Victor Bjorgan - Publisher of Bloggers of the Americas

Last weekend, a french-spanish filmmaker whose documentary about the violent street gang of the Maras in El Salvador provoked controversy earlier this year has been found shot in the head.

The body of Christian Poveda, 52, was discovered in a car in Tonacatepeque, a poor rural area 10 miles outside the capital San Salvador. Police say that Poveda was driving back from filming in La Campanera, an overcrowded ghetto that is a stronghold of the Mara 18 gang, when he was apparently ambushed.

Poveda first came to El Salvador in the early 1980s to cover the decade-long civil war as a photographer for Time magazine. He also reported from wars in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and other countries. He returned to El Salvador in the 1990s and dedicated himself to documentary work, concentrating on Salvadoran gangs.

His killing has provoked anger and revulsion in many countries around the world. I deplore this repugnant and reproachable criminal act and the authorities in El Salvador should work tirelessly until they find Poveda´s killers. Mauricio Funes, the former Marxist guerrilla who became President of El Salvador in June, spoke of his shock in a statement and ordered a full investigation.

Photo of La Vida Loca, documentary about the Mara 18 gang

La Vida Loca (Crazy Life), Poveda’s latest film, focused on the hopeless and brutal lives of various fantastically tattooed members of the gang Mara 18. The film is critical of the heavy police crackdown on the Maras gang members, which Poveda felt failed to take account of the hopeless poverty and personal tragedy that drive young Salvadorans to turn to crime.

The assasination of Poveda shows that the Maras are in control of the crime in the region. They are able to kill anybody who is in their way.

The Mara 18 and ad its rival Mara Salvatrucha MS gangs form part of a huge criminal network that runs down through Central America from Los Angeles, where there is a large community of Salvadoran expats.

Members of Mara Salvatrucha - Since 2008 many new Mara members have no more tatoos, to difficult the work of the police.

In fact the origin of the Maras gang is in the USA. Many of the gangsters were deported from the United States after serving jail terms there. Mara Salvatrucha (commonly abbreviated as MS, Mara, and MS-13, is a criminal gang that originated in Los Angeles and has spread to Central America, other parts of the United States, and Canada. The majority of the gang is ethnically composed of Salvadorans, Hondurans, Guatemalans, and Nicaraguans.

Only in El Salvador, authorities estimate there could be as many as 30,000 so-called mareros, who sell drugs, rob illegal migrants or extort money from businesses in the tiny, impoverished country of 5.7 million people. El Salvador has one of the highest homicide rates in Latin America.

The Maras had ties to the former salvadoran guerrilla FMLN. According to Dr. J. Michael Waller, a Latin America expert with the Center for Security Policy, Mara Salvatrucha-13 has provided services to the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (known by its Spanish acronym, FMLN). “MS-13 began when demobilized FMLN guerillas moved to Los Angeles in the 1980s and early 1990s,” Waller said. “MS-13 provided the muscle for the FMLN election campaign.” Former Presidential advisor Patrick Buchanan also stated in his book “State of Emergency” that many FMLN sympathizers were part of the formation of MS-13.

FBI seal

Their activities have caught the eye of the US agencies Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), who in September 2005 initiated wide-scale raids against suspected gang members, netting 660 arrests across United States. In May 2005, ICE expanded Operation Community Shield to include all transnational organized crime and prison gangs. ICE’s Operation Community Shield has since arrested 7,655 street gang members.

In the United States, the gang’s strongholds have historically been in the American Southwest and West Coast states. Membership in the U.S was believed to be as many as about 50,000 as of 2005. MS-13 criminal activities include drug smuggling and sales, arms trafficking, auto theft, carjacking, home invasion, assault, aggravated assault, assault on law enforcement officials, drive-by shootings, contract killing and murder. Thanks to this police activity in the US, many Maras after doing time in prison were expelled to their countries in Latin America. This has expanded the presence of the Mara gang in Central America.

Today the MS is a TOC organization (Transnational organized crime). The Maras is organized across national borders. The activities of the Maras, plus other latin TOCs like the Mexican Mafia and the Mexican Drug Cartels are ´provoking serious distortions in Latin America. It can undermine democracy, disrupt free markets, drain national assets, and inhibit the development of the latinamerican societies. In doing so, these international criminal groups threaten the security of all the region. Undirectly, the latino TOCs are benefiting from the US internal repression of the gangs.

The Maras are getting international now. In that sense they are major beneficiaries of globalization. They take advantage of increased travel, trade, rapid money movements, telecommunications and computer links, and are well positioned for growth. We can now say that the US latin gangs are taking Central America and Mexico. During the last 10 years , the United States has exported its gang problem, sending Central American-born criminals back to their homelands, without warning local governments. The result has been an explosive rise of vicious, transnational gangs that now threaten the stability of the region’s fragile democracies. As Washington sleeps, the gangs are growing, spreading north into Mexico and back to the United States.

Last December, a bus driving through the northern city of Chamalecon in Honduras was stopped by gunmen. The assailants quickly surrounded the bus and opened fire with their AK-47s, killing 28 passengers. The attackers, police later revealed, had been members of a notorious street gang known as Mara Salvatrucha (or MS-13) and had chosen their victims at random. The slaughter had nothing to do with the identities of the people onboard; it was meant as a protest and a warning against the honduran government’s crackdown on gang activities in the country. U.S. officials subsequently arrested Ebner Anibal Rivera-Paz, thought to be the mastermind of the attack, in February in the Texas town of Falfurrias.

The attack and the subsequent arrest were only the latest sign of the growing power of Central America’s gangs and their ability to shuttle between their home countries and the United States. In the past few years, as Washington has focused its attention on the Middle East, it has virtually ignored a dangerous phenomenon close to home. Ultraviolent youth gangs, spawned in the ghettos of Los Angeles and other U.S. cities, have slowly migrated south to Central America, where they have transformed themselves into powerful, cross-border crime networks. With the United States preoccupied elsewhere, the gangs have grown in power and numbers; today, local officials estimate their size at 70,000-100,000 members.

