Mexican Drug Cartel Extortion
Hits Firms in El Paso

THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS 10/5/09 - EL PASO — U.S. businesses are reporting threats by extortionists claiming to be members of drug cartels, a sign that criminal tactics common in Mexico are showing up north of the border.
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As crime grows in Mexico,
more people flee to Texas

Dallas Morning News 10/4/09 - PABELLON DE ARTEAGA, Mexico – A peculiar smell lingers at the pink and white home near City Hall: burnt candles lighted hours earlier to pray for the safe return of the latest kidnapping victim.
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The Border: Texas Steps Up
Where Washington Falls Down

By Texas Governor Rick Perry

During a time when Washington seems more determined than ever to inject itself into the day-to-day lives of everyone in the country, border security is one area - a legitimate federal responsibility - where the federal government has demonstrated a decided lack of urgency. Full Story

Sheriff's office on new
organized crime task force

Phoenix Business Journal - by Mike Sunnucks 10/1/09 --
The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office is part of a new organized crime, drug trafficking task force aimed at drug cartels and smuggling rings — after all. Full Story

Visas for Canada won't stop flood of phoney refugee claimants from Mexicans fleeing violence

Canada.com - How many of the 5,500 Mexican asylum seekers -- many of them doctors, lawyers and business people -- who swamped Canada's immigration system in the first six months of 2009 would fit this internationally accepted definition of refugee? Full StoryL
LINK TO CANADIAN STORY IF PDF DOESN'T WORK

Violence of the Mexican drug cartels
likely to get worse before better, officials say.

Dallas Morning News 10/5/09 - As the fight with the Mexican drug cartels heats up, they're arming themselves for war, including standing orders from one cartel leader to kill American law officials, and any Americans who get in the way.. Full Story

5 men killed in shooting in Mexico
in bar in border city killing capital

(AP) 10/5/09 CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — Mexican prosecutors says a gang of armed assailants burst into a bar in the border city of Ciudad Juarez and shot five men to death.
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Mexico Police Step Up Drug Seizures

BBC News 10/2/09 - Mexican authorities say they have made their largest-ever seizure of chemicals used in the manufacturer of the synthetic drug methamphetamine.
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SPECIAL SECTION ON KIDNAPPING IN MEXICO

Read both latest news and advice on kidnappings.

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Dissecting a Drug War

By Kent Patersonwww.mexidata.info -Part One:

El Paso was the scene last month as academics, students, journalists, community members, and a smattering of government officials from the United States, Mexico and other parts of the world gathered to analyze and debate the 40-year war on drugs. Located next door to blood-soaked Ciudad Juarez, the event took place at a time when a sense of urgency literally prevailed just outside the conference doors. Second story on this drug conference:

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Deindustrialization, drugs and recovery

By Kent Paterson, Part Two
newspapertree.com El Paso online 10/5/09

A careful reading shows how much of the underworld activity moved from north to south, especially but not exclusively during the Prohibition Era, in contrast to the contemporary media stories of violence and mayhem threatening to spill across the US border from Mexico.

Editor’s Note: The following story is the second and last report on the US War on Drugs conference held in El Paso, Texas, on September 21 and 22 of this year. The event was initiated by faculty from the University of Texas at El Paso and supported by a host of local organizations and agencies.

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WATCHING MEXICO has been created to focus on the latest up-to-date news on Mexico's drug cartel, crime and corruption events, espeically kidnapping and narcotic-realated violence against Mexicans and foreigners. The site also carries frequent analysese of these events and their relationship to Mexico at large, i.e. politics and the economy, and towards its closest neightbors and global ramificaons.

Inside are pages that concentrate on.the special problems of taxi crime and kidnapping, car driving, street crime, con games aimed at foreigners and specific, current situatons to major cities and resorts, as well as rural doings.

Our audience includes Mexicos from all classes, when even farmers have laptops to download latest news that could affect crops, as well as foreigners in Mexico for busienss or pleasure, and those who married Mexicans or just fell love with the country, not a hard thing to do at all.

We recognize that Mexican culture is far more subtle and sophisticated than 99% of Americans have even a clue. Also, those of us who do have that clue still have little hope of penetrating the strong and supple veneer most Mexicans present to the outside world. Our Mexican associates can assist with that.

Mexicans themselves are the most vulnerable victims of the confluence of forces that has brought the drug and corruption wars to their homeland, and only they can win the struggle.

We want to make www.watchingmexico.com partially a kind of Mexican-focused Drudge Report, bringing links to the latest news articles from Spanish and English language media on Mexico, and the Mexican drug war, border problems, narcotics mafia, the kidnapping gangs often led by active duty police officers, but also the business successes and opportunities of living and working in Mexico. The second part will consist of analyses of major news, as well as in-depth looks at parts of Mexico and how it relates to current events, and advice from insiders on how to succeed in Mexico, not only in business and just living there, but avoiding kidnapping gangs, even the petty ones who use taxis to find victims to empty their ATM accounts over a period of days.

Please bookmark us and sign up to www.twitter.com/watchingmexico to get instant notices of the latest news, including where danger could have popped up, or where the scene is calm.

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Mexico's small but
vibrant Jewish community

Mexico's Jewish community, small but vibrant, begins reaching out to its fellow citizens.

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Mexico's Real War

Joel Kotkin, Forbes Magazine 10.06.09

It's not drugs.

"The middle class in Mexico is going down," private school owner Arendondo told me in his office by the courtyard of the brightly painted school in the largely lower-middle-class Iztacalco, one of Mexico City's 16 diverse delegaciones, or boroughs. "The middle class is predated by both the super-rich and the criminal poor. We are squeezed in the middle of the sandwich." Full Story

U.S. Anti-gunrunning to Mexico
Effort lauded, questioned

By Jerry Seper Washington Times !0/6/09

Just days after the Justice Department said its anti-gunrunning project on the U.S.-Mexico border had made "enormous inroads into stemming firearms-related violent crime" and touted a planned expansion of the program, the department's Office of Inspector General on Monday said some funding for the $22 million project was not being properly used.

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