All Notebook Entries

Sources within the US Congress have confirmed to Narco News that the US government has released approximately USD$90 million of the $116.5 million in foreign military financing (FMF) under Plan Mexico, also known as the Merida Initiative or Plan Merida.  The $90 million comprises approximately 77% of Mexico's total FMF allotment under Plan Mexico in 2008. 

Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales indicted for criminal conspiracy in private prison profiteering, resulting in prisoner assaults

By Brenda Norrell

WILLACY COUNTY, Texas -- US Vice President Dick Cheney was indicted today for a prison profiteering scheme and charged with abuse of prisoners. Cheney invested millions in the Vanguard Group, an investment management company with interests in the prison companies in charge of detention centers. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was also indicted in the prison profiteering scheme, resulting in ongoing prisoner assaults and at least one murder.
Human rights activists urged a probe into prison profiteering after the private prison corporations GEO Group and CCA (Corrections Corporation of America) began receiving enormous federal contracts to build detention centers to imprison migrants. GEO's new migrant prisons including prisons in Laredo, Texas and Jena, Louisiana.

The name of the US drone, 'Predator,' reflects what the United States has become

By Brenda Norrell

TUCSON -- The bad news is that the US Border Patrol has four drones flying out of Fort Huachuca over the US/Mexico border for surveillance. One drone has already crashed near Nogales and these unmanned aerial planes, provided first by Israel's Apartheid spy technology maker, Elbit Systems, are a risk to the lives of those on the ground in Arizona.

The good news is that Airforce pilots are not flying over in their planes. Airforce pilots in Tucson were so eager to smuggle cocaine in uniform, that the FBI halted Operation Lively Green. More than 50 Army, Navy, Marine and National Guard soldiers have been sentenced for smuggling cocaine for cash, from Nogales to Phoenix.

On Saturday, November 15th, 2008, Time published an incendiary piece of “reporting” by Alison Stateman, describing negative consequences experienced by supporters of California’s Proposition 8, with the sensationalistic title, “What Happens If You’re on the Gay ‘Enemies List.’” The deeply flawed article is a completely one-sided attempt to portray these individuals and businesses as innocent victims of a vengeful, torch-and-pitchfork-wielding gay mob, bent on the destruction of any who dare to stand between them and their goal of legalized gay marriage. This article is nothing more than journalistic arson, as it appears to have been commissioned with the goal of pouring gasoline on the fire of extant rifts between various communities –while polarizing straight people, and African-Americans in particular, against the gay community.

On Saturday, November 15th, up to one million people rallied in over 300 cities and towns across the United States and overseas to advocate for one common cause: marriage equality for all.

This event was born only eight days earlier when two women, Amy Balliett and Willow Witte, started exchanging emails about the passage of California's Proposition 8 and anti-gay initiatives in the states of Florida, Arizona and Arkansas. They created Join the Impact, and people flocked to their new website to network and publicize their own grassroots plans to rally. You can read more about Join the Impact in this great article from 365Gay.

I joined with the local LGBT rights organization Equality Action Now to help stage the Sacramento, CA demonstration. Many fine speakers, including local elected leaders, made the case for marriage equality. As they did, my mind wandered to consider the power of marriage, and three marriages in particular, to change the world.

Look back in time with me, then ahead to the future, to consider these three marriages.

In conjunction with the national grassroots movement Join the Impact, Equality. Action.

UPDATE: More death threats to border reporters before Rodriguez buried 

FronteraNorte Sur reports in "A Border Press Emergency," that the threats to border reporters continues. There were even death threats to others before Armando Rodriguez was buried.

"Even before murdered El Diario de Juarez reporter Armando Rodriguez was buried last week, more Ciudad Juarez journalists reported getting death threats. In one case, the director of a popular online news site took the threats so seriously he immediately left behind his property, packed up the family and fled to the United States.

"According to the Mexico City-based Center for Journalism and Public Ethics (CEPET), Jorge Luis Aguirre, director of the La Polaka news service, received a call on his cell phone last Thursday, one day after Rodriguez’s murder, which warned the news manager that he 'was the next in line.'" Read article.

