You will have to forgive me for not being around - we are deeply into having a new shower & bath installed and having the downstairs insulated before the hot weather hits. And, of course, I still can barely walk. So, it is a mess around here. Hopeful for knee surgery after the 26th of June, finally.
Still how many instances of tacit approval do you slightly suspect we will witness in the next few months? Last week, Al Jazeera reported that Israel will not investigate Shireen Abu Akleh's murder.
Yesterday, CNN reported that new evidence suggests Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead in a targeted attack by Israeli forces. How much of this new evidence will be white washed ? BTW, excellent report by Jeffrey St. Clair from those dreaded two weeks ago. (English translation courtesy Rebelion by Paco Muniz de Bastillo.)
And, what of the Uvalde Texas Massacre? I would love to hold out for hope by listening to the Democrat Senator from Connecticut Chris Murphy, but am more inclined to believe Mike Spies of the Trace. Particularly after this week's psycho denial by the country's leading Republicans.
As disheartening as all of that is, have we reached the bottom of the barrel ? Mike believes there are more guns out there in the US than people, and getting rid of them will be next to impossible. And, Juan Cole hits the nail on the head again:
~ From Informed Comment:
When It Comes To Guns, The US Is a Third World Country Run by Corporate Lobbyists For A Profit
"Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – 21 are dead in another mass shooting, including 19 schoolchildren. The white slavers of the Old Souoth used to call US slavery our “peculiar institution.” Nowadays we have another peculiar institution, the gun culture.
And we are peculiar. When it comes to gun violence, the United States is less like France, Britain, Italy and Japan, other members of the G7 industrialized democracies, and more like Brazil, Venezuela, and Colombia. Competition for scarce resources in poor countries and weak governments drive gun violence in the latter three. But the US at least on the surface is wealthy and has a strong government.
Italy has violent criminal organizations in places like Sicily and Florence, but its rate of death from firearms is 1.31 per 100,000 residents. In 2021 793 people died in gun violence in Italy. That would be like 4,435 people dying of gun violence annually in the United States.
ESPN: “Steve Kerr spoke about the mass shooting at a school in Uvalde, Texas.”
The actual statistic? In 2021 45,009 Americans died of gunshot wounds, with 20,919 of those being homicides. The rest were suicides. This year’s rate is 12.21 per 100K. 1,560 of these deaths were children or teens, more than twice as many deaths by gunshot, proportionally, as were suffered by the entire UK in 2021 even when we account for the difference in its population and that of the US.
In absolute numbers, 155 people were killed by guns in 2021 in Great Britain. We polish off nearly that number of people every day with guns, in absolute numbers.
Turkey has absorbed something like 3.5 million Syrian refugees fleeing a civil war, and has endemic Turkish-Kurdish violence, suffering also from ISIL terrorism. The country is middle income but not wealthy, with a nominal per capita GDP per year of $9,539. In the US it is $63,000. Turkey’s rate of gun deaths per 100k is 1.95. In absolute numbers, people with guns killed 1,626 people last year, equivalent to 6,362 dead Americans because Turkey is only about a fourth as populous as we are.
Here’s the list of the top countries so far in 2022 by gun deaths per 100,000 residents:
Honduras 60
Venezuela 49.22
El Salvador 45.6
Eswatini 37.16
Guatemala 34.1
Jamaica 30.72
Brazil 21.9
Colombia 18.65
Panama 15.11 14.36
United States 12.21
So, you know, Swaziland and El Salvador are strange company for the United States on a key social statistic.
In my view, there are two reasons for which we can’t do better on gun deaths than countries whose biggest industries include lawless drug cartels (Mexico has better gun statistics per 100k than we do).
First, we do not in fact have strong governance. You could see that in the Jan. 6 insurrection, when congressional representatives and senators came within an inch of being hanged by a motley crew of scruffy white supremacists.
The billionaires and corporate CEOs don’t want to pay their fair share of taxes, which has left the government bankrupt. Our national debt now exceeds our annual GDP, which is a danger signal. Moreover, the corporations do not want to be regulated by the government, so they buy congressmen and senators and write the regulations for them and order them to pass them into law. This is called “regulatory capture,” and it is how the U.S. is run.
Contrast New Zealand and Australia, which have actual governments as opposed to corporate holding companies. When those countries had mass shootings, they promptly banned semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles. The problem has since been much less severe. We can’t do that because we don’t have a proper government.
The annual gun business revenue is $28 billion. We’re talking Colt and Smith & Wesson, etc.
You could say that isn’t much money, but because John Roberts abolished campaign finance reform and classed money as speech (it isn’t), it actually is more than enough to engage in regulatory capture on the Hill. That is, so many congress people and senators get funding from the gun lobby for their campaigns that it is impossible to pass even the mildest of gun safety measures. The problem isn’t voters, in most of the country. It is the lobbyists. They not only managed to buy Congress but in so doing they have bought the Supreme Court indirectly.
After all, the film business in the US before COVID was only $35 billion, but Disney wrote ridiculous copyright laws to protect Mickey Mouse from going into the public domain that extend copyright to a century. If you invented a cure for cancer, it would be generic in only a few years. But if you write a song about curing cancer, it will be protected for a hundred years.
