Big+Copy+and+Paste

__MEXICAN DRUG WAR__ **1. ** A recent U.S. government report suggests that "Two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico."  **2. ** Mexico has one of the highest kidnapping rates in the world: An average of 70 people are abducted each month. **3. ** More than 1,100 guns found discarded at Mexico shooting scenes or confiscated from cartel gangsters were traced to Texas gun merchants in 2007. **4. ** One of Mexico's most notorious drug kingpins, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, escaped a maximum security prison in 2001 by driving out in a laundry truck.  **5. ** This year Forbes magazine included Joaquin Guzman, a Mexican drug lord, on its annual billionaires' list.  **6. ** A drug cartel hood named "The Cook" reportedly dissolved the bodies of 300 victims in acid as part of the grisly work he committed for crime bosses. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">7. ** The FBI has reported 75 open cases of Americans kidnapped in Mexico.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">8. ** In a poll by the daily newspaper La Reforma, Mexico City residents ranked public insecurity as a worse crisis than the economy by a 5-to-1 margin. In the past year, 20 percent were crime victims. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"> <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">9. ** In the past year, Mexico's civil drug war has claimed some 6,300 lives.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">10. ** Grammy-nominated singer Sergio Gomez was kidnapped and his genitals were burned with a blowtorch in December 2007, presumably for singing narco corridos, or "drug ballads."

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">11. The U.S. federal government spent over $15 billion dollars in 2010 on the War on Drugs, at a rate of about $500 per second.12. State and local governments spent at least another 25 billion dollars.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">People
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">Arrested for Drug Law Offenses <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">13. Arrests for drug law violations this year are expected to exceed the 1,663,582 arrests of 2009. Law enforcement made more arrests for drug abuse violations (an estimated 1.6 million arrests, or 13.0 percent of the total number of arrests) than for any other offense in 2009.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">14. Someone is arrested for violating a drug law every 19 seconds. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; line-height: 0px; overflow: hidden;">

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Arrested for Cannabis
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">15. Police arrested an estimated 858,408 persons for cannabis violations in 2009. Of those charged with cannabis violations, approximately 89 percent were charged with possession only. An American is arrested for violating cannabis laws every 30 seconds.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; line-height: 0px; overflow: hidden;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">Incarcerated

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">16. Since December 31, 1995, the U.S. prison population has grown an average of 43,266 inmates per year. About 25 per cent are sentenced for drug law violations.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">17. For the last 20 years, the United States has been waging a so-called "War on Drugs". This war has been, at best, ineffective; at worst, an **<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">unmitigated disaster **. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">18.The direct cost of the War on Drugs is something like
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">40 or 50 billion dollars per year

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; line-height: 0px; overflow: hidden;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">28. 2 million people in prisongiving us the highest incarceration rate on the **<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">planet ** <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">29. 100 million of us have used them