By Brenda Norrell

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- News reporter Armando Rodriguez was the fifth reporter murdered in Mexico this year, and the 20th news reporter murdered in Mexico since 2000, when he was gunned down as he took his child to school on Thursday, Nov. 13, 2008. These numbers increase when the number of independent journalists murdered are added to the list of media assassinated in Mexico.

Rodriguez, a reporter for El Diario, the largest privately-owned daily in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, was shot dead outside his home.

Reporters without Borders said, "Rodriguez, aged 40, became the latest victim in a bloody war between the country’s major drug cartels which is centred on Ciudad Juarez, in Chihuahua State, with more than 1,300 casualties since the start of the year."

On Tuesday, November 4th, the United States took a bold step forward when it elected Barack Obama to be our next President. But the day was bittersweet for gay and lesbian Americans and their allies, because ballot initiatives limiting the civil rights of LGBT Americans passed in four states. Three, in California, Arizona and Florida, targeted same-sex marriage, and the especially pernicious Arkansas initiative placed new barriers to adoption, not only for same-sex couples, but for all unmarried couples.

Since that set of apparently contradictory electoral outcomes came to pass, there has been a groundswell of response. Some of it has been useless and divisive, such as finger-pointing at various classes and communities of people who predominately opposed marriage equality at the polls, but much of it has been inspiring.

The agencies in charge of Mexico’s drug war have high-ranking officials who protect the cartels

By Ricardo Ravelo, Proceso
Translation from the original Spanish and notes by Kristin Bricker

The animosity between the heads of Federal Attorney General’s Office and the Public Security Ministry don’t just immobilize the federal government and make its crusade against drug traffickers and organized crime futile.  It also shows that both institutions are so porous that the gangsters have already positioned themselves in them.  The infiltration is of such magnitude that even Eduardo Medina Mora and Genaro Garcia Luna have become suspect.

No one is illegal -- Somos un solo rio/We are all one river"

Article and photo by Brenda Norrell

SAN FRANCISCO -- AIM-West is hosting the 40th Anniversary Reunion of the American Indian Movement, Nov. 24 -- 28. With the theme, "No one is illegal -- Somos un solo rio/We are all one river," the topics include the militarization of the US borders, treaty rights, protection of sacred places, international Indigenous rights and religious freedom for prison inmates.

Bill Means, cofounder of the International Indian Treaty Council, is among the featured speakers at the sunrise gathering on Alcatraz Island on Thursday, Nov. 27. The weeklong AIM-West reunion includes Native Americans who have made history in the struggle for Indigenous Peoples rights, including Madonna Thunder Hawk, Manny Pino, Lenny Foster, Mike Flores, Charlie Hill, Patricia Bellanger and others.

By Jorge Carrasco Araizaga and Francisco Castellanos J., Proceso
Translated from the original Spanish by Kristin Bricker

Through confessions obtained “under torture” and with multiple irregularities, the Federal Attorney General’s office (PGR in its Spanish initials) maintains the three alleged culprits under arrest in the September 15 terrorist attack in Morelia, Michoacan—which left eight people dead and 106 injured—even though many family members and neighbors assure that the accused were in Lazaro Cardenas [250 miles south of Morelia] the moment the attacks occurred. 

Juan Carlos Castro Galeana, Julio Cesar Mondragon Mendoza, and Alfredo Rosas Elicea, the suspects in the grenade attack, were kidnapped and tortured by armed men in Lazaro Cardenas and later brought to a house in Apatzingan, where they were tormented again, before federal authorities took charge of them.

According to the criminal investigation PGR/SIEDO/UEITA/110/2008, the accused say they were kidnapped and psychologically and physically tortured for days so that they would confess to the attack and to being members of Los Zetas.

On the morning of November 9, a group led by a man who is alleged to have been involved in the 1997 Acteal massacre chased a family of adherents to the Zapatista's Other Campaign off of the land where they've lived since 1973.

