rash of violence in USA

29/11/2015

Friday’s mass shooting at a Colorado Planned Parenthood health center, alongside last week’s white supremacist attack on a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in Minneapolis, is a stark reminder that domestic terrorists continues to be one of the most real and present threats to Americans’ safety.

border town

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By Lourdes Medrano, Correspondent / December 3, 2012 NOGALES, ARIZ. It's a scene all too familiar on this Arizona stretch of the Southwest border: One or more people, under the cover of darkness, clamber over the tall metal fence that is the international boundary in a mad rush to smuggle marijuana bundles into the United States without detection.

On Oct. 10, authorities say, a similar incident resulted in the death of 16-year-old José Antonio Elena Rodriguez, shot multiple times after a Border Patrol agent responded with gunfire to a rock attack.

Under Border Patrol policy, bullets can be a justified response to rocks, because rocks have caused serious injuries to agents in the past. But both American civil liberties groups and Mexican authorities are drawing attention to the incident, saying it raises worrying questions not only about the Border Patrol's use of force, but also its recent surge of manpower along the border.

Could you pass a US citizenship test?

The teen became at least the 16th person to die along the 2,000-mile border at the hands of the Border Patrol since January 2010 – and the eighth in which agents have cited rock-throwing as a reason for using deadly force, according to border watch groups.

The FBI is investigating, as are Mexican officials. At the behest of concerned members of Congress, the Office of Inspector General is already reviewing border agencies' use-of-force guidelines in connection with a different incident.

A primary concern is whether a hiring boom in recent years has hurt training.

"This massive increase of agents with very little proportional accountability and oversight, I think has led to some problems," says Vicki Gaubeca, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Regional Center for Border Rights in Las Cruces, N.M.

The Border Patrol, which in 2003 became part of the Department of Homeland Security under Customs and Border Protection, has more than doubled its size to approximately 21,000 agents since 2004. Most, close to 18,500, guard the Southwest border, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a congressional committee in September.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) representatives in Arizona, Washington, and Texas, declined to discuss the agency's use-of-force policy or any of the agent-involved fatalities.

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EL PASO, Texas (Reuters) - A U.S. Border Patrol agent, accused of buying guns in the United States and smuggling them to Mexico for use by drug cartels, must remain in jail pending a detention hearing later this week, a U.S. Magistrate Judge ruled on Tuesday. Ricardo Montalvo, 28, and his girlfriend Carla Gonzales-Ortiz, 29, briefly appeared in court for the first time since their arrest on Monday. They are charged with conspiracy to buy firearms and more than 20,000 rounds of ammunition to be smuggled into Mexico. They are accused of acting as "straw purchasers" of at least nine firearms between November 2010 and January 2011. Straw purchasers say they are purchasing weapons for themselves but conceal the true buyer. A grand jury indictment accuses Montalvo and Gonzales-Ortiz of purchasing guns, including five AK-47-type pistols, two .380-caliber pistols, and two .22-caliber rifles. The guns are favored by Mexican drug cartels, the indictment says. The pair are accused of purchasing more than 20,000 rounds of ammunition, 97 high-capacity magazines and four 37mm flair guns, which are sought by Mexican cartels for conversion into grenade launchers, the indictment says. The indictment does not say if the weapons were actually smuggled into Mexico. Montalvo, who is based in El Paso, Texas, had been on administrative desk duty since January 2011 when the investigation started. Mexican cartels rely on purchases of firearms in the United States and the Mexican government has often complained about the smuggling across the border. The arrest of Montalvo and Gonzales-Ortiz came only days after three men pleaded guilty to charges of trafficking high-powered rifles and other guns to Mexico from Arizona under the botched "Fast and Furious" federal sting operation. Republicans have criticized President Barack Obama's administration for allowing the Fast and Furious program - under which a government agency permitted weapons smuggling across the border in order to try to nab the criminals in a sting operation. The failed operation embarrassed the administration and led to some calls for Attorney General Eric Holder to resign. Montalvo and Gonzales-Ortiz will be arraigned at a hearing on Friday, said Terri Abernathy, senior litigation counsel. (Editing by Greg McCune and Lisa Shumaker)

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SUNLAND PARK, N.M. (AP) — While much of New Mexico is west of the Rio Grande, this dusty enclave of 14,000 residents is the only U.S. city located on the Mexico side of the river, on the same side as — and just across the border fence from — Juarez.

