The Obama Gun Effect

[wmbwinn]

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) – Shadowy vigilante groups are threatening Mexico's drug gangs near the U.S. border in retaliation for a wave of murders and kidnappings that killed 1,600 people in this city alone last year.

One group in the border city of Ciudad Juarez pledged last week to "clean our city of these criminals" and said their mission was to "end the life of a criminal every 24 hours."

The emergence of vigilantes would be a new twist to a vicious drug war that killed 5,700 people in Mexico last year and forced the United States to give hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Mexican government.

Ciudad Juarez, a manufacturing center in the desert across from El Paso, Texas, was the scene of the worst violence in 2008 as drug cartels fought each other as well as staging kidnappings for ransom and extorting businessmen.

In an e-mail to news organizations, the "Juarez Citizen Command" said it was funded by local businessmen sick of abductions and extortion in the city, home to factories that export goods to the United States.

While none of the city's 1,600 in the last year were undoubtedly the work of vigilantes, a body was found on January 7 with a message next to it that read: "This is for those who continue extorting."

And six men in their 20s and 30s were shot dead and dumped together in Ciudad Juarez in October with a cardboard sign reading: "Message for all the rats: This will continue."

Drug gangs often leave threatening messages with the bodies of their victims, but security officials said those two incidents might have been the work of vigilantes.

Another group, "Businessmen United, The Death Squad" put a video on Internet site YouTube last June threatening to go after kidnappers and criminals in Ciudad Juarez, the biggest city in Mexico's Chihuahua state. The video is no longer on YouTube.

"FACELESS, ANONYMOUS"

State officials in Chihuahua said they were investigating who was behind the messages.

"We cannot tolerate the presence of these type of faceless, anonymous groups," said Manuel del Castillo, a spokesman for the state government.

Retiring CIA chief Michael Hayden said last week that Mexico's drug violence was possibly a greater problem than Iraq for President-elect Barack Obama. The U.S. Justice Department also says Mexican gangs are one of the biggest threats to the United States.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has sent tens of thousands of troops and federal police to battle drug gangs but the violence has become worse since he took office in 2006.

At least two other groups calling themselves vigilantes have sent statements to news organizations in the past two months, one in the northern state of Sonora bordering Arizona, and the other in the Pacific state of Guerrero, home to the beach resort of Acapulco.

In Ciudad Juarez, some residents say they would welcome vigilantes. "That way they would stop the gangs, the mafia. People are leaving here because of so many murders," said David Hinojosa, 30, who shines shoes in the city.

The city has been rocked by gun battles and beheadings by rival gangs fighting over smuggling routes into Texas, despite the presence of around 3,000 troops and federal police.

But local lawmakers say encouraging vigilantes is a mistake. Some residents question whether soldiers are moonlighting as hitmen for drug gangs, a charge the army denies.

"People's reactions are understandable. But this is not the route we should take to solve things," said Andreu Rodriguez, an opposition lawmaker and the head of security issues in Chihuahua's state legislature.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090119/...s_mexico_drugs

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So, this should be fun to discuss.

1)Would you become a vigilante if that were happening in your town? What if your children were kidnapped and ransomed? What if your business or estate or other holdings were extorted?

The police/military can't fix the problem (they usually can't and they can't fix the problems in Dallas either).

It is just a matter of degree. How bad does it get before you are a vigilante?

Now, of course, it is better if the police/military can handle the issue and keep the crime issue far enough away from you that you can live your life oblivious to the problems.

Want a gun?

It may continue to spill further north into Texas and the other border areas.

[dalmations202]

This problem is much like the problem the Dallas Cowboys had.

You can't just throw money at the issue.

You have to find or Be willing to get the job done.

The Cowboys didn't have it, and if they want to clean up the border town, they need to find it.


Oh yea, No need for me to answer, because you already know my answer. I'd prefer a posse or deputy situation to a vigilante -- but call it what you will.

[wmbwinn]

I told you that this was a growing problem and that it would affect you at some point...

How much until you decide to get a gun to defend yourself???
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Just as government officials had feared, the drug violence raging in Mexico is spilling over into the United States.

U.S. authorities are reporting a spike in killings, kidnappings and home invasions connected to Mexico's murderous cartels. And to some policymakers' surprise, much of the violence is happening not in towns along the border, where it was assumed the bloodshed would spread, but a considerable distance away, in places such as Phoenix and Atlanta.

Investigators fear the violence could erupt elsewhere around the country because the Mexican cartels are believed to have set up drug-dealing operations all over the U.S., in such far-flung places as Anchorage, Alaska; Boston; and Sioux Falls, S.D.

"The violence follows the drugs," said David Cuthbertson, agent in charge of the FBI's office in the border city of El Paso, Texas.

