NightBlogger

From Air Combat Command USAF website:
Angel Thunder is a combat search and rescue task force exercise designed to test theater spin-up capabilities and examine the integration of all Air Force assets in mission planning procedures and mission execution.

Arizona Daily Star
Foreign Troops Take Part in “Drill” at Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson
To troops downed in combat, few sights are sweeter than the approach of military rescuers. In a few weeks, Tucson will be at the center of efforts to speed up that lifesaving process.Personnel from around the globe will converge at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base from Dec. 1 to Dec. 12 for the largest rescue exercise of its kind. The effort, dubbed Angel Thunder, will involve the U.S. Army and Air Force, troops from Germany, Chile, Colombia and observers from Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Pakistan.

Several non-military U.S. agencies such as the State and Justice departments, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office, also will take part in the drills, which aim to smooth interaction between military branches, allied nations and civilian agencies. With about 450 personnel involved, Angel Thunder “is the most complex and largest Department of Defense personnel- recovery exercise to date,” said a news release from Air Combat Command in Langley, Va. D-M will be at the hub of the effort, but most of the mock rescue action will take place elsewhere in Arizona and in New Mexico.

London Banker
Systemic Risk, Contagion and Trade Finance…
Letters of credit have financed trade for over 400 years. They are considered one of the more stable and secure means of finance as the cargo is secures the credit extended to import it. The letter of credit irrevocably advises an exporter and his bank that payment will be made by the importer’s issuing bank if the proper documentation confirming a shipment is presented. This was seen as low risk as the issuing bank could seize and sell the cargo if its client defaulted after payment was made. Like so much else in this topsy turvy financial crisis, however, the verities of the ages have been discarded in favour of new and unpleasant realities.

The combination of the global interbank lending freeze with the collapse of the speculative, leveraged commodity price bubble have undermined both the confidence of banks in the ability of a far-flung peer bank to pay an obligation when due and confidence in the value of the dry cargo as security for the credit if liquidated on default. The result is that those with goods to export and those with goods to import, no matter how worthy and well capitalised, are left standing quayside without bank finance for trade. Adding to the difficulties, letters of credit are so short term that they become an easy target for scaling back credit as liquidity tightens around bank operations globally. Longer term “assets” – like mortgage-back securities, CDOs and CDSs – can’t be easily renegotiated, and banks are loathe to default to one another on them because of cross-default provisions. Short term credit like trade finance can be cut with the flick of an executive wrist.

Further adding to the difficulties, many bulk cargoes are financed in dollars. Non-US banks have been progressively starved of dollar credit because US banks hoarded it as the funding crisis intensified. Recent currency swaps between central banks should be seen in this light, noting the allocation of Federal Reserve dollar liquidity to key trading partners Brazil, Mexico, South Korea and Singapore in particular. Fixing this problem shouldn’t be left to the Fed. They aren’t going to make it a priority. Indeed, their determination to accelerate the payment of interest on reserves and then to raise that rate to match the Fed Funds target rate indicates that the Fed are more likely to constrain trade finance liquidity rather than improve it. Furthermore, the Fed may be highly selective in its allocation of dollar liquidity abroad, prejudicing the economic prospects of a large part of the world that is either indifferent or hostile to the continuation of American dollar hegemony.

If cargo trade stops, a whole lot of supply chain disruption starts. If the ore doesn’t go to the refinery, there is no plate steel. If the plate steel doesn’t get shipped, there is nothing to fabricate into components. If there are no components, there is nothing to assemble in the factory. If the factory closes the assembly line, there are no finished goods. If there are no finished goods, there is nothing to restock the shelves of the shops. If there is nothing in the shops, the consumers don’t buy. If the consumers don’t buy, there is no Christmas. Everyone along the supply chain should worry about their jobs. Many will lose their jobs sooner rather than later.