But it's more than the anomalous location that lends to the town's persistent reputation as a self-contained banana republic.

When state police descended on the dysfunctional community before the March elections, the reaction wasn't so much surprise as "what now?"

And that would be the latest allegations of extortion and financial kickbacks among municipal officials, and, more colorfully, that a mayoral candidate tried to force his opponent out of the race with a secretly recorded video of the other man getting a topless lap dance.

But what is relatively new in Sunland Park and in other troubled border cities and towns is the harsh response to such shenanigans. State and federal agencies are cracking down on border town corruption as part of the larger effort to battle Mexican drug cartels.

"Everyone turned their heads for so long," said Richard Schwein, a former FBI agent in nearby El Paso, Texas, where at least 28 people have either been convicted or indicted recently for voting scandals or awarding fraudulent contracts. Then, when the Department of Justice and the FBI made it a priority, "Bingo!"

Another example can be found 70 miles west of El Paso, in tiny Columbus, N.M., where authorities a year ago arrested the mayor, police chief, a town trustee and 11 other people who have since pleaded guilty to charges they helped run guns across the border to Mexican drug cartels.

That corruption that seems endemic to the border towns can be blamed on a mix of small-town politics, an influx of corrupt government practices from across the border, and, of course, the rise of the cartels and their endless supply of cash.

"If you're (a small town police officer) making $35,000 a year, and someone offers you $5,000 cash ... and next month there's another $5,000 in it for you, you've just (substantially increased) your income by not being on patrol on a given road," said James Phelps, an assistant professor with the Department of Security Studies and Criminal Justice at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas.

The U.S. attorney for New Mexico, Kenneth Gonzalez, says more local officials have gotten caught up in scandals as federal authorities put a more intense and sophisticated focus on border towns as part of their attempts to thwart the cartels.

"A result of that intense scrutiny is that we more than likely are going to ensnare someone abusing their position," Gonzalez said.

In Sunland Park, an inquiry into local elections turned into a major probe by multiple agencies.

State auditor Hector Balderas said that broad cooperation among agencies shows that law enforcement is starting to realize that "many crimes are interrelated."

"I think law enforcement agencies and other agencies are now learning that these fiscal problems are symptoms of potentially greater corruption," Balderas said. "And a village or municipality can be infiltrated by criminal elements very easily."

Dona Ana District Attorney Amy Orlando stated in court that Sunland Park's former mayor pro tem and then mayor-elect, Daniel Salinas, 28, had boasted to his codefendants in the cases there that he had ties to the cartels and could call on them to have people who testify against him killed.

Salinas' attorney vehemently denied those allegations.

The two dozen felonies filed against Salinas to date focus on corruption of the financial and voting processes. Although he won the mayor's chair, he was barred from taking office by the terms of his bail.

So allies on the City Council recently named a political newcomer to the job. The new mayor, 24-year-old Javier Perea, most recently worked as a jewelry store employee at an El Paso mall. He replaces former Mayor Martin Resendiz, who dropped a bid for Congress after admitting in a deposition that he signed nine contracts while drunk.

Said Orlando, "Unfortunately I think what is happening down in Sunland Park is that it was being run by a small group of people that were using funds and using the resources there for their own gain, operating it really as just their own little town — not following rules, not following regulations."

Incorporated in 1983, Sunland Park could geographically be considered a suburb of El Paso or Las Cruces, N.M., or even an upscale neighborhood in north Juarez. The town has a modern racetrack, replete with casino gambling, on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande. There are a few store fronts, churches and even horse stables lining its main road.

The residents are friendly, but weary of the attention that they fear has made the town a laughingstock.

Salinas has declined to talk about the case, citing advice from his lawyer. But during an encounter outside his house after the second of his three arrests, he seemed at ease for a man facing multiple felony charges and continued investigation.

"I could write a book," he said with a wry smile.

And the native of the town still has many supporters.

"He is a good man, you can see it in his eyes," a man at the senior center said, before rushing off when asked for his name.

Besides Salinas, several city workers, including the city manager, the city's public information officer, the public works director and former city councilors and the former police chief, have also been indicted in the three separate criminal cases.

In one, Salinas and others are accused of trying to force his mayoral opponent, Gerardo Hernandez, out of the race with the lap dance video. Hernandez, who finished second, told investigators that an unidentified man threatened to blackmail him by producing a still image from the video. Hernandez said he was set up.