The marabuntas (big deadly ants), or maras, a now pose the most serious challenge to peace in the region since the end of Central America’s civil wars. Nor is the danger limited to the region. Fed by an explosive growth in the area’s youth population and by a host of social problems such as poverty and unemployment, the gangs are spreading, spilling into Mexico and beyond — even back into the United States itself.

With them, the maras are bringing rampant crime, committing thousands of murders, and contributing to a flourishing drug trade. Central America’s governments, meanwhile, seem utterly unable to meet the challenge, lacking the skills, know-how, and money necessary to fight these supergangs. The solutions attempted so far — largely confined to military and police operations — have only aggravated the problem; prisons act as gangland finishing schools, and military operations have only dispersed the gangs’ leadership, making bosses harder than ever to track and capture.

Central America has seen few improvements in the last years, since the end of the cold war. Today the region’s seven small republics, rather than exhibiting the new harmony and prosperity that were expected to come with peace, bear only the scars and open wounds of traumatized societies: rampant corruption, gang warfare, drug smuggling, intense urban poverty and overpopulation, and neglect from the international community.

Something must be done to correct this situation, and the United States has a major responsibility on what is going with the export of the latin organized crime to Central America. .

The Merida Initiative (also known as the Mexico Plan) and the new development of the Colombia Plan gives the US a chance to design a specific Plan for Central America and the Caribbean. The 65 million dollars included in the Merida Initiative for Central America is far from being enough. In fact the war against the cartels in Mexico and the weakening of the FARC in Colombia could provoke the migration of these criminals to Central America. These criminal organizations are natural allies of the Maras.

Central America has become a key pipeline for drug shipments from Colombia northward.

According to U.S. law enforcement officials, 60 percent of the cocaine that entered the United States last year passed through Central America, concealed in small aircraft, fast boats, and trucks. This represents a three fold increase since 1993, and the chaos that the burgeoning drug trade has wreaked on the region has given rise to a new fear, the potential “Colombianization” of Central America.

The mexican-american Merida Initiative MI is not enough to fight against organzed crime in Central America. This Plan was and will allways be a mexican plan. The 65 million are not enough to fight the threats of drug trafficking, transnational crime and money laundering in Central America.

The weak US assistance includes some training, equipment and intelligence. The US govenment says that the Merida Inititative in Central America will be equipping and training local police, supporting judicial reform plans, building prosecutorial capacity, and cooperating with other key agencies–including border security, corrections, customs, and when appropriate, the military. The Initiative also addresses a broad range of needs outside of law enforcement and the judiciary–including funding drug treatment centers, gang prevention activities, education, and public outreach.

I am sorry to tell the US Department of State that the Merida Initiative is in a dead end, and has too little money for Central America. This is not a myth.

The other thing that shows how questionable is the instrumentalization of the Merida Initiative in Central America are the Letters of Agreement signed by the US and some central american republics.

The Letter of Agreement Signed between the US and the Dominican Republic is only funding with 2 million dollars, focusing on providing equipment and technical consulting services to the Financial Analysis Unit of the dominican government , a few bucks for National Police Reform Projects; Anti-Money Laundering Assistance ($300,000); to the National Directorate for the Control of Drugs Reform Projects($750,000) Development of a National Digital Criminal Database ( $550,000); Equipment for the Navy Intelligence Unit ($250,000) and a lousy sum of U$150,000 to organize a Joint Haitian-Dominican Border Security Program. Nothing concrete is said about how to fight the action of the transnational gangs, how to target the young criminals and the youth at risk, how to deal with the Us expelled dominican criminals, etc..

The Letter of Agreement signed with Costa Rica is even worse. The gangs are not a serious problem in Costa Rica, but in spite of that the US government signed an agreement with the “ticos” funding them with one million US dollars (frist year). Funding what? Well, 75% of the money goes to equipment for the police.

The Letter of Agreement with Nicaragua will provide them with $1.5M in assistance (2008), almost 50% of it to equipment for the Nicaraguan National Police.

Until now, the signed Letter of Intentions show that the tactics of the Merida initiative has no direct connection with the goals and strategy of the Initiative. The mother of all Letter of the Intentions should be the one to be signed with El Salvador. The problem of the Maras should be the center of this agreement. On the other hand, most part of the effort of the US agencies are focusing in the US Southwest border (El Paso Intelligence Unit-EPIC).

The FBI has showed some good results in the cooperation with law enforcement agencies in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico (the TAG). In September 2008 TAG investigators arrested five MS-13 gang members who were transporting a cache of anti-tank weapons and military small arms.

Also, FBI agents from Charlotte, N.C., worked with TAG investigators in actions that led to the indictment of 26 MS-13 gang members in June 2008, including Manuel Ayala, who allegedly directed gang activities in the United States from his jail cell in El Salvador.

The Central American Fingerprint Exploitation Initiative (CAFÉ), a criminal file/fingerprint retrieval initiative, is also a good initiative. The CAFE was developed by the MS-13 National Gang Task Force and the mexican Policia Nacional Civil (PNC) to store criminal fingerprints of gang members from Chiapas, Mexico, and the Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras. This information is incorporated into the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services database and is available to all U.S. local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. By incorporating these records into a searchable database, law enforcement agencies like the PNC can access the data through their own Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems. The question here is if this gang information is accesible for central american law enforcement agencies.

Since 2006, the FBI has searched, processed and incorporated more than 72,000 criminal records from El Salvador, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and Chiapas, Mexico, into the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System.

But as I said before. the Merida Initiative should have a separate central american chapter. Or the best solution is to have a specific Plan for Central America, independent from the more mexican Merida Initiative. The US can not continue to export latino criminals to the weakened region of Central America. On top of all these plans, the law enforcement agencies of the US, Mexico, Colombia and Central American governments should coordinate efforts.