Corporate power distorts the US economy and cultural life in deleterious ways, and the capture by the gun manufacturers of gun regulation at the national level is one of our great tragedies and crosses to bear. We may have nice homes and apartments and a better life than even French and Italians materially, but we don’t know if our children will get home from school without bullet holes in them. We have the money of a France or Japan or Germany but the insecurity and anxiety of a Brazil or Venezuela.
The other part of the equation is that although our per capita income looks impressive, because of our vast income inequality there is actually a Third World country inside the United States. Our rich live in gated communities with their own security. Our poor are at risk for being caught in the crossfire of gang shootings. They are living in a situation more like Colombia’s or Mexico’s than like that of the Malibu or Manhattan set. As inequality worsens further, so does security for all but the affluent.
So, welcome to the Third World, folks. Trump may have derided sh*thole countries, but he and his ilk are exactly the people who have turned America into one."
~~~~~
Steady As You Go Down Here....
Sinaloa vs. CJNG
So far this month we have had 118 executions in Tijuana, bringing the YTD total up to 670 dead. Which in many ways, sounds par for the course - except Zeta who has been reporting all of these here and in Ensenada, Mexicali and Tecate has been setting up some red flags, and the question begs, are we looking forward to more huge street battles in just about all of the Municipalities for control of the Plaza ?
Check out these reports, all from Zeta:
~ From Zeta: Pictures included on the link.
Ordena "El Mayo" "limpia" criminal en Tijuana
Edición Impresa -
Investigaciones ZETA -
lunes, 16 mayo, 2022 12:33 PM
On April 23, “El Ranchero”, an unidentified Sinaloa Cartel operator, threatened to “clean up” enemy cells and cartels. On May 7, six thugs who had just arrived from Sinaloa were arrested and claimed to bring orders to “align the people”
“I come from Sinaloa to clean the plaza , because those from Nueva (CJNG) are making a mess, leaving bodies, blankets and charging people and businesses for plaza, they told us to be there and receive orders from the 'Ranchero', and he He was going to tell us what to do,” were the summed up words of Sonoran Edi Mayorga, after being captured early on Saturday, May 7, in Tijuana.
The Municipal Police captured him in the Castillo neighborhood, located in the North Zone, one of the three areas that the traffickers are currently fighting over in this border municipality, according to reports from the authorities integrated into the Coordination Tables for Peace and Security. The other two are Playas de Tijuana and Cerro Colorado-Mariano.
Mayorga was apprehended after a chase, aboard a white Honda Odyssey truck with California license plates. He was accompanied by five other criminals. According to the government version, only the driver was a native of Tijuana, the rest were from Sinaloa and had arrived in Baja California between eight and six days ago.
Luis Armando Galván, the driver, commented: “ Today they told me to be a driver with some people who arrived from Sinaloa, they brought the order from 'Mayo' not to shoot at the government, they just ordered them to clean up to the square".
Eight years ago, in May 2014, the name and face of this young man - then 20 years old - was published in the Baja California media. The father reported him as missing, and the prosecution sent an investigation.
Another of those captured, Jorge Luis López Juárez, assured more, less words: “I work in Sinaloa for the people of 'Mayo' Zambada, they gave me the order to come to Tijuana and I arrived about eight days ago, all the orders were given to us over the phone and they told me to put myself under the orders of the 'Ranchero', but the truth is I don't know him in person, we would throw ourselves into the business of burning down a house that sells drugs and slot machines , and line up his people, because we want everything the piece and according to what they were from the Nueva , with which we bring war”.
The versions of the rest of the detainees, José Luis Quintero Beltrán, Eduardo Fernando Montoya Moreno and Javier Raymundo Vázquez García, are similar, the only thing that changes is the time they supposedly had to have arrived in Tijuana.
The detainees lived in different parts of the city, only one, Vázquez García lived in the North Zone, "perhaps to monitor the points they planned to attack," said an agent.
Authorities were asked if they had detained other criminals who had just arrived from Sinaloa or other states, the answer was: "It does not mean that there are no more, only that they have not been arrested, because in addition, according to what was said by those captured, they were dispersed throughout the city," so they are alert and investigating.
The criminal sextet was apprehended after burning a building and murdering a man on Avenida Carranza, on the road that connects with Avenida Internacional in the Castillo neighborhood, near the North Zone of Tijuana.
On May 30, 2017, in the same bodegón, a narco-tunnel under construction was located that did not reach the border strip, but rather a drainage channel that did cross the Line. Five people were arrested in that operation.
In the same location, there was a car wash , a kind of quarters and currently they had little machines , and according to intelligence information, it was a meeting point for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). Specifically from the cell identified as "Los Erres", headed by the half brothers Javier Adrián Beltrán Cabrera and Isaac Alhiu Chávez Cabrera, who criminally served the Arellano Félix Cartel, later Sinaloa and recently recruited with the servants of Nemesio Oseguera "El Mencho".
