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Mexican Drug Cartels Profiting from High Local Cocaine Prices : Police (AU/MX)
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- Mexico : Drug Cartel Targets Woman Journalist Through Online Social Media (TAMPS)
Mexican Drug Cartels Profiting from High Local Cocaine Prices : Police (AU/MX)6 December 2011 The Australian
The NSWCC said there were many significant organized crime groups now operating in Sydney that were controlled and supplied from overseas. "There are numerous instances of key individuals from crime groups being arrested in NSW with significant quantities of prohibited drugs," the report said. "But even where this affects the supply chain, new supply chains are quickly established. "Such local arrests do not deter the criminal principals who are resident overseas. In a case of a Mexican cartel, despite arrests of a number of individuals in this country and significant seizures of prohibited drugs and cash, the cartel managed to set up a new stream of supply within months." In the past 18 months major arrests over three seizures of cocaine totaling nearly 750kg saw supplies of the drug dry up. In the months following the seizures, cocaine in Australia was only being sold in ounces and was of low purity, with prices rising as a result of the shortage. "More recently it has stabilized, indicating that there have been some successful importations of cocaine," the commission said. In its most recent analysis of the drug trade, the Australian Crime Commission, which operates nationally, has put the average price of a gram of cocaine as low as $250 in NSW and between $300 to $350 in other states. Prices usually climb towards $400 when supply is restricted. About 300kg of cocaine was allegedly seized from a yacht off the coast of Queensland last month. Four Spanish nationals have since been charged. The Australian Federal Police yesterday would not confirm or deny that the Spaniards were part of a Mexican-controlled syndicate. The ACC has also warned that Mexican cartels "may also import the violent practices which have been reported overseas". Source: [www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/mexican-drug-cartels-profiting-from-high-local-cocaine-prices-police/story-e6frg6nf-1226214560522] Return to Contents Mexico : Drug Cartel Targets Woman Journalist Through Online Social Media (TAMPS)5 DECEMBER 2011 Women News Network
In regions where cartel violence is high the fear is tangible for those trying to get information out online and in-print about the drug cartels. “With most of the police here you don’t know who you’re talking to—a detective or a representative of organized crime”, said Aguilar’s husband and former police chief David Silva. With cartels now carefully watching internet forums, blog posts and twitter tweets, all journalists and bloggers are in increased danger as they are monitored and identified as online targets. The recent murder of journalist Elisabeth Macías is a case in point. “The fight for territorial control of the border zone is also waged in a new battleground: the internet and its social media”, says the new November 2011 Social Media Manifesto Against Mexican Drug Cartels by a group which calls themselves ‘the Mexican Internet Community’. “We the twitterers and hashtag users of Northeastern Mexico (#reynosafollow, #nuevolaredo, #matamoros, #tamaulipas, #mier, and others who) released this manifesto in response to the murder of our companion, a social media user attacked by a group of drug traffickers, that occurred early this morning in the city of Nuevo Laredo, in the state of Tamaulipas,” continued the Manifesto. “We repudiate and condemn this criminal act that has provoked a state of terror, and we demand justice in the face of the national silence it is meant to impose, and the stage of amnesia and impunity it portends. This murder is the fourth against twitterers and bloggers that has occurred in less than two months”, added the Mexico Internet Community. As the news of Macías murder spread throughout the internet, UNESCO condemned the assassination of Macías and demanded “urgent measures to stop the violence against journalists in Mexico”. “…in practice, there is no efficient defense, investigation or preventing measures. We live in an absolute state of anarchy, of save-yourself, where the journalist has no option but to self-censor”, said Mexican Interior Secretary Francisco Blake Mora in one of Mexico’s most popular daily newspapers La Jornada. A few months after his September 2011 statement, Blake died in a mysterious helicopter crash on November11. Investigations are currently looking at the possibility that the helicopter’s fuel may have been contaminated. As social media becomes an important tool for communicating, the already high incidence of violence in Mexico has accelerated rapidly as those who speak out, including numerous women journalists, who have also been particularly daring in their actions in speaking out online, are targeted. “These murders seem to represent an alarming strategy to intimidate internet users to stop communicating information related to violence”, said Amnesty International following a report release on the death of Macías. “The fact that at least eight communicators have been murdered this year indicates the vulnerability of media professionals and the lack of real impact