Feral Jundi

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Bounties: Mexico’s Huge Bounties on Drug Lords

Filed under: Bounties,Mexico — Tags: , , — Matt @ 7:18 PM

   I wanted to start a new category called Bounties, because I think this is an area that private industry can certainly get involved with and benefit.  It is surprising how many bounties there are out there throughout the world, and if the readership ever comes across some of the high dollar ones, let me know and I will post them.  Happy hunting. –Matt

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Mexico’s huge bounties on drug lords

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 

Mexico has offered rewards of up to USD 2 million to those who provide tips that leads to the arrest of the country’s drug ringleaders.

According to an official publication released on Monday, the government has offered “up to 30 million pesos (two million dollars) to whomever provides information that is useful, true and leads to the location and arrest” of the drug lords, AFP said.

Mexico’s attorney general Eduardo Medina Mora has published a list of 24 drug kingpins, including Mexico’s most-wanted man, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman whose name stands top on the list.

Medina Mora said the government is even ready to accept information provided by rival drug gangs.

“We don’t rule out that those giving us information are part of (organized crime) groups. The important thing is to capture the wanted person,” he told reporters.

Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon, using the country’s armed forces, has launched a crackdown on drugs and drug-related violence since he took office in December 2006.

In 2008 more than 5,300 died in Mexico in drug-related violence.

The Sinaloa cartel is among the most notorious Mexican drug cartels led by Guzman.

Guzman who escaped from a maximum security prison near Guadalajara in 2001, recently ranked among Forbes magazine’s wealthiest people around the globe.

Medina Mora described Mexico’s ongoing drug violence escalation as “unheard of.”

“Solid and decided participation and collaboration on the part of society is indispensable,” he said.

Story Here

 

Friday, March 27, 2009

Disaster Response: We Used PMC’s for the Katrina Hurricane Disaster, So Why Not The US/Mexico Border Disaster?

     This story below is ridiculous, and I certainly hope that this is not yet another trend that only increases do to a perceived lack of manpower or resources to fight this crap.  I have also been listening to a lot of law enforcement agencies and government officials on the news continue to complain that they just don’t have the manpower to cover this stuff. Couple that with the weapons story I just posted, and entire towns being rampaged by drug cartels, and I am just wondering when this disaster is going to be treated like a disaster?  

     To me, this is a disaster of epic proportions, and needs attention now. Arguably, the drugs and gang/border violence over the years, have killed way more people and ravaged way more communities than any muslim fundamentalists have or hurricanes have.  It is a disaster that requires attention now.  But so do the disasters in Afghanistan, Iraq, Africa, etc.

     So what is the solution, if the border needs guys with guns, and there just isn’t enough of them in the military or police? Hell, Obama just requested 4,000 more troops for Afghanistan.  And if money is an issue, or time to train up an adequate force to get on the border is an issue, then a short term or mid term solution called Private Military Companies or Private Security Companies is the answer. They were an answer during the Hurricane disaster of 2005, and they could be the answer now.   

(more…)

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Mexico: Drug Cartels’ New Weaponry Means War

Filed under: Mexico,Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Matt @ 10:58 PM

     Doug sent me this one, and this is very interesting on two levels.  The gun control folks in the US have been saying that all the weapons the cartels use, are coming from the US, and obviously they are not. The pistols and basic rifles maybe, but the war grade munitions like grenades and what not are coming from Central America.  

     The second point is the type of weaponry that they are getting out of Central America. Grenades, belt-fed machine guns, rocket launchers, .50 caliber sniper rifles–all of it is war munitions, and requires a very specific approach to defend against and deal with. So if security companies start picking up contracts down there, the level of security should at least be on par to combat this type of stuff.  I am not talking mall cop security, I am talking Iraq style security.  Thats if PMC was ever used to battle PMC down there. –Matt

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Drug cartels’ new weaponry means war

Narcotics traffickers are acquiring firepower more appropriate to an army — including grenade launchers and antitank rockets — and the police are feeling outgunned.

By Ken Ellingwood and Tracy Wilkinson

March 15, 2009

Reporting from Zihuatanejo, Mexico, and Mexico City — It was a brazen assault, not just because it targeted the city’s police station, but for the choice of weapon: grenades.

The Feb. 21 attack on police headquarters in coastal Zihuatanejo, which injured four people, fit a disturbing trend of Mexico’s drug wars. Traffickers have escalated their arms race, acquiring military-grade weapons, including hand grenades, grenade launchers, armor-piercing munitions and antitank rockets with firepower far beyond the assault rifles and pistols that have dominated their arsenals.

Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling of semiauto- matic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

The proliferation of heavier armaments points to a menacing new stage in the Mexican government’s 2-year-old war against drug organizations, which are evolving into a more militarized force prepared to take on Mexican army troops, deployed by the thousands, as well as to attack each other.

(more…)

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Kidnap and Ransom: Rural Mexican Villages Dig Moats to Repel Raiding Gangsters

Filed under: Kidnap And Ransom,Mexico — Tags: , , , , — Matt @ 10:50 PM

“We have support of the federal forces,” said an official of the dirt-street village. “Security is what we’re lacking.” 

    This is sickening to read.  When a town has to resort to these types of measures to defend themselves from this kind of crime, then you know things are really bad. The protection of this town would be an excellent project of a PMC, if given the contract.  Just saying.  –Matt

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Rural Mexican villages dig moats to repel gangsters

Ditches don’t always deter raids, but federal troops can’t be spared

By DUDLEY ALTHAUS

Houston Chronicle

March 22, 2009, 3:43PM

Julian Cardona For the Chronicle

Ruben Solis, a farmers’ leader, says these moats that villagers dug around Cuauhtémoc were “a means of preservation” for the town. The sentinels at the checkpoints to the village, however, have been removed. ?

CUAUHTEMOC, Mexico — Little town, big hell.

That proverb about turmoil in small communities has never seemed truer than in this gangster-besieged village and a neighboring one in the bean fields and desert scrub a long day’s drive south of the Rio Grande.

Since right before Christmas, armed raiders repeatedly have swept into both villages to carry away local men. Government help arrived too late, or not at all.

Terrified villagers — at the urging of army officers who couldn’t be there around the clock — have clawed moats across every access road but one into their communities, hoping to repel the raids.

“This was a means of preservation,” said Ruben Solis, 47, a farmers’ leader in Cuauhtemoc, a collection of adobe and concrete houses called home by 3,700 people. “It’s better to struggle this way than to face the consequences.”

But shortly after midnight last Sunday, villagers said, as many as 15 SUVs loaded with pistoleros attacked nearby San Angel, population 250, and kidnapped five people. Four victims were returned unharmed a few days later. The fifth hostage, a teenage boy, was held to exchange for the intended target the raiders missed, villagers said.

“We have support of the federal forces,” said an official of the dirt-street village. “Security is what we’re lacking.”

After the earthworks were dug in both villages, volunteers manned checkpoints at the remaining open entrances. Those sentinels, however, were removed when it was decided they couldn’t stop a serious attack, anyhow .

“We aren’t able to confront this sort of thing,” Solis said. “We have a few shotguns, some .22 rifles, a few pistols — nothing compared to what they have.”

(more…)

Monday, March 23, 2009

Mexico: Los Zetas, A PMC/Cartel That Truly Deserves Negative Media Attention

Filed under: Law Enforcement,Mexico — Tags: , , , , — Matt @ 8:23 PM

   Thanks to Eeben for pointing these guys out to me.  You learn something new all the time, and these guys have been going off the hook since 2003. This is a group, founded by Mexican Special Forces, that executed it’s operations like the military complete with an intelligence apparatus, all for the sake of the drug trade.  That to me is evil, and that deserves an onslaught of negative media attention.  Yet the media continues to focus on groups like Xe, because it’s easy and safe. Pffft.  

    The really bad guys are just south of the US border, and have been murderous heathens when it comes to crimes against humanity, yet where is the media pressure?  I mean there is no comparison, when you put these guys up against Blackwater, but by all means keep demonizing BW.  How about it Jeremy Scahill, why not write about a truly evil PMC and put your efforts into a Los Zetas book……that’s if your man enough? smirk

    I also like the idea that Eeben came up with in that same post in the comments section.  PMC versus PMC!  I would love to see Executive Outcomes come out of retirement and take on these fools.  That would be money well spent in my humble opinion.  Although from the sounds of it, Los Zetas has kind of taken on an Al Qaeda type of emergence, where the original group is really not in control and the idea of the group lives on in spirit. Missed opportunities. Either way, the myth of the Los Zetas would be a good one to crumble if we could. –Matt

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Los Zetas: Evolution of a Criminal Organization

11 Mar 2009

By Samuel Logan for ISN Security Watch

From the original 31 members, the Mexican organized criminal faction Los Zetas has grown into an organization in its own right, operating separate from the Gulf Cartel and just as violent, Sam Logan writes for ISN Security Watch.

Between the first of the year and mid-March, 2009 the Mexican criminal organization most commonly known as “Los Zetas” has been busy. Members of this group have been linked to a death threat delivered to the president of Guatemala, a grenade thrown into a bar in Pharr, Texas, the death of a high-ranking military general in Cancun, and a fair share of the organized crime-related deaths registered this year in Mexico.

(more…)

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