Telephone 911-1984

Guambat's Log 21032015

George Orville published his book 1984 in 1949. His science fiction of a Big Brother with eyes and ears everywhere in the year 1984, 35 years later, was pure hyperbole. He missed it by a generation, a close call in galactic terms. By that time, his dystopian vision was replaced by a utopian one. This whole timeframe was witnessed by Guambat, including the Aquarian utopia of his coming of age years.

Perhaps this accounts in some small measure for the manic depression Guambat harbours in his burrow.

For Orville's 1984 to work, it needed a backbone, a skeletal technology to hang its ears and eyes on. Guambat has seen that one grow from the jelly dish of made science, too. Today, he plays with its toys. He has his own CCTV eyes and his own broadband handheld soundboard to the world. Through his own eyes and ears, the whole world can watch him, hear him. His every word and thought are traceable right back to his keyboard and search engine.
It didn't take much. Although field phones had been a significant feature in WWII, they predated that. The Happy Chappy's pictured pictured here with that phone booth to his head made the first hand-held phone call in 1973, two years before Microsoft was born.

The internet wasn't even a glimmer in ISIS' eyes when Orville's 1984 arrived. Al Gore invented that one in 1991, which no doubt had something to do with the analog hand-held phones becoming digitalized in the 1990's, adding data transmissions just before September 11 in 2001. Now it's broadband capable, and has been since before Guambat's grands were born. The Iridium satellite phone launched in 1998 didn't prevail as a satellite phone service for high costs alone; it was too compact, and therefore vulnerable, a web, and the successful webs of this era are the ones that promise autonomy bordering on but not reaching anonymity amongst ubiquitous dispersion, though their true strength and talent lies in their omniscient cloud presence.

So, what was that utopian vision that displaced Orville's 1984? Read the links below for the full stories.

Meet the man whose utopian vision for the Internet conquered, and then warped, Silicon Valley by Jacob Silverman

Twenty years ago, the period equivalent of “net neutrality” was the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Even as Silicon Valley began to capture the country’s imagination, the tech elite were souring on their government. They accommodated it where they thought they needed to — telecom firms, for instance, enabled surveillance by acquiescing to records requests from the intelligence agencies — and they received tokens such as start-up tax breaks and STEM investments in return. But eventually the predominant attitude was alienation: The Internet was theirs, not Big Brother’s. Meanwhile, they routinely compare their corporations to city-states or call for the secession of the San Francisco Bay Area.

To understand where this cyber-libertarian ideology came from, you have to understand the influence of “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” one of the strangest artifacts of the ’90s, and its singular author, John Perry Barlow. Perhaps more than any other, it’s his philosophy — which melded countercultural utopianism, a rancher’s skepticism toward government and a futurist’s faith in the virtual world — that shaped the industry.

The problem is, we’ve reaped what he sowed.

“A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” was an utterly serious document for a deliriously optimistic era that Wired, on one of its many valedictory covers, promised was a “long boom”: “25 years of prosperity, freedom, and a better environment for the whole world.” Techno-skeptics need not apply. Barlow’s 846-word text, published online in February 1996, begins with a bold rebuke of traditional sovereign powers: “Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.” He then explains how cyberspace is a place of ultimate freedom, where conventional laws don’t apply. At the end, he exhorts the Internet to “be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.”

It wasn’t the first viral document, but it was one of the period’s most pervasive and influential, appearing on thousands of Web sites within months of its publication. More than that, the language and sensibility suffused Silicon Valley thinking. When Eric Schmidt describes the Internet, however misguidedly, as “the world’s largest ungoverned space” in his book “The New Digital Age,” he is borrowing Barlow’s rhetoric. When tech mogul Peter Thiel writes, in “The Education of a Libertarian,” that he founded PayPal to create a currency free from government control and that “by starting a new Internet business, an entrepreneur may create a new world,” it’s impossible not to hear Barlovian echoes. [Bitcoin? Sure, that little bit, too.]

All this was an unlikely achievement for a man who personified what the British theorists Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron called “the Californian Ideology.” Barlow wrote songs for the Grateful Dead, tended to his parents’ Wyoming ranch in the waning days of family farms and eventually helped co-found the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy organization. The trajectory of his life is embodied in the title of Fred Turner’s excellent history of the era, “From Counterculture to Cyberculture,” about how hippie communitarianism found its way into early Web communities like The WELL, a popular message board.

To Barbrook and Cameron, the Californian Ideology reflected a “new faith” emerging “from a bizarre fusion of the cultural bohemianism of San Francisco with the hi-tech industries of Silicon Valley.” It mixed “the free-wheeling spirit of the hippies and the entrepreneurial zeal of the yuppies” and drew on the state’s history of countercultural rebellion, its role as a crucible of the New Left, the global-village prophecies of media theorist Marshall McLuhan and “a profound faith in the emancipatory potential of the new information technologies.” Adherents of the California Ideology — many of them survivors of the “Me” decade, weaned on sci-fi novels, self-help and New Age spiritualism — forsook the civil actions of an earlier generation. They thought freedom would be found not in the streets but in an “electronic agora,” an open digital marketplace where individuality would be allowed its fullest expression, away from the encumbrances of government and even of the physical world.

Part of this belief system’s appeal was its ability to combine a host of sometimes incompatible ideas: radical individualism and digital community; neoliberal, free-market capitalism and an Internet industry pioneered by government grants; spiritual truth-seeking and corporate conformity. For hackers turned systems engineers or graffiti artists turned graphic designers, it held great appeal. It promised that they had value and might make the world a better place. Joining Microsoft or AOL didn’t mean selling out; it just meant recalibrating one’s sense of how utopia might be achieved.

Barlow’s writings were tailor-made for this period of techie euphoria, which seemed to herald a revolution not only in communications and commerce, but also in social relations and culture. Barlow, with his ranching background, saw the Internet as a vast, borderless electronic frontier. Whereas the hippie generation explored Eastern religions and hallucinogenic drugs as pathways to enlightenment or psychic renewal, Barlow’s generation seized on the consciousness-expanding potential of the Web.

Yet there was something quixotic about “A Declaration.” Barlow was articulating noble principles (free speech; egalitarianism; freedom from discrimination, bias and oppression), but his desire for “independence” from the world of flesh and bureaucracy was naive. From its earliest incarnation as ARPANET, the Internet owed its existence to the U.S. government. It was always an infrastructure project with a physical presence in the world — wires, routers, servers, data centers and computers to interface with them. It may have helped bits cross borders, but that didn’t mean that borders or laws no longer mattered. With today’s debates over mass surveillance, it’s clear that governments exercise a great deal of power online.

The text itself has aged poorly, too. Its dateline — Barlow published the document from the World Economic Forum conference in Davos, Switzerland — shows that Internet pioneers were far more wrapped up in the traditional power structure than they might acknowledge. (Barlow had worked on one of the congressional campaigns of Dick Cheney, a fellow Wyoming man.)

And it’s not just governments that have grown more powerful online. Companies have used the notion of an independent Internet to justify calling themselves its sovereign authorities. Using the vaguely humanitarian rhetoric of “connection,” they cast themselves as the handmaidens to our digital emancipation. But at the same time they have become even more adept at bulk data collection than the government. Meanwhile, they are the ones that decide how to manage our communications and which reforms are instituted. Even a populist measure like net neutrality was shepherded to passage by some of the industry’s biggest players.

Privacy Isn't All We're Losing, a Declaration by Peggy Noonan

The U.S. surveillance state as outlined and explained by Edward Snowden is not worth the price. Its size, scope and intrusiveness, its ability to target and monitor American citizens, its essential unaccountability—all these things are extreme.

The purpose of the surveillance is enhanced security, a necessary goal to say the least. The price is a now formal and agreed-upon acceptance of the end of the last vestiges of Americans' sense of individual distance and privacy from the government. The price too is a knowledge, based on human experience and held by all but fools and children, that the gleanings of the surveillance state will eventually be used by the mischievous, the malicious and the ignorant in ways the creators of the system did not intend.

For all we know that's already happened. But of course we don't know: It's secret. Only the intelligence officials know, and they say everything's A-OK.

If—again, if—what Mr. Snowden says is substantially true, the surveillance state will in time encourage an air of subtle oppression, and encourage too a sense of paranoia that may in time—not next week, but in time, as the years unfold—loosen and disrupt the ties the people of America feel to our country. "They spy on you here and will abuse the information they get from spying on you here. I don't like 'here.'" Trust in government, historically, ebbs and flows, and currently, because of the Internal Revenue Service, the Justice Department, Benghazi, etc.—and the growing evidence that the executive agencies have been reduced to mere political tools—is at an ebb that may not be fully reversible anytime soon.

How did we get here? You know. In the days after 9/11 all the clamor was for safety. Improve intelligence, find the bad guys, heighten surveillance. The government went to work. It is important to remember that 9/11 coincided almost exactly with the Internet revolution. They happened at pretty much the same time.

In the past 10 years technology sped up, could do more and more—big data, metadata. Capabilities became massive, and menacing.

Our government is not totalitarian. Our leaders, even the worst of them, are not totalitarian. But our technology is totalitarian, or rather it is there and can be used and abused by those whose impulses tend, even unconsciously or unthinkingly, in that direction.

So what's needed? We must realize this is a crucial moment: We either go forward with these programs now or we stop, and think.

I feel that almost everyone who talks about America for a living—politicians and journalists and even historians—is missing a huge and essential story: that too many things are happening that are making a lot of Americans feel a new distance from, a frayed affiliation with, the country they have loved for half a century and more, the country they loved without every having to think about it, so natural was it.

This isn't the kind of thing that can be quantified in polls—it's barely the kind of thing people admit to themselves. But talk to older Americans—they feel they barely know this country anymore. In governance it's crucial to stay within parameters, it's important not to strain ties, push too far, be extreme. And if you think this does not carry implications for down the road, for our healthy continuance as a nation, you are mistaken. Love keeps great nations going.