That May 7, the Sinaloans arrived in a truck that was parked on International Avenue, got out and doused the warehouse with gasoline and set it on fire, throwing a smoke grenade. The only man who was inside came out, the detainees assure that he shot them and that is why they killed him, but no other weapon was found at the scene. A shot to the head and he collapsed, to later burn next to the premises.
They could not identify him by fingerprints because it was one of the body parts that was burned the most, “ a male person was found partially consumed by the flames, wearing black pants without a shirt or shoes, which is in a lateral decubitus position, surrounded with wire in the neck area and without the cephalic region , ”the report indicated.
After seeing the fire, agents patrolling the area immediately arrived at the point: "The driver started the march and stopped meters ahead, where several individuals climbed onto the panel, and then fled towards Playas de Tijuana."
Later they were located on Boulevard Rosas Magallón, at the height of the Cañón del Matadero neighborhood, and finally they were detained on Second Street in the Linda Vista neighborhood, the Tijuana Secretary of Citizen Security reported via a bulletin.
They also seized two 9-millimeter pistols, two generic .223-caliber rifles, an AK-47 rifle, six long-arm magazines, four short-arm magazines, five ballistic vests, two grenades -one fragmentation and one smoke-, a radius of communication and 128 useful cartridges.
These subjects were arrested at 03:40 am, after committing the first murder that Saturday. After the capture of these men, at 05:18 hours a murderous day was restarted that ended at 23:50 hours and added ten murders throughout the city.
In Camino Verde they killed a man with a bullet to the head; later another individual was shot to death in the Buenos Aires Norte neighborhood; The thugs continued in the Cerro Colorado delegation and executed Brayan Ceja Leyva in the Presidentes neighborhood, whose body was found with his head covered and a narco message; the following body was found tied by the hands, in Urbi Villas del Prado in Natura; in Pedregal they found José Antonio Ortiz Villafán shot; another body in a state of putrefaction was located in the La Joya neighborhood on the Ensenada Tijuana highway; and at night, the bodies of a couple, man and woman, were found in Playas de Tijuana.
THE TRAFFICKER MURDERED
Seven hours after the last homicide on Saturday, at 07:35 on Sunday May 8, the emergency numbers received a report of a kidnapping. A police presence was required at an address located on Tarahumara and Taxqueña streets in the Mariano Matamoros subdivision.
They denounced that “four hooded male persons on board a vehicle entered the home”, they were looking for Jesús Alfredo Manjarrez Zamora, 53 years old and head of the family that resides in the house. But when the patrol arrived, they asked them to leave because they were not needed.
Fifteen hours later, on the night of Sunday the 8th, the Emergency numbers received a call from the same address again, asking for help for a "person injured by a firearm", upon arrival they found Manjarrez lying face down with various injuries, and various signs ballistics near him. Upon arrival, paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene.
On Friday, March 25, 2011, this man was detained by elements of the Army in a warehouse located on Cuchumá Street in the López Portillo subdivision of the Cerro Colorado district. In the operation, they seized 1,264 packages, a total of 5.8 tons of marijuana from Sinaloa, attributed to the brothers Alfonso and René Arzate, of the Sinaloa Cartel.
Manjarrez, then 40 years old, a native of Sinaloa, was presented as part of the cartel and was arrested along with Tito Cobos de la Torre. They were arrested in possession of a Remington shotgun , two pistols, a revolver, three 9mm magazines and 95 useful cartridges of various calibers. Both subjects were released almost immediately by a judge. In fact, in 2014 Cobos was sued by the Municipal Development Trust of Tijuana (PROMUN), dedicated to "managing the land reserve of the city council, receiving future contributions of real estate for its development and use, as well as for its alienation to the various developers. public and private for housing and urban development”, and requested and obtained protection from federal justice.
“THE MAX” AND “THE RANCHER”
"This is going to happen to all grasshoppers at El Ranchero" , was the legend written on a cardboard that was thrown on the corpse of a man with a bullet in the head on September 7, 2021 on Río Amacuzac street in Mariano Matamoros ; it was the first time that criminal nickname was publicly known.
The second time, they threatened him: “ This Is For You Cristian Leonel Ting Thaylor aka El Yogi And Your Patron La Ranchera Stop Killing Innocent People And Come Out Altopon With Us In The Downtown Area We Send The War I Come To Your House AttE La Menchiza” . The message was written on a white canvas that was hung on April 12, 2022, in a shopping center on Villas del Campo street, in the neighborhood with the same name in the Presa Rural delegation, also in the East Zone.
Thing Taylor is a native of Ensenada and has a history of carrying a weapon, crimes against health, illegal deprivation of liberty, robbery with violence and qualified homicide
He was arrested on August 27, 2018 in flagrante delicto, aboard a vehicle, while carrying two teenagers. He had raised them in a home in La Morita, accompanied by five other armed criminals.
On that date, the prosecution was investigating this criminal cell as being responsible for the disappearance of another young man, Edwin Paul Ramírez García, of whom the authority did not report that he had regained his freedom.