If cargo trade stops, the wheat doesn’t get exported. If the wheat doesn’t get exported, the mill has nothing to grind into flour. If there is no flour, the bakeries and food processors can’t produce bread and pasta and other foods. If there are no foods shipped from the bakeries and factories, there are no foods in the shops. If there are no foods in the shops, people go hungry. If people go hungry their children go hungry. When children go hungry, people riot and governments fall. More

Financial Times

“Rich households in America have been leaving both middle and poorer income groups behind. This has happened in many countries but nowhere has this trend been so stark as in the United States,” said the OECD.

The gap between rich and poor has widened in most developed countries over the past two decades as economic growth has benefited the wealthy more than the impoverished, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The greatest inequality in incomes in the mid 2000s was found in Mexico and Turkey followed by Portugal and the US. Denmark and Sweden were the most equal societies in terms of income disparity in the 30-nation study.

The UK was seventh in terms of inequality – some 8 per cent above the OECD average – using the Gini scale, which measures disposable household income adjusted for household size. Mexico on the same basis was 52 per cent above average and Turkey 38 per cent. The US had the highest inequality level and poverty rate with the exception of these two countries, the OECD said in a report. Only a few countries has bucked the trend with France, Greece and Spain reducing income inequality over the past 20 years.

“Rich households in America have been leaving both middle and poorer income groups behind. This has happened in many countries but nowhere has this trend been so stark as in the United States,” said the OECD. The average annual income of the richest 10 per cent in the US – $93,000, using common purchasing parity – was the highest in the OECD. The poorest 10 per cent earned $5,800, “about 20 per cent lower than the average for OECD countries,” it said.

Angel Gurría, OECD general secretary said: “Growing inequality is divisive. It polarises societies, it divides regions within countries, and it carves up the world between rich and poor. Greater income inequality stifles upward mobility between generations, making it harder for talented and hard-working people to get the rewards they deserve. Ignoring increasing inequality is not an option.”

The biggest reason for the increase in inequality was changes in the labour market, with low-skilled workers experiencing “ever-greater problems in finding jobs”. This was despite the fact that there were more people in work across the OECD as a whole, said Mr Gurría. More people living alone or in single-parent households had also contributed to growing inequality. More

Eric Watkins
Senior Correspondent
Production from Mexico’s Cantarell oil field fell 36% over the past year, reducing the country’s overall oil production and creating a sharp decline in its exports. “New fields aren’t coming on line fast enough to replace Cantarell,” said Jesus Reyes Heroles, general director of Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex). Reyes’ remarks coincided with an announcement by Pemex that in the first 7 months of 2008 the state firm produced an average of 2.84 million b/d of oil, down 10% from the same period in 2007. Pemex confirmed that the decline in production is due mainly to the fall-off in production from Cantarell. It said the giant field produced 1.12 million b/d, a figure 472,000 b/d less than during the same period a year before. More

Source: MEXICO CITY (AFP)
A private jet that crash-landed almost one year ago in eastern Mexico carrying 3.3 tons of cocaine had previously been used for CIA “rendition” flights, a newspaper report said here Thursday, citing documents from the United States and the European Parliament. The plane was carrying Colombian drugs for the fugitive leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman, when it crash-landed in the Yucatan peninsula on September 24, El Universal reported.

The daily said it had obtained documents from the United States and the European Parliament which “show that that plane flew several times to Guantanamo, Cuba, presumably to transfer terrorism suspects.” It said the European Parliament was investigating the private Grumman Gulfstream II, registered by the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation, for suspected use in CIA “rendition” flights in which prisoners are covertly transferred to a third country or US-run detention centers.

It also said the US Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) logbook registered that the plane had traveled between US territory and the US military base in Guantanamo. It said the FAA registered its last owner as Clyde O’Connor in Pompano Beach, Florida. Extraordinary rendition has been harshly criticized since it began in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

LA Times
MEXICO CITY — The sickening discovery this week of 11 headless bodies heaped like broken dolls near the colonial city of Merida underscored a bitter lesson for Mexico: The battle to control the multibillion-dollar drug trade knows no boundaries.

The bodies are piling up nationwide, even in normally tranquil and touristy spots such as Merida, not far from the Maya ruins of Chichen Itza. During a seven-day period ended Friday, more than 130 people died violently throughout the country. Headless bodies turned up in four states, including Baja California.