Some of the reaction to the NSA story is said to be generational. The young are said not to fear losing privacy, because they never knew it. The middle-aged, who grew up in peace and have families, want safety first, whatever it takes, even excess. Lately for wisdom I've been looking to the old. Go to somebody who's 75 and ask, "So if it turns out the U.S. government is really spying on American citizens and tracking everything they do, is that OK with you?" They'll likely say no, that's not what we do in America.

Guambat appreciates the nod of the head to the oldies, being one himself. A little respect, as Aretha noted, goes a long way.

Now Guambat must respectfully acknowledge there are two sides to every story. As Fox claims to prove, reporting should be fair and balanced. In keeping with Fox' display of that notional ideal, Guambat would ask that you kindly consider the following. NSA Reform That Only ISIS Could Love Unfortunately, Mr. Murdoch's Wall Street Journal requires that you pay a toll on the internet highway to read that. Please to put a penny in the old man's hat.

Don’t Do It, Wendy! (concerning the advice of one jail breaker to another)

A thousand years ago, Guambat and Mrs. Guambat took Baby Bat to DisneyLand, and rode the Peter Pan ride. Baby Bat memorized every kid's media she ever heard or saw. Back then, most of the media was only scratchy records, but then came VHS and Baby Bat was mesmerized. So she had seen Peter Pan, and many of the other Disney films and stories come to life at DisneyLand.

So, anyway, there we all were riding the little carriage through the Land of Pan, at the part where Capt. Hook was making Wendy walk the plank, and it all just became toooo much for Baby Bat, who blurted out, "Don't Do It Wendy!", for all to hear.

Precious memory.

But one that has little to nothing to do with this article.

Taliban to Malala Yousafzai: we regret the shooting but you should join a madrassa

In an open letter released on Wednesday, Adnan Rasheed, a former air force member turned TTP cadre, said he personally wished the attack had not happened, but accused her of running a "smearing campaign" against the militants. "It is amazing that you are shouting for education, you and the UNO (UN) is pretending that you were shot due to education, although this is not the reason ... not the education but your propaganda was the issue," Mr Rasheed wrote.

Mr Rasheed was sentenced to death over a 2003 attack on Pakistan's then military ruler General Pervez Musharraf but escaped from custody in a mass jailbreak in April last year.

He accused Malala of seeking to promote an education system begun by the British colonialists to produce "Asians in blood but English in taste" and said students should study Islam and not what it called the "satanic or secular curriculum".

"I advise you to come back home, adopt the Islamic and Pashtun culture, join any female Islamic madrassa near your home town, study and learn the book of Allah, use your pen for Islam and plight of Muslim ummah (community)," Mr Rasheed wrote. 

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/taliban-to-malala-yousafzai-we-regret-the-shooting-but-you-should-join-a-madrassa-20130718-2q59v.html#ixzz2ZLhzj5DT

I can hear the sage cry of Baby Bat ringing in my ear:

Don't do it, Wendy!!!!

Cockroaches out of the shadows

You know they're there, but when they come out into the light, you know you have so many that they can't any longer stay in the shadows. You have an undeniable problem that will not go away on its own. Cockroaches.

You start by cleaning up your own mess that they feed on.

Greek New Dawn's Ilias Kasidiaris sues women over TV row

The spokesman for Greece's far-right Golden Dawn, who slapped a left-wing politician and threw water over another on a TV debate, is suing his victims.

Ilias Kasidiaris went to an Athens court to announce he would sue the women for defamation.

Mr Kasidiaris is also suing the TV station, Antenna, for illegal detention after staff tried to stop him leaving following the incident last Thursday.

Golden Dawn will be contesting a critical Greek election this Sunday.

Mr Kasidiaris avoided an arrest warrant for the attack, lying low until it expired.

Under Greek law, the arrest warrant for a minor crime must be carried out by midnight the day after the incident took place for an immediate trial - otherwise it goes to judicial procedure and a much later trial date is set.

"I did what millions of Greeks would have done - when you get hit in the face you have to defend yourself," he said.

His Golden Dawn party garnered 7% of the vote in Greece's inconclusive May election, campaigning on an anti-immigrant platform.

Among other policies, it has proposed planting mines along Greek borders to prevent the entry of migrants.

The party has been accused of violent attacks against immigrants in Athens, but denies the claims.

Greek neo-Nazi MP presses charges against his victims

He further laid charges against a journalist present at the time, who called up a prosecutor asking for action to be taken against him.

The prosecutor had ordered Kasidiaris' arrest on the grounds of attempted grievous bodily harm. But a 48-hour deadline for his arrest on sight expired on Saturday, meaning he is entitled to walk free until his trial.

The latest polls indicate Golden Dawn will remain in parliament after the June 17 elections, despite a slight drop.

Greeks seek better terms after Spanish rescue

With days to go before the June 17 election which could decide Greece's future in the euro zone, the Spanish accord has been dragged into a campaign being fought largely over the harsh conditions imposed under Greece's own 130 billion euro bailout.

The radical leftwing SYRIZA party, which has campaigned on a pledge to scrap the Greek bailout altogether and demand better terms, said the Spanish deal proved that the austerity imposed by international lenders had failed.

"Developments in Spain fully vindicate us in our reading of the crisis: this is a deep structural crisis of the eurozone itself," SYRIZA spokesman Panos Skourletis said on Monday. "The discussions in Europe open new perspectives for Greece and the euro zone."

SYRIZA is running neck and neck with the conservative New Democracy party which helped pass the bailout in parliament and says it can improve the terms without ditching it. Conservative leader Antonis Samaras said the Spanish deal was proof that Greece had more to gain by negotiating with its European partners than by falling out with them.

"Just think about it, at a time when a country like Spain negotiates, some argue that we have to clash with Europe," he said.

The overwhelming majority of Greeks want to keep the euro currency but want to be freed from the harsh austerity measures imposed as part of the bailout that rescued Athens from bankruptcy in March.

With Greece now in its fifth year of deep recession, unemployment running at almost 22 percent and a growing threat of social breakdown, there is pressure from all parties to ease the tough conditions of the March bailout.

"I'm not afraid we will be forced to leave the euro zone. I'm tired of being afraid. I only hope that we will have jobs, a way to make ends meet after June 17", said Eleni Karakoussi, 31, a saleswoman, who said she intended to vote for SYRIZA.

Generally, old generals never die

Iran attack decision nears, Israeli elite locks down

This inner sanctum at the end of a corridor between Netanyahu's private room and the office of his top military adviser, is where one of the decade's most momentous military decisions could soon be taken: to launch an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear program.

Time for that decision is fast running out and the mood in Jerusalem is hardening.

Adding to the international pressure, U.S. ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro said this week American military plans to strike Iran were "ready" and the option was "fully available".

Experts say that within a few months, much of Iran's nuclear program will have been moved deep underground beneath the Fordow mountain, making a successful military strike much more difficult.

Iran's nuclear program - regarded by Netanyahu as an existential threat to the state of Israel - will soon be buried deep enough underground to render an Israeli attack impossible. The Jewish state's options are narrowing.

"I think they've gone into lockdown mode now," the senior Western diplomat said. "Whatever happens next, whatever they decide, we will not find out until it happens."

As the deadline for a decision draws nearer, the public pronouncements of Israel's top officials and military have changed. After hawkish warnings about a possible strike earlier this year, their language of late has been more guarded and clues to their intentions more difficult to discern.

"The top of the government has gone into lockdown," one official said. "Nobody is saying anything publicly. That in itself tells you a lot about where things stand."

Netanyahu, those who know him say, is determined to avoid going down in history as the man who did not shirk his opportunity to stop Iran going nuclear.

Cinco de Mayem

It's a gringo thing, that Cinco de Mayo stuff. Mainly celebrated by Norte Americanos who need an excuse to drink and eat beans. As if.

History.com explains its, well, history, and we can only hope this is not a deja vue all over again.

In 1861 the liberal Mexican Benito Juárez (1806-1872) became president of a country in financial ruin, and he was forced to default on his debts to European governments. In response, France, Britain and Spain sent naval forces to Veracruz to demand reimbursement. Britain and Spain negotiated with Mexico and withdrew, but France, ruled by Napoleon III (1808-1873), decided to use the opportunity to carve a dependent empire out of Mexican territory. Late in 1861, a well-armed French fleet stormed Veracruz, landing a large French force and driving President Juárez and his government into retreat.

Certain that success would come swiftly, 6,000 French troops under General Charles Latrille de Lorencez (1814-1892) set out to attack Puebla de Los Angeles, a small town in east-central Mexico. From his new headquarters in the north, Juárez rounded up a rag-tag force of 2,000 loyal men—many of them either indigenous Mexicans or of mixed ancestry—and sent them to Puebla. Led by Texas-born General Ignacio Zaragoza (1829-1862), the vastly outnumbered and poorly supplied Mexicans fortified the town and prepared for the French assault. On May 5, 1862, Lorencez drew his army, well provisioned and supported by heavy artillery, before the city of Puebla and led an assault from the north. The battle lasted from daybreak to early evening, and when the French finally retreated they had lost nearly 500 soldiers. Fewer than 100 Mexicans had been killed in the clash.

Although not a major strategic win in the overall war against the French, Zaragoza's success at Puebla represented a great symbolic victory for the Mexican government and bolstered the resistance movement. Six years later—thanks in part to military support and political pressure from the United States, which was finally in a position to aid its besieged neighbor after the end of the Civil War—France withdrew. The same year, Austrian Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, who had been installed as emperor of Mexico by Napoleon in 1864, was captured and executed by Juárez's forces.

Read more at the link above.

Mexonline.com adds local flavour.

It is primarily a regional holiday celebrated in the Mexican state capital city of Puebla and throughout the state of Puebla, with some limited recognition in other parts of Mexico, and especially in U.S. cities with a significant Mexican population. It is not, as many people think, Mexico's Independence Day, which is actually September 16.

