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American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Brazil: Eike Batista arrested

Eike Batista, who once was Brazil’s richest man, was arrested after returning from New York (emphasis added),

The entrepreneur, who for a brief period was Brazil´s richest man, is accused of paying $16.5 million in bribes to the former governor of Rio de Janeiro state, Sérgio Cabral, according to a police spokesman. The alleged payments were made from 2007 to 2014, while Mr. Cabral was in office, according to police officials.
. . .
Mr. Batista and his lawyer, Fernando Martins, said the businessman left Brazil for business reasons Tuesday night, two days after police sought to arrest him, and didn’t know an arrest warrant was about to be issued.

Batista is in deep trouble; in addition to the above mentioned bribery charges,

Brazilian prosecutors said in September that Mr. Batista paid bribes of $2.35 million to the presidential campaign of former President Dilma Rousseff in 2010. The prosecutors, who are leading Brazil’s so-called Operation Car Wash investigation centered on embezzlement at state oil company Petróleo Brasileiro SA, said Mr. Batista came forward in June to offer them the information.

Prosecutors filed no charges against Mr. Batista at the time and said they were investigating the alleged payment.

Mr. Batista also was indicted for financial crimes related to the failure of OGX, the oil company he created, which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2013.

O Globo (link in Portuguese) reports that Batista negotiated with federal authorities the terms for his return, since the regarded him as a fugitive. However, according to O Globo, the authorities did not make a formal request to the U.S. for Batista’s arrest.

Sometime between his departure and return to and from NYC, Batista shaved his head, which has caused quite a buzz in Brazil,

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NYT, WaPo want sob stories

Scott Johnson and Paul Mirengoff post that The Former Newspaper and the WaPo are canvassing their readers

In what might be described as the journalism equivalent of ambulance chasing

for stories on

how their lives have been ruined by President Trump’s executive order on immigration.

Where were the NYT & the WaPo on Obama’s immigration record? (emphasis added)

Obama went from soliciting Latino votes in the 2008 election by promising to tackle immigration reform in his first 100 days to never getting around to crafting a remedy for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

And he went from criticizing the George W. Bush administration for sending federal agents to arrest nursing mothers who were “torn from their babies” to essentially deputizing, through Secure Communities, thousands of local and state police officers to enforce federal immigration law by checking the immigration status of anyone with whom they came in contact.

In recent weeks, the same person who – in August 2010 – signed a $600 million border security bill proposed by Senate Democrats that put more agents, fencing and equipment on the U.S.-Mexico border expressed worry about his successor’s plan to build a border wall.

It’s surreal to hear Obama and other Democrats express their indignation at the idea that people could be deported and families separated when, for the past eight years, this has been standard operating procedure for the Obama administration and the party that covered up for it.

There needs to be an honest and serious accounting of Obama’s cynical and cruel immigration record.

And yet we can’t very well expect the media to provide it

And to all of you hypocrites protesting at the airports,

the countries whose citizens are barred entirely from entering the United States is based on a bill that Obama [*] signed into law in December 2015.

Obama signed the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act as part of an omnibus spending bill.

Where were you then?

Related:
Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration – the full text

UPDATED
[*] The seven countries – Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Syria – were designated as countries subject to restrictions for Visa Waiver Program travel for certain individuals under Pres. Obama

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Ft. Lauderdale shooter indicted on 22 charges

Ft. Lauderdale Airport shooter Esteban Santiago has been Officially Charged in Case

The 26-year-old faces two charges each for the five people killed during the incident near the baggage claim of Terminal 2. Santiago also faces two counts each for the six people wounded in the shooting.

Santiago is due back in court Monday, where he will enter a plea on all charges. He confessed to planning the shooting following interrogation from officials with the Broward Sheriff’s Office, FBI and other agencies, authorities said.

As you may recall, Santiago allegedly Converted to Islam, Identified as Aashiq Hammad Years Before Joining Army, according to Judicial Watch’s investigation.

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Mexico: Peña Nieto and the Juarez cartel

In the flurry of news and criticism over the cancelled Peña Nieto visit, Ildefonso Ortiz and Brandon Darby remind us that the Juarez Cartel used shell companies to finance Peña Nieto’s presidential campaign; their article from March last year explains how,

The bombshell revelation was made this week by the independent news outlet Aristegui Noticias who claim that top officials of the Juarez Cartel financed thousands of cash cards that were handed out by Mexico’s Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) during the 2012 political campaign that resulted in the victory of Enrique Pena Nieto. According to the Mexican journalists, the cash cards were provided by a company called Monex. They were reported to be financed through a series of shell corporations by key players with the Juarez Cartel.     

Through a three part series, the Mexican news organization identified Rodolfo David “El Consul” Avila Cordero as a key figure in the financial scandal that implicates the leading figures in Mexico’s ruling party the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI).

