey newspaper El Norte.

While valuable to many residents, social networkers also spread rumors that have panicked communities. Prosecutors last month jailed and charged two people [a math teacher and a grandmother] with "terrorism" for tweeting false reports of gangster attacks on schools in the Gulf Coast port of Veracruz.

Social media reports of other gangster attacks emptied the streets of Veracruz's capital, Xalapa, and other towns last weekend. Suggesting that the terrorism charges were overblown, Veracruz Gov. Javier Duarte nevertheless announced Tuesday that he would propose a new state law against "upsetting the public order."

But governments elsewhere have turned to social media in efforts to keep people informed. City officials in Reynosa, on the Rio Grande downriver from Nuevo Laredo, began tweeting several years ago to warn residents of gangster roadblocks and shoot-outs, blandly referring to them as "risky situations."

Early this year, mainstream media executives agreed with federal officials to scale back on coverage of the criminal slaughter that has killed more than 40,000 people in less than five years.

Many newspapers no longer print photographs of murder victims nor report the contents of threats or other messages left with bodies or in public places. Executives reason that publishing specifics-- including the beheading, dismembering or flaying of victims-- only encourages the gangsters and helps them spread their propaganda.

But Blog del Narco, the second site threatened by the Nuevo Laredo messages, religiously carries close-up shots of the carnage, as well as messages left with bodies or elsewhere. Many of the blog's anonymous posts seem likely to have been penned either by the gangsters themselves or investigating police.

The blog Wednesday published the text of a banner draped by a local criminal syndicate in the violent city of Apatzingan, in western Michoacan state. The sign warned residents to avoid Thursday night's public celebrations that kick off Mexico's Independence Day.
"Be alert for possible threats from the Zetas," reads the banner, signed by local gangsters who call themselves the Knights Templar. "Together we can guard our city and our people from persons who only want to cause harm."

Bloggers, of course, aren't the only people who need to be alert in regard to the Zetas. Yesterday they killed the family of a policeman in connection to the deadly fire-- 52 people died-- they had set at a casino in Monterrey August 25. Is Mexico becoming a failed state? Is it already a failed state?

The murder of the family came on a day of violence in and around Monterrey, in which at least 15 people were killed.

Monterrey and the state of Nuevo Leon have seen rising bloodshed as the Zetas and Gulf cartels vie for control of trafficking routes to the US.

The casino attack was one of the deadliest episodes of violence since President Felipe Calderon launched his crackdown on drug gangs in late 2006.

Gunmen burst into the crowded casino in broad daylight and doused it in petrol before setting it alight.

Panic ensued as people rushed for the exit. Many were overcome by smoke as the building was engulfed in flames.

The attack caused outrage in Mexico, a country that has become accustomed to drug-related violence, with around 40,000 killed in less than five years.

"Failed States, 2011" -- No, Not Wisconsin, Ohio Or Florida (Yet)... The Ones Surrounding India

In some ways India and its neighborhood is about as different from the U.S. as you can possibly be. I've been writing about that since I first went there in 1969. But viewed from Kathmandu, Nepal-- where the tourist scene these days is almost all Indian and where the English-language TV channels are all Indian-- India is very much like the U.S.

Oh, not that India. The other one, the 21st-century one, the one that watches Glee, How I Met Your Mother, HBO and Indian TV shows that display a culture so disgustingly celebrity-oriented that it even puts our own to shame... well almost. I don't know what they call Madison Avenue in Mumbai, but God, do these guys ever run the show.

I just watched an episode of a popular show, India's Most Desirable. I don't recommend it... but go ahead:



India has (another) problem. It's surrounded by the world's most-failed states. True, Africa's worse. Somalia's No. 1. But Chad, Sudan, Nigeria, Congo, Zimbabwe, Central African Republic, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Niger, Burundi, Kenya, Guinea Bissau, even Ethiopia are right up there among the world's most vulnerable countries. However, none of those places are as much like our country as India is. And India's neighbors... no fewer than seven of them made the Top 50 of the most-failed states index:

#7 -- Afghanistan
#12 -- nuclear-armed Pakistan
#18 -- Myanmar
#25 -- Bangladesh
#27 -- Nepal
#29 -- Sri Lanka
#50 -- Bhutan

India doesn't have any other neighbors-- except Tibet, which isn't considered a country, but a region of China. But the occupation forces there apparently feel there's a problem. They just pulled all foreigners' visas for a month. I know. I was supposed to be there now.

On Pakistan, the report said, "Pakistan has long been dubbed the world's most dangerous country in Washington policy circles" and "yet Pakistan isn't just dangerous for the West-- it's often a danger to its own people."

On Bangladesh: "Two of five Bangladeshis live under the poverty line. Any improvements will also be fighting the environmental clock. If sea levels rise just by 1 metre, scientists warn, 17 per cent of the country could be submerged."