Celebrating Cinco de Mayo has become increasingly popular along the U.S.-Mexico border and in parts of the U.S. that have a high population of people with a Mexican heritage. In these areas the holiday is a celebration of Mexican culture, of food, music, beverage and customs unique to Mexico.

Commercial interests in the United States and Mexico have also had a hand in promoting the holiday, with products and services focused on Mexican food, beverages and festivities, with music playing a more visible role as well. Several cities throughout the U.S. hold parades and concerts during the week following up to May 5th, so that Cinco de Mayo has become a bigger holiday north of the border than it is to the south, and being adopted into the holiday calendar of more and more people every year.

What's to celebrate?


23 dead, 9 found hanging from bridge, in Nuevo Laredo

The bodies of nine people were found hanging from a bridge just south of Laredo, Texas in the Mexican town of Nuevo Laredo early Friday morning. Five men and four women were among those dead.

Bodies of 23 found dumped near U.S. border in Mexico drug war

found hanging from a bridge or dismembered in ice boxes and garbage bags

Police could not confirm who was responsible for the murders but a message seen with the bodies indicated it may have been an attack by the Zetas cartel against the rival Gulf cartel. The Zeta cartel was founded by deserters from the Mexican special forces who became Gulf cartel enforcers and later split from their employers.

The two gangs are now fighting for control of local drug trafficking routes.

In Nuevo Laredo, 23 corpses found on grisly day in Mexican drug-cartel war

A Web site devoted to news about narco-violence published photographs of the nine victims — five men and four women — swinging from the bridge, the corpses bloody and bearing marks of torture. Some had their pants pulled down to their ankles.

There was a banner hung beside the bodies on the bridge, and its profanity-laden message boasted that “in this way I am finishing you all off.” It also said that one victim “cried like a woman giving birth.”

Feel like celebrating now? With terrorists right on our doorstep?

SEEK and ye shall find ... Taliban?

The Taliban Got the Biometric Border Blues

When Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan on May 2nd, it was reported that his body was quickly identified and confirmed. That was done using biometric technology developed during the last decade, and applied widely in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Called SEEK (Secure Electronic Enrolment Kit), this is a portable electronic toolkit that collects biometrics from people. This includes fingerprints, eye (iris) scan and photos of suspects, which are stored electronically.

The fingerprints are particularly useful, because when they are stored electronically, you can search and find out immediately if the print you have just lifted from somewhere else, like off the fragment of a car bomb, is in there or not.

While DNA tests (which take hours to perform, on not-so-portable equipment) are the best form of ID, if you have fingerprints, iris scans and a photo, you are nearly as certain. Even just fingerprints and the face scan/photo, is pretty convincing. Because of the reporting on SEEK after the bin Laden raid, there were few Pakistani officers or government officials who were unaware of what biometrics was and what it could do.

In Afghanistan, the government this year used SEEK kits to collect data on nearly two million Afghans, so that these people could be issued very secure (hard to fake) ID cards. For the government, this makes it more difficult for criminals, Taliban and Islamic radicals in general to infiltrate the government, or just operate freely.

The U.S. has long collected biometrics from those they arrest, or otherwise encounter and want to positively identify. This database now has nearly a million people in it.

It only takes about two minutes per subject to use SEEK to take the biometric data, so any suspicious characters are quickly added to the master database. Now, after several years of this, raiding parties know to grab any guy who seems to panic at the sight of the biometrics equipment coming out. The terrorists know that biometrics is bad news for them, and they fear it.

The equipment for this was installed at border posts near Quetta (the capital of Baluchistan province, which forms Afghanistan's southern border) five years ago. But after a few days, thousands of armed, and angry, tribesmen forced the border posts to shut down until they got rid of the biometric gear. The Taliban, and drug gangs, knew that this biometric stuff was being used with great success in Afghanistan to identify and track Islamic radicals and all sorts of criminals.

Pakistan, under pressure from the United States and Afghanistan, has agreed to resume using biometric (fingerprinting, photos and iris scans) of people using the roads between Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is believed that this new attempt will be equally short-lived and unsuccessful. But the Pakistanis are under pressure to show the Americans and Afghans that they are not partners with the Taliban.

First thing we do, let's kill Lady Justice

All:

God save your majesty!

Cade:
I thank you, good people—there shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score, and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers, and worship me their lord.

Dick:
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

Cade:
Nay, that I mean to do.
Henry The Sixth, Part 2 Act 4, scene 2, 71–78

Brazil judge Patricia Acioli shot dead in Niteroi

A Brazilian judge renowned for her work against organised crime has been shot dead in Rio de Janeiro State.

Patricia Acioli was gunned down outside her home in the city of Niteroi late on Thursday by masked men travelling on two motorbikes, officials said.

She was best known for convicting members of vigilante gangs and corrupt police officers.

Brazil officers held in judge's death

Three military police officers have been ordered held as suspects in last month's killing of a Rio de Janeiro judge who had been investigating police links to organized crime, authorities said Monday.

The three officers, who had already been arrested in connection with an earlier killing of an 18-year-old slum resident, were members of a special tactical police battalion in the community of Sao Goncalo outside of Rio.

Read more: http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Brazil+officers+held+judge+death/5392544/story.html#ixzz1YAbVtzkT

Rio Reacts to Murder of Judge Patrícia Acioli

Judge Acioli is one of three judges executed in Brazil in the past eight years for their investigations into organized crime. A task force formed by three judges will take over Judge Acioli’s cases.

Over the past ten years, Criminal Judge Acioli was known for taking a tough stand against militia members, death squads and corrupt police officials. She was responsible for the arrest of some 60 officers linked to militias.

Hours before she was murdered, she had ordered the arrest of eight police officers suspected of killing a young woman in a favela in Sao Gonçalo, a municipality of Niterói. All eight officers have been arrested and placed in custody.

Reports show the bullets that killed Jugde Acioli came from .40 and .45 caliber pistols, weapons restricted to the Armed Forces and Civil and Military Police. Family members said that Judge Acioli had received several death threats and requested, but failed to receive, police protection. Several press outlets report that Acioli’s name appeared on a Black List marked for death, found on militia leader Wanderson Silva Tavares, known as Gordinho (Fatty), who was arrested in January this year.

Chief Justice Peluso asked for immediate action by the Federal Police. “On behalf of the Supreme Court, the National Council of Justice and the Judiciary, [I] repudiate the brutal murder of Judge [Acioli]. Cowardly crimes against magistrates are attacks on judicial Independence, rule of law and democracy in Brazil,” he said in a statement.

Hattip: Fearless About Jailing Rogue Police, Brazil Judge Was Slain in Hail of Police-Issue Bullets

Terrorism or business?

Stratfor Global Intelligence provides very comprehensive political, military, economic and other intelligence and insight on issues around the world. It's almost too much to keep up with. But one of the emails Guambat received recently from Stratfor jumped out at him with one particular, and perhaps not germane, comment.

It came in the midst of an interview between a Stratfor correspondent, Colin Chapman, and a Mexican security expert, Scott Stewart. One of the talking points was the construction of extra car barriers outside the US Embassy in Monterrey, Mexico.

Chapman asked, "Has this building been targeted...?"

Stewart replied (extracts):

"The Mexican cartels certainly don’t shy away from violence. We see them regularly beheading and dismembering people. However they tend to try to target most of their violence against opponents of the fellow cartels or against government employees, and a lot of times the government employees that they target are actually working for opposition cartels. So there’s really a relation there between the targeting.

"One thing to remember is that these cartels are not terrorist groups. They are really businesses, and they’re organized crime organizations. So their end is making money. That is their objective."

Guambat appreciates that at some academic level there is a logic there. But damned if he can discern some universal distinguishing characteristic between the wantonness of Mexican violence and the wantonness of Al Queda violence. He has previously expressed his dismay about what is happening in Mexico, a country he once loved to visit.

Stratfor is by and large a subscription service, but it does have a free page with Scott Stewart discussing The Perceived Car Bomb Threat in Mexico. Click the linked title for the read.

Interned Americans oppose demonizing American Muslims

Japanese Americans: House hearings on radical Islam 'sinister'

Although the youngest who were interned are in their late 60s, Japanese Americans remember what it means to be targeted during wartime because of their nationality.

After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered that all ethnic Japanese along the Pacific Coast be sent to one of 10 isolated internment camps in seven states. Of those imprisoned, 62 percent were second- or third-generation Japanese Americans born in the United States. Most lost their property to the government.

During the chaotic days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Basim Elkarra was passing by an Islamic school in Sacramento when he did a double-take: The windows were covered with thousands of origami cranes - peace symbols that had been created and donated by Japanese Americans.

Amid the anger and suspicions being aimed at Muslims at that time, the show of support "was a powerful symbol that no one will ever forget," said Elkarra, a Muslim American community leader in California.

It was also the beginning of a bond between the two groups that has intensified as House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) prepares to launch a series of controversial hearings Thursday on radical Islam in the United States.

In 1988, Congress approved legislation that apologized and distributed $1.6 billion in reparations, blaming the roundup on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership."

It was the memory of the camps that led the Japanese to reach out to their Muslim counterparts, said Kathy Masaoka, a high school teacher who co-chairs the Los Angeles chapter of Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress.

"It dawned on us that this is really something that could escalate among Muslims, the same things our parents faced," she said. "They were being scapegoated."

What followed was a candlelight vigil in Los Angeles's Little Tokyo and the "Bridging Communities" program, aimed at educating Muslim and Japanese high school students on diversity. Last year, 40 students participated in five seminars, sharing stories of challenges they face related to race, religion and ethnicity.

"They see clearly that they have similar experiences," said Affad Shaikh, civil rights manager for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "Even though the target group of the discrimination is different, the purpose of that harassment is the same."

Peter King obviously is one who has a strong attraction to provoking fear. That kind of behaviour is socio-pathic and must be stopped.