The confrontation started when the group began work to construct a road through land occupied by adherents to the Zapatista’s Other Campaign in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas. The adherents consider the construction of the road to be a pretext to evict them because the construction crew was accompanied by surveyors who came to measure the property’s boundaries, ostensibly in order to sell the land.  The land the adherents occupy is legally federal property and a protected zone because the Utrilla mansion, officially a historical monument, is located there.  However, the property is registered with the Zapatistas’ Good Government Council in Oventik.

Friday, Nov. 7 2008

The trial against three high placed government officials of the Mireya Moscoso administration for abuse of power in the release of terrorist Luís Posada Carriles has been postponed until November 24, La Prensa reports.

According to the newspaper, one of the accused was on a business trip outside Panama today.

Ex-minister of Government & Justice Arnulfo Escalona, the former director of the National Police Carlos Barés and the former sub-director of Immigration Javier Tapia are facing charges of abuse of authority. They are accused of releasing convicted terrorist Luís Posada Carriles and his accomplices hours before then President Mireya Moscoso pardoned them on the last day of her administration.

Read the story in The Isthmian.

NCAI urges new protections for sacred places, while Homeland Security seeks to keep secret the digging up of Native American graves during construction of the border wall

By Brenda Norrell

Photo Save the Peaks

Larry Summers has emerged within the media speculation machine as one of the leading candidates for the post of Secretary of Treasury. If he assumes that position under the Barack Obama presidency, he will undoubtedly play a key role in helping to manage the nation out of its current economic crisis.

Summers, no doubt, has the background in economics to deal with that mission, but it is worth noting that while he served in a leadership role in the Treasury Department under the Clinton administration, the agency chalked up a less-than-stellar record on civil rights issues, particularly with respect to Hispanic employees of the U.S. Customs Service then under the department’s umbrella.

One reason Raymond Kelly should not be considered for any federal position under a Barack Obama’s administration:  He is a racist!

DHS issues a policy to all employees not to talk to the Barack Obama’s Transition Team because the members are non-federal employees yet.  This "don't talk policy" sounds like a "gag-order" - what does the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has to hide?

On November 6, 2008, I heard on National Public Radio (NPR), as I was driving to the U.S. Post Office, that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had recently issued (one can assume that after U.S. Senator Barack Obama was officially declared our next U.S. President-Elect) a policy or order prohibiting all DHS employees from talking to any member (s) of the U.S. President-Elect Barack Obama’s Transition Team, because they are not federal employees yet.

Israel site of border training for US and Canada

By Brenda Norrell

Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mouriño and drug prosecutor José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos died along with twelve other people when the plane carrying the government officials crashed into Mexico City's financial district last night.

Juan Camilo Mouriño had been at the center of numerous energy scandals.  He was Felipe Calderon's right-hand man and climbed the political ladder on the current president's coattails.  As Interior Minister he was the most powerful member of Calderon's cabinet.

José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos had received numerous death threats and survived two attempts on his life as a result of his work combatting drug cartels. 

BARACK OBAMA, 44th President of the United States - Congratulations Mr. President Obama!

I personally know the implications that an Obama's White House administration will bring.  JUSTICE!

This is the end of cronysm, favoritism, mismanagement, abuse of authority and corruption within our federal government.

Mexican Congress approves light reforms for the state oil company; legislators vow to continue the campaign to privatize Pemex

Mexican Congress approved light reforms to the state-owned oil monopoly Pemex at the end of October 2008. While the details of the reforms have still not been published in the government’s Official Diary of the Federation, details are trickling out through the media.

The biggest reform reported so far assigns specific blocks of the Gulf of Mexico to private companies to drill and explore. Private companies have been allowed to explore and drill in the Gulf of Mexico for years, but this is the first time they’ll have exclusive rights to specific blocks. This was one of the more contentious parts of the new laws, with opposition leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador calling for language specifically barring the government from assigning exclusive blocks to private companies. He sees this practice as an initial step towards further privatization of Mexico’s oil industry. However, Energy Secretary Georgina Kessel argued, "If we're drilling a well in one particular area, we can't allow somebody else to come along and do drilling in the same area."