In another case, Salinas is accused of giving the former acting police chief the job of chief for convincing his sister not to run against a Salinas ally for city council. And in the third, Salinas and others are accused of billing hookers, drinks and campaign videos to a $12 million fund set up for the city by the owner of Sunland Park casino and racetrack to aid the town's ongoing efforts to get a border crossing built there.

State auditor Balderas said he's been monitoring the town since 2009. A previous auditor recommended the state take over the town in 2004 after finding scores of violations of state and local laws.

"Sunland Park has had a culture that has lacked accountability for many years," Balderas said. "They probably should have been taken over many years ago. They got more brazen when they didn't."

Dark Knights

A man alleged to have lured two US volunteer firefighters to their deaths in Webster, New York left a long note outlining his plans, police say.

No motive was given but the note left by William Spengler, identified as the gunman said he was planning to "do what I like doing best - killing people."

The War on Drugs

Prohibition: The So-Called War on Drugs Page One by Peter Meyer
Don't miss The War on Drugs, Page Two

The criminalization of marijuana in the United States in the 1930s at the behest of the oil industry and others threatened by hemp, and the maintenance of the criminal status of cannabis to this day by cryptofascist governments, principally the United States, profiting enormously, directly and indirectly, from the "War on Drugs" while callously inflicting, directly and indirectly, major harm upon their citizens, is one of the great contemporary crimes against humanity. How long are we going to let those bastards get away with this?

Arizona heat

This man is Raúl Héctor Castro. He is 96 years old, a former Arizona governor, and a former United States Ambassador to El Salvador, Bolivia and Argentina. He was born in Mexico, and is a United States citizen.

Last month he was stopped by U.S. border patrol agents after residual radiation from a medical procedure he’d recently undergone triggered an alarm at a checkpoint in Tubac, AZ. The 96 year-old heart patient was then forced to exit his vehicle in the 100 degree Arizona heat and wait in a tent in a business suit, even as his companion begged the agents not to subject an elderly man to such treatment.

Education: For Whom and For What?

Noam Chomsky, a world-renowned linguist, intellectual and political activist, spoke at the University of Arizona on Feb. 8, 2012. His lecture, "Education: For Whom and For What?" featured a talk on the state of higher education, followed by a question-and-answer session.

Chomsky, an Institute Professor and a Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he worked for more than 50 years, has been concerned with a range of education-related issues in recent years. Among them: How do we characterize the contemporary state of the American education system? What happens to the quality of education when public universities become more privatized? Are public universities in danger of being converted into facilities that produce graduates-as-commodities for the job market? What is the role of activism in education? With unprecedented tuition increases and budget struggles occurring across American campuses, these are questions that are more relevant than ever.

border patrol

The Border Patrol cites federal laws permitting it to operate checkpoints and stop suspicious drivers. Establishing internal checkpoints has been a long-standing policy in Texas and California, states along the border with Mexico, as well as (less frequently) New York, Vermont and New Hampshire.

The constitutionality of such laws, which clearly violate the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, has been challenged over the last several decades, but federal courts have consistently upheld the governments right to operate the checkpoints. The checkpoint issue reached the Supreme Court in 1976, which claimed that warrantless stops and searches do not violate the Constitution in areas near the border.

However, civil liberties advocates in Texas, Arizona and California have aptly described the checkpoints as ever-expanding militarized zones. There are approximately 8,000 Border Patrol agents on the US-Mexican border.

Arizona's Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

ORGAN PIPE CACTUS NATIONAL MONUMENT, Ariz. -- On a hot desert morning last week, a group of 20 tourists gathered in the visitor center in Arizona's Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument to attend a mandatory safety briefing before taking a guarded van tour to Quitobaquito springs. The springs is part of the 69 percent of the remote border park west of Tucson that has been closed to the public since Kris Eggle, a 28-year-old law enforcement park ranger, was shot and killed while pursuing drug runners armed with AK-47s in 2002.