Next they come for Guambats.
//

Terrorism makes for strange bed bugs

According to the IrishCentral news site, Libya's Gaddafi to pay billions for IRA atrocities

Say what, thought Guambat? Gaddafi funded the bombing of that plane over Lockerbie, Scotland, but what's that got to do with the right wingnut Irish?

Well, this is the story (from a year ago) below the headline:

Colonel Gaddafi is to pay $3.5 billion to victims of IRA atrocities it has been revealed.

Gaddafi allowed the importation from Libya in the 1980s of tons of semtex plastic explosives to be used in IRA attacks.

Among the attacks carried out with Libyan semtex were the Harrods Christmas bombing of 1983, which killed six and the Enniskillen atrocity of 1987 that left 11 dead during a Remembrance Day service.

It was also used by the Real IRA splinter group in the Omagh bombing in August 1998, which killed 29 and injured 220 in the worst killings of the Troubles.

And Libyan semtex was also used in the 1989 Lockerbie Pan Am 103 airline bombing that left 270 dead.

The IRA don't colour beer green; they coloured it red.

IRA Atrocities

The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) is an Irish republican paramilitary group - and proscribed Terrorist organization - whose aim was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and bring about a United Ireland by force of arms and political persuasion.

This "force of arms" involved violence and murder against civilians - Catholic and Protestant - and members of the British Armed Forces. In all, 1,800 people were murdered by the IRA during the so-called "Troubles".

Thus, Guambat was moved from cynicism to dismay to read the following.

It takes a terrorist: Former IRA supporter to chair hearings on U.S. Muslims

In 1985, the Irish government boycotted the St. Patrick's Day parade in New York City, the biggest celebration in the Irish-American calendar. The cause of its umbrage was Peter King, that year's grand marshal and someone the Irish government said was an "avowed" supporter of a terrorist organization, the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

King, then a local politician on Long Island, was one of the most zealous American defenders of the militant IRA and its campaign to drive the British out of Northern Ireland. He described the IRA, which mastered the car bomb as an instrument of urban terror, as a "legitimate force."

And he compared Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the IRA's political wing, to George Washington.

But King sees no parallel between the IRA and violent Islamist extremism, which he describes as a foreign enemy or a foreign-directed enemy. His preferred comparison for the IRA is with the African National Congress led by Nelson Mandela; the IRA, no less than the ANC's military wing, was fighting for community rights and freedom, he says.

"I felt that the IRA, in the context of Irish history, and Sinn Fein were a legitimate force that had to be recognized and you wouldn't have peace without them," King said. "Listen, I think I'm one of the people who brought about peace in Ireland."

"If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the IRA for it," King said in 1985.

King also clashed with prominent Irish-Americans who condemned IRA violence. He dismissed the Friends of Ireland caucus in Congress, which included Sens. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Edward Kennedy, as infused with a "moral arrogance and self-righteousness that would do justice to the royal family."

A quarter-century later, the New York Republican is chairman of the powerful House Homeland Security Committee.

So what's the hubbub, Guambat?

Rally hits Congress’s focus on Muslims, terror

The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Representative Peter King, has said that affiliates of Al Qaeda are radicalizing some American Muslims. King plans hearings starting Thursday on the threat he says they pose.

King, a Republican from Long Island, told CNN’s “State of the Union" yesterday that he sees an international movement with elements in the United States of Muslims becoming more radical and identifying with terrorists.

“I don’t believe there is sufficient cooperation" by American Muslims with law enforcement, King said. “Certainly my dealings with the police in New York and FBI and others say they do not believe they get the same — they do not give the level of cooperation that they need."

This is how an adult addresses the issue: Talking terrorism

Guambat is hopelessly confused:

just who is the terrorist? (See this)

Iran's New Year's Resolution: To just hang in there

Opinion: Meanwhile, Iran is hanging one person every eight hours

Iran is quietly and efficiently hanging people at an alarming rate. The tempo has increased since the New Year, with 66 victims as of today and counting.

Think Afghanistan. Think tanks.

We had nothing to do with Al Qaeda's 9/11 attacks, Afghan Taliban claim

The Afghan Taliban on Monday denied they were mixed up in Al Qaeda's 9/11 plot - or that they would ever target the U.S. homeland.

The bizarre denial came in a letter to "the members of the American Congress" nine years after the attacks were hatched by one-eyed Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.

Ahmadi said the Afghanistan war "began on the basis of an event which is a mystery" and claimed the U.S. still is motivated by 9/11.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/11/09/2010-11-09_hey_we_had_nothing_to_do_with_911_taliban_claim.html#ixzz15pK6QSVU

Think tank: 92% of Afghans never heard of 9/11

A report (PDF) from the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) shows that 92 percent of those surveyed had never heard of the coordinated multiple attacks on US soil on September 11, 2001. It also shows that four in 10 Afghans believe the US is on their soil in order to "destroy Islam or occupy Afghanistan."

The survey also suggests that Afghans are skeptical of their own government's ability to protect them, and have little regard for the fledgling democratic institutions the country is building. Fully 43 percent could not name one positive aspect of democracy, and nearly two-thirds -- 61 percent -- said they didn't think Afghan forces would be able to keep up the fight against the Taliban if and when Western forces withdrew.

“We need to explain to the Afghan people why we are here, and both show and convince them that their future is better with us than with the Taliban,” ICOS lead field researcher Norine MacDonald said in a statement.

Military to deploy heavily armoured tanks to Afghanistan for the first time as the US escalates its assault on the Taliban

The US is escalating its assault on the Taliban with a sharp rise in bombing and missile raids, more relaxed rules on the destruction of civilian property and the deployment of heavily armoured M1 Abrams tanks to Afghanistan for the first time.

The Americans say they plan to deploy a company of M1 Abrams tanks, considered among the most lethal of US military vehicles with an ability to destroy buildings more than a mile away. The fast 68-tonne tanks will be used by US marines in Helmand province where the Americans say the Taliban are equipped with weapons such as rocket propelled grenades.

Under Petraeus's predecessor, General Stanley McChrystal, who was sacked by the White House over criticism of his civilian superiors, the US counter-insurgency strategy laid a heavy emphasis on separating and protecting Afghan civilians from the Taliban.

Although that is not being formally abandoned, Petraeus has decided to take the fight to the insurgents and American forces have taken a more aggressive stance.

McChrystal's emphasis on protecting civilian lives did not sit well with many in the military, including front line troops who were prevented, for example, from destroying houses that might be used to hide roadside bombs or provide shelter for attack. American troops now routinely destroy houses they believe to be a threat. But the shift has angered Karzai who has argued that night raids by special forces and other tactics are fuelling support for the Taliban.

The number of "special operations" missions targeted at Taliban leaders has more than tripled since General David Petraeus took over as Nato commander in Afghanistan in July. Nato planes dropped about 1,000 bombs and missiles last month, more than at any time since the early stages of the war in 2001.

One US official told the Washington Post that the new strategy is forcing back the Taliban.

"We've taken the gloves off, and it has had huge impact," the official said.

Bordering on anarchy

Investigator in Falcon Lake 'Mexico pirates' attack is beheaded: sources

Rolando Flores was the commander of a team of police investigating the disappearance and reported shooting of David Hartley on a Mexican border lake last month.

Hartley, 30, was reportedly shot while jet skiing with his wife Tiffany on Falcon Lake, which straddles the Mexico-Texas border.

Since the incident technically happened in Mexican waters, the U.S. has no jurisdiction over the case and Mexican authorities are handling the investigation.

Flores' headless body was left in a suitcase in front of a Mexican military compound on Tuesday, Texas Rep. Aaron Peña told CNN.

The investigator had been out searching the Falcon Lake area for clues to Hartley's disappearance on Monday, but never made it home.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/10/12/2010-10-12_investigator_in_mexico_pirates_attack_case_at_falcon_lake_killed_beheaded_accord.html?r=news/national#ixzz12CWrHcMf

Policeman possibly linked to Falcon Lake case beheaded

The area is known to be under control of the Zeta drug cartel, which fiercely protects the remotely populated ranchland lining the Texas-Mexico border, as well as the Mexican side of the vast Falcon Lake reservoir.

Mexican investigators have meanwhile expressed fears of searching in Zeta turf.

See Bordering on Afghanistan
//

Searching for whatever in all the wrong places

The sheer buggery of the searches that Guambat has had to endure, along with most everyone else except real terrorists it would seem, has troubled him into posting about it 5 years ago: Search me

And still the aggravation continues:

Daniel Rubin: An infuriating search at Philadelphia International Airport

At what point does an airport search step over the line?

How about when they start going through your checks, and the police call your husband, suspicious you were clearing out the bank account?

That's the complaint leveled by Kathy Parker, a 43-year-old Elkton, Md., woman, who was flying out of Philadelphia International Airport on Aug. 8.

A female Transportation Security Administration officer wanded her and patted her down, she says. Then she was walked over to where other TSA officers were searching her bags.

"Everything in my purse was out, including my wallet and my checkbook. I had two prescriptions in there. One was diet pills. This was embarrassing. A TSA officer said, 'Hey, I've always been curious about these. Do they work?'

What happened next, she says, was more than embarrassing. It was infuriating.

That same screener started emptying her wallet. "He was taking out the receipts and looking at them," she said.

In a side pocket she had tucked a deposit slip and seven checks made out to her and her husband, worth about $8,000.

Two Philadelphia police officers joined at least four TSA officers who had gathered around her. After conferring with the TSA screeners, one of the Philadelphia officers told her he was there because her checks were numbered sequentially, which she says they were not.

"It's an indication you've embezzled these checks," she says the police officer told her. He also told her she appeared nervous. She hadn't before that moment, she says.

She protested when the officer started to walk away with the checks. "That's my money," she remembers saying. The officer's reply? "It's not your money."

Thirty minutes after the police became involved, they decided to let her collect her belongings and board her plane.