The following cardboard was found on the night of April 23, in the Aleman neighborhood of the Central Zone: “ THE CLEAN BALL OF LUMINOUS ARRIVES, HERE THEY DON’T SCARE ANYBODY, KILL INNOCENT PEOPLE, CHARGE PLACES, KIDNAPPERS ATTM: EL RANCHERO CDS, I’M GOING TO REMOVE THE LITTLE THAT IS LEFT (CDS) (F.ER)”. It was on the corpse of the person who in life bore the name of Arturo Bravo Contreras.
In the Coordination Tables for Peace and Security, they have not yet identified "El Ranchero" but due to the areas of influence, Central and North Zone, Playas de Tijuana and Cerro Colorado-Mariano, they consider that he must be directly related to Edwin Antonio Rubio López "El Max", and investigate the possibility that it is himself.
The only criminal record of Rubio López, dates from October 2013, “ he was captured when he was speeding in a gray 2000 Lincoln car, with California license plates, on Avenida Principal and Calle Margen Right, Colonia El Florido. Upon inspection they found a .45 caliber squad pistol with nine shots, and two packages containing 10 kilograms of marijuana.”
Prior to 2020, he was classified as a cell leader of the Uriarte brothers, and more recently, the authorities labeled him as a servant of Los Arzate, both groups of the Sinaloa Cartel. According to the local corporations, the former continue under the shelter of Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, while the latter continue to serve him, but without his protection, since November 2020."
~~~~~
~ From Zeta:
(The Return Of The Assassins)
Destacadas BCS - Adela Navarro Bello - miércoles, 25 mayo, 2022 9:07 PM
"Cartels such as Sinaloa or Jalisco New Generation, have hundreds of them at their service and send them to different states of the Mexican Republic, to carry out their threats, carry out their vendettas or kill the competition."
"They have never really left; In a country like Mexico, where over the last three years the figure of one hundred thousand executed has been exceeded, it is to be assumed that the hired killer is more present than ever, and also now, on the rise.
For many years, the Presidency of the Republic tried to change the criminal narrative to, in his idea, generate a more appropriate climate for peace. In the six-year term of Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006-2012) a national media agreement was even called for to eliminate from the journalistic lexicon in the case of the red note, police or insecurity, words such as hitman, lieutenant, capo, executed, dejected, and a long etcetera. Thus, hit men, lieutenants, criminal cell leaders, and capos came to be called "priority targets."
In the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto, the change in the criminal narrative was maintained within his strategy of a Mexico for Peace, but instead of being known as "Priority Targets", they were called hit men, lieutenants, heads of criminal cells and capos, "Generators of Violence", a term that continues to be used both in the Attorney General's Office of the Republic, even when they are not even investigated, and in many state prosecutor's offices and attorney's offices.
But a few days ago, regarding the terrible murder on Saturday, May 21, of the lawyer, human rights defender and feminist activist, Cecilia Monzón, in San Pedro Cholula, Puebla, who was gunned down while driving her car, the President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, returned the term hit man to the presidential narrative, and therefore official, of the Government of the Republic regarding organized crime and drug trafficking.
López Obrador referred days after the crime in Puebla: "... well, the murder of Cecilia Monzón in Puebla, because it is a very painful issue, since we have the information of what happened we are attending. The serious problem, because it was an execution, that is, it was assassins who murdered her, without any doubt about it…”, were the words expressed by the national president, and later he offered his condolences to Monzón's family.
A hitman, is one who commits murders by order, is in most cases young people, trained in weapons embedded in the structures of drug trafficking and organized crime. Hired assassins, then, at the service of the drug cartels.
If the President knows for sure, as he declared two days after the activist's crime, that it was hitmen, presumably he will have information about the criminal structure to which they belong, cartel, organization or mafia, and it is prevailing, given that it has already resolved on the origin of the material authors, that I collaborate with the local authorities in Puebla, so that the crime of Cecilia Monzón does not go unpunished.
Indeed, hit men are back and on the rise. Cartels such as Sinaloa or Jalisco New Generation, have hundreds of them at their service and send them to different states of the Mexican Republic, to carry out their threats, carry out their vendettas or kill the competition. This, in a State of Law, should not be difficult to investigate, and to reach the drug trafficking and organized crime networks and do justice, the hitmen used to be loyal to their criminal organization and possess information on the structure that gives them recourse and impunity. from corruption.
They were also assassins who also murdered the journalists Margarito Martínez and Lourdes Maldonada in Tijuana, at the end of January 2022. Three assassins in each of the crimes, all belonging to criminal cells of the Arellano Félix Cartel, but despite Having been detained (all six), and the people who lead them criminally being identified, no intellectual author has been singled out, prosecuted or an arrest warrant has been issued for crimes against journalists.
In the case of Margarito, it is presumed, even though it has not been possible to link to the investigation, that the perpetrator is the head of a CAF cell, who ordered the crime for assuming that Margarito Martínez was providing information to journalists who write on portals and in print. While in the investigation of Lourdes Maldonado, the motive for the intellectual authorship has not been determined, but the three men who participated in her murder, the one who drove the vehicle, the one who fired the weapon and who cleaned the crime scene They paid each of them five thousand dollars. Whose? It is not known, the investigations in both cases are stalled, even though Maldonado's investigation includes as a suspect a personal friend of the President, the former Governor, Jaime Bonilla Valdez.