On Nepal: "Nepal is the poorest country in South Asia, according to the United Nations, and that's unlikely to change until the peace process is implemented and security restored. There are signs that the Maoists may be losing patience-- and thinking about going back to the trenches to fight for more."

On Sri Lanka: "The government's final push against the rebels relied on the shelling of civilians and other atrocities, according to a 2010 report by the International Crisis Group. . . . The most recent statistics from last year indicate that some 327,000 are still displaced from the conflict. . . . Despite the pronounced fractures still lingering, the Sinhalese-dominated government in Colombo seems eager to forget the past."

Failed States

No, this is not a post about Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. This week the Fund for Peace released their 6th annual Failed States Index. The part that scared me most was that, by their very sensible standards, there were only 13 "sustainable" countries-- and the U.S. wasn't one of them. Neither was Britain, Japan, or France, though they came closer than the U.S. They use 12 indicators to come up with overall scores for that are at work destabilizing each country: demographic pressures, refugee disasters (including internal displaced persons + chronic and sustained human flight), legacy of vengeance-seeking group grievance or group paranoia, uneven economic development along group lines (if you guess that the U.S. scores badly here, you've been paying attention), sharp and/or severe economic decline, criminalization and/or delegitimization of the state, progressive deterioration of public services, suspension or arbitrary application of the rule of law and widespread violation of human rights, security apparatus operates as a "state within a state," rise of factionalized elites, and intervention of other states or external political actors.

Overall, the 10 states with the highest scores, from bad to worse, are nuclear-armed Pakistan, Guinea, Central African Republic, Iraq, Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Chad, Somalia. Some of the other countries in the worst category include Lebanon, Iran, Uganda, North Korea, Ethiopia, Burma, Yemen, Nigeria and Haiti.

But when you take out countries that have been disintegrating-- like all of the ones mentioned above-- and you just focus on the relatively prosperous and stable developed nations, the U.S. looks like it has some real problems-- even over and above making problems for other countries. China, Israel, Russia, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, South Africa and Brazil all score significantly worse than the U.S. On the other hand, the U.S. score (35.3) is closer to countries beginning to totter, like Greece (45.9), Italy (45.7) and Spain (43.5) than it is to top performers like Norway (18.7), Finland (19.3) and Sweden (20.9).

The Fund For Peace analysis of the U.S. data is very generous and makes no mention of the problems being caused by teabaggers, plutocrats and other conservative malcontents at all. Of the 5 core state institutions-- leadership, military (although this was written before General Stanley McCrystal's outrageous insubordination and Obama's inability to deal with it appropriately), police, judiciary and civil service-- everything is rated "excellent" except the judiciary (rated "good").

The U.S. has very highly developed state institutions, which give the state legitimacy rather than legitimacy resting with individual leaders or administrations. Except for incidents of disputed electoral counts which can be highly controversial (e.g., 2000 presidential election dispute in Florida), elections are largely viewed as free and fair, and citizens usually trust their elected representatives to make and vote for policies that will benefit them. Dissatisfaction with particular leaders can be expressed through regular elections with political figures limited to fixed terms and other electoral mechanisms: recalls, referenda, local and state elections; the press which is lively and free; and constitutional checks and balances among the three branches of government.

The U.S. military is strong. Military expenditures equal 4.06% of the GDP. The President is the chief of state and the commander-in-chief; thus, the military is under civilian control and generally accountable to the people. The military budget must be approved by Congress.

The police force is also widely viewed as protecting the people. There is no central police; state and local governments control their own forces. Police are accountable for their actions and police brutality is investigated and punished.

The judiciary is independent and federalized. Defendants have a right to legal counsel and a jury of their peers. Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life by the President, but must be approved by the Senate. There are accusations that African-Americans and other minorities do not get equal justice, however, and the prisons are disproportionally filled with minority offenders. Capital punishment is legal and controlled by the states. Controversy also exists over new legal procedures applied to suspected terrorists, who are not subject to either the civilian or military systems of justice. This represents a parallel justice system created for reasons of national security. In addition, Congress has investigated partisan firing of federal attorneys, undermining the morale and structure of the U.S. Department of Justice.

The civil service is professional, and jobs are based on merit-based tests, well compensated, and offer good benefits.

The U.S. has a strong economy, though it is vulnerable to downturns at times. Its state institutions are sound and supported by constitutional foundations widely accepted by its citizens. However, the U.S. should work to decrease its national debt and create more jobs and better job security. The U.S. should also implement policies that decrease income inequality and uneven access to social services, such as health care.  Its human rights policies in the fight against terrorism are controversial and have raised questions about the country’s adherence to international norms, treaties policies it helped create. However, while there is a domestic debate on civic rights issues, the general public has not felt that their liberties have been violated or compromised much by government measures taken in the name of national security.