When she got home, her husband of 20 years said the police had called and told him that they'd suspected "a divorce situation" and that Kathy Parker was trying to empty their bank account. He set them straight.

The new TSA directive reads: "Screening may not be conducted to detect evidence of crimes unrelated to transportation security." If evidence of a crime is discovered, then TSA agents are instructed to contact the appropriate law enforcement agency.

So just what evidence made them treat Kathy Parker like a criminal?

Lt. Frank Vanore, a Philadelphia police spokesman, said that TSA personnel had called his officers, who found the checks to be "almost sequential." They were "just checking to make sure there was nothing fraudulent," he said. "They were wondering what the story was. The officer got it cleared up."

TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis said the reason Parker was selected for in-depth screening was that her actions at the airport had aroused the suspicion of a behavior detection officer, and that she continued to act "as if she feared discovery."

"We need to ascertain whether fear of discovery is due to the fact a person is concealing a threatening item, be it a dangerous weapon or some kind of explosive," Davis said. "If the search is complete, and shows individuals not to be a threat to the aircraft or fellow passengers, they are free to go."

But why call police? Davis said, "Because her behavior escalated."

"When they decided to search me, there was nothing wrong with my behavior," she said. "I was trying to keep a positive demeanor about everything. My behavior didn't escalate. I did ask questions."

Read more: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/daniel_rubin/20100818_Daniel_Rubin__An_infuriating_search_at_Philadelphia_International_Airport.html?page=2&c=y#ixzz0xOXPqvxG

Asking question: yep, that was her first mistake and her major transgression, Guambat reckons. It's a simple case of power run a-schmuck.

But is this just a one-off and otherwise everything is just hunky-dory? Nope. That commie, ACLU-hugging Wall Street Journal reports this:

Is Tougher Airport Screening Going Too Far?

The Transportation Security Administration has moved beyond just checking for weapons and explosives. It’s now training airport screeners to spot anything suspicious, and then honoring them when searches lead to arrests for crimes like drug possession and credit-card fraud.

But two court cases in the past month question whether TSA searches—which the agency says have broadened to allow screeners to use more judgment—have been going too far.

A federal judge in June threw out seizure of three fake passports from a traveler, saying that TSA screeners violated his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure. Congress authorizes TSA to search travelers for weapons and explosives; beyond that, the agency is overstepping its bounds, U.S. District Court Judge Algenon L. Marbley said.

“The extent of the search went beyond the permissible purpose of detecting weapons and explosives and was instead motivated by a desire to uncover contraband evidencing ordinary criminal wrongdoing,” Judge Marbley wrote.

Judge Marbley said the TSA had no authority to open the envelopes. In his ruling, he said prior cases clearly established that airport security searches should be aimed only at detecting weapons or explosives.

“A checkpoint search tainted by ‘general law enforcement objectives’ such as uncovering contraband evidencing general criminal activity is improper,” the judge wrote.The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Columbus has filed notice that it will appeal the judge’s order.

In the second case, Steven Bierfeldt, treasurer for the Campaign for Liberty, a political organization launched from Ron Paul’s presidential run, was detained at the St. Louis airport because he was carrying $4,700 in a lock box from the sale of tickets, T-shirts, bumper stickers and campaign paraphernalia. TSA screeners quizzed him about the cash, his employment and the purpose of his trip to St. Louis, then summoned local police and threatened him with arrest because he responded to their questions with a question of his own: What were his rights and could TSA legally require him to answer?

TSA said in a statement on the Bierfeldt incident that travelers are required to cooperate with screeners, and while it is legal to carry any amount of money when flying domestically, the agency believes cooperation includes answering questions about property.

Congress charged TSA with protecting passengers and property on an aircraft “against an act of criminal violence or aircraft piracy” and prohibited individuals from carrying a “weapon, explosive or incendiary” onto an airplane. Without search warrants, courts have held that airport security checks are considered reasonable if the search is “no more extensive or intensive than necessary” to detect weapons or explosives.

You can read more for yourself here, or simply watch some of this.

So what's a poor traveler to do? Opening your window and shouting out loud "I'm mad as hell and won't take it any longer" will likely raise your blood pressure, embitter your neighbours and do nothing else at all.

But writing your elected officials, and sending in petitions, well that's about the only democratic response that has any hope for a change.

That's what this patently perturbed guy recommends:

Calling for TSA Reform: Travel Tips by Burleson Consulting

As a frequent traveler I frequently witness abuse from TSA personnel and I believe that it is time to petition the government for reform of this highly-critical homeland security function.

Living -- and dying -- in the Stone Age

Taliban stone Afghan couple to death for adultery

The woman, Sadiqa, was 20 years old and engaged to another man, said Kunduz provincial police chief, General Abdul Raza Yaqoubi. Her lover, 28-year-old Qayum, left his wife to run away with her, and the two had holed up in a friend's house five days ago, said district government head, Mohammad Ayub Aqyar.

Afghan couple stoned to death

Sunday's execution is the first by the Taliban in the Kunduz province and follows last week's call by Afghan clerics for a return to sharia and capital punishments under Islamic law.

"The couple were brought into an open field and about 100 Taliban or supporters of the Taliban gathered and began stoning them just after a Taliban supporter read out a statement of their confession."

The incident comes a week after officials alleged that a woman accused of adultery was flogged and executed in the northwestern Badghis province.

Bordering on Afghanistan

Mexico is beginning to look a lot like Afghanistan, which is bringing that war a lot closer to the home of the gringos. But it didn't happen yesterday, and it won't change manana. (Image left used without the permission of REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic; indulgence prayed for.)

Voice of America reported in 2009, "Representative Loretta Sanchez from California noted that Mexico has now deployed forty-five thousand troops [in the drug war] -- around the same number as the United States has in Afghanistan."


Back in 2006, NPR was telling us, Mexico's Drug Wars Leave Rising Death Toll:

Mexican and U.S. officials are meeting Thursday in Laredo, Texas, to discuss concerns about growing drug violence in Mexico. U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza has advised U.S. citizens to exercise extreme caution when traveling in Mexico because of "the rising level of brutal violence."

More than 1,500 people have died in narcotics-related killings this year alone. In recent months, dozens of people have been beheaded and tortured as cartels across Mexico fight for the lucrative drug-trafficking routes into the United States.

The state of Michoacan, best known outside of Mexico as the place where monarch butterflies winter, has the highest number of people killed — 400 so far this year. Mexican intelligence officials estimate that at least 65,000 people in Michoacan live off the drug trade in some way.

The New Yorker carried a piece in 2008 which tried to go a bit deeper than the usual newsbites we are fed. You should read it all; Guambat dare not copy the whole thing.

Letter from Mexico
Days of the Dead, The new narcocultura, by Alma Guillermoprieto

In Sinaloa, Javier Valdez Cárdenas, a reporter, columnist, and editor for the scrappy local newspaper Río Doce, is an exception to the general indifference.

Having for years made it his business to know a great deal about drug issues, he is a mandatory stop for Mexican and foreign journalists trying to figure out the Culiacán drug scene. Valdez is about forty, stocky, swarthy, and graying, but there is something of the cocky teen-ager in his manner. We had lunch on a scorching Culiacán afternoon, and he recited with studied weariness the stages of his home state’s emergence as the crucible of Mexico’s drug crisis.

It was in the late nineteenth century, he said, that the opium harvest first became visible, encouraged by the arrival of Chinese immigrants who had come to build a railroad. There was, he added, the long-standing local use of marijuana, particularly by Mexican soldiers, who got through the useless hours of patrol and guard duty with the help of a spliff or two. There was the almost certainly apocryphal—but nevertheless widely believed—story that during the Second World War the United States urged Sinaloa to boost its (illegal) production of opium in order to meet the medical needs of G.I.s wounded in combat.

There was, for real, the gigantic marijuana boom in the nineteen-sixties, fuelled by demand in the United States. And, Valdez noted, there was the notable decline in illegal crop harvests in the late seventies, as the result of a series of violent and ambitious assaults on growers carried out by the Mexican federal police with the support of the Mexican Army, and with the energetic encouragement of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration.

“That was when the drug trade really began to expand,” Valdez said. “Because the few traffickers who remained here were killed, but all the rest of them emigrated. Now they’re all over the country.”

Forty years after Operación Intercepción—which was followed by Operación Cooperación, Operación Cóndor, and other drug-war initiatives—as much as thirty per cent of Mexico’s arable land is suspected of being under cultivation for clandestine crops, drug violence in Sinaloa has taken a quantitatively different turn, and the Sinaloa traffickers have generated entire dynasties of criminals who are at war in nearly every one of Mexico’s thirty-one states, as well as Mexico City.

The exiles who left Sinaloa for Tijuana, Guadalajara, and Ciudad Juárez in the nineteen-seventies included members of the Arellano Félix family; a bold operator called Joaquín Guzmán; and a schemer with a talent for international relations, Amado Carrillo.

They and their elders spent the next two decades collaborating with Colombia’s drug kings on clandestine routes for delivering cocaine and marijuana to the United States. Beginning in the mid-nineties, after Pablo Escobar was killed and his main rivals were arrested, the Mexican associates assumed their rightful position in the global drug economy.

The main access points to what is by far the largest market for drugs in the world are, after all, in Mexico. By the turn of the millennium, Mexico was exporting heroin and marijuana, transporting the majority of Colombian cocaine, and collaborating with Chinese traders in the production and export of methamphetamines. The Sinaloa traffickers, who had not necessarily remained friends, controlled access to all the major border points, with the exception of the ones in the Gulf Coast state of Tamaulipas. Those, the government believes, were the domain of Osiel Cárdenas, a particularly violent local trafficker.

With its key border cities of Nuevo Laredo (on the other side of the Rio Grande from Laredo) and Matamoros (across from Brownsville), the state of Tamaulipas is a coveted prize that Osiel Cárdenas’s former associates now control. They are, for the most part, ex-members of an élite Army anti-narcotics unit, operating under the code name los Zetas, and they have drastically upped the ante on all forms of violence; the practice of beheading their victims is one of their signal contributions to the drug trade.