In recent weeks, cells of hitmen have arrived in Baja California from states such as Michoacán, Puebla, Sinaloa, Jalisco, who have been sent by the criminal leaders of the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, Nemesio "El Mencho" Oseguera, respectively, to fight a bloody war on that terrain for the territory of the northern border of Mexico between the municipalities of Tijuana, Tecate and Mexicali.
The arrival of these assassins has been documented by the weekly ZETA , and local authorities, particularly the Attorney General of the State of Baja California, as a result of the apprehension of some of these assassins. Six arrested in Tijuana under the orders of the hosts of "El Mayo" Zambada, two apprehended in Tecate and 10 escaped, who serve Jalisco New Generation.
These assassins have set Baja Californian territory on fire with their weapons and shots, increasing the number of people executed, mainly in these three municipalities, but not limited to them.
The assassins are back in the presidential narrative, hopefully this direct identification of the murderers of the cartels and organized crime, will serve the Attorney General's Office and the federal government itself, to do what they have not done in recent three years: recognize them, accept their presence and the damage they do to society, to persecute, prosecute and imprison them, because halfway through the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico cannot stand it any longer, so much impunity, so much blood."
~~~~~
Long, But Worth Knowing About; printed edition two days prior to Adella Navarro Bello's report Incidentally, Playas is a hot spot and from the looks of it, we are just warming up:
"El Mayo" vs. "El Mencho" en BC
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| Courtesy Yahoo: Recent Narco Tunel Otay | |
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| Sunny Jim's Cave...You know the place, La Jolla Cove aka "Shark Alley" |
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| Courtesy Zeta |
These operate in the vicinity of the San Ysidro and Otay international checkpoints, shopping malls, around the IMSS clinic, Alamar expressway, Lázaro Cárdenas Boulevard, Paseo de los Héroes, Downtown Zone and River Zone.
"In recent days, a new modus operandi has been put into practice to defraud motorists in Tijuana, which consists of some drivers, when driving, suddenly stopping the vehicle so that the one behind them hits them, or else, without caution change lanes to be hit.
Once the accident is caused, the "staggers" corner their victim and make him believe that they are to blame, so they ask for a monetary settlement in their favor before the expert arrives at the scene, becoming aggressive to intimidate.
These operate in the vicinity of the international checkpoints of San Ysidro and Otay, shopping malls, around IMSS clinic one, Alamar expressway, Lázaro Cárdenas Boulevard, Paseo de los Héroes, Zona Centro and Zona Río.
As a result of this, several subjects accused of causing car accidents have been arrested, who were turned over to the investigating authority for crimes of injury and damage to third party property. So far only a few are identified by name and photograph.
The Municipal Citizen Security and Protection Secretariat (SSPCM) urges motorists to exercise caution and immediately report to 911, in case of being involved in a road mishap."
~~~~~
In 2022, FGE reports four cases of municipal officials involved in homicides, and in less than a month, two fatal victims: one raped by a K-9 with a stick. There are 291 complaints in Sindicatura
On the night of April 28, elements of the Municipal Police aboard units with the K-9 emblem, arrived at a little store with slot machines on Avenida del Pacífico in Playas de Tijuana. In that place, one of the agents forcefully introduced, on more than one occasion, a broomstick with antibacterial gel, in the anus, to the person in charge of the place.
Three days after the attack, the victim was rushed to Tijuana General Hospital. The doctors found a serious infection in the area of the colon, rectum and anus, for which they had to operate on an emergency basis. The 50-year-old man died on the night of May 18, as a result of the aggression of the police.
According to witnesses interviewed by ZETA , the municipal policemen who were on board the units with license plates BC-599A1, P-1005, BC-843A1 and BC-516A, entered the store with little machines and asked about the “mere, mere ”; They approached the manager and asked who was selling drugs there. The man told them that he didn't know, that he was just the store manager. The policemen began to beat him and kept asking “Who is the good guy?”, but the victim continued saying that he had no knowledge of it.
In the fury of the municipal for not getting a satisfactory answer, one of them ordered the manager to bend over backwards and lower his pants. The man was forced to undress from the waist down in front of the clients (witnesses) and the security elements of the Municipality. Immediately afterwards, one of them took a broomstick, put antibacterial gel on it, took flight and inserted it into his rectum more than once.
While the rest of the uniformed men closed the door of the place, they took the belongings of all those present there, at least eight people, and took the video surveillance equipment that was in the premises.
A few days after this event, the same police officers went to the house where the victim lived, they did not find the family, but they did find a man who was renting a room; They beat him and threatened him, with the intention of finding out where the person they had assaulted days before was. His wife, an American citizen, assures that since that day she has not heard from him again.
Meanwhile, in the hospital, after his first operation, the victim is informed that if he survives the infection, he would have to carry his intestines in a bag, since the injuries they caused have destroyed almost 80% of his system. digestive, and the organs to be able to act. Such news led the man to attempt suicide on May 3.