Updated 8/25/09

9/11 Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds’ Testimony Under Oath Now Available On Video – 911Blogger.com

Coverage on Bradblog.com: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7374

Complete Transcript: http://www.bradblog.com/Docs/SibelEdmondsDeposition_Transcript_080809.pdf

Sibel Edmonds Deposition, 8/8/09: PART 1 of 5 from Justice Through Music on Vimeo.

Sibel Edmonds Deposition, 8/8/09: PART 2 of 5 from Justice Through Music on Vimeo.

Sibel Edmonds Deposition, 8/8/09: PART 3 of 5 from Justice Through Music on Vimeo.

Sibel Edmonds Deposition, 8/8/09: PART 4 of 5 from Justice Through Music on Vimeo.

Sibel Edmonds Deposition, 8/8/09: PART 5 of 5 from Justice Through Music on Vimeo.

Poder y Negocios, 7/3/2009

June 8th, the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center, organized a conference to examine the state of relations between Mexico and the United States, to see if there has been qualitative changes and to anticipate what will come next. Many topics were well covered- the impact of the economic recession, the lack of competitiveness, the H1N1 virus, and the July 5th elections, among others- in particular, narcotrafficking and Felipe Calderón’s attempt to use the military to confront drug violence, dominated the discussion for three hours.

Calderón’s growing dependence on the use of military forces for work that corresponds to civil society, generated questions and comments by the panelists and the public audience. The audience insisted to know when the military will return to the barracks, but no one was able to respond with certainty, because it seems that no one knows, not even Calderón. Arturo Sarukhan, the Ambassador of Mexico, ventured to say that the “final aim” of the president is to reassign the armed forces and to make use of the police, “as quickly as it is operationally possible.”

Read more…

Cannot help getting amused every time I hear statements made by the so-called experts on “Arms Trafficking”, particularly in connection with the case of Viktor Bout. I cannot help wondering whether these self-appointed experts are genuinely dumb, or they are just a sub-class of human whom are willing to do whatever in order to getting the pay associated with being a paid propaganda parlor.

Anytime and every time the story of Viktor Bout is being recited, it usually comes packaged with two additional names. The first is of an accountant named Richard Chichakli, and the second is of a former journalist named Douglas Farah. Chichakli is by all counts the only person in this world who questioned the merit of the allegations against Bout; while Farah is, also by all counts, the only source in this world for all the media allegations against Viktor Bout. One may say that the original source is Johan Peleman the UN contractor; and to that I reply: when listening to Peleman and Farah, you will easily conclude that one of them is repeating the other. Same phrases, same stories, same references, even the same words, it is just a different person. The few public video clips posted on Youtube.com of Farah and Peleman provide enough ground to conclude that the two persons are one when it comes to Viktor Bout.

Both Douglas Farah and Johan Peleman are “Self-proclaimed Experts” in Arms trafficking. Peleman did all the United Nations writing about Viktor Bout, while Farah did all the testimony that ever given before the US Congress about Viktor, and all of the anti Bout NGO-financed books and the internet writings; and that bring me to the point where I see the “funny stuff” related to the anatomy of an arms deal.

Farah and Peleman claimed that in order for an arms deal to materialize a document called “End User Certificate – EUC” must be produced to the seller of the arms in order to confirm that the buyer is a legitimate government, etc. etc., and they both also claimed that Viktor Bout was forged EUC in order traffic arms. The case they said to have discovered revealed that Bout allegedly purchased arms under an EUC issued by Togo; however, he diverted the merchandises to Angola. Well, they also claimed that he did that so massively so the amount of arms purchased for the Togo exceeded the population of that country. The entire so-called “discovery” was focused on the End User Certificate which in their words provided the ultimate evidence.

The thing that bother me in that story, and frankly in every story I hear about Viktor Bout is the fact that I only hear the name of Bout and no one else! I wonder why nobody else is bothered by that, no one has even asked about the role of the seller of the arms? I mean how come we never hear Peleman and talking about the source of the Arms?

We all agree that if Viktor Bout have trafficked arms he had to buy it from somebody. Why we do not question those sellers, better, why the mighty US government go after the source as they claimed to be doing in their war against drugs for example. Then, are we suppose to believe that because Bout allegedly provided a fake End User Certificate in order to acquire arms, the seller did not notice that the amount is massively larger than what a country like the Togo could use – and these are the exact words of Douglas Farah. So why don’t we hold the seller of such dangerous goods accountable, don’t they have to do due diligence? It is not very complicated, if I enter a store and ask to purchase 1000 hunting rifle for my personal use, that would very likely sounds “hard to believe”, if not straight out suspicious. So how come when Viktor allegedly provided the fake EUC to the seller in justification of buying huge some of arms for a country with no army, the seller found the request “reasonable” and gave Viktor all the arms he needed to become the largest trafficker in the history of man as the US government alleged, and Douglas Farah propagated? Why don’t we question this? To me, Viktor Bout resembles nothing more than a scapegoat for what the government-sponsored traffickers are doing, just a name to use in covering their tracks.

• Isn’t strange that we want to hold Bout accountable but not those who sold arms to him?
• Isn’t hard to believe that we say Bout faked EUCs but we do not mention or question those who accepted the alleged fake document? 
• Isn’t difficult to understand how we run our mouths about the arms transporters but we just hush-up and fear to talk about the arms sellers, users, or those financing the deals

The list goes on and on, and the hypocrisy is too thick and to disgusting to go through. The standard of double stands is a cancer to this world, a cancer that causes wars and misery, and it is a disease that is promoted by the US and its propaganda parlors.