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">30. The U.S. federal government spent over $15 billion dollars in 2010 on the War on Drugs, at a rate of about $500 per second.State and local governments spent at least another 25 billion dollars.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">31. Arrests for drug law violations this year are expected to exceed the 1,663,582 arrests of 2009. Law enforcement made more arrests for drug abuse violations (an estimated 1.6 million arrests, or 13.0 percent of the total number of arrests) than for any other offense in 2009.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">32. Someone is arrested for violating a drug law every 19 seconds.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">33. Police arrested an estimated 858,408 persons for cannabis violations in 2009. Of those charged with cannabis violations, approximately 89 percent were charged with possession only. An American is arrested for violating cannabis laws every 30 seconds.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">34. Since December 31, 1995, the U.S. prison population has grown an average of 43,266 inmates per year. About 25 per cent are sentenced for drug law violations.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">35. After 40 years, the United States' war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">36. There’s a savage struggle between Mexican and theU.S.for control over the lucrative drug trade to theU.S.Mexico's most violent city,Ciudad Juarez, where more than 9,000 people have died in a horrifying drug war since 2008, is renaming itself Heroica Ciudad Juarez, or Heroic City of Juarez. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">Myths <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">37. Mexico is descending into widespread and indiscriminate violence.The Mexican government lacks the resources to fight the cartels.Endemic corruption allows the cartels to flourish.Drug violence is a Mexican problem, not a U.S.one. Mexican drug violence is spilling over into the United States. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">38. U.S. officials have long been concerned about the mindless violence bred by Mexico’s bloody and brutal drug wars, they have a new reason to worry: Americans are increasingly getting caught in the deadly crossfire. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">39. But some U.S. law enforcement officials closest to the border say that new aggressiveness by the cartels — including threats to target U.S. law enforcement officers — and increasing drug gang violence on the U.S. side of the border mean that moreAmericans will die if the U.S. and Mexico can’t soon turn the tide. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">40. On April 6th police discovered mass graves near San Fernando, a town in Tamaulipas state near the border with the United States, which so far have yielded 183 bodies. Two weeks later hidden tombs were discovered in the north-western city of Durango from which 100 corpses have so far been extracted. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">41. The Tamaulipas victims were apparently killed with sledgehammers or burned alive. They included a car salesman, a social worker and a Guatemalan migrant. Investigators believe they were kidnapped from buses to be robbed and raped by the Zetas cartel. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">42. The authorities’ failure to stop the slaughter, even as unclaimed luggage mounted at bus terminals, is stunning: only last summer, 72 migrants were found murdered near San Fernando, supposedly by the same cartel. However, police did free two groups of kidnapped migrants elsewhere in the state this month. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">43. The situation in Northern Mexico is devolving into chaos as prohibition-created organizations fight for control of the lucrative <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">44. Northern Mexico drug route into the United States. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">45. The Mexican government is powerless to end the violence. Overpowered authorities basically have abandoned the area, recognizing their inability to restore any sort of order to the area. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">46. Police first warned that the march was illegal, but then announced they would only arrest people breaking the drug laws.. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">47. "There is a lot of biased information about marijuana and this is the reason why much of the public does not understand the substance," she said. "The cannabis plant can be used to produce paper. This will save a lot of trees because the cannabis plant can be harvested three times a year," she added. 48. Ruiz, 21, a photographer with Monclova-based news daily <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: block; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">La Prensa , was found fatally shot in Monterrey, Nueva León state, early Friday morning, according to CPJ interviews and press reports. He had been abducted the previous night along with José Luis Cerda Meléndez, a Televisa-Monterrey entertainment show host, as the two were leaving the station's studios in a vehicle driven by Cerda's cousin, Juan Gómez Meléndez. According to news reports, unidentified armed men forced the three out of the vehicle and into a van. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none;">49. New York, March 29, 2011--The Committee to Protect Journalists deplores the shooting death of Mexican photographer Luis Emanuel Ruiz Carrillo on Friday and calls on Mexican authorities to launch a thorough investigation into his killing. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #810081; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">__[]__ <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">10 interesting facts: <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">50. A recent U.S. government report suggests that "Two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">51. **Mexico has one of the highest kidnapping rates in the world: An average of 70 people are abducted each month. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"> <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">52. **More than 1100 guns found discarded at Mexico shooting scenes or confiscated from cartel gangsters were traced to Texas gun merchants in 2007. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">53. **One of Mexico's most notorious drug kingpins, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, escaped a maximum security prison in 2001 by driving out in a laundry truck **<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">5. ** This year Forbes magazine included Joaquin Guzman, a mexican drug lord, on its annual billionaires' list. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">54. A drug cartel hood named The Cook reportedly dissolved the bodies of 300 victims in acid as part of the grisly work he committed for crime bosses. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">55. ** The FBI has reported 75 open cases of Americans kidnapped in Mexico. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">56. ** In a poll by the daily newspaper La Reforma, Mexico City residents ranked public insecurity as a worse crisis than the economy by a 5-to-1 margin. In the past year, 20 percent were crime victims. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">57. ** In the past year, Mexico's civil drug war has clamied some 6.300 lives. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">58. **Grammy-nominated singer Sergio Gomez was kidnapped and his genitals were burned with a blowtorch in December 2007, presumably for singing narco corridos, or "drug ballads."