“El Gordo”, as he was known in Playas, is the second fatality of the Tijuana Municipal Police in less than a month. Interviewed by ZETA , José Fernando Sánchez González, Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection of Tijuana, refused to talk about the case, arguing that he did not want to hinder the investigations of the Attorney General's Office and the Sindicatura.
The FGE assures that it has already identified those who raped and caused the death of this citizen; however, they have not prosecuted the case. The research folder is identified by the number 204-2022-17739.
On the other hand, in Sindicatura they commented that they have not yet been provided with the information to investigate the elements, but they assure, there will be severe sanctions for the commanders and the police.
While the State Human Rights Commission (CEDH) revealed that it opened file 1307/2022 ex officio, with the aim of investigating the actions of the municipal police.
FOUR HOMICIDES PERPETRATED BY THE POLICE IN 2022
From January to date, the FGE has registered 178 open investigation folders for abuse of authority against municipal police officers in Tijuana, of which 45 are for assaults on citizens and four cases where elements of the corporation appear accused of the crime of homicide.
The CEDH indicated to ZETA that in the course of 2022 it has registered 49 complaints against the Municipal Citizen Security and Protection Secretariat (SSPCM) of Tijuana, with the main human rights allegedly violated: Legal Security, Dignified Treatment, Integrity and Personal Security, and Legality.
In contrast, during 2021, the agency registered 193 complaints against the SSPCM; while, in 2020, it received 254 complaints against the same agency.
For the president of the ECHR, Miguel Ángel Mora Marrufo, these practices are historically and systematically made invisible. He stressed that in the statistics they found human rights violations such as arbitrary arrests, police abuse and extrajudicial executions.
Mora Marrufo said that it is not just about demanding that the Police elements improve their practices, but that the demand goes directly to their superiors so that they improve their working and human conditions, training and better benefits, in order to reduce this type of actions.
For its part, the Sindicatura del Ayuntamiento de Tijuana has received 291 complaints against municipal police officers in the current year. In 2020 there were 799 complaints and, in 2021, 678.
The complaints are for homicide, injuries, illegal entry to homes, robbery, extortion and abuse of authority in arrests, by elements of the Police. There are currently 646 open complaints against this corporation.
THE OTHER VICTIM OF THE MUNICIPAL POLICE
In a video broadcast on social networks, elements that manned the BC525A-1 patrol are observed, climb Jorge Luis Cabrera Vélez, 30, in the back and hang him from one of his feet, while being he hears screaming as he is allegedly beaten by the officers.
The lifeless body of Jorge Luis was located in Residencial Margaritas on April 30. Angélica Cabrera, the victim's sister, accused the municipal police of beating her brother to death and stealing $500.
According to the FGE investigation, around 9:57 p.m. on Saturday, April 30, the call was received to the Emergency line, reporting that a person with an arm injury was outside the reporter's home. , which was caused by Jorge when trying to enter the home; the reporter himself treated him, placing a tourniquet to stop the bleeding.
When the Public Security units arrived, as well as paramedics from the Red Cross, they realized that Jorge Luis was already dead. According to the forensic medical report, he presented laceration of the thoracic aorta / bronchial laceration (nervous vascular bundle of the left arm / pulmonary laceration and secondary hepatic laceration) and abdominal chest trauma.
Until now, according to Sindicatura, two of the elements involved have been suspended: Daniel "N" and Luis "N", however, the case has not yet been prosecuted.
Relatives and neighbors of the neighborhood where Jorge Luis lived, assure that elements of the Police were hanging around and intimidating them after the complaint and exposure of the case in the media.
“The entire neighborhood is very afraid because we no longer trust the Municipal Police. Most of my neighbors don't even want to go out to the store anymore because there is no trust in them. The residents of El Niño ask for the support of the Army and National Guard to please patrol the streets instead of the Municipal Police. Citizens no longer trust them," Jorge's brother assured ZETA .
HOMICIDE OF ROBERTO BRAVO, UNPUNISHED FOR 2 YEARS
Roberto Alfonso Bravo Reyna “El Razo”, 29 years old, was gunned down by members of the Tijuana Municipal Police on May 24, 2020. The alleged perpetrators were identified as Antonio de Jesus Ulloa Osorio, Salomón Satiel Cruz Guerrero, René Alejandro Chávez Roa, Alfredo Galaviz Estrada, all under the orders of a commander identified as "Comandante Corona" or "El Gato".
On that occasion, the Tijuana municipal police officers involved in the operation said they shot him in self-defense as he fled. The youths accompanying the victim testified that he was unarmed when the officers pulled him away from the group, shot him and left him to die.
Sixteen bullet holes with entry and exit, and one perforation only at the entrance, were the injuries that the forensic doctor found on the body of "El Razo." At least two of the bullets were fired at his legs at very close range, since the experts located metal residues from the shots.
Three people accompanying those referred to as “El George”, “Abel” and “Itzel” were threatened. Witnesses said that the policeman who shot Bravo Reyna showed them a photo of the murdered young man on his cell phone, warning them that they could do the same thing to them because they knew who they were and where they lived. They had kept his credentials.