•  
  • The double standard is to hear about Viktor Bout but shut-up about Neil Bush and his involvement with the US sponsored, UK–residing Russian arms trafficker and financer of the Terrorism in Chechnya
  • The double standard is to suppress information about the US and UK businesses involved in selling arms out of Eastern Europe and Gibraltar while propagating that a swimming pools cleaning company is involved in arms trafficking
  • The double standard is to call a person like Richard Chichakli a “naturalized-Syrian American” but not a disabled United States Armey American Veteran
  • The Double standard is hearing Farah and alike second-classing the patriotism of Richard Chichakli while none of them had one of service in the United States military

The anatomy of an arms deal involves a buyer, a seller, a financer, and a transporter. Viktor Bout if he was the person the double standard propaganda projected to us he will be nothing but 25 percent of the deal… Well, the American double standard seems to suggest that we should not talk about the other 75 percent because of national interest.

Photo by Flickr user Seansie

A government audit of U.S. efforts to stop arms trafficking to Mexico was criticized Friday by a Republican lawmaker who said its conclusion that smuggled weapons from America were fueling the rise of violent Mexican drug cartels was based on incomplete data.

The report, released Thursday by the Government Accountability Office, said that the United States lacked a coordinated strategy to stem the flow of smuggled weapons.

Designated immigration agents authorized to participate in drug enforcement
It listed a wide array of shortcomings, both operational and legal, that it said had allowed thousands of weapons made or sold in the United States to find their way to the cartels.

One of its findings was that more than 90% of the firearms traced by authorities after being seized in Mexico over the last three years came from the United States.

Read more…

The Christian Science Monitor, 6/18/2009

Democrats are largely avoiding the gun issue, but some hope a new Government Accountability Office report will help tighten rules for gun shows.

The Government Accountability Office information that 87 percent of seized guns given to US authorities by Mexican officials come from the US shouldn’t come as a surprise, says Bill Vizzard, a criminologist at the California State University in Sacramento. “We’re the largest legal gun market in the world.”

Read more…

Reuters/NYT just ran a story on the IAEA report that Iran is “ramping up” nuclear production of low enriched uranium (LEU) to the point where it has 5000 centrifuges operating.  Note that this number of operational centrifuges isn’t really news.  Back in November 2008, Iran’s nuclear chief announced that the country was running 5,000 uranium centrifuges at its central plant,  up 1,000 from the 4,000 reported in August.

I’m guessing that what is news is that Iran’s stockpile of LEU is at 1339 kg , nearly triple what  it had six months ago.

In any case, these operations are in direct defiance to U.N. demands that Iran cease its nuclear program. Iran claims it wants the industry for the purposes of alternative energy; however, it has stonewalled an IAEA investigation and limited its inspections.

To actually produce a bomb it would require conversion of the low enriched uranium into high enriched uranium, a process requiring the configuration of its centrifuge network and other time consuming “technical hurdles.”  Inspectors would notice the process…unless they already have a secret site location where this is taking place.

BTW, has any one seen Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan lately? Pakistan released him from house arrest a few months ago.  You know, the rogue nuclear scientist, dubbed the “largest nuclear proliferator in history”, who has admitted to selling nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya? Anyone?

Click here for more on Iran and its pursuit of weapons capability.

Reuters, 5/28/2009

Mexican Federal Police

Guns like the Barrett M-82 sniper rifle, the AK-47 and Bushmaster .223 are among those favored by cartel hitmen that slaughtered some 6,300 people in Mexico border cities like Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana last year.

In Mexico, gun sales are regulated by the government and require citizens to apply for permits, which are rare and expensive. But deadly weapons are in ready supply at a substantial discount for those Mexicans willing to drive 350 miles from the border.

Read more…

Roberto Rodriguez, El Paso Times, 5/24/2009

I am writing in regard to Diana Washington’s article, “Mexico data overstate weapons traced to U.S.,” published by the El Paso Times on May 14.

The issue of arms trafficking has always been on the bilateral agenda, as would be expected by any country geographically linked to the largest arms producer in the world. The transnational nature of drug-trafficking makes it difficult for Mexico to successfully confront this threat on its own, especially as criminal organizations operating on both sides of the border are financed with bulk cash and armed with weapons trafficked from the U.S. into Mexico. The routes, means of transportation and concealment methods used to smuggle arms into Mexico are similar to those observed in drug-trafficking.

Your reporter’s allegation that the Mexican government “handpicked” weapons for tracing by U.S. authorities, and that the statement that 90 percent of weapons are traced back to the United States is “overblown” is a denial of reality, not to mention retrograde of an era that has long passed. Indeed, 90 percent of all weapons seized in Mexico and successfully traced by ATF originated in the U.S. We welcome the reinforcement of key agencies, such as ATF, along the border. While much work remains to be done, it is sad to see counterproductive allegations that do nothing but strengthen the drug cartels that have wreaked havoc on our law enforcement, military and society.

It is important to underscore that at no moment whatsoever has the Mexican government argued that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution needs to be in any way revised to address the illicit trafficking of weapons into Mexico.

Roberto Rodríguez is Consul General of Mexico.

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Raffaele Amato

NAPLES, Italy —  A purported Neapolitan mafia boss who was one of Italy’s top cocaine importers has been arrested in Spain, prosecutors said Sunday.

Raffaele Amato, involved in a murderous turf war within the Camorra crime syndicate, was picked up Saturday in Marbella in a joint Italy-Spain operation, Naples prosecutor Giovandomenico Lepore said in a statement.

Amato is accused of several homicides in connection with a feud dating back to 1991 between two Camorra clans that left more than a dozen people dead, he said.

He was a top killer for boss Paolo Di Lauro, who was trying to keep control of the clan from rival Antonio Ruocco, Lepore said.

In 2006, Di Lauro was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison on charges of Mafia association, extortion and drug trafficking. On Sunday, prosecutors added subsequent charges to his sentence, along with six other people already behind bars.

Amato was arrested in Spain in 2005 but was freed a year later on a technicality.