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">5 Hidden Facts:
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">59. All of the confiscated drug trafficker loot is being channeled to a Mexico City museum, which now houses acquisitions including high-tech spyware and diamond-encrusted pistols. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">60. A record number of confiscated weapons were traced to U.S. retailers in 2008. The cross-border bullet trade is also flourishing, and since there are no special regulations on bullets, there is not much U.S. officials can do to stop it. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">61. Kidnappers and cartels regularly use Twitter and other online social networks to communicate, making government officials consider restrictions on these sites. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"> <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">62. While Mexicans who cross the border claiming political asylum are often expelled, an increasing number of wealthy and entrepreneurial Mexicans are securing a special class of U.S. visa that allows them to flee Mexico by investing in American enterprises. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">63. The drug violence is expanding beyond Mexico. The cartels are reaching into the Caribbean and entering Africa and Muslim countries, where emissaries can secure the materials to make methamphetamines they can ship back to South and Central America.

Time line:
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">64. 2001 - Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman escapes from a Mexican prison in a laundry van. Mexico's most-wanted drug lord, he builds a coalition of drug gangs from the western state of Sinaloa and vows to take control of Mexico's vast drug trade. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"> <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">65. 2002 - Police weaken the Tijuana cartel by killing drug boss Ramon Arellano Felix and arresting one of his brothers.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">66. 2003 - Mexican soldiers capture Osiel Cardenas, leader of the Gulf cartel based in eastern Mexico, after a shootout between troops and gunmen in the border city of Matamoros.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">67. 2004 - Trying to take advantage of Cardenas' arrest, Guzman sends well-armed enforcers to border cities south of Texas to take over Gulf cartel smuggling routes. Heavy fighting breaks out before Guzman's fighters are eventually repelled.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">68. 2005 - Guzman seeks control of the border city of Tijuana and trafficking routes into California. Violence escalates across Mexico and about 1,500 people are killed over the year. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">69. 2006 - Killings spread to the resort of Acapulco, the industrial city of Monterrey and to Michoacan in western Mexico, the home state of Felipe Calderon, who takes office as president on Dec. 1 and immediately sends out troops and federal police to stem the violence. Drug gang killings rise to 2,300 and atrocities like beheadings and torture increase. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">70. 2007 - Calderon extradites Gulf cartel leader Cardenas to the United States and makes a historic 23-tonne cocaine seizure. US President George W. Bush pledges $1.4 billion in drug-fighting gear and training for Mexico and Central America. Violence escalates and more than 3,000 are killed in the year. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">71. 2008 - Guzman's hitmen take on the Juarez cartel in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, and quickly becomes the drug war's bloodiest flashpoint. Drug violence kills around 6,300 people across Mexico in the year. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">72. 2009 - Calderon sends 10,000 more troops to Ciudad Juarez but killings continue. Violence spills over the border into Arizona. U.S. President Barack Obama visits Mexico and vows to clamp down on smuggled guns but the annual drug war death toll soars above 7,000. In December, an elite navy squad tracks down and kills drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva, head of the cartel of the same name and one of Mexico's most-wanted traffickers. Six bodyguards also die in the raid on a luxury apartment in the city of Cuernavaca near the capital. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">73. 2010 - Police capture drug kingpin Teodoro "El Teo" Garcia Simental, known for having rivals tortured, killed and then dissolved in acid, in January. But drug gangs grow more brazen, killing three people linked to the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juarez, murdering a gubernatorial election candidate in the increasingly lawless northeastern state of Tamaulipas and setting off a car bomb in Ciudad Juarez. Cartel murders soar to unprecedented levels, exceeding 5,000 by mid-June, as mass killings at drug rehabilitation centers and parties become common. On July 29, top trafficker Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel, No. 3 in Guzman's Sinaloa cartel, dies as soldiers try to arrest him near Guadalajara, the first big win of the year for Calderon.