Itzel and Abel were ordered to say that "El Razo" and "El George" had deprived them of their liberty. In fact, that was the official and public version given by the municipal authorities on May 24, when the fact became known: that they were chasing some kidnappers who were carrying their victims in the vehicle, that one of them attacked them and they killed him.
The reality is that Jorge, Abel, Itzel and Roberto have known each other for years. They were friends. That's why Roberto's family looked for them after the murder. They told them what had really happened, and despite their fear, they agreed to appear again to testify before the Public Ministry and tell the truth about what happened in the crime, since their first statements were forced by municipal agents.
Two years into the investigation, the FGE has not yet prosecuted the case, despite the evidence and testimony presented by the victim's relatives. The alleged weapon placed on Roberto, according to sources consulted by ZETA , came from the seizure warehouse of the State Attorney General's Office itself; of the gunpowder tests performed on the victim, one is lost and the other was negative.
This Weekly asked the FGE for updated information regarding the status of the case, responding that the investigation folder is still being put together; however, the police officers identified for the execution of Bravo Reyna were not suspended and are still active in the city.
PREVIOUS ADMINISTRATIONS PROMISED “PURGING AND TRAINING” OF THE POLICE
In March 2021, the then Secretary of Public Security and Citizen Protection, Pedro Cruz Camarena, recognized the lack of training of police elements as the reason for the brutal arrests and crimes committed by the corporation against the citizens, whom they should protect.
He assured that this type of case was for him "a field of opportunity to train the police", based on an alleged study where they argue that when the police go on persecution, "the adrenaline that is generated, at the moment in which they arrest the person there is a biological instinct to unload it and it becomes an aggression, which can even be an offense, a robbery or a blow”, he excused.
In such a scenario, he said, there is specialized training for the management of adrenaline, of containing the reaction after an individual is caught.
The former official would affirm that in his seven months in command, he would implement said training and heed the recommendations issued by the ECHR on the prevention and eradication of police abuse, but he did not do so."
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Okay, won't have time tonight to do the Ukraine & I'm worried about the Donbas, praying it doesn't turn bad. But, here you can see the US Administration has been trying to reach out to Cuba et al:
~ From Foreign Policy:
Washington loosens its sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela ahead of a critical summit.
By, Catherine Osborn, the writer of Foreign Policy’s weekly Latin America Brief.
May 20, 2022, 8:00 AM
"This week, White House officials announced steps to move away from the “maximum pressure” approach of sanctions and diplomatic isolation toward Cuba and Venezuela that was a centerpiece of former President Donald Trump’s Latin America strategy. Despite campaign promises to change some policies, especially on Cuba, they have mostly continued during the Biden administration.
Now, U.S. President Joe Biden is finally rolling back some—but not all—of Trump’s sanctions on Cuba, which were applied on top of a now-60-year U.S. economic embargo on the country. The new policies include allowing increased U.S. remittance flows and select U.S. travel to the island. A Trump-era restriction prompted a bank that processed an estimated $1 billion in remittances per year to pull out of the country in 2020. The White House will also aim to provide at least 20,000 U.S. immigrant visas to Cubans each year, bringing the United States back in line with a migration accord it signed with Cuba in 1994.
Biden left in place a ban on U.S. financial entities doing business with Cuba’s main remittance processing firm due to its ownership by Cuba’s military, so while sending U.S. remittances to Cuba is now technically allowed, their route into the country remains difficult. A White House official said the administration would work to facilitate other ways for payments to reach the island but that it would “take time.”
Travel also remains restricted: While under then-President Barack Obama U.S. citizens could visit Cuba as tourists, they will now only be granted permission under certain circumstances, such as for educational purposes.
Further south, Biden plans to lift some oil-related restrictions on Venezuela to incentivize President Nicolás Maduro to return to stalled talks with the country’s opposition. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, and Washington will now allow the U.S. oil company Chevron to discuss potential future drilling with Venezuelan officials. Depending on Maduro’s behavior, this could eventually translate into U.S. permission for Chevron to resume exporting Venezuelan oil to the United States, the Washington Post reported.
The Biden administration is also working with two European oil firms in Venezuela to “divert Venezuelan oil bound for China to Europe,” Bloomberg reported. The European Union is seeking to embargo imports of Russian oil by the end of the year over Russia’s war in Ukraine, a move the United States has already taken. The demands prompted by this new energy crunch in Western nations help explain the timing of the recent U.S. overtures toward Venezuela.
On Cuba, White House officials said their changes were the result of a long-running policy review; Juan Gonzalez, the senior director for the Western Hemisphere on the White House National Security Council, told CBS that the new policies could also help address the causes of Cuban emigration. This fiscal year has seen the highest numbers of Cuban migrants arriving at U.S. borders in four decades, with more than 150,000 Cubans expected to reach the United States by the end of fiscal year 2022, on June 30.
Another more immediate event looms over Biden’s policy shifts. More than a dozen countries, including Mexico, have signaled or openly threatened that they might boycott the upcoming June Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles if Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela are not invited. Biden has thus far leaned toward excluding the three countries from the summit—a semi-regular gathering of Latin American and Caribbean heads of state—on grounds that their leaders were not democratically-elected.