The Yucatan peninsula, strategically close to smuggling routes through Central America, tallied 12, after another decapitated body was found a few hours later Thursday about 80 miles east of the carnage near Merida.

Mexico’s drug wars used to play out mainly in smuggling battlegrounds along the U.S. border, such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez. But a crackdown launched 21 months ago by President Felipe Calderon has exacerbated feuding among drug traffickers for control of smuggling routes.

As a result, the country convulses with daily violence that shows a new and disturbing geographic reach and viciousness.

“The bottom line is you’ve got a major internecine battle, a kind of civil war among drug cartels,” said Bruce Bagley, a security and drug-trafficking expert at the University of Miami. “It has intensified because the stakes are high. There’s a great deal of money to be made.”

But traffickers are keenly aware of the psychological effect on enemies and ordinary Mexicans when they chop off rivals’ heads and leave threatening notes with the remains.

Some analysts say tactics such as beheadings, once unheard of in Mexico’s drug underworld, are akin to terrorism because part of the goal is to scare civilians so that they will press the government to back off. Calderon has sent 40,000 troops and 5,000 federal police officers into the streets as part of the campaign against organized crime.

“You’re sending a signal to the Calderon government, to the police, that you mean business,” said Fred Burton, vice president for counter-terrorism at Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based intelligence firm. ” ‘This is the result when you don’t play ball with us.’ ”

Last week, the Calderon government announced a broad new blueprint for fighting crime, including better coordination between federal and local authorities, new federal prisons, improved tracking of cellphones and tougher steps against money laundering.

Calderon administration officials said Thursday night that the Yucatan beheadings and other spectacular displays of violence show that arrests and drug seizures have hurt the cartels, prompting them to lash out with increasing savagery.

“They have to respond in a symbolic way that creates uncertainty in the public — this is what they have been doing during the last months,” Atty. Gen. Eduardo Medina Mora said late Thursday during an interview on Mexican television.

Since Saturday, Mexico has tallied at least 136 killings across 18 of its 31 states, according to Mexican news media accounts. They included especially brazen attacks:

* On Thursday, the day the headless bodies were found near Merida, gunmen stormed a house in the Pacific state of Guerrero, killing two women and two girls, ages 8 and 12. Two police officers were ambushed and slain in a gun battle as they raced to the home.

* An armed group battled Mexican troops Wednesday in the central state of Guanajuato. Four gunmen died and two soldiers were wounded.

* Four decapitated bodies turned up Tuesday in Tijuana. Those killings appeared to be linked to a power struggle between drug traffickers who once collaborated as part of the Arellano Felix gang. Headless bodies also were found in Sinaloa and the northern state of Durango.

Two weeks ago, a hit squad killed 13 people, including a 16-month-old boy, at a family gathering in the northern town of Creel, a tourist gateway to the scenic Copper Canyon region.

Hardly a day goes by without new accounts of violence. Unofficial tallies by Mexican news outlets put the death toll from drug violence this year at more than 2,600. By some counts, it has already exceeded the total for 2007, which set a record.

Police officers have died at an alarming rate. The daily Milenio newspaper reported Friday that 71 officers had been slain nationwide in August — the highest monthly toll since Calderon launched his crime offensive in December 2006. More

Kris Gutierrez
Fox News
Illegal immigrants are returning home to Mexico in numbers not seen for decades — and the Mexican government may have to deal with a crush on its social services and lower wages once the immigrants arrive. The Mexican Consulate’s office in Dallas is seeing increasing numbers of Mexican nationals requesting paperwork to go home for good, especially parents who want to know what documentation they’ll need to enroll their children in Mexican schools. “Those numbers have increased percentage-wise tremendously,” said Enrique Hubbard, the Mexican consul general in Dallas. “In fact, it’s almost 100 percent more this year than it was the previous two years.” The illegal immigrant population in the U.S. has dropped 11 percent since August of last year, according to the Center for Immigration Studies. Its research shows 1.3 million illegal immigrants have returned to their home countries. Some say illegal immigrants are leaving because a soft economy has led to fewer jobs, causing many laborers to seek work elsewhere. Others argue that a tough stance on immigration through law enforcement has spread fear throughout the illegal population. More

