THE BORDER REPORT

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is about to find out what a journalist, now dead, found out ten years ago. The system, once pushed, will respond. In Assange’s case, he and Wikileaks are finding themselves losing the resources for survival, one by one, more every day. First Amazon dumped Wikileaks, then PayPal, now Visa and Mastercard. Next up, the Justice Department with potential trafficking in stolen property charges, the New York Times reports.

I noticed the editors of the Washington Post, perhaps smarting over Wikileaks’ not sharing the cable-dump with them, started referring to Assange as pasty-faced in their news stories.

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THE BORDER REPORT

This is a story I produced for the Fronteras Project that aired this morning on Arizona Public Media.

Please bookmark and visit our web site, FronterasDesk.org, for stories from all along the border region, from San Diego to San Antonio.

I interviewed Linda Thomas, a former program manager working within Dept. of Homeland Security’s Strategic Border Initiative, or SBInet. It’s the first time someone with an insider’s understanding of the project has emerged to discuss their experiences.

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THE BORDER REPORT

Legit? Or no?

Assassins Sent to “Take Out” Bandits in Vekol Valley

On May 13th, 2010 the Department of Homeland Security sent out an email to several law enforcement agencies regarding intelligence information they had developed. The information was not disseminated to the general public as it was deemed “law enforcement sensitive.”

On October 14th, the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office was contacted by a local news entity that had the information contained in the email regarding “assassins being sent to take out bandits in Vekol Valley” which is located in western Pinal County. The news entity had confirmed the information through other law enforcement agencies both on a local and federal level.

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THE BORDER REPORT

Readers of BorderReporter are no strangers to the stories that surface on a daily basis of clashes between Mexico’s cartels and the state. But some of you may find certain elements of this report I co-authored on firearms trafficking to Mexico interesting. Funded by the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego, my colleague, Colby Goodman and I set out to establish the parameters of the trafficking debate, since so often, the numbers are roughly generalized and given little context.

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THE BORDER REPORT

Edgar “La Barbie” Valdez Villarreal sang like a drunken perrico, grinning the entire time while he spoke of his relations to Shorty Guzmán, El Mayo Zambada, Arturo Beltrán, and even Ramon Ayala (I’m sure Ayala appreciated that). He boasted of sending semi-trucks full of dope north and bringing them back in to Mexico stuffed with cash. He lamented not having finished the job of murdering his Zeta rivals. Now, Mexican president Felipe Calderón says all the video-recorded declaraciones are out the legal window, since he didn’t say them in front of a judge nor did he have his lawyer present.

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