<span class="focusParagraph" style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">74. Mexico's most violent city, Ciudad Juarez, where more than 9,000 people have died in a horrifying drug war since 2008, is renaming itself Heroica Ciudad Juarez, or Heroic City of Juarez. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">75. Without even a hint of irony, the Chihuahua state Congress, which legislates for Ciudad Juarez, has voted in the name change to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the border city's role in the downfall of a Mexican dictator and the revolution it fueled. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">76. In a ceremony on Saturday due to be attended by Mexican President Felipe Calderon, state and city leaders will celebrate the city's new name as part of three weeks of festivities to mark the decisive battle on May 8, 1911 when rebels defeated troops loyal to strongman Porfirio Diaz. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">77. The past glories contrast with the forlorn, desert city's image not just for the drug war but for the unresolved murders of hundreds of young, poor women since 1993. Ciudad Juarez's desolate streets and prison-like houses are a world away from the glittering shopping malls of El Paso, Texas, visible through the through the wire fence marking the border between the world's richest nation and its struggling southern neighbor. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">78. "This is an alternative to the defamatory way the city has been treated," state lawmaker Enrique Serrano, who voted for the name change, told reporters this month. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">79. It was not immediately clear if the new name will be used on maps of Mexico and on official federal documents. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">80. The city was named by Diaz himself in honor of Mexico's most famous president, Benito Juarez, who in 1865 briefly took refuge here with his republican forces during the French invasion of the country. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">81. A marble plaque on a museum restored for the celebrations describes the city -- a dismal mass of assembly plants, slum housing and shop fronts emblazoned with graffiti -- as "the indomitable land of opportunities, friendly and generous." <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">82. But in a place beset by executions, where children have been beheaded by deranged teenage gunmen and where blood is scrubbed off the sidewalks on a daily basis, many residents find the whole thing offensive. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">83. "These politicians are trying to manipulate things so that the violence doesn't see the light of day. They want to straighten things out, but they are not going to do it like this," said 30-year-old electrician Carlos Martinez, standing by a recently restored building from the Diaz era. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">84. A war between the rival Juarez and Sinaloa cartels over control of Ciudad Juarez's smuggling routes into the United States has reached terrifying levels since early 2008, when Calderon sent thousands of troops and police to try to contain the violence. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">85. Efforts have so far been unsuccessful, and more than 230,000 residents have fled the city over the past three years. This has ended a growth boom fueled by U.S. free trade and reduced Ciudad Juarez' population to around 1.3 million. 86. When President Felipe Calderon visits Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Mexico's brutal drug war will be high on the agenda. Fighting among the cartels — and between government forces and the cartels — has cost nearly 24,000 Mexican lives since Calderon took office in late 2006. 87. The U.S. is giving $1.3 billion in military and judicial aid to Mexico to help Calderon's battle against the drug mafias. Mexico's drug cartels are the major foreign supplier of marijuana and methamphetamines to the United States, and Mexico is a main conduit for cocaine coming mainly from Colombia. 88. An NPR News investigation in Ciudad Juarez — ground zero of Calderon's cartel war — finds strong evidence that Mexico's drug fight is rigged, according to court testimony, current and former law enforcement officials, and an NPR analysis of cartel arrests. 89. In that border city, federal forces appear to be favoring one cartel, the Sinaloa (named after the coastal state in northwestern Mexico), which the U.S. Justice Department calls one of the largest organized crime syndicates in the world. 90. A woman in stretch pants and sneakers peddles music CDs of narco-ballads in the streets of Juarez. Her most popular inventory represents the two narcotics cartels battling for control of the city, across the border from El Paso, Texas. 91. The hometown favorite is La Linea, or the Juarez cartel. The newest gang in town is a group of freelance local traffickers backed by the Sinaloa cartel, whose chief is Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera. 92. "La Linea is from here. It's the Juarez cartel," the woman says. "Chapo wants to take over Juarez, but those with La Linea don't want to give it up. This is why there's so much killing." 93. With a $5 million bounty on his head, Guzman is the world's most wanted drug lord. He is said to live deep in the state of Sinaloa — hundreds of miles from Juarez — protected by mountains, an army of //<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">pistoleros, // loyal villagers and his own wolfish cunning. 94. Everywhere in Juarez, people whisper the story about how the Mexican army and federal police are helping Guzman's gangs of assassins capture the city. 95. Most residents are afraid to talk about it openly. Their suspicions are based on what they see, and what they live. Over the past two years, the president has dispatched 10,000 army troops and federal police to Juarez to quell the violence that's been killing six victims a day. 96. "The presence of the army and the federal police has not resolved the problem," says Manuel Espino, former congressman from Juarez and former head of the National Action Party, the president's party. "On the contrary, it's gotten worse. El Chapo comes to town to take over the territory. It makes us believe there's a complicity with the federal government." 