of measures to prevent and punish the aggressions against journalists”, continued Amnesty. Creating a climate of fear and widespread censorship throughout many local in-print news outlets as violence continues, reports on drug trafficking crime, collusion and corruption in the region have almost come to a complete halt. But the citizens of Mexico want to know more about what’s happening in their region. Instead of reading in-print newspapers to get the news many are committed to getting it via social media. The problem is that social media is proving to be more than just an opportunity for muckrakers to speak the truth. As cartels find and target journalists, bloggers, facebook and forum members online who report or comment about drug related crime and crime cartels it is expected that the violence will continue or accelerate. Like the rest of the world Mexico City is jumping on the band wagon in using digital interactive tools that are available to the public online. Mapa Delictivo is an online interactive map that reports crimes across the city in real time. “…with the traditional media silenced, Mexicans have gone online in search of news. But now that looks risky too… Although many sites are anonymous, the mobsters seem to be getting better at tracking down contributors, even outside of Mexico”, said The Economist in a recent September report. “Last year two Mexican students at Columbia University in New York set up a website to track violence in Monterrey, another troubled city in Mexico’s north. The project was cancelled after the site’s administrator, based in the United States, received a threatening phone call”. Before Elisabeth Macías left her office for the night on September 23 she posted one last comment on her website ‘Nuevo Laredo en Vivo’. “Hunting rats if you see where they run, denounce them”, Macías said. Ten days earlier, on September 13th, two young internet users (a man and a woman), who allegedly informed two Mexican cartel watch blogs some details surrounding criminal activity, were found murdered next to threatening messages signed Z (thought to be the signature of Los Zetas). Their bodies were hanged from a bridge in the same city of Nuevo Laredo where journalist Elisabeth Macías lost her life. A more recent case of a beheaded man’s body found with a similar message also occurred recently on November 9th, 2011. He is believed to be another administrator of the chat forum Macías used to chat and post news. According to Amnesty International these murders and the murder of Elisabeth Macías are a clear threat to social network users who live in the most violent regions of Mexico. Following Macías death, few local newspapers featured the story. Not even the daily newspaper Primera Hora, where she worked, mentioned her on their Sunday editorial. There was only a brief report on the “discovery of an unknown woman, beheaded”. The Tamaulipas Government, through the Justice Department, confirmed the murder the night before. As the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) declared: “Throughout Mexico, but especially in the north, unrelenting violence by criminal groups has terrorized the local press into silence. In the face of this rampant censorship and a near-complete void of information, Mexican citizens, and many journalists, are turning to social media and online forums to share news and inform each other… The murder of the Mexican journalist in the city of Nuevo Laredo on Saturday marks a potential watershed: It is the first case CPJ has documented in which someone was murdered in direct retaliation for journalism posted on social media”. According to recent CPJ statistics, 888 journalists worldwide have been killed since 1992. Of these, 60 journalists and 4 media workers have been murdered in Mexico. 93 percent were male and 7 percent female. 44 percent were threatened beforehand; 32 percent were taken captive and 20 percent were tortured. Internet and social media provide no longer a safe space for free press in some parts of Mexico, it doesn’t matter if you’re a man, a woman, young or old; if you publish information on traditional media or via internet. “I wouldn’t go to Mexico now. I don’t think its any more dangerous for an American than a Mexican, but the drug violence is so random everyone is at risk”, says a member of an online motorcycle riders forum only four weeks ago. “…ultimately, we feel unprotected in the face such atrocities and we are fearful, because this war has now cost the lives of victims in cyperspace, which is our element”, says a November 9, 2011 statement by the Mexico Internet Community in their new Social Media Manifesto. Source: [www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1TSND_enUS458US459&aq=f&gcx=c&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=nuevo+laredo] Return to Contents Directory: gifiles -> attach -> 137 attach -> Russia 110204 Basic Political Developments 137 -> Adaptability Sustainment attach -> Pop-up 1 ("C" Chechnya) Header Text: Emir of the Caucasus Emirate Doku Umarov Image attach -> Russia and Islam are not Separate attach -> Chapter 13: The Northern Caucasus attach -> Russia 100209 Basic Political Developments attach -> The evolution attach -> The devolution attach -> South Korea and Brazil: Brazilian’s Plan and Korean Visit Download 162.51 Kb. Share with your friends:
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