What is certain is that the campaign that has filled Mexican life with daily news of vicious crime—torture, kidnappings, beheadings—is being fought by Chapo Guzmán against his former allies. These include, first of all, the Beltrán Leyva family, which allegedly ordered the murder of Edgar and which, it was reported last week, may have infiltrated the U.S. Embassy in Mexico. But Guzmán is also locked in combat with the remaining members of the Arellano Félix drug clan, in Tijuana; with the brother of the plastic-surgery victim Amado Carrillo; and, above all, with the heirs of the Gulf Coast empire created by the extradited Osiel Cárdenas. The fight is over drug routes, particularly those that end in Tamaulipas and serve as access points to the United States, and over profitable illicit local businesses like prostitution and the smuggling of illegal immigrants. Included in the territorial bounty is the right to control an unknown number of the police and the military—cops and commanders both—who moonlight as the traffickers’ henchmen.

Felipe Calderón, a member by family tradition of the conservative Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), took over as his party’s second President of the current era in December of 2006, following seventy years of uncontested rule by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or PRI.

Calderón’s election was contested, and he was perceived by much of the electorate as a weak leader. The need to overcome this impression may have been a factor in his decision, almost immediately upon taking office, to involve the military in renewed combat against the drug trade—a fight that his predecessor, Vicente Fox, had less visibly pursued.

Troops are now deployed across the country, resulting in mounting tension between the local security forces and the federal troops. Quite a few high-level arrests have been made, but drug crimes have increased wherever the troops patrol, a consequence of what several people I talked to described as “stirring up the chicken coop.” A certain nostalgia for the days when the PRI was in charge and the drug traffickers knew their place would have been unthinkable a couple of years ago, but it has encouraged old PRI-istas to believe that the party can return to power in the 2012 elections.

In large part, though, it was the PRI’s defeat — or, rather, the long-withheld recognition of its defeat — and the dawn of real electoral politics that led to what appears to be the drug trade’s thorough infiltration of the political parties.

This last according to a PRIista whom I shall call Héctor, who enjoyed a long and successful national career before retiring to his home state. In the old days, much of the money for what was essentially a ceremonial presentation of the candidate to his subjects came from the vast coffers of the one-party state. Modern media campaigns put an end to all that.

“Thanks to the television stations, our campaign needs multiplied,” Héctor explained. “A congressman’s electoral campaign can now run to sixteen, seventeen million dollars.” Where is such money to come from? Informed opinion has it that each of the major drug groups now has ties to significant numbers of politicians in its party of choice, if not to the party itself.

As for the current military offensive, Héctor gave a little snort of disgust. “When you see what amounts to a military parade in these towns, in which the Army is trooping along on the main avenue while on the side streets people are killing each other . . . when I see how these people”—the traffickers—“are climbing up right into the very beard of the state, I think, Holy fuck! This country could really collapse!”

There remains the problem of corruption. Several new vetting agencies, Monterrubio said, will conduct ongoing polygraph tests and background checks on all law-enforcement personnel. In the old days, there was a de-facto agreement between the government and the traffickers that the traffickers would kill each other among themselves. “But now,” Monterrubio said, “the traffickers have realized that they can use the murders to send a message through the media. It’s narco-terror.”

“In the end, it’s all absurd,” Froylán Enciso, a friend of mine who is a historian specializing in the drug trade, remarked the other day. “The class solidarity between the troops and the growers is far greater than the soldiers’ need to obey orders.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/10/081110fa_fact_guillermoprieto?currentPage=all#ixzz0u76B7iGe

As said above, you should read the whole story. Get the goods on the guys and their hoods.

But, to get a taste of the culture of Mexico you probably don't know, be sure to read the part about Enriqueta Romero Romero, known as Queta, or Quetita, her shrine of the Holy Death, and her scrawny little plastic La Santa Muerte.

Now this is a small extraction from an article posted over 3 years ago, in May 2007, by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs:

Mexico’s Drug War: A Society at Risk – Soldiers versus Narco-Soldiers

Today, Mexico is a country dangerously devoid of any security; a country which cannot defend itself against a pathological danger that has rendered its citizens completely vulnerable to what is little better than a state within a state. Along with the endemic corruption is an unacceptable level of domestic and imported crime and a surge of weapons for which a deeply complicit Washington shamefacedly does little better than shrugs its hands.

A January 29 article in the Mexican daily Reforma found that between 2001 and November 2006, a total of 99,767 members of the armed forces deserted, of which 88,889 were from army units. This means that, on average, 46 soldiers deserted every day from the Mexican army.

It is also important to note that the military salaries for troops as well as non-commissioned officers is low, while the annual budget for the entire armed forces is estimated to be a modest $3.1 billion. The question remains as to how a military with no direct external enemies manages to spend even this relatively modest budget.

More mysterious and less transparent than the regular Mexican military are Los Zetas. Little is known about the members of the “military wing” of various drug cartels, in part in order to spare the Mexican military of the embarrassment that scores of former special forces have been lured into being criminals for much higher wages. It is known that Los Zetas are more often than not former members of the Mexican Special Air Mobile Group.

Despite some successes as a result of the military’s crackdown operations, Mexican drug cartels do not appear to be visibly shaken as the violence at their hands continues to rage.

In 2006, over 4,000 were killed in Mexico in drug-related violence. So far this year, according to various unofficial Mexican newspaper accounts, between 900 and 1000 people have fallen.

On May 16 alone, over 30 people died across the country in cartel-related violence in the bloodiest day since Calderón took office. A shootout that day between the Mexican police and drug hitmen (it is unclear if they were Zetas) left 15 suspected criminals dead, along with five policemen and two civilians. The firefight took place on a ranch in the state of Sonora, around 100km from the border with Arizona.

Now, to November 2008: Mexico's Spreading Drug Violence

Mexico's economy is slowing. But one sector is doing a brisk business -- the funeral industry near the U.S. border (Reuters).

Since Mexican President Felipe Calderon began his offensive against drug cartels and organized criminals in December 2006, drug-related killings have escalated, as has the need for undertakers.

He has deployed over thirty thousand soldiers across the country, purged several police forces of corrupt members, and pushed a judicial reform package through Congress. But the violence has only mounted.

More than four thousand people have died in drug-related violence this year, up from more than 2,500 deaths in 2007. The escalation is so great that drug gangs are widely suspected of causing the plane crash in early November that killed the interior minister

The drug cartels' infiltration of the police, judiciary, and political parties has severely compromised the government's ability to fight the drug cartels, some experts say.

"International drug cartels pose an extraordinary threat both here and abroad," said U.S. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey in September 2008. Mexico's drug gangs could be a greater threat to the United States than global terrorism, adds John P. Sullivan of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department.

Calderon has sought U.S. assistance to tackle the problem. A new aid package known as the Merida Initiative (PDF) will provide $400 million in equipment and communications systems this year, with plans for further funding in the next two years. Some Mexican and U.S. analysts criticize the package for its focus on equipment rather than training and institution building. Others note that the package does not address how to reduce U.S. drug demand.

In early 2009 the Voice of America reported Growing Drug Violence Shakes Mexico, Threatens to Spill Into US

More than six thousand people died last year in Mexico's drug wars. So far this year the violence has only gotten worse. More than one thousand people have already been killed.

Police have become common targets, especially in border cities in northern Mexico.

American officials recently announced results from an operation aimed at Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, which also sends drugs to Canada. They announced hundreds of arrests in the United States and the seizure of twenty-three tons of drugs.

And, this week, President Obama nominated the police chief from Seattle as the new director for the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Around the same time, McClatchey news reported on all the talk but not any action, Drug violence pushes Mexico to top of U.S. security concerns:

The administration announced Tuesday that it's sending more federal agents and high-tech equipment to the U.S.-Mexican border in an attempt to blunt violence in both countries. One aim is to stanch the flow of U.S. weapons into Mexico, which Mexican officials say is fueling the drug wars.

"This issue requires immediate action," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on Tuesday. "We are guided by two very clear objectives. First, we are going to do everything we can to prevent the violence in Mexico from spilling over across the border. And second, we will do all in our power to help (Mexican) President (Felipe) Calderon crack down on these drug cartels."

Omitted from the steps, which build on programs begun under the Bush administration, is the deployment of 1,000 additional National Guard troops requested by Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer.

Perry and Brewer praised the White House announcement, but reiterated their requests for National Guard troops to back up border agents and local law enforcement agencies.

The dispatching of more customs, border and federal firearms agents to the border comes on the eve of a string of high-level U.S. visits to Mexico, beginning with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday and Thursday. She'll be followed next week by Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder, and later in April by Obama.

Clinton's talks also will focus on the global economic crisis and a long-running dispute over the entry of Mexican trucks into the U.S. under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

It's the drug violence that's dominated headlines and captured U.S. political attention, however.

Guambat reckons it's hard not to notice the headlines, like these from today:

Mexico car bomb: 'Colombianization' of Mexico nearly complete

A well-orchestrated car bomb exploded in Ciudad Juarez late Thursday, across from El Paso, Texas, killing at least three and sparking panic among the Mexican population. It is the first known use of a car bomb against authorities and the local population, and marks a troubling new level of violence as traffickers seeking to control the drug trade battle one another and Mexican authorities.

Drug Gang Suspected in Mexico Party Massacre

The gunmen, who struck around 1:30 a.m., were traveling in a convoy of eight cars, witnesses told local media. Without warning they entered the party and began firing indiscriminately before escaping.

“They shot anything that moved,” according to a local police source quoted in the newspaper El Norte.

Among the dead were five women. Although the vast majority of the nearly 25,000 people killed since President Felipe Calderón began his attack on drug gangs in December 2006 have been men, women have increasingly become targets.

The police said that 18 people were wounded in the birthday party attack.