97. "When you're out on the streets of Juarez and you hear constantly from people that are eyewitnesses, relatives of victims, they're saying prior to the killings the army was here. They left here, and armed men came and killed somebody," Roman says. 98. Last month, gunmen killed six federal police officers and left a message painted on a public wall: This is what happens to officers "who ally with Chapo and all those mother- - - - - - - who support him. Signed — La Linea." 99. NPR spoke to a former Juarez city police commander who confirms the story. 100."The intention of the army is to try and get rid of the Juarez cartel, so that Chapo's cartel is the strongest," says the ex-commander, who asked that his name not be used because of death threats he says he received in Juarez. 101. He was on the force when the Sinaloa cartel came to town, and he says his entire police department worked for the local cartel. He is now seeking asylum in El Paso. 102. "When the army arrived in March 2008, we thought, damn, now all this violence is going to end," he says. "The number of deaths did drop for about three weeks. But during those three weeks, Chapo's people contacted the army and figured out what they were doing and how much money they wanted. They started to pay them off, and the Sinaloans just kept working." 103. Collusion between the Mexican army and the Sinaloa mafia in Juarez is further corroborated by sworn testimony in U.S. federal court, where two top Sinaloa traffickers went on trial in El Paso in March. 104. One of the government's main witnesses was a convicted former Juarez police captain, Manuel Fierro-Mendez, who went on to work for the Sinaloans. He testified that he regularly provided intelligence on La Linea to an army captain, after which the military would go arrest people and seize weapons and vehicles. 105. In an exchange with lead prosecutor Russell Leachman, Fierro-Mendez described the need to have control over local, state and federal agencies "and have free rein to continue trafficking drugs without any problem." Later in the day, Leachman asked 106. Fierro-Mendez: "And was the influence with the military an important factor?" 106. U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Matthew Sandberg testified at the trial, confirming the contact between Fierro. 107. Mendez and a Mexican army officer, code-named Pantera//<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, // the Panther. 108. In an effort to get a more precise picture of who the authorities are going in Juarez, an NPR News investigation analyzed thousands of news releases posted on the website of Mexico's federal attorney general's office, the Procuraduria General de la Republica. The news releases document every arrest of a cartel member charged with organized crime, weapons or drug offenses. 109. Juarez is the murder capital of Mexico, and now the most patrolled and policed city in Mexico. The NPR analysis found that since federal forces arrived in the state of Chihuahua in March 2008, there have been 104 arrests involving suspects identified as cartel members. Of those arrests, 88 were affiliated with the Juarez cartel, and 16 with Sinaloa. 110. But Enrique Torres, spokesman for the military and police joint operation in Chihuahua, says there is "no way" there is favoritism. 111. "The work of the Mexican army in Chihuahua and here on the border is to damage the structures of criminal groups, regardless of their origin," Torres says. "We've arrested many criminals for many crimes, who belong to all the drug trafficking groups." 112. In February, growing criticism that Calderon's forces are selectively fighting the cartels prompted him to address the issue at a news conference. 113. "These accusations are totally unfounded, false. In most cases, it reflects a misunderstanding of the facts, the result of other interests, I want to be clear," Calderon said. 114. Tony Payan, a political scientist at the University of Texas, El Paso and the Autonomous University of Juarez, says the Sinaloans operate in "apache raids" in Juarez. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">115. "[Chapo] sends his people into the city and they clean out a number of people they've already identified," Payan explains. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">116. "But they do it in a very disciplined way; they're not sloppy," he adds. "The Juarez cartel has proven to be very sloppy." There's a simple explanation why the authorities arrest more traffickers from the Juarez cartel, says Joe Arabit, special agent in charge of the El Paso office of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The DEA is a strong supporter of Calderon's crackdown on the cartels. 117. "La Linea has controlled the [smuggling] corridor so there are more [Juarez cartel] operators in this corridor than any other cartel. Therefore, you're going to see more people from [that cartel] being arrested," he says. 118. But this explanation overlooks an important detail, say local journalists who cover street crime. As the Sinaloa cartel has muscled into the city, La Linea gangsters switch sides and join the Sinaloans, also known as //<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">la gente nueva, // the new people. 119. There's even a name for them — //<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">chapulines, // or grasshoppers. The small number of arrests of Sinaloa operatives is striking to Howard Campbell, an anthropologist at the University of Texas, El 120. Paso and an expert on Mexican drug trafficking. He sees a larger strategy at work. "It appears the cartel de Sinaloa is winning the battle over the cartel de Juarez, and it doesn't seem possible for them to do that without some sort of backing from the Mexican military," he says. 121. "For the drugs to get to Ciudad Juarez and from there into the U.S., they have to pass through military-controlled territory. And so the military is either absolutely inept, or they're corrupted by the Chapo Guzman cartel. There's really no other explanation," Campbell says. 122. This is not an exclusive arrangement — corrupt elements of the Mexican military are for hire for any cartel. 123. Indeed, in 1997, Mexico's then-drug czar, Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, was convicted and imprisoned for working for the 124. Juarez cartel, at the time the country's top drug mafia. 125. Four years ago, a detachment of soldiers was caught escorting a shipment of marijuana through Juarez cartel-controlled territory. 126. In January 2006, Texas peace officers witnessed an astonishing sight: a Mexican military Humvee trying to pull a pot-laden 127. SUV out of the Rio Grande, where it had gotten stuck. Police video captured the entire incident. The following month, Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West and his deputy went to Washington, D.C., to testify at a congressional hearing about the incident. The dope was being smuggled into his county. 128. "When the deputies arrived at the border, where the drug loads were to cross, the deputies were met with the Mexican military in a military Humvee. The deputies reported seeing heavily armed soldiers in the Humvee. The deputies took a defensive position while the Humvee and load vehicles crossed back into Mexico," West testified. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">129. The paunchy, no-nonsense lawman in a white hat is worried these days that the drug violence is about to spill over the Rio Grande into his county. "Until one person is in charge of all the drugs, they're going to keep killing each other," he says of the Mexican cartels. "And they're going to use the Mexican government to help them do it," he said in a recent interview in the town of Fort Hancock. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">130. Hudspeth County is across the Rio Grande from the newest Sinaloa-controlled territory, el Valle de Juarez. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Juarez Valley is a region of cotton fields and farm towns east of that city — so close to Texas that you can watch the Walmart trucks creeping past on Interstate 10. For decades, this has been a valuable smuggling area. That's why the Sinaloa cartel wants it. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">140. Carlos Spector is an immigration attorney in El Paso whose family goes back three generations in the Juarez Valley. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">"The Valle de Juarez represents a model of how the cartel war is being fought and its relationship to the Mexican government," Spector says. He and other sources with direct knowledge of the Juarez Valley say it appears that the army's policy is to stand by and let the Sinaloa hit men do their work. "Nothing could happen without the military. So it was by omission, by refusing to act that they participate with the drug traffickers," Spector says. 141. In the past two years, Sinaloans have used a scorched-earth strategy of murder, torture and arson to take over the Juarez Valley, under the direction of an assassin nicknamed quitapuercos — pig killer. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">142. The community of Esperanza is a virtual ghost town, with dogs wandering the streets. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">143. An old woman wearing a soiled plaid dress and accompanied by her granddaughter made her way down the deserted road like an apparition. The walker she leaned on scraped on the gravel. 144. Mexican and American officials, crediting American training of the military and what they consider to be an increasingly professional federal police force, point out that more than half of the 37 most wanted crime bosses announced last year have been captured or killed. 145. The government also maintains that the last quarter of 2010 showed a decline in the pace of killings. 146. Both Mexican and American officials, who say the two countries have never worked closer in fighting crime, are facing growing pressure to prove that their strategy is working. 147. The violence has in some cases spilled over the border and become a source of mounting concern in states in the Southwest. 148. In October 2010, the government announced that it was preparing a plan to radically alter the nation’s police forces, hoping not only to instill a trust the public has never had in them but also to choke off a critical source of manpower for organized crime. It would all but do away with the nation’s 2,200 local police departments and place their duties under a “unified command.” Bibliography: 150. In February 2011, the Pentagon began flying high-altitude, unarmed drones over Mexican skies in hopes of collecting information to turn over to Mexican law enforcement agencies. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: blue; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">[|Office of National Drug Control Policy] <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #810081; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">[] <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #810081; display: block; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">__[]__ <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Source: Jeffrey A. Miron & Kathrine Waldock: " <span style="background-color: transparent; color: blue; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">The Budgetary Impact of Drug Prohibition []

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: blue; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">Uniform Crime Reports, Federal Bureau of Investigation

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #810081; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">[]

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0000ff; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">__[]__

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #810081; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">__[]__

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #810081; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">__[]__

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #810081; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">__[]__

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #810081; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">__[]__

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: blue; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">[]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/20/us-mexico-drugs-idUSTRE74J4UZ20110520

[]