Madero Munoz files complaint with PGR over MP $25 million
2012-02-01
Posted by: badanov
Citing two other cases Pedro JoaquÃn Coldwell claimed were politically motivated, drug charges against former Jalisco state governor Arturo Zamora and against former Guerrero state governor Manuel Anorve, he said in his statement that charges that the money was being diverted from Veracruz state coffers to the election campaign of Pena Nieto were "willful and reckless" and "absolutely false."
Madero Munoz -- who is credited with forcing the resignation of Moreira, who left his state of Coahuila as governor with record breaking public debt -- is apparently taking a lesson from the saga of Moreira. With the new filing he is attempting to place the financial antics -- to call them what they are -- of PRI politicians and officials front and center in the debate over who should lead Mexico for the next six years.
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Mexican political operatives caught with USD $1.9 million
2012-01-31
Posted by: badanov
Despite reports in the Mexican press that the money was returned, as of 1632 hrs Monday on the website of El Diario de Coahuila, an unidentified PGR spokesmen said the money would not be returned until its origin could be proved.
In a reported internet radio interview, Veracruz state government spokesman Gina DomÃnguez told Formato 21 the cash was transported because an upcoming holiday made such as large transaction difficult. The implication is that Mexicans routinely get large draws on their accounts in cash for holidays and the state would be trying to compete for service with everyone else.
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Human rights report on Mexico suffers from timing and ignorance
2012-01-24
Posted by: badanov
It is worth noting that the Mexican military have publicly stated their commitment to policing their ranks of those who commit abuses, but that is never enough for the human rights watching agencies who swim in the arcane insistence that not only must every t get crossed, but get crossed their way.
It is also worth noting that drug cartels routinely pay poor citizens -- in cash or in kind -- to lodge complaints against the military when a loss of life or other abuse has taken place. SEMAR chief Admiral Mariano Francisco Saynez Mendoza has said as much, and indeed in Mexican press there have been descriptions of individuals who have been paid to perform such services as protesting the Polica Federal presence in an area, for example.
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Suicide rare among Tarahumara, say church, political leaders
2012-01-19
Posted by: badanov
Later press reports have Gardea walking back the mass suicide aspect of the story saying the 50 Tarahumara deaths were a cumulative number for 2011 and did not occur as a single event.
Gardea is also quoted as distinguishing between despair and the lack of food.
"Spiritually, the Tarahumara are strong, " Gardea is quoted as saying.
Gardea's evidence of the large number of suicides rests in an apparent story that a number of Tarahumara families had been asking for money for funeral expenses.
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Mexican official says rumors are "tinged with evil"
2012-01-18
Posted by: badanov
In stories recently published in Mexican press, unidentified non-governmental organizations have been trying to establish a pattern by reporting a number of orphans have appeared in some areas, suggesting the suicide rumors could be true. But if NGOs have an opportunity to create a statistic from anecdotal information, they will create a statistic which will then be transcribed by a pliant press as established fact. To date NGOs have failed to do so, suggesting suicide stories are probably apocryphal.
Indigent Indian groups and others in the Mexican Sierra in the north have suffered a massive crop failure due to a drought and record cold. The problems are so severe, the word famine is being used even in larger news outlets in Mexico. While the famine -- to call it what it is -- may not be as widespread as one in Somalia, for example, the near total lack of food has galvanized some sectors of Mexican society into rapidly bringing relief to the area.
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Mexican IX Region commander kicked upstairs
2012-01-18
Posted by: badanov
General Marco Antonio Gonzalez Barreda was appointed Inspector General and Comptroller of the Army and Air Force and will likely move to Distrito Federal.
General Gonzalez Barreda oversaw security operation dubbed Laguna Segura since late October of last year. That operation is still ongoing.
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Death toll in Tarahumara famine begins with 4 dead
2012-01-16
Posted by: badanov
According to Mexican national sources, the drought at the crux of the problem started back in the summer of 2010, and it started as a problem hardly anyone in the press and in government noticed. Record numbers of Mexican citizens were being killed overwhelmingly by drug cartels that summer and into the following spring.
Who pays attention to crop reports, which do not sell advertising for newspapers and electronic media anyway?
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Zedillo Lawsuit will be decided on sovereignity claims
2012-01-15
Posted by: badanov
If [former Mexican President Ernesto] Zedillo committed any act, gave any order, was aware of any act or order of any significance which led to the massacre, the plaintiffs claim, it would represent an act outside Zedillo's authority. But any one of those putative acts must be considered in context of the Chiapas Conflict in 1994.
The EZLN [Ejercito Zapista Liberacion Nacional ] attacked in January 1994, starting in the last year of the term of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. Despite warnings by local and state government officials that the national government do something about the increased activity of Guatemalan rebel's use of Mexico as a haven against Guatemalan Army counterinsurgency operations since 1992, Salinas seem to be caught with his pants down. It was probably an unlikely combination of intervention by the Liberation Theology wing of the Mexican Catholic church and EZLN logistics that ended the hottest portion of the war.
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Zedillo claims immunity from prosecution for Mexican massacre
2012-01-07
Posted by: badanov
It is extremely unlikely Zedillo had any direct responsibility for the attack in Acteal or he knew in advance about the attack, inasmuch as he was president and commander in chief of the Mexican Army at the time of the attack.
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A Mexican Spring?
2012-01-05
Posted by: badanov
Proceso in one article in 2010 explained that the reason for press silence was cartels were constantly threatening newspapers and their reporters for their reportage. Some comments made in national publications said, without much attribution, that some newspapers in Tamaulipas were under control of drug gangs. So why risk personal harm reporting violent event when you can report on the latest government news release that would not incur cartel anger?