The head of the Naples police squad, Vitrorio Pisani, said Amato had since become “the principal, or one of the principal importers of cocaine in Italy.”

The Camorra, the equivalent of the Sicilian Mafia for the Naples area, controls drug and arms trafficking, prostitution, extortion and illegal betting rackets   thanks  AP   read down

Was the killer Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, as the Warren Commission found? Or was it a conspiracy and Oswald merely a patsy, as he claimed before his own murder?

Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie JFK pointed the finger at everyone: from Kennedy successor Lyndon Johnson, to the CIA, the FBI, the Mafia and shadowy figures in the Pentagon.

Stone’s conspiracy was so massive and implausible that it had the unintentional effect of discrediting serious researchers who questioned the official version – putting them on a par with people who study UFOs.

Two years later Gerald Posner’s book, Case Closed, hit back against the conspiracy theorists, arguing that Oswald was the killer and he had acted alone.

For the past 15 years interest in the subject has waned as it seemed everything that could be known about the case was already before the public.

But during that time two amateur historians have been quietly working away, digging through archives and official documents and interviewing the surviving players from the era.

What they have turned up is fascinating and should be enough to make the strongest sceptic think again.

Legacy of Secrecy: The Long Shadow of the JFK Assassination, the product of 20 years’ work by authors Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann, claims to have solved the mystery once 

read more    James Campbell

Washington Post, 4/16/2009

President Obama will announce in a visit here today that he will push the U.S. Senate to ratify an inter-American arms trafficking treaty designed to curb the flow of guns and ammunition to drug cartels and other armed groups in the hemisphere.

Senior administration officials confirmed that he will make the announcement after meeting with Mexican President Felipe Calderon this afternoon.

The Obama administration’s commitment to seek ratification [of the treaty] is important because stemming the number of illegal firearms which flow into Latin America and the Caribbean is a high priority for the region and addresses a key hemispheric concern relating to people’s personal security and well-being,” said a senior Obama administration official.

Read more…

The .50-caliber Browning machine gun

Dane Schiller, Houston Chronicle, 4/15/2009

On the very day officials confirmed President Barack Obama will appoint a border czar to combat drug cartels, Mexican police announced they confiscated a U.S.-made machine gun that could penetrate steel from a mile away, likely the most destructive weapon of its type ever seized in Mexico. Together, the two moves signal the ever increasing strength of cartel warfare — and the task ahead for the U.S. and Mexican governments.

The discovery of the .50-caliber Browning machine gun, which Mexican authorities said was mounted in the bed of a pickup and has a rate of fire of 800 rounds a minute, also came just days before Obama’s first trip to Mexico.

Read more…

i can only imagine what sort of fucked up narratives are circulating the u.s. media right now about somali pirates. so i thought i would share some points of view which are refreshing and smart in their analysis of the situation. the first comes from the fabulous rapper k’naan who is from somalia but who lives in kenya. he wrote the following which was published in the san francisco bay news and which provides some much needed historical context:

The news media these days have been covering piracy on the Somali coast with such lopsided journalism that it’s lucky they’re not on a ship themselves. It’s true that the constant hijacking of vessels in the Gulf of Aden is a major threat to the vibrant trade route between Asia and Europe. It is also true that for most of the pirates operating in this vast shoreline, money is the primary objective.

But according to so many Somalis, the disruption of Europe’s darling of a trade route is just Karma biting a perpetrator in the butt. And if you don’t believe in Karma, maybe you believe in recent history. Here is why we Somalis find ourselves slightly shy of condemning our pirates.

Somalia has been without any form of a functioning government since 1991. And although its failures, like many other toddler governments in Africa, spring from the wells of post-colonial independence, bad governance and development loan sharks, the specific problem of piracy was put in motion in 1992.

After the overthrow of Siyad Barre, our charmless dictator of 20-some-odd years, two major forces of the Hawiye Clan came to power. At the time, Ali Mahdi and Gen. Mohamed Farah Aidid, the two leaders of the Hawiye rebels, were largely considered liberators. But the unity of the two men and their respective sub-clans was very short-lived. It’s as if they were dumbstruck at the advent of ousting the dictator, or that they just forgot to discuss who will be the leader of the country once they defeated their common foe.

A disagreement of who will upgrade from militia leader to Mr. President broke up their honeymoon. It’s because of this disagreement that we’ve seen one of the most decomposing wars in Somalia’s history, leading to millions displaced and hundreds of thousands dead.

But war is expensive and militias need food for their families and Jaad (an amphetamine-based stimulant) to stay awake for the fighting.

Therefore, a good clan-based warlord must look out for his own fighters. Aidid’s men turned to robbing aid trucks carrying food to the starving masses and re-selling it to continue their war. But Ali Mahdi had his sights set on a larger and more unexploited resource, namely the Indian Ocean.

Already by this time, local fishermen in the coastline of Somalia had been complaining of illegal vessels coming to Somali waters and stealing all the fish. And since there was no government to report it to, and since the severity of the violence clumsily overshadowed every other problem, the fishermen went completely unheard.

But it was around this same time that a more sinister, a more patronizing practice was being put in motion. A Swiss firm called Achair Partners and an Italian waste company called Progresso made a deal with Ali Mahdi that they were to dump containers of waste material in Somali waters. These European companies were said to be paying warlords about $3 a ton, whereas to properly dispose of waste in Europe costs about $1,000 a ton.

In 2004, after a tsunami washed ashore several leaking containers, thousand of locals in the Puntland region of Somalia started to complain of severe and previously unreported ailments, such as abdominal bleeding, skin melting off and a lot of immediate cancer-like symptoms. Nick Nuttall, a spokesman for the United Nations Environmental Program, says that the containers had many different kinds of waste, including “uranium, radioactive waste, lead, cadmium, mercury and chemical waste.”