This just came in off the tipline, it seems the husband of a U.S. citizen has gone missing somewhere on that magical highway between Naco and Cananea, Sonora. Lots and lots of things happen on that 35 mile stretch of road, many of them terrible, none of them clear. If it bears out, and so far it seems to, this isn’t good. Last week, the Mexican Army uncovered a grave with what they said were four bodies inside. Others, including a Cananea law enforcement source, tell me it was actually 11 bodies in that grave. That doesn’t include eight more people have been reported missing between June 19 and today. It says something of what’s been happening in Cananea lately that the families of the eight missing men all willingly went to police. What’s always stayed inside, between the families, is now on the outside. This smells of panic. More

This Dobbs clip discusses the new North American common currency called the “Amero”. The NAU progress report claims everything is ontrack for the Union to go into effect in 2010. Dobbs reports that the North American union will be an Orwellian Brave New World. The fall of dollar will pave the way for the implementation of the Amero, resulting in the loss of sovereignty for three countries, and economic control and enslavement over its populations.

The investigation of a salmonella outbreak in the United States is shifting to the southern border to encompass produce imported from Mexico, CNN reported on Thursday. U.S. health officials are struggling to find the source of the outbreak linked to certain types of tomatoes. There have been at least 922 reported cases of salmonella food poisoning in 40 states and the District of Columbia since mid-April, CNN reported. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has alerted growers and brokers handling their products that, starting on Monday, inspectors will stop shipments from Mexico of ingredients common to Mexican cuisine, CNN reported, citing sources familiar with the investigation. Cilantro, jalapeno peppers, serrano peppers, scallions and bulb onions are among the products to be examined, it said. More

Narcosphere
The bloodshed in Ciudad Juarez being fueled by the drug war must have triggered a major alarm in Washington, D.C., this past weekend when the sister-in-law of a prominent U.S. Congressman was kidnapped while on a shopping excursion in the Mexican border town.

Juarez, located across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, has been the flashpoint for escalating tensions in the drug war in recent months, as evidenced by a rash of kidnappings and some 450 murders to date — including dozens of local Mexican cops. The causes are complex and layered, ranging from widespread political and law enforcement corruption, to turf battles among rival narco-trafficking cells, to increased street-drug consumption (ie., cheap heroin) to the frustration that comes with the desperation of poverty. More
Also See:
Drug lords to Mexican police: Join us or die
Mexico is in a guerrilla war

ABC News
An outbreak of salmonella poisoning linked to raw tomatoes has been traced to Mexico and Florida, according to federal health officials. Officials today said they will send teams of investigators to Mexico and Florida this weekend. They would not identify the farms that are being investigated, stressing that salmonella contamination could have occurred somewhere later along the distribution line.

“We don’t know for certain that the contamination occurred on a farm,” said Dr. David Acheson of the Food and Drug Administration. “The contamination could have occurred upstream of the farm, in a distribution center, or the packing shed or warehouse. And it’s important that we inspect in those areas to rule that out. We cannot assume that the contamination has occurred on a farm.”

A cluster of 285 salmonella cases has been reported in Texas in the past week, and federal and state officials there are working to determine the cause. All told, authorities have identified 552 people infected with salmonella in 32 states and the District of Columbia since April 10, according to the Centers for Disease Control. More than 50 people have been hospitalized. No deaths have been attributed to the outbreak. More

This is silly. Whatever drivers save at the pumps they spend on the drive down and back, not to mention risking their lives in Drug Lord ravaged TJ.