Meanwhile, Inside Mexico's Drug War, Americans Allege Abuse

Two Americans were driving back to El Paso, Texas, last December after an afternoon across the border in Ciudad Juárez. A few blocks from the border, they were surrounded by Mexican army trucks and pulled from their Dodge Ram.

Two soldiers later testified that they drove the two Americans to a military compound on the outskirts of town, questioned them briefly, then turned them over to civilian authorities. The Americans were charged with possession of marijuana with intent to sell.

Those two men — Shohn Huckabee, 23 years old, and Carlos Quijas, 36 — are being held in a Ciudad Juárez jail. They tell a different story about what happened that night. They say Mexican soldiers planted the marijuana in their truck. When they arrived at the military base, they say, they were blindfolded, tied up, hit with rifle butts, shocked with electricity and threatened with death.

Mr. Huckabee says he was subjected to similar tactics. "I believe what was done to me was torture," he said in an interview. "When I did not answer their questions, they shocked me with a wire that was in my hands. My whole body froze up. The pain went from bearable to a point where I couldn't even talk."

Mexican prosecutors say the two men were caught red-handed. Two soldiers involved in their arrest testified at their trial that they counted 99 packages of marijuana in the suitcases, weighing more than 100 pounds.

Messrs. Huckabee and Quijas say they've never been involved with drugs and would never have tried to cross the border with two suitcases of marijuana. During their trial, they produced three witnesses who testified that they saw soldiers put suitcases into Mr. Huckabee's truck.

The army previously has dismissed complaints of abuse as the work of people allied with drug traffickers who want to drive soldiers out of Ciudad Juárez. "Many times they make human-rights complaints because they want to limit our capacity for action and besmirch the institution," said Brigadier Gen. Jesús Hernández Pérez, commander of the 4th Artillery Regiment, in an interview late last year.

The article contains much more detail of the incident. It won't make you want to vacation in Mexico.

There's just so much more that could be said, and there are plenty of people with other agendas to do so. For Guambat, he's just sad. He really likes Mexico and its people. He's going to retire back into his burrow now and mix up a jug of Margaritas.

Of BP and Bhopal

There is no doubt that BP is in Deepwater Doodoo, described as "the worst spill in U.S. history, which has now affected 120 miles of coastline."

BP will no doubt take a financial hit of some small (in the scheme of things) proportion: BP oil spill clean-up costs rise to $1.25bn.

But, in the other hand, "BP's first-quarter [that's only 3 months, mind you] replacement cost profit was $5,598 million, compared with $2,387 million a year ago, an increase of 135%."

In the larger picture it might be said, "the oil company posted profits of $26bn last year".

Hell, even the shareholders might have to pony up lost opportunity costs if the political fallout from the Deepwater Disaster gets out of hand: Gulf of Mexico oil spill: BP to mull politics of shareholder dividend payments.

To be sure, the BP's British cheerleaders are doing their part to mitigate any damages to BP, if not the Gulf Coast. Simply look at that last story's headline from the UK's Telegraph. It wimply characterizes the Deepwater Disaster as a simple "oil spill". Oh Blimey, did I spot your rug? Oh tish!

Despite Tony Hayward's "idiotic remarks", the BP CEO is sounding almost Churchilian in his stiff upper lip fortitude: BP's Tony Hayward: I'm a Brit. I can take it.

The British bristling is perhaps best distilled in this bit of bloody whinging Pom pub talk from Bruce Anderson:

Any fair-minded person who examines the Gulf of Mexico oil spillage is compelled to two conclusions. First, that there is no evidence of wrongdoing by BP. Second, that the President of the United States has behaved disgracefully.

The history of the modern oil industry is punctuated by disasters: Exxon Valdez, Piper Alpha, Texas City. The history of modern aviation is also punctuated by disasters, too

In the Gulf of Mexico, there are difficulties with fishing and tourism. These should not be exaggerated. Some of the lemming media would have us believe that the Louisiana coast is inhabited by pre-lapsarian fisher-folk whose arcadian tranquility has now been violated by the brutalities of BP. Has anyone ever met an insurance claimant who understated his loss?

The real threat to Louisiana's economy, and to America's, comes from President Obama.

In the Liberal media, Mr Obama's rhetorical skills have been grotesquely overrated. He is not a good speaker. Presidents Reagan and Clinton were naturals, while George Bush Jnr could give a superb performance from a prepared text. But Barack Obama's delivery is cold and introverted. The presidency is a strange office, its incumbents caught between regular illusions of omnipotence and equally regular frustrations of Congressional constraint. The only way to break out of Lilliput is to use the White House as a bully pulpit. This President cannot do that, because he cannot make Americans feel good about themselves.

There may be an explanation for this. Nobody knows what Mr Obama believes. During his brief period in the Senate, he took ultra-left wing positions on almost everything. This delighted Democrat activists, and turned him into a presidential candidate. Once he had secured his base, he dumped almost all the leftism in pursuit of electability. That means a chronic political crisis.

Instead, he has to defame BP. To listen to Mr Obama, one might have thought that BP was run by George III and Lord North, with Lord Cornwallis in charge of safety – and there is worse.

It has been 10 years since BP stopped calling itself British Petroleum (patriots could be tempted to conclude that its present misfortunes are divine punishment). Yet the President constantly reverts to the old name, as if "British" were a term of abuse. Not only is Britain the US's most important ally. BP has 24,000 American employees and 10,000 British ones. So when he denigrates this great company, Mr Obama is damaging US interests as well as British ones.

The international left has always hated the oil industry; the oil well and the motor car are two of capitalism's principal heraldic devices. It might have been hoped that the anti-oil nonsense would subside with the blowout of Marxism: not so. The poisonous gases merely found another vent: the extremities of the Green movement, and especially Greenpeace, which would like to deny mankind the energy resources upon which civilisation depends.

So, on this note of poisonous gases found in other vents, Guambat segues to another gas: acetylene.

The Union Carbide & Carbon Corp. (UCC) was formed in 1917 from the combination of four companies: Union Carbide Co. (incorporated 1898), Linde Air Products Co. (incorporated 1907), National Carbon Co., Inc. (incorporated 1899), and Prest-O-Lite Co., Inc. (incorporated 1913). The new entity was organized as a holding company, with its four members acting relatively autonomously and cooperating where their businesses converged.

This is part of the beginnings and history of Union Carbide, a US company, not at all British, although both companies might be more critically aligned as Global powerhouses:

The merger combined what had often been competing interests to form an industrial chemicals powerhouse. The oldest member of the quartet, Union Carbide, had been formed to manufacture calcium carbide, which was used in the production of metal alloys. A by-product of alloying calcium carbide with aluminum was acetylene, a gas that company executives hoped would prove useful for street and household lighting. But when Thomas Edison's electric incandescent light bulbs proved more practical for most lighting, it looked as if Union Carbide's acetylene lighting business was obsolete. Luckily, a French researcher discovered that acetylene could be burned in oxygen to produce a hot, metal-cutting flame. A whole new market for the gas emerged, and UCC was ready to take advantage of it.

Union Carbide had been involved with the Linde Air Products Co. through joint acetylene experiments for about six years before the formation of the UCC holding company. As one of America's first oxygen-producing concerns and (after 1917) part of one of the country's largest chemical companies, Linde soon became the world's largest producer of industrial gases like acetylene, hydrogen and nitrogen. These gases formed the foundation of the petrochemical industry.

With combined research efforts and a national push for new technologies to help win World War I, new developments came in rapid succession at Union Carbide. New products included batteries for portable radios and corrosion and heat-resistant ferroalloys that strengthened the steel used to build skyscrapers, bridges, and automobiles. The government's need for ethylene during "the great war" also generated interest in hydrocarbon byproducts. These substances were made from calcium carbide and would later become the raw materials for the production of plastics, synthetic rubber, fibers, solvents, explosives, and industrial chemicals. In 1919 the first production of synthetic ethylene began. Ethylene would develop into the industry's most important industrial hydrocarbon, eventually used in polyethylene (plastics), polystyrene (styrofoam), and antifreeze, among other products. Union Carbide's Prestone brand ethylene glycol soon became the top-selling antifreeze, a position it held throughout the twentieth century.

Polyethylene, a plastic used in squeeze bottles (high-density polyethylene), as well as in films and sheeting (low-density polyethylene), became Union Carbide's largest dollar-volume product after World War II. An olefins division was set up in the 1950s to supply low-cost raw materials for the chemicals and plastics industry in the 1950s. For several years the company sold these plastics to other manufacturers. But Carbide finally capitalized on this discovery in 1964, when Glad branded plastic wraps, bags, and straws were introduced. Within just four years, Glad became the leading brand in its market.

By the 1960s, Union Carbide occupied the top spot in many of its primary fields, including industrial gases, carbon electrodes for industrial electric furnaces, batteries, atomic energy, polyethylene plastic, and ferroalloys. In 1965 the conglomerate's sales topped $2 billion for the first time. And from 1956 to 1966, Union Carbide parlayed a few plants in a dozen countries into 60 major subsidiary and associated companies with plants in 30 countries serving over 100 markets. International operations of the conglomerate contributed 29 percent of its annual sales, and mid-decade the company name was changed to Union Carbide International Co. to reflect its increased global presence.

Union Carbide was still the United States' second-largest chemical producer, but it invariably lagged behind most of its competitors in terms of growth and profitability during this period. Misguided investments in petroleum, pharmaceuticals, semi-conductors, mattresses, and undersea equipment, combined with a $1 billion petrochemicals complex at Taft, Louisiana, which ran in the red for the last three years of the 1960s, further tarnished Union Carbide's standing. Not surprisingly, the conglomerate's stock dropped from $75 in 1965 to $45 in 1968 as the company "earned a reputation for aimless fumbling," according to Business Week.