the national E-Verify database

At Wednesday night's GOP debate, Mitt Romney called Arizona a "model" for immigration enforcement, singling out the state's 2007 law mandating that all employers use the national E-Verify database when hiring workers. He promised to institute a national E-Verify law if elected. "You do that, and just as Arizona is finding out, you can stop illegal immigration," he said. Last May, the state defeated the Chamber of Commerce's suit against the law in the Supreme Court.
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, Romney's adviser on immigration issues, helped write Arizona's E-Verify law as well as Arizona's 2010 SB1070 law (Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act). At the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, Kobach touted what's happened in Arizona as proof that "self-deportation"—Romney's chosen immigration strategy—is working. "People started self-deporting by the tens of thousands," after E-Verify passed, he said, according to the Hill.
Romney and Kobach are right that, on at least one level, the law has had a significant impact in Arizona. A study published last year by the Public Policy Institute of California shows that about 92,000, or 17 percent, of the Hispanic non-citizen population of Arizona left the state in the year after the state passed E-Verify legislation; most of those who moved were probably illegal immigrants. PPI researchers told Yahoo News that the law—not the recession, or highly-publicized raids targeting illegal immigrants—was the most likely cause of the exodus.
Yet while PPI's research helps predict what might happen if an E-Verify system were implemented nationally, as Romney hopes, it exposes some of the less-desirable side-effects of the law as well. In Arizona, the non-citizen Hispanic workers who did stay behind increasingly shifted into a shadow economy, said Magnus Lofstrom, a co-author of the study. The self-employment rate among non-citizen Hispanics in Arizona nearly doubled post-E-Verify, and a higher proportion of people who said they were self-employed lived in poverty and lacked health insurance.
Lofstrom told Yahoo News that the informal economy would grow significantly nationwide if a national E-Verify system were established. While illegal immigrants in Arizona were able to move to other states to find work, their choices would be significantly limited if E-Verify were implemented nationally; the only real (and unlikely) option would be to for undocumented workers to move to another country. In other words, we'd be much more likely to see an increase in informal employment rather than a massive movement among illegal immigrants to "self-deport."
What would that mean? An increase in informal employment among the nation's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants would result in lower tax revenues--since non-self employed illegal immigrants are more likely to have taxes withheld from their paychecks--higher poverty levels among illegal immigrants, and a higher potential for employer abuse, said Lofstrom. (Right now, America has a relatively small shadow economy compared to other developed countries, like Italy.)
Another snag with instituting a national E-Verify program is that the current system cannot detect identity fraud. A 2009 government-commissioned study found that E-Verify only flags illegal immigrants half the time, because it can't detect when a worker is using documents that belong to someone else. (Employers enter in Social Security or alien registration numbers, birthdates and names of employees into the database, which figures out whether they match the federal immigration and Social Security databases.) To combat this fraud, Romney has said he supports biometric ID cards for immigrants that would contain a fingerprint or other identifying device that clears them for work. Romney hasn't explicitly said that every person in America should have this card--an idea that many libertarians object to. But without being adopted universally, undocumented people could still use false documents. (The Romney team had not responded to requests for comment from Yahoo News by the time this article was published.) Mandatory national ID cards have played a starring role in failed bipartisan immigration reform proposals in Congress over the past few years.
In Arizona, there is no state-wide system to make sure businesses are using E-Verify. Rather, individual citizens are asked to expose employers that they suspect of hiring illegal immigrants to their local district attorneys. Yet district attorneys were not granted the power to subpoena businesses that are suspected of hiring illegal immigrants, and some DAs have complained that the law is an unfunded mandate for their offices, according to Judy Gans, immigration policy director at Arizona University's Udall Center. Only three businesses were prosecuted under the law in the first three years after it passed.
But business owners still worry that E-Verify's high error rate could leave them open to prosecution. Republicans in Arizona's state Senate are now moving to change the law at their request. Republican state senator Jerry Lewis, who defeated anti-illegal immigration hardliner Russell Pearce last year in a historic recall election, is co-sponsoring a bill with seven other Republican senators to provide "safe harbor" to businesses that use E-Verify but still accidentally hire unauthorized workers.
Lewis, who is backing Romney, told Yahoo News that he is not a fan of Kobach's draft immigration laws.
"Does Kobach's presence in Romney's campaign create a difficulty for him? I believe it does," Lewis said. "I think people want a real solution and I don't think the legislation that has been drafted by Kobach is a real solution." Lewis said the immigration laws "polarize people."
Lewis added that he thinks Romney will eventually agree with him that making all illegal immigrants leave the country is not a solution to the country's immigration problems.
"I think he'll realize that there is a place for a real solution to the issue, and it's not just let's get everybody that's undocumented out of the country," Lewis said.