The violence takes many forms: Drug customers who owe money are kidnapped until they pay up. Cartel employees who don't deliver the goods or turn over the profits are disciplined through beatings, kidnappings or worse. And drug smugglers kidnap illegal immigrants in clashes with human smugglers over the use of secret routes from Mexico.

So far, the violence is nowhere near as grisly as the mayhem in Mexico, which has witnessed beheadings, assassinations of police officers and soldiers, and mass killings in which the bodies were arranged to send a message. But law enforcement officials worry the violence on this side could escalate.

"They are capable of doing about anything," said Rusty Payne, a Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman in Washington. "When you are willing to chop heads off, put them in an ice chest and drop them off at a police precinct, or roll a head into a disco, put beheadings on YouTube as a warning," very little is off limits.

In an apartment near Birmingham, Ala., police found five men with their throats slit in August. They had apparently been tortured with electric shocks before being killed in a murder-for-hire orchestrated by a Mexican drug organization over a drug debt of about $400,000.

In Phoenix, 150 miles north of the Mexican border, police have reported a sharp increase in kidnappings and home invasions, with about 350 each year for the last two years, and say the majority were committed at the behest of the Mexican drug gangs.

In June, heavily armed men stormed a Phoenix house and fired randomly, killing one person. Police believe it was the work of Mexican drug organizations.

Authorities in Atlanta are also seeing an increase in drug-related kidnappings tied to Mexican cartels. Estimates of how many such crimes are being committed are hard to come by because many victims are connected to the cartels and unwilling to go to the police, said Rodney G. Benson, DEA agent in charge in Atlanta.

Agents said they have rarely seen such brutality in the U.S. since the "Miami Vice" years of the 1980s, when Colombian cartels had the corner on the cocaine market in Florida.

Last summer, Atlanta-area police found a Dominican man who had been beaten, bound, gagged and chained to a wall in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood in Lilburn, Ga. The 31-year-old Rhode Island resident owed $300,000 to Mexico's Gulf Cartel, Benson said. The Gulf Cartel, based in Matamoros just south of the Texas border, is one of the most ruthless of the Mexican organizations that deal drugs such as cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine and heroin.

"He was shackled to a wall and one suspect had an AK-47. The guy was in bad shape," Benson said. "I have no doubt in my mind if that ransom wasn't paid, he was going to be killed."

In July, Atlanta-area police shot and killed a suspected kidnapper while he was trying to pick up a $2 million ransom owed to his cartel bosses, Benson said.

State and federal governments have sent millions of dollars to local law enforcement along the Mexican border to help fend off spillover drug crime. But investigators believe Arizona and Atlanta are seeing the worst of the violence because they are major drug distribution hubs thanks to their webs of interstate highways.

In fact, drug officials have dubbed Atlanta "the new Southwest border," said Jack Killorin, a former federal drug agent and director of the Atlanta region's High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task force.

El Paso, population 600,000, is only a quarter-mile away from Mexico's Ciudad Juarez, which has seen open gun battles and 1,700 murders in the last year. But El Paso remains one of America's safest cities, something Cuthbertson said is probably a result of the huge law enforcement presence in town, including thousands of Border Patrol and customs agents.

In the past year, more than 5,000 people have been killed across Mexico in a power struggle among Mexico's drug cartels and ferocious fighting between them and the Mexican government. The cartels have established operations in at least 230 U.S. cities, according to the Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center.

Payne said the U.S. and Mexico are working together to pressure the warring cartels. Payne cited the extradition of high-level drug suspects — four members of the Arellano Felix cartel in Tijuana were brought to the U.S. in December — and the capture or killings of several other top cartel leaders across Mexico in the past year.

"We have to make sure that we attack these criminal organizations at every level so that we are safer not only in Mexico and on the Southwest border, but here in the rest of the country," Payne said.

While some Americans may feel victimized by the spillover of violence, others are contributing to it. Americans provide 95 percent of the weapons used by the cartel, according to U.S. authorities. And Americans are the cartels' best customers, sending an estimated $28.5 billion in drug-sale proceeds across the Mexico border each year.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090209/...lover_violence

[wmbwinn]

disturbing lawsuit:

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A group of 16 illegal aliens is suing an Arizona rancher, claiming he violated their civil rights, falsely imprisoned them and inflicted emotional distress by holding them at gunpoint on his property along the border.

The federal lawsuit against Douglas, Ariz., rancher Roger Barnett, his wife, Barbara, and his brother, Donald, is taking place before Judge John Roll in U.S. District Court and will run through Feb. 13. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or MALDEF, is representing the five female and 11 male illegals.

