FLE

Militarizing Mexico’s Drug War Seven months ago, President Felipe Calderón of the conservative National Action Party took office and declared war on drug traffickers, ordering 20,000 troops into the streets to put an end to drug-cartel related murders. Despite the troops, the number of drug-related murders has tripled and the army’s massive deployment has yielded tales of widespread human rights violations, like that of Sara. More than 1,000 people, mostly police officers, soldiers and members of enemy cartels, have been killed since Jan. 1. In Veracruz, elite armed gangs linked to the Gulf Cartel planted a decapitated head outside an army barracks with a note: “We’re going to keep going when the federal forces get here.” In Tabasco, men in a Jeep Cherokee delivered a refrigerator to the front door of the newspaper Tabasco Hoy; inside security agents found the severed head of a city councilman. Drug trafficking across the Mexico-United States border exploded in the ’80s in the wake of U.S. moves to quash traffickers from Colombia and the Caribbean. Since the ’90s, drug traffickers have moved an estimated $10 billion worth of cocaine, marijuana, heroin and methamphetamines across the border each year. As much as 70 percent of the cocaine that enters the United States crosses the border from Mexico. Drug-related violence between warring cartels has plagued the borderlands for years, increasing in the ’90s and then exploding in the last two years. Three thousand people died of drug-related violence during the six-year reign of former President Vicente Fox. Last year, more than 20 police officers and rival gang members were beheaded, and their heads were often put on public display in harrowing fashion. In Acapulco, two police officers’ heads were posted on the fence outside a state government building above a poster-board sign that read: “So that you learn some respect.” In Michoacán, assassins stepped into a crowded nightclub and rolled five severed heads onto the dance floor....
Lawmakers Probe Prosecution of Border Agents Who Shot Mexican Drug Runner Pressure is growing on Capitol Hill to investigate the prosecution of two former Border Patrol agents doing prison time for their on-duty shooting of a Mexican man who was transporting drugs into the United States. Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos are serving 12 and 11 years, respectively, for the non-fatal shooting in 2005 of Osvaldo Aldrete Davila. The agents shot Davila in the buttocks as he was transporting more than 700 pounds of marijuana into the United States through Fabens, Texas. Davila was given immunity in exchange for his testimony against the agents. Now the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight is organizing a hearing on any influence the Mexican government may have had on prosecuting Compean and Ramos. Rep. Bill Delahunt, the Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee, said a formal invitation to testify will be also be sent to U.S. prosecutor Johnny Sutton "so there will be no confusion as to whether he’s available or whether he’s willing to appear."....
Ashcroft Tells of Surveillance Disputes Former attorney general John D. Ashcroft told the House intelligence committee yesterday about disputes in the Bush administration over aspects of its domestic surveillance program, which peaked in the March 2004 visit to his hospital bedside by White House officials seeking his change of heart. House Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.) said the two-hour closed-door hearing covered Ashcroft's "whole tenure as attorney general." The hearing, Reyes said, examined how the administration viewed the use of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act provisions requiring a special court to issue warrants for domestic eavesdropping. The panel heard last week from former deputy attorney general James B. Comey, whose mid-May testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the 2004 hospital episode sparked an outcry among congressional Democrats. Next month, Reyes said, the committee will hear private testimony from Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and CIA Director Michael V. Hayden, with the goal of holding public hearings in the fall. Reyes declined to detail the specifics of Ashcroft's testimony but said the former attorney general, now in private practice, gave the panel "very candid advice" as it considers drafting new legislation that could rewrite FISA. There was "robust and enormous debate" within the Bush administration about the post-Sept. 11, 2001, program, he said....
Inconvenient Truths On 21 December 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was 38 minutes into its journey when it was blown up at 31,000 feet. The explosion was so powerful that the nose of the aircraft was torn clean off. Within three seconds of the bomb detonating, the cockpit, fuselage and No. 3 engine were falling separately out of the sky. It happened so quickly that no distress call was sent out and no oxygen masks deployed. With the cockpit gone, the fuselage depressurised instantly and the passengers in the rear section of the aircraft found themselves staring out into the Scottish night air. Anyone or anything not strapped down was whipped out of the plane; the change in air pressure made the passengers’ lungs expand to four times their normal volume and everyone lost consciousness. As the fuselage plummeted and the air pressure began to return to normal, some passengers came round, including the captain. A few survived all the way down, until they hit the ground. Rescuers found them clutching crucifixes, or holding hands, still strapped into their seats. The fuselage of the plane landed on a row of family houses in the small Scottish town of Lockerbie. The impact was so powerful that the British Geological Survey registered a seismic event measuring 1.6 on the Richter scale. The wing section of the Boeing 747, loaded with enough fuel for a transatlantic flight, hit the ground at more than 500 miles an hour and exploded in a fireball that lit the sky. The cockpit, with the first-class section still attached, landed beside a church in the village of Tundergarth....
Straight Talk: Videotaping Police Last month, Brian Kelly of Carlisle, Pa., was riding with a friend when the car he was in was pulled over by a local police officer. Kelly, an amateur videographer, had his video camera with him and decided to record the traffic stop. The officer who pulled over the vehicle saw the camera and demanded Kelly hand it over. Kelly obliged. Soon after, six more police officers pulled up. They arrested Kelly on charges of violating an outdated Pennsylvania wiretapping law that forbids audio recordings of any second party without their permission. In this case, that party was the police officer. Kelly was charged with a felony, spent 26 hours in jail, and faces up to 10 years in prison. All for merely recording a police officer, a public servant, while he was on the job. There's been a rash of arrests of late for videotaping police, and it's a disturbing development. Last year, Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly threatened Internet activist Mary T. Jean with arrest and felony prosecution for posting a video to her website of state police swarming a home and arresting a man without a warrant. Michael Gannon of New Hampshire was also arrested on felony wiretapping charges last year after recording a police officer who was being verbally abusive on his doorstep. Photojournalist Carlos Miller was arrested in February of this year after taking pictures of on-duty police officers in Miami. And Philadelphia student Neftaly Cruz was arrested last year after he took pictures of a drug bust with his cell phone. As noted, police are public servants, paid with taxpayer dollars. Not only that, but they're given extraordinary power and authority we don't give to other public servants: They're armed; they can make arrests; they're allowed to break the very laws they're paid to enforce; they can use lethal force for reasons other than self-defense; and, of course, the police are permitted to videotape us
without our consent....