Unfortunately for Union Carbide, environmental complaints about the company's Marietta, Ohio, ferroalloy plant came to a head in 1971, when consumer champion Ralph Nader brought a decade of local residents' complaints into the national spotlight. For four years, the conglomerate had largely ignored public and government efforts to make it clean up several plants that were polluting the air over West Virginia. Union Carbide's resistance to outside influence gave it the public image of a reactionary bully concerned only with profits and scornful of the environment, a stigma that would haunt the company for years to come. In 1971, UCC capitulated to federal orders that it immediately use more expensive low-sulphur coal to reduce noxious sulfur dioxide emissions by 40 percent. The company was given a fall 1974 deadline to install $8 million in advanced emissions scrubbers.

From 1967 to 1973, physical output of chemicals and plastics rose 60 percent, while per-pound production costs were cut by one-third. William S. Sneath continued these trends when he became chairman and CEO in 1977. Still, the company found itself increasingly strapped for cash. Steadily rising expenses in Europe resulted in a $32 million loss in 1978, which forced Carbide to divest virtually all of its European petrochemicals and plastics operations. That same year, UCC was forced by its creditors to retire $292 million in long-term debt, which forced it to borrow another $300 million in 1979. That year, Carbide's Standard & Poor's credit rating fell from AA to A+, and its stock fell as low as 42 percent below its $61 book value.

Chairman Sneath embarked on another round of cost-cutting in 1980, pruning the executive staff by 1,000 and divesting a total of 39 businesses. Sneath retained six primary businesses: graphite electrodes, batteries, agricultural products, polyethylene, and industrial gases. By 1980, Carbide had 116,000 employees at over 500 plants, mines, and laboratories in 130 countries, bringing in over $9 billion in annual sales. Sneath embarked on a plan to invest profits into high-margin consumer goods and specialty chemicals.

The massive disaster at Union Carbide's pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, in December 1984 struck the corporation just as it was beginning to make lasting strides toward profitability.

UCC had established battery plants in India as early as the mid-1920s, and had seven plants with 5,000 employees there by 1967. India's chronic food shortages precipitated a government-sponsored "Green Revolution" in the 1960s, with the country's socialist government eager to join Union Carbide in establishing pesticide and fertilizer plants. In 1975 the Indian government granted Union Carbide a license to manufacture pesticides, and a plant was built on the sparsely populated outskirts of the regional capital of Bhopal. The plant drew more than 900,000 people to Bhopal by 1984.

Union Carbide officials estimated that at least five tons of methyl isocyanate (MIC) seeped out of the plant in just 30 minutes one day in December 1984. The accident killed over 2,300 people and permanently injured another 10,000. Newsweek magazine called the incident "the worst industrial accident in history."

Five senior Indian executives of Union Carbide were arrested. The Indian government charged Warren Anderson, chairman of Union Carbide's board, with "corporate and criminal liability" and accused the Union Carbide management of "cruel and wanton negligence." Many class action suits were filed against Union Carbide on behalf of the victims. In April 1988, a court in India ordered Carbide to pay $192 million in "interim" damages. Union Carbide and the Indian government reached a much-criticized settlement for $470 million in 1989.

In addition to the human toll, the tragedy set off a chain reaction at Carbide: by 1985, the company's market value dropped by two-thirds to less than $3 billion, and GAF Corp.'s Samuel Heyman accumulated enough stock to mount a hostile takeover bid of $5.3 billion. After working for two decades to expand its consumer products lines, Carbide was forced to sell off its Consumer Products Division, a profitable group that included Glad trash bags, Eveready batteries, Prestone, and STP automotive products, for $840 million. The corporation borrowed $2.8 billion, raised a total of $3.6 billion in asset sales, and repurchased $4.4 billion in stock to repulse Heyman's attack.

Carbide scaled back to the three main business lines--chemicals and plastics, industrial gases, and carbon products--that were once its strength, and benefited from sharply reduced interest rates and falling costs of petrochemical feedstocks. But the company had lost the safety net provided by its consumer products.

In 1989 Carbide advanced slightly on its long journey toward financial recovery. Net income was $573 million. Profits in the chemicals and plastics divisions put Carbide in the number two spot on the list of the top ten publicly traded companies in America. The company succeeded in reducing its debt-to-capital ratio to below 50 percent, and invested $181 million in research and development. That year, the company introduced its proprietary LIHDE Oxygen Combustion System, which used pure oxygen to burn organic wastes.

As a fitting mark to Union Carbide's 75th anniversary in 1992, the company had the year's best-performing stock on the Dow Jones list of 30 industrials. Carbide was half way to achieving its $400 million cost reduction goal, and had endured a loss of $187 million. The dramatically smaller corporation had shifted its focus from diversification to becoming a low-cost leader in basic chemicals.

This strategy included uncharacteristic environmentalism: Carbide anticipated "inevitable government mandates on waste reduction and recycling" when it started reprocessing plastic bottles in 1992. After Bhopal, UCC's efforts helped raise industry performance standards and levels worldwide, and the company was praised for its "Responsible Care" efforts.

In 1999, Dow Chemical bought out Union Carbide, and thereafter, became a wholly owned subsidiary of Dow Chemical Company on February 6, 2001, following completion of its settlement and opening of The Bhopal Memorial Hospital and Research Centre, ending its chapter in India.

Fast forward into the past and present:

Court Convicts Seven in Bhopal Gas Leak

A district court in Bhopal found seven former Union Carbide India Ltd. officials guilty of "causing death by negligence" in the gas leak there 25 years ago, the first verdict in the only Indian criminal case against the company related to the disaster.

The defendants were found guilty of failing to prevent the leak at a Union Carbide pesticide plant, sentenced to two years in prison and fined 100,000 rupees ($2,130), India's Central Bureau of Investigation said.

The verdicts will likely be appealed.

Victims' representatives say the gas leak, India's worst industrial disaster, killed between 8,000 and 10,000 people in the days following the accident, has resulted in the deaths of 25,000 people, and that 100,000 people continue to suffer from chronic illnesses stemming from gas exposure.

The government of Madhya Pradesh, the central Indian state where Bhopal is situated, puts the death toll at 3,787.

Union Carbide has said its officials weren't involved in the day-to-day running of the plant and therefore weren't subject to the jurisdiction of the Indian court.

"Union Carbide's responsibility—along with the rest of the chemical industry—is to work hard every day to prevent a tragedy like this from ever happening again," the company said in a statement after the verdict.

The statement added, "After 25 years, what are needed most now in Bhopal are prompt and effective government attention to claims that victims and their families are still suffering and a cleanup of the Bhopal site by the Madhya Pradesh State Government, which controls the site."

Bhopal gas leak: Each victim has got around Rs 12000 [that's a bit more than US$250]

The world's worst ever industrial disaster took place on the night of 2-3 December 1984, when a tank full of deadly methyl isocyanate gas exploded in a fertilizer plant owned by UCIL. Over 40,000 kg of the toxic, colorless gas wafted over the sleeping city. People who breathed the gas suffered symptoms ranging from suffocation, blindness and vomiting to spontaneous abortions, lung, kidney, liver and brain damage. Initially, nearly 4,000 people died and over a lakh suffered injuries. Latest estimates put number of deaths at over 20,000 and injured at nearly 6 lakh. [A lakh is roughly 100,000.]

The highly reactive gas is supposed to be kept at temperatures below 5°C, under pressure. However, the refrigeration system had been shut down since June 1984. The tank and valves that regulate gas flow were also defective. There was no safety system in place. There was no warning system for localities surrounding the factory. Lessons had not been drawn from earlier accidents in the same plant.

A BBC account of the events at Bhopal on December 3, 1984, described the situation:

Hundreds of people have died from the effects of toxic gases which leaked from a chemical factory near the central Indian city of Bhopal.

The accident happened in the early hours of this morning at the American-owned Union Carbide Pesticide Plant three miles (4.8 km) from Bhopal.

Mr Y P Gokhale, managing director of Union Carbide in India, said that methyl isocyanate gas (MIC) had escaped when a valve in the plant's underground storage tank broke under pressure.

This caused a deadly cloud of lethal gas to float from the factory over Bhopal, which is home to more than 900,000 people - many of whom live in slums.

Chaos and panic broke out in the city and surrounding areas as tens of thousands of people attempted to escape.

More than 20,000 people have required hospital treatment for symptoms including swollen eyes, frothing at the mouth and breathing difficulties.

Thousands of dead cats, dogs, cows and birds litter the streets and the city's mortuaries are filling up fast.

Bhopal resident, Ahmed Khan, said: "We were choking and our eyes were burning. We could barely see the road through the fog, and sirens were blaring.

"We didn't know which way to run. Everybody was very confused.

"Mothers didn't know their children had died, children didn't know their mothers had died and men didn't know their whole families had died."

Another account reported,

The leak was caused by a series of mechanical and human errors in the pesticide producing plant, operated by the Union Carbide Corporation, a U.S.-based multinational. For a full hour, the plant's personnel and safety equipment failed to detect the massive leak, and when an alarm was finally sounded most of the harm had already been done. To make matters worse, local health officials had not been educated on the toxicity of the chemicals used at the Union Carbide plant and therefore there were no emergency procedures in place to protect Bhopal's citizens in the event of a chemical leak. If the victims had simply placed a wet towel over their face, most would have escaped serious injury.

As near as Guambat could discern, no one blamed the US President for the situation.


So, to put this into perspective, in terms of real damage, the Deepwater Doodoo is a big stink, but the numbers of human deaths, particularly the "collateral damage", resulting from it pale in comparison to the Union Carbide disaster.

But otherwise, how are the similarities shaping up, if at all? It will be intriguing to see if BP goes the course of Union Carbide, or if we've now learned from past disasters.

Whatever will come of the Deepwater Doodoo, as for Bhopal, the British Broadcasting Corporation is reporting,

Rashida Bee, president of the Bhopal Gas Women's Workers group, told the AFP news agency that "justice will be done in Bhopal only if individuals and corporations responsible are punished in an exemplary manner".