But this wasn’t just a passing evil from one or two groups taking advantage of our unprotected waters. The U.N. envoy for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, says that the practice still continues to this day. It was months after those initial reports that local fishermen mobilized themselves, along with street militias, to go into the waters and deter the Westerners from having a free pass at completely destroying Somalia’s aquatic life.

Now, years later, the deterring has become less noble, and the ex-fishermen with their militias have begun to develop a taste for ransom at sea. This form of piracy is now a major contributor to the Somali economy, especially in the very region that private toxic waste companies first began to bury our nation’s death trap.

Now Somalia has upped the world’s pirate attacks by over 21 percent in one year, and while NATO and the EU are both sending forces to the Somali coast to try and slow down the attacks, Blackwater and all kinds of private security firms are intent on cashing in.

But while Europeans are well within their rights to protect their trade interest in the region, our pirates were the only deterrent we had from an externally imposed environmental disaster. No one can say for sure that some of the ships they are now holding for ransom were not involved in illegal activity in our waters.

The truth is, if you ask any Somali, if getting rid of the pirates only means the continuous rape of our coast by unmonitored Western vessels and the producing of a new cancerous generation, we would all fly our pirate flags high.

It is time that the world gave the Somali people some assurance that these Western illegal activities will end if our pirates are to cease their operations. We do not want the EU and NATO serving as a shield for these nuclear waste-dumping hoodlums.

It seems to me that this new modern crisis is truly a question of justice, but also a question of whose justice. As is apparent these days, one man’s pirate is another man’s coast guard.

word.

here is k’naan talking about the nuclear toxic waste on hard knock tv:

notice what he says: “i would say if you want the piracy to stop, stop dumping nuclear toxic waste in our country.”

and here is an episode of al jazeera’s “people and power” that investigates arms trafficking and that toxic waste dumped on somalia’s shores:

jeremy scahill has an excellent piece in the socialist worker today on the obama response to the recent american attack on somali pirates in which he ponders what the u.s. response will be now as well as what they will do with the somali man they are holding in custody:

There are certain to be calls from bloodthirsty lunatics to send this Somali man to Guantánamo or Bagram, with right-wingers like Newt Gingrich and Cal Thomas wrapping this into their tired “Obama is weak on terror” narrative. As Thomas wrote last week on the Fox News Web site:

What will the Obama administration do if the pirates are captured alive? He won’t sent them to Gitmo, which he is closing down. Will they get ACLU lawyers? Will there be testimony from a “pirates rights” group? Will they be released on a technicality after a trial in U.S. courts?

If there is not as forceful a response as there was during the Jefferson administration, it will invite more of these incidents. The world’s tyrants are watching to see how President Obama reacts. The message they get will determine how they respond to America and whether we will be in greater peril.

Indeed, the Wall Street Journal on Sunday called for the Somali man in custody to be “transferred to Guantánamo and held as an ‘enemy combatant,’ or whatever the Obama administration prefers to call terrorists.” On this point, Horton points out an interesting distinction between the Obama and Bush administration positions on “pirates,” particularly as it relates to the “terrorist” label.

The big legal issue is around calling them “terrorists,” which the Bushies did with regularity and Obama resisted. I think that Obama and his people are correct. These people were motivated by the desire to make money, pure and simple, which makes them conventional pirates. If they were labeled “terrorists,” the insurance company and the ship charter company wouldn’t be able to negotiate with them or make a payment. Pirates they can still pay off, which will often be the most sensible and least costly solution.

If the U.S. decides to pursue prosecution of the Somali “pirate” in custody in a U.S. court, he would hopefully have a right to a defense (which would clearly enrage the crazies) and the nature of that defense could well depend on what type of legal counsel he ends up with and how his lawyers present the motives of his actions, as described to them, in attempting to seize the Maersk Alabama.

This could be a major test of Obama’s legal interpretation of the rights of prisoners taken by the U.S. in unusual circumstances (to put it mildly). In an era when due process has been trashed in the U.S. and prisoners have been tortured at CIA “black sites” and held without trial for years at Guantánamo and elsewhere, Obama should allow exactly what Thomas and his ilk fear so much–respect for the legal rights of prisoners held by the U.S.

scahill added some bits to this on his blog–i am so elated to see he finally has a blog as his voice is so needed more than ever:

But the Obama administration has convened a special group on Somalia—even before the “pirate” crisis blew up publicly. And it isn’t just the “pirate bases” being looked at for potential military action. The Washington Post reported on Saturday:

Senior Obama administration officials are debating how to address a potential terrorist threat to U.S. interests from a Somali extremist group, with some in the military advocating strikes against its training camps. But many officials maintain that uncertainty about the intentions of the al-Shabab organization dictates a more patient, nonmilitary approach.

Al-Shabab, whose fighters have battled Ethiopian occupiers and the tenuous Somali government, poses a dilemma for the administration, according to several senior national security officials who outlined the debate only on the condition of anonymity.

All of these developments in Somalia and the Horn of Africa come amidst a growing US military presence on the continent through the US military command known as AFRICOM. In late 2006, US-backed Ethiopian troops invaded Somalia and overthrew the government in an operation that was framed in the rhetoric of the “war on terror.” The invasion resulted in an estimated 10,000 deaths and more than one million Somali refugees.

it is worth noting, too, that ken quinn, one of the americans who was on the ship the other day had this to say about somali pirates:

Quinn told reporters the experience was “terrifying and exciting at the same time.” Asked what he thought of the pirates who seized the boat, Quinn said: “They’re just hungry.”

for more background on the somali pirates you can watch/listen to an interview with mohamed abshir waldo on democracy now! today. and you can read his article in which he historicizes much of this issue as well as offers some solutions:

The EU, NATO and US Navies can, of course, Rambo and obliterate the fishermen pirates and their supporting coastal communities but that would be illegal, criminal act. Yet, it may temporarily reduce the intensity of the shipping piracy but it would not result in a long-term solution of the problem. The risk of loss of life of foreign crews and ecological impact of major oil spill would be a marine catastrophe of gigantic proportions for the whole coastal regions of East Africa and the Gulf of Aden. In their current operations, the Somali fishermen pirates genuinely believe that they are protecting their fishing grounds (both 12-mile territorial and EEZ waters). They also feel that they exacting justice and compensation for the marine resources stolen and the destroyed ecosystem by the IUUs. And their thinking is shared and fully supported by the coastal communities, whose protectors and providers they became.