According to the Los Angeles Times, U.S. senator Barack Obama's maternal grandmother has died in Hawaii.

I understand and feel the pain that Senator Obama may be undergoing knowing of the loss of his grandmother, who raised him at the age of 10.

I remember also the death of my maternal grandmother who raised me as I was growing up as my mother, a farm immigrant loaborer tended the farm fields of Arizona and California. 

By Brenda Norrell

TUCSON -- In Tucson, a community known for human rights organizations that are setting global standards, the University of Arizona has been co-opted by dollars to become spy central.
The university is very proud of its new millions to spy on people, by way of the Internet, and develop "technologies," including lasers on migrants' arteries.
Under the guise of the war on terror, human rights activists, especially peace activists, have been targeted throughout the United States and the world by unbridled US spy technology and US government lawlessness.

I would like to express my appreciation and send this "thank you note" to official (s) of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for looking into who "browsed" and ran the names "Barack Obama" and his aunt's name "Zeituni Onyango," into their DHS' data bases and who made the unauthorized disclosure.

Finding the culprit (s) should be a very easy task.  Why I say this with such confidence?  Because I know that the DHS' Office of Inspector General (OIG) and the ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) investigators, if they really want to find the "Privacy Act" and "unauthorized disclosure" violator (s) employee (s), they can enter the names of Barack Obama and Zeituni Onyango into their data base systems and see who queried the names.  This is such a basic investigative task, that by the time I finish writing this story, I am sure they (the OIG and OPR) already know who was the employee (s) who queried the name.  This is one violation, the unauthorized use of the DHS' data bases.  The second violation is, who "leaked" or made the unauthorized disclosure to the media.

Celerino “Cele” Castillo III, a former DEA agent who played a key role in exposing the U.S. government’s role in narco-trafficking as part of the Iran/Contra scandal, is now a discredited man.

At least that is what the office of U.S. Attorney Johnny “House of Death” Sutton in San Antonio, Texas, who is a “dear friend” of President George W. Bush, would like us to believe. The black mark now affixed to Castillo’s reputation courtesy of Sutton’s office, however, is a thin conceit on the eve of a presidential election that is expected to usher in a sea change in American politics that might well lead to a re-examination of Castillo’s revelations — which also were supported and advanced by legendary investigative journalist Gary Webb and a host of congressional inquiries in subsequent years.

“United States Attorney Johnny Sutton announced that in San Antonio yesterday [Oct. 22], 58-year-old former Drug Enforcement Administration agent Celerino “Cele” Castillo, III, of McAllen, Texas, was sentenced to 37 months in federal prison for his role in dealing firearms without a license,” states a press release issued recently by Sutton’s office.

Article and photo by Brenda Norrell

TUCSON -- Walkers gathered this morning in Tucson to walk to San Xavier on the Tohono O'odham Nation, remembering those who died on the US/Mexico border. The walk, coordinated by Derechos Humanos, is the eighth annual Day of the Dead pilgrimage. The eight mile walk from St. John's Church is underway to the San Xavier del Bac Mission. Kat Rodriguez, of Derechos Humanos, told walkers that the 183 white wooden crosses being carried represent each person who died in the desert from Oct. 1, 2007 to Sept. 30. While some crosses carry the names of the dead, there are 108 crosses marked "unknown." Of those, there were 19 people who could not be identified as to whether they were male or female, because so little of their bodies could be found. Derechos Humanos said that 1,600 people have died trying to cross the Sonoran desert in the past eight years. Walkers will culminate their journey with a gathering at the mission at 1 p.m.
Listen to audios from this morning, Kat Rodriguez of Derechos Humanos and columnist Roberto Rodriquez
http://censored-news.blogspot.com/

Photos at: http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com

By Brenda Norrell

WASHINGTON -- The construction of the United States border wall is now listed with the treatment of Guantanamo detainees as an international human rights concern by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States.

In a statement released today, the Commission said it "received troubling information about the impact that the construction of a wall in Texas, along the U.S.-Mexico border, has on the human rights of area residents, in particular its discriminatory effects."