If there’s pain at the pump in the U.S., Mexico may just have a remedy. A gallon of regular unleaded gasoline in San Diego retails for an average price of $4.61 a gallon. A few miles south, in Tijuana, it’s about $2.54 — even less if you pay in pesos. More and more people appear to be taking advantage of the lower price. “I used to buy exclusively in the U.S. before gas started really going up,” said Patrick Garcia, a drama teacher at an elementary school in San Diego who lives in Tijuana. “Since then, I’ve been buying all my gas in Tijuana.” The lower prices mean a U.S. motorist could save almost $54 filling up a two-year-old Ford F150 pickup with a 26-gallon fuel tank in Mexico. More

SAN JUAN COPALA, Mexico — Driving through the back roads of western Oaxaca state in southwestern Mexico, one could often hear 94.9 FM, Radio Copala, “The Voice that Breaks the Silence.” In one of the station’s tag-lines played several times a day, a slow, piercing violin gave way to the languid voice of a woman singing in Spanish: “I am a rebel because the world has made me that way, because no one ever treated me with love, because no one ever wanted to listen to me.”

But amid such overwrought sadness, a strong — and perhaps hurried — young woman’s voice would interrupt: “Some people think that we are too young to know.” And then a second young female voice interjects: “They should know that we are too young to die.” More

Simply, Mexico is in a guerrilla war and the majority (54%, in a recent Reforma poll) of the population thinks the narco-guerrillas are winning. Last month, the guerrillas decimated the senior staff of Mexico’s law enforcement organizations and there are threats of more assassinations to come. In small towns, policemen are resigning en masse as the drug gangs continue their killing spree. Placards and banners are openly displayed in town streets promising death to the police that oppose the drug gangs and/or offers to recruit anybody with military experience. More
Also see:
Poll: Mexicans see drug gangs winning
All-out violence and terror in Mexican city of Culiacan

BBC News
US GIANT Ford is to invest $3bn (£1.5bn) in a new car plant in Mexico, the biggest investment in the country’s manufacturing sector. The move is a blow to American car workers who had hoped the factory would be built in the United States. Ford has lost more than $15bn (£7.5bn) over the past two years and says the new facility is crucial to its future.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon hailed the announcement as a “turning point” for his country. The new factory, and other changes to Ford’s Mexican operations, are likely to create an estimated 4,500 jobs in Mexico, where car workers earn substantially less than their American counterparts. Mr Calderon made the announcement with Ford president Alan Mullaly at the presidential compound in Mexico City on Friday. “We want Mexico to be an automotive country, one that is competitive and with the most advantages so that the worldwide automotive industry will establish itself here,” Mr Calderon said. More

MEXICO CITY, Mexico (CNN) Seven federal police officers were killed Tuesday in northwest Mexico in the latest in a series of drug-related violence, a spokesman for the federal police said. Another four officers were wounded and a civilian was killed during the incident, which occurred as police were conducting a weapons and drugs raid on a home in Culiacan, police spokesman Armando Arteaga said.

Upon arriving at the house, the officers were fired upon and a grenade was thrown at them, Arteaga said. Authorities arrested two people, including a minor, and confiscated seven AK-47s and dozens of ammunition clips. Culiacan, a city of more than 600,000 people in the state of Sinaloa, has become a key battleground in Mexico’s drug war. More

Then there’s this chilling account from CULIACAN, Mexico :

The boy looked to be about 12 or 13 years old. Chubby, he struggled a bit with his bicycle as he rode to where we stood. He had a slight smirk [see photo] as he played a tape that blared music from speakers tied to his bike. The tune was an ode to Edgar Guzman, the son of a local drug kingpin who was killed by a rival drug gang in a shootout May 10. It was a message from the cartel to the cops, said Gen. Jose Antonio Guzman, the Mexican police commander heading up a raid on a house this day. The drug lords had sent the boy to let everyone know they were watching. It was a chilling moment in a city that has gained a reputation for being one of the most dangerous in Mexico.

More

Photo worldsurfer
E. EDUARDO CASTILLO/AP
Homicides related to organized crime jumped 47 percent in 2008, Mexico’s attorney general said Friday in a rare confirmation of how bad violence has become. Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora told Radio Formula that 1,378 people have been killed so far this year, compared with 940 in the same period last year.

The statistic reflected what many in Mexico already knew: Drug-related killings have soared in recent months. But the details were the first official snapshot on the rise in killings. The Mexican government has been reluctant to release homicide statistics, leaving the public to rely on informal tallies by the news media. Read more