The matter needs careful review and better understanding of the local environment. The piracy is based on local problems and it requires a number of comprehensive joint local and external partners approaches.

Firstly, practical and lasting solution lies in jointly addressing the twin problems of the shipping piracy and the illegal fishing piracy, the root cause of the crisis.

Secondly, the national institutional crisis should be reviewed along with the piracy issues.

Thirdly, local institutions should be involved and supported, particularly by helping to form coastguards, training and coastguard facilities. These may sound asking too much to donors and UN agencies. But we should ask what it meant those who paid tens of millions dollars of ransom and their loved ones held hostage for months.

Fourthly, a joint Somali and UN agency like the present ICAO for the Somali airspace should be considered.

finally, isn’t it a bit disingenuous for americans and europeans to rail against somali pirates when there are zionist pirates in palestinian waters attacking palestinians every day? i bet this never made the u.s. media:

6th of April 2009 at 7am: Israeli Naval forces have abducted eight Palestinian fishermen (including two minors) from the Salateen area in north of the Gaza Strip. Additionally, the fishermen’s four hassakas (small fishing boats) have been taken by the Israeli Navy. According to eyewitnesses, the fishermen were only about 100 meters from the coast at the time of their abduction.

Initial information received regarding the fishermen’s details are as follows:

- Esshaq Mohammed Zayed, 45
- Rassam Mohammed Zayed, 25
- Hafez Assad Al Sultan, 25
- Ahmed Assad Al Sultan, 17
- Safwat Zayed Zayed, 35
- Nashaat Zayed Zayed, 10
- Hammada Joma Zayed, 22
- Joma Mollok Zayed, 50

During the last month the Israeli Navy has escalated its attacks against Gazan fishermen by injuring at least three of them, abducting a further 24 fishermen, and stealing 10 hassakas and one shansula fishing boat.

CNN, 3/25/2009

President Obama on Tuesday vowed to invest the resources needed to address the threat posed by drug traffickers in Mexico. ”We are going to continue to monitor the situation, and if the steps we have taken do not get the job done, then we will do more,” he told reporters Tuesday night.

He praised the efforts of Mexican President Felipe Calderon to counter drug cartels, which “have gotten completely out of hand,” but said the United States must take further steps, such as ensuring that illegal guns and cash do not flow from north of the Rio Grande to the cartels in Mexico. ”That’s what makes them so dangerous,” he said.

Read more…

Reuters, 3/11/2009

U.S. border police have arrested four men and seized three shipments of guns, ammunition and weapons parts bound for Mexico, authorities said on Wednesday, weapons that would likely have been used by warring drug cartels. The Department of Homeland Security said border police in Arizona seized 10 guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition hidden in a pickup truck bound for Mexico on Saturday, and arrested two men, a Mexican and a U.S. citizen.

U.S. and Mexican authorities are working closely to curb the illegal trade in arms to Mexico, where more than 7,000 people have been murdered by the cartels since the start of last year.

Read more…

Boston Globe, 3/4/2009

Weekly death tolls may be something Americans associate with war zones like Baghdad, yet this is life within miles of the nation’s southern border. Mexico has become synonymous with gun violence and drug trafficking, and the power of drug cartels has lately increased, causing a surge in violence. In 2008, 6,000 Mexicans were killed in gang warfare, twice the number of the year before, with another thousand deaths so far this year.

This is not just a Mexican problem. According to US and Mexican law enforcement oficials, 90 percent of the guns picked up from criminal activity are purchased in the United States. Fifty-five percent of weapons picked up are assault rifles – which can be bought legally in much of the United States. These military-grade weapons easily out-muscle the Mexican police.

Gun-loving states may take a laissez-faire approach to gun ownership, but have no right to impose this ethic upon others. Assault weapons and gun-sale loopholes are bleeding over the border. In the absence of state action, federal controls are the only solution.

Read more…

Wall Street Journal, 3/2/2009

This week, an Arizona gun shop goes on trial in state court in what law-enforcement officials are calling a landmark case against gun dealers who sell weapons that end up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels, fueling horrific violence south of the border that killed more than 6,000 people last year.

X-Caliber Guns LLC, is accused of knowingly selling hundreds of weapons, mostly AK-47s, to buyers who were posing as fronts for Mexican drug gangs. The gun store’s owner, 47-year-old George Iknadosian, has maintained his innocence in court filings.

While the U.S. has long pressed Mexico to stop the flow of illegal drugs such as cocaine from crossing the border heading north, Mexico has complained that the U.S. doesn’t stop the flow of guns heading south. Mexican and U.S. officials estimate that more than 90% of the weapons used by Mexican drug cartels come from the U.S.

Read more…

CBS News reports that the DEA has coordinated and executed night raids on and arrested 50+ in an operation designed to crack down on the Sinaloa drug cartel operating inside the U.S. Previously, more than 700 had been arrested over a 21 month period.

The interstate raids were conducted in California, Minnesota, and in surrounding suburbs of Washington, D.C.

Evidence seized includes “more than 23 tons of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines; plus dozens of planes, boats and cars; more than $63 million in cash; and scores of weapons in the operation.”

This from the New York Times

A federal judge in Manhattan sentenced an arms dealer to 30 years in prison on Tuesday, finding overwhelming evidence that he and an associate had agreed to sell huge quantities of weapons “to what they believed was a terrorist organization who would use those weapons, among other things, to kill Americans and to wreak havoc,” the judge said.