Avila Cordero was arrested in 2005 in Mexico City in connection with the seizure of almost $750,000 in cash. At the time authorities had identified him as a top tier operative with the Juarez (Carrillo Fuente) Cartel who worked as their financial operator an a key figure in their connections with Colombian drug lords.  Avila Cordero had earned the nickname “The Consul” because of his links to high ranking officials within the Mexican government and acted as an ambassador of sorts, Aristegui Noticias reported.

Eight years after his arrest, Avila Cordero became a contractor for a government funded program called Crusade Against Hunger. Using a company called Conclave SA de CV and Prodasa SA de CV, Cordero was able to secure more than $396 million pesos or $25 million in government contracts through rigged bidding processes by government officials.

The Crusade Against Hunger is a pet project of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto who claimed that with that program he would improve the quality of life for his people.

According to the investigation by the Mexican journalists, Conclave and Prodasa are shell companies that do not have real offices or staff.

Ortiz and Darby posted yesterday that

Mexico’s President Cancels White House Visit After Trump Hits CartelsMexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has cancelled his planned visit to the U.S. where he was expected to meet with President Donald J. Trump. The cancellation comes after Mexico’s government denounced Trump’s new border security measures aimed at interfering with the cash flow of the very Mexican cartels believed to have financed the current Mexican president’s campaign.

There’s room for discussion on whether or not the cancellation is directly related to this.

However, Peña Nieto’s approval ratings last week were at 11%. Every minute the media in the U.S. and in Mexico spend berating Trump and/or what Trump may or may not do is a minute they don’t spend examining the reasons why Mexico’s government has failed – and continues to fail – its own citizens.

Remember also that Peña Nieto’s popularity started its precipitous decline after the 2014 disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students. Only the remains of one student have been found.

The Ayotzinapa massacre, not Donald Trump, is emblematic of Mexico’s failures.

Related:
Southern exposure: The costly border plan Mexico won’t discuss

UPDATE
Linked to by Maggie’s Farm. Thank you!

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Mexican woman arrested in Spain for inciting ISIS jihad

El País reports:
Mexican woman arrested in Madrid on terrorism charges. The detainee is said to be a “very important” figure in radical circles in her home country

Say again?
“The detainee is said to be a “very important” figure in radical circles in her home country”

Spanish authorities have accused the woman of glorifying terrorism and believe she was a part of a “stable structure” dedicated to the diffusion of extremely violent jihadist propaganda “using a range of online platforms and instant-messaging services,” Spain’s Interior Ministry said in a statement.

EN ESPAÑOL
Una mexicana, detenida en Madrid por enaltecer el terrorismo yihadista
Spanish authorities have accused the woman of glorifying terrorism and believe she was a part of a “stable structure” dedicated to the diffusion of extremely violent jihadist propaganda “using a range of online platforms and instant-messaging services,” Spain’s Interior Ministry said in a statement.

The detainee had already converted to Islam in 2010 before moving move to Spain, according to the Civil Guard. On her arrival in this country, she married a Muslim and began to spread radical messages.

“She managed to become one of the most important figures among women in the Islamic community in the country of her birth,” sources say, promoting female jihadism and sharing propaganda material with a wide range of contacts. [emphasis added]

The woman remains unnamed.

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Mexico wants respect UPDATE

Mexican president to Trump: My nation ‘demands respect’, while offering Mexicans illegally in the U.S. help in defying immigration laws (emphasis added):

Peña Nieto also highlighted Trump’s pledge to control migration into the U.S., reassuring Mexicans that their government will offer the protection Mexican immigrants require when they are in the United States. “I’ve ordered the Secretary of Exterior Affairs to reinforce the safety measures for our co-nationals. The 50 Mexican embassies will become authentic legal defense for immigrants,” Peña Nieto added

Last time I looked, there was one embassy and the rest are consulates, but I digress.

The government of Mexico has also spent money on a pamphlet that instructs migrants how to safely enter the United States illegally and live there without being detected. (I actually read one, on my own hands.)

For decades Mexico has not protected its own citizens from the cartels’ deadly human trafficking business,

To cross the Sasabe desert and go on to Arizona, migrants are told they must pay about $4,500 to the coyote, who is appointed by the cartels. They are also forced to pay an additional $700 in a separate “tax” to the criminal groups themselves.

At the church-run shelter, there were rumours that the week before, two Honduran migrants were murdered after they took the fatal decision to embark on the journey north without paying.

Indeed,

little attention is devoted to the role that the empowerment of Mexican drug cartels has played in reshaping the human smuggling dynamics in the last years. Until 2009, at least 47 independent cartels dedicated to human smuggling and human trafficking operated in Mexico. However, with the emergence of Los Zetas as an independent cartel in 2010 and the empowerment of the Cartel Del Golfo (CDG) in the last five years, the smaller cartels have been absorbed or destroyed, producing a dramatic change in the dynamics of human trafficking and human smuggling in the country.

Mexican drug cartels have identified a lucrative niche of opportunity in the geostrategic position of Mexico as “bridge country” for migration flows towards the U.S., and are now actively exploiting it. These organizations have vigorously seized the human smuggling activities in the southern and northern borders of Mexico, and have transformed