Conspiracy theories and the Chilean miners

 

The Chilean miners were trapped underground because of an earthquake engineered by the USA because they wanted to cripple the Chilean mining industry.

Or they were imprisoned as punishment for Chile being one of the countries fighting the New World Order, a secret powerful group that wants to rule the world.

Eighteen dead as cartels bring fight to army

Originally published in The Times

Mexican drug cartels heightened their war with the state by blockading troops in their barracks in two cities close to the US border.

Eighteen gunmen were killed in the clashes, which came after gang members used vehicles to prevent soldiers from coming to the aid of embattled security forces elsewhere. In Reynosa, gunmen fought the authorities after parking trucks and four-wheel drive vehicles outside one base and commandeered buses, coaches and cars from civilians to block the motorways approaching the key border city.

We’re not a gang, we’re a union, say the drug killers of Ciudad Juárez

Published in The Times on March 27, 2010

Alejandro Saenz takes a seat behind the shabby prison desk with the confident air of a CEO. Tall and thin with gelled hair, he looks like a conceited teenager. He is actually 30, a killer, and has been imprisoned in the Ciudad Juárez jail for ten years.

“We are very good people,” said his colleague Nicolas Sosa, and it is hard to tell if he is joking. Slick and muscled, with patterns shaved into his beard and wearing a tight white t-shirt and cowboy boots, Sosa’s looks are marred only by his nose, which is bent to one side. “I am here because I killed two cops,” he said. “I was mad — they stopped me and took my money, and I had a gun.”

Sosa and Saenz are two senior members of the Artist Assassins, a drug gang working in Ciudad Juárez, the most violent city in the world. The 600 Artist Assassins and 1,200 Mexicles, another local gang, are employed by the Sinaloa Cartel — run by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the country’s most wanted man — to control the drug traffic passing through Juárez.

How Ciudad Juárez was disfigured by Mexico’s drug wars

Originally published in The Times

At first sight, Ciudad Juárez is a Mexican city much like any other. An affluent border town of Wal-Marts and Holiday Inns, with old people waiting at bus stops and children walking happily home from school.

In daylight, there are few signs of its dubious distinction of the world’s most violent city — with a murder rate of 191 per 100,000 inhabitants — until you are shown them.

Denisse Guerrero points out the bridges from which the Juárez drug cartel hang decapitated bodies and narcomantas, banners displaying messages from the narcotráficos, as we drive past. A schoolteacher in one of Juárez’s state schools, Ms Guerrero was a close friend of Lesley Enriquez, the American consulate worker killed with her husband as she drove away from a children’s party last week.

US withdraws Mexico consular families in wake of staff killings by drug cartels

Originally published in The Times

Mexico’s drug wars crossed the border yesterday as American officials removed their families from a string of northern consulates and the FBI joined the hunt for the killers of the first US Government employees to die in a battle between crime cartels.

Mexico City marches against region with gay law

Originally published in The Times

“It’s so cool that things are changing,” said Eduardo Pérez, relaxing with his boyfriend, Mario, in the celebratory atmosphere of Mexico City’s gay district, the Zona Rosa. “We’ve been together for ten years now. This law will change a lot for couples like us. We’re not second-class citizens any more.”

A new law legalising same-sex marriage in Mexico City came into force yesterday, greeted with celebrations from the gay community and strong condemnation from the Roman Catholic Church and the country’s ruling party, the Catholic National Action Party.