Monzer al-Kassar was extradited from Spain in June.
The sentence means that the dealer, Monzer al-Kassar, a 63-year-old native of Syria who the authorities say was involved in arms trafficking since the early 1970s, will probably spend the rest of his life behind bars.

When Mr. Kassar was extradited to the United States from Spain, American authorities assured Spain that they would not seek a life sentence for him. There was evidence at the trial that he had provided intelligence in the past to Spanish authorities on terrorism and other matters.

There were also hints that some of his information might have helped the United States government, but that was shrouded in classified pretrial hearings, and not presented to the jury.

Before the sentencing, the judge, Jed S. Rakoff of Federal District Court, called Mr. Kassar “a very sophisticated person, a very complicated person.”

The judge said it was “a tragedy that a person of his intelligence has spent so much of his life in activities that certainly were not calculated to advance the human race.”

Hinting at the intrigue and mystery surrounding the defendant, Judge Rakoff added: “I think it is fair to say that Mr. al-Kassar is a man of many faces.”

The arrest of Mr. Kassar and his associate, Luis Felipe Moreno Godoy, 60, stemmed from an elaborate sting run by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Mr. Godoy, a Chilean whom prosecutors described as Mr. Kassar’s right-hand man, was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Tuesday.

In the sting, the D.E.A. used informants who posed as middlemen and who said they were seeking weapons for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, a rebel group that has been designated by the United States government as a foreign terrorist organization.

At the trial in November, the jury heard evidence that Mr. Kassar and Mr. Godoy agreed to sell 15 surface-to-air missiles, 4,000 grenades, nearly 9,000 assault rifles and thousands of pounds of C-4 explosives to the FARC for a profit of more than $1 million.

The men were told that the missiles would be used to shoot down American helicopters in Colombia, and Mr. Kassar told one operative that he could provide “a thousand men to help fight against the United States,” the evidence showed.

Judge Rakoff also agreed to order Mr. Kassar to forfeit all of his assets, including a mansion in Marbella, Spain, where he held meetings with the operatives who were part of the sting operation.

A prosecutor, Boyd M. Johnson III, told the judge that “the mansion was the headquarters of the arms trafficking organization.”

Court papers filed by prosecutors indicate that the government is investigating Mr. Kassar’s other overseas assets. At one point, Mr. Johnson referred to Mr. Kassar’s nearly “limitless wealth.”

The lawyer for Mr. Kassar, Ira Lee Sorkin, and for Mr. Godoy, Roger L. Stavis, both said after the hearing that they would appeal.

During the trial, the defense introduced video testimony from two Spanish officials who confirmed that Mr. Kassar had been a source of information for the Spanish government. One said he had given intelligence information on terrorism.

Mr. Kassar addressed Judge Rakoff before he was sentenced, saying that the jury should have been allowed to hear more details of his long-time cooperation.

“Without any doubt, I have saved human lives,” including the lives of Americans, he said.

“If the jury had seen this classified information,” he said, “I’m sure they would have come with a different verdict.”

Both he and Mr. Godoy, who spoke through a translator, said that they were innocent.

But the judge said he could not ignore “the totally overwhelming nature of the proof in this case, vast amounts of which were videotaped,” he added, referring to meetings between the defendants and the operatives.

The L.A. Times reports that in a news conference earlier this month, President Obama described Iran’s”pursuit” of weapons capability, echoing CIA Director Leon Panetta’s definitive comments made while testifying on Capitol Hill: “From all the information I’ve seen… I think there is no question that they are seeking that capability.”

Way different from the November 2007  National Intelligence Estimate, little over a year ago.

And they’re doing it with parts unknowingly supplied by the U.S.!!!!

Back in November 2008, Iran’s nuclear chief announced that the country is running 5,000 uranium centrifuges at its central plant. These operations are in direct defiance to U.N. demands that Iran cease its nuclear program. The report of 5,000 centrifuges is up 1,000 from the 4,000 reported in August.

Ruh roh. BTW, has any one seen Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan lately? Pakistan just released him from house arrest the other day.  You know, the rogue nuclear scientist, dubbed the “largest nuclear proliferator in history”, who has admitted to selling nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya? Anyone?

Click here for more on Iran and its pursuit of weapons capability.

UPDATE: (Guardian UK):  Iran makes its first test run of nuclear reactor in Bushehr: “Substitute fuel used in trial of facility that Tehran says is for energy, but west fears programme is front for building atomic weapon.”

The New York Times, 2/25/2009

The Mexican agents who moved in on a safe house full of drug dealers last May were not prepared for the fire power that greeted them. When the shooting was over, eight agents were dead. Among the guns the police recovered was an assault rifle traced back across the border to a dingy gun store here called X-Caliber Guns.

Now, the owner, George Iknadosian, will go on trial on charges he sold hundreds of weapons, mostly AK-47 rifles, to smugglers, knowing they would send them to a drug cartel in the western state of Sinaloa. The guns helped fuel the gang warfare in which more than 6,000 Mexicans died last year.

Read more…

The CID has arrested two arms trafficker from Ashua bus terminus on Bangaon-Bagdah Road near the Indo-Bangladesh border on Tuesday afternoon. The arrested, identified as Taliq Mandal and Salim Mandal, hail from Jamalpur in Bihar. Two 9mm revolvers, 4 revolvers, 7 one shotters and 44 rounds of cartridges have been recovered from them. The traffickers used to sell the Bihar-made arms in local markets.

According to sources, the arms syndicate is active along places like Ashua, Banshghata, Amdoba close to the Indo-Bangladesh border. Few months back the BSF arrested an arms trafficker from the region. On 13th July, 2007, the BSF arrested one Noor Islam, who is allegedly linked to HuJI and was involved in smuggling RDX across the border.

Source: Anandabazar Patrika [25-02-2009]