Al Garza, National Executive Director for Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, attended the first day of hearings on Monday. While the plaintiffs allege that Barnett attacked them because he is racist, Garza, an American of Mexican descent, said Barnett has never shown any hostility toward him.

"There is no racist agenda here, or I wouldn't be a part of it because I am an American of Hispanic descent," Garza said. "We don't hate anyone from any particular country. We just want our laws enforced. This is not about color."

Many of the aliens are residents of Michoacan, Mexico. Four live in Illinois, one resides in Georgia and another in Michigan. All of the plaintiffs currently living in the U.S. listed pseudonyms in the lawsuit due to "fear of adverse action based on immigration status."

According to the complaint, Barnett, a resident of Douglas who owns 22,000 acres along the border in southeastern Arizona, approached the group of illegals on an all-terrain vehicle on March 7, 2004. He allegedly began yelling at them in English and broken Spanish while aiming his gun at the group. While Barnett's dog barked at the intruders, the illegal aliens accused him of ordering the dog to attack. One of the women said the rancher kicked her because she refused to get up.

Barnett allegedly detained the trespassing illegals until Border Patrol agents arrived.

But Garza said their testimonies don't add up.

"I saw yesterday that these stories were fabricated," he said. "They were coerced into saying things that would ordinarily not be said by an illegal immigrant with no education."

Garza said Barnett's dog has never been vicious and that Barnett did not kick the woman. He also said one female witness told the court the group had been robbed in Mexico and that the only time they feared for their lives was when Barnett accosted them.

"She said she was not afraid in Mexico because there were only four men, and there was only one gun, and the way that they robbed them was in a very nice, very polite fashion," he said. "But when Barnett came into the picture, she said he was very vicious and he wanted to kill them. So they were more afraid of one American defending his property than four robbers on their side."

The lawsuit alleges that Barnett never told the illegals they were trespassing and failed to post a sign notifying them that they were on private property. Because they detained the group, the Barnett family is accused of depriving the plaintiffs of equal protection and due process under the law.

"What in the world are they doing on anyone's property?" Garza asked. "What are they doing in the United States? It doesn't make any sense."

He continued, "They are here breaking laws. They conspired to come here. What makes anyone believe that they are credible?"

MALDEF claims the family attacked, harassed, threatened and held the illegals against their will because they were motivated by racial and class-based discrimination. The Barnetts allegedly caused the group "severe emotional and mental distress," including fear, anxiety, humiliation, stress, frustration and sadness. Each illegal alien is suing for $1 million in actual damages and $1 million for punitive or exemplary damages.

In March, the same judge refused to have the lawsuit thrown out, because he said he believed the family denied the aliens' right to interstate travel and that the detention was racially motivated.

The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps and Arizonans for Immigration Control have been rallying in support of Barnett in front of the court.

Garza said property owners are forced to deal with the consequences when immigration laws are not strictly enforced. Illegal aliens cross the border and destroy private property every day.

"I wouldn't blame the guy if he told them to leave," Garza said. "I would have done the same thing because of all of their discarded trash. They urinate everywhere. There is feces all over the place, discarded clothing, shoes, backpacks, cans and other things that we're responsible to pick up. They do that, and we're racist?"

In a 2004 interview with Fred Elbel and Frosty Wooldridge, Barnetts said he used to pick up trash from illegals, but he no longer makes the effort.

"I won't pick it up because some day, I think if our government gets up off their a-- and does the job they're supposed to, they're going to quit coming across and I can make one big concentrated effort, if I'm still alive, to get the trash off," he said. "It's going to take 20, 30 or 40 people with garbage bags to carry it off ... of one particular area. Some days, I think what the hell am I doing this for?"

Garza said groups of illegals cross the border and head to Tucson, Phoenix and other staging areas in Arizona.

From there, they go into Michigan, Idaho and wherever the demand is," he said. "They find jobs in the hotel business, working at golf courses, landscaping, cooking, and washing dishes. It's not because Americans won't do these jobs; it's because they don't want to pay."

While illegals may only earn $7 an hour for such jobs, Garza said they find other ways to compensate for lack of income.

"They don't mind because they go on welfare and use aliases. They get welfare, food stamps, free education, section 8 housing. They don't have to pay taxes. Why not work for $7 an hour?"

Garza told WND he believes politicians need to stop caving into demands for cheap labor so the influx of illegals will stop. They must secure the borders, enforce immigration law, hold people who hire illegals accountable and stop giving social benefits to noncitizens.

He said, "We're inviting them by giving them an appetite for things like jobs, public and social services like welfare, free medical and things that we don't get as taxpayers."

In the interview, Barnett said he has tried to contact his representatives about the wave of illegals coming across his property.

"They won't listen," he said. "They're useless."

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.p...w&pageId=87988