Although White House officials called this timing a coincidence in a briefing on the Cuba measures, observers such as El Colegio de México historian Rafael Rojas have written that Washington’s policy shifts could be an attempt to “counteract the boycott”: Even if the Biden administration does not end up including Cuba and Venezuela in the summit, these new policies show that Washington is not unshakably wedded to a hard-line position toward the countries.
“I think the Biden administration has realized that continuing with Trump policies toward Latin America, which it has basically done until now, for a year and a half, could lead to a debacle at the Summit of the Americas,” Jorge Heine, a former Chilean diplomat and now Boston University professor, told Estación Central radio.
On Wednesday, Washington and Mexico City held a round of talks over the boycott threat and Mexico City’s demands on invitees. (As of Thursday afternoon, the United States had not yet sent out invitations for the event, despite it being just weeks away.) Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard posted a video to Twitter on Wednesday saying that Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador had aired Mexico’s position in talks with U.S. officials, heard Biden’s perspective, and was expected to announce a decision within the coming days.
In Venezuela, the new U.S. policy toward the country appears to have spurred cautious optimism about Maduro’s potential return to negotiations. On Tuesday, government and opposition envoys tweeted a photo of them shaking hands and celebrating a return to the “spirit of Mexico,” where negotiations are based.
The Venezuelan opposition hopes talks can solidify guarantees around the conditions for the country’s 2024 elections. Isadora Zubillaga, the deputy foreign minister of the shadow government led by opposition figure Juan Guaidó, wrote in Foreign Policy this week that U.S. sanctions relief “must be contingent on progress at the negotiating table as well as concrete and irreversible democratic reforms and outcomes in Venezuela.”
Maximum pressure on Cuba and Venezuela in recent years has neither loosened their leaders’ grip on power nor improved living conditions for everyday people. While there are no guarantees that Biden’s new steps will lead to concrete political progress, in Venezuela they appear to have created an opening for it, and in Cuba their socioeconomic benefit is clear."
I know what Ebrard said, but according to this next report, AMLO has made up his little mind:
Diaz-Canel, Presidente de Cuba, Descarta Asistir a Cumbre de las Americas
Destacados -
Carlos Álvarez -
miércoles, 25 mayo, 2022 6:30 P
"The president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, ruled out, on May 25, 2022, his attendance at the IX Summit of the Americas, which will take place from June 6 to 10 of this year, in Los Angeles, California, United States, which had the "intent to exclude several countries".
Through a publication on his Twitter social network account, the Cuban president indicated that the United States had conceived from the beginning that the ninth edition of the Summit of the Americas would not be inclusive.
"It was his intention to exclude several countries, including #Cuba, despite the strong regional demand that the exclusions be ended," tweeted Díaz Canel Bermúdez, who also acknowledged that the US government has been carrying out intense negotiations with the in order to demobilize the demands of the majority of the countries of the region.
“We share the position of the leaders of the region who have firmly claimed that everyone must be invited on an equal footing […] As has always happened in the past, the voice of #Cuba will be heard at the IX Summit of the Americas ”, concluded the Cuban president.
On May 24, 2022, the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro Moros, assured that the voice of his country, as well as those of Cuba and Nicaragua, will be present at the IX Summit of the Americas, to which none of the three governments Latin Americans has been invited.
“But I tell you, at this point, whatever you do in Washington, the voice of Venezuela, the voice of Cuba and the voice of Nicaragua will reach Los Angeles in the great protests of the people and our voice will be in that room. I say so, our voice will be present at the Los Angeles summit, whatever the United States Government says, we will be there with our truth," Maduro Moros said in a televised act.
Although the White House has not made official the list of countries invited to the event, in April 2022 the US Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Brian Nichols, said in statements to the Colombian network RCN that the invitations to Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela depended on the decision of President Joe Biden, but he believed that he had made it clear that countries that, by their own actions, do not respect democracy, will not receive them.
Following warnings from Washington, in addition to the president of Mexico, the president of Bolivia, Luis Alberto Arce Catacora, also announced that he is making his attendance conditional on there being no exclusions at the next hemispheric summit to be held June 6-10 in Los Angeles. California.
For his part, the president of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei Falla, made public, on May 23, 2022, the letter he received from the White House with the formal invitation to attend the Summit, although he had said a week before that he would not go, due to Washington's criticism of the appointment for another term of Attorney General María Consuelo Porras Argueta, whom the US has accused of being a "corrupting actor."
Meanwhile, the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, remains in the position that he will not ensure his presence at the Summit of the Americas, until it is confirmed that the United States has invited all the leaders of the region.
On May 18, 2022, the president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega Saavedra, assured that he is not interested in participating. "From here I tell the Yankee: forget it, we are not interested in being at that Summit, we are not interested [...] that summit does not exalt anyone," he said during an activity in the capital Managua.
Ortega Saavedra called for the strengthening of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), which emerged in 2011 as an integration organization without the presence of the United States. "We Latin Americans have to defend ourselves so that they respect us," he declared."
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Well, Nica has good surf but Danny Ortega and his esposa Rosario turned out to be a real dorks and my knee is killing me...Samoza was bad, but these guys take the cake. bye for now.
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