So without really showing it, the press in Tamaulipas made a quite public display of how a cartel in control of municipalities in Mexico would be: Press freedom at the whim of a well-heeled criminal, backed by the force of arms. The curbing of press freedoms were not nationwide to be sure. In Juarez for example, the press is vigorous and critical of both criminal gangs and of government. Northern Tamaulipas was similar to the Mexican Sierras where cartels continue to operate with complete impunity.
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Penn State Football Recruiting
2011-12-30
Posted by: badanov
Stolen idea from Terps' Boy
Fire Away!
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PAN pushes to nullify gubernatorial election after court win
2011-12-29
Posted by: badanov
The results of the election, -- a PRI governor of Michoacan elected by less than 50,000 votes and the failure of PRI to outright capture the state chamber of deputies -- if they were the commonly held bellwether, would more likely foretell an electoral disaster for PRI in 2012.
The court ruling does little to help PRI's plans, and it seems to be a minor victory for PAN. So far, the ruling does not affect the local deputy election or even vote count on the governor's election, but a PAN leader, Juan Molinar, has said he will press to change that and requested the court to set aside the Michoacan gubernatorial election as well.
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Mexican Army reinforces Saltillo -- UPDATED
2011-12-29
Posted by: badanov
News reports also say that an unidentified special forces unit also accompanied the army troops reinforcing Saltillo.
Saltillo is the capital of Coahuila state. It is also the headquarters for the Mexican 6th Military Zone, an army ground command which covers part of Chihuahua state as well as Coahuila state.
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Attorney General questions 12 Coahuila officials about illegal loans
2011-12-21
Posted by: badanov
The PGR announcement is the first official national investigation into the crimes which led to the tremendous increased debt of Coahuila state. PGR's investigation will likely lead to jail time for some, if not all of the officials named.
The total debt the state has acquired to date had ballooned to MP $36 billion (USD $2,613,600,000), the highest debt load per capita of any state in Mexico, and has forced credit ratings agencies such as Fitch's to lower the state's creditworthiness, and Coahuila state itself to institute severe austerity measures to pay back the money owed.
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Mexican states indebtedness threaten Mexican national economy
2011-12-18
Posted by: badanov
Oaxaca's problem and a growing problem with several of the other states is in transparency, priorities and spending. If the charges that seem to be arrayed against Ruiz are as true in those other states, the one-two punch of state government spending and state debt may become a national issue before the next national president is even in office a year.
Last week, Laura Rojas, a PAN Mexican Chamber of Deputies coordinator held a "Debt Expo" forum in Mexico City where the facts about state spending were laid out.
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"...it ain't over 'til we say it's over..."
2011-12-06
Posted by: badanov
In Mexican national politics, you can look awfully silly trying to take things at face value, so PRI federal deputy Carlos Flores Rico threw back into the face of his colleague Perez Cuevas the question of his "morals" when hundreds of migrant workers were killed in San Fernando, Tamaulipas during his tenure as a commissioner in Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Migracion.
The countercharge may look irrelevant, which it is, but it is also characteristic of how sensitive PRI leaders and members will be to the issue of debt contracted by Mexican states going into the 2012 presidential campaign. For all the unseemly pettiness of bringing attention to Coahuila's debt started by PAN national president Gustavo Madero, the full weight of the scandal appears yet to have hit.
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Embattled Humberto Moreira resigns as head of PRI
2011-12-03
Posted by: badanov
Moreira's record as leader of the PRI has been nearly exemplary, save for the Michoacan elections last month in which the PRI barely eked out a win in the governor's house by less than 63,000 votes, and failed to get a majority in the state Chamber of deputies. All the other state elections during his brief tenure were marked by crushing wins over the opposition both in the legislatures or in municipalities, continuing the near clean sweep by his predecessor, Beatriz Parades Rangel, during whose term the PRI flipped or retained 11 of 14 state houses.
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Way to go Google!
2011-11-29
Posted by: badanov
When Protein Wisdom's Jeff Goldstein posted the video of a pair of foul-mouthed private schoolgirls who were crashing the conservative BlogCon11 in Denver, he was warned by Google that they were considering removing the video due to privacy concerns.
Today we find Google If you read here, I sprung into action, downloaded the material, converted with ffmpeg to mpeg format and made it available to download or view at FreeFireZone.
If you are using Firefox, right click on the link in the title and open it in a new tab and the video will/should play on your browser.
If you want to ruin a liberal teacher's life and career, and maintain a video link showing two ill-tempered foul-mouth girls, feel free to post a link to this story. The teacher and the fruits of her labor are certainly worth maintaining for posterity.
Fire Away!
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Sunday Morning Coffee Pot: Crisis deepens for Moreira
2011-11-27
Posted by: badanov
If comments in the news articles about the fees hikes are any indication, Coahuilans are angry at PRI for the coming user fee hikes.
They shouldn't be. The party was going real good while Moreira was governor with numerous and popular income support/transfer programs funded by the bulging state treasury and fuelled by a populist facade. Parties such as the one going on in Coahuila since the election of Moreira are almost always good until a bad guy takes away the punch bowl.
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Sidebar: More Coahuila state and private officials named in debt scandal
2011-11-27
Posted by: badanov
The article which is partially based on a November complaint filed with the Mexican national SHCP general counsel, said numerous other documents were found in the files of the national SHCP files which contained the faked signature of Manuel Zamora. Reports do not say how far back the forgery scheme goes back, or if it goes back further than December, 2009.
On its face, the complaint seems to go some distance in separating Humberto Moreira Valdes' involvement in the falsification of documents and illegal acquisition of debt during Moreira's term as governor of Coahuila. However, even if the recent revelations do exonerate Moreira they do not entirely let him off the hook. There is no way Moreira could not have known at least some of the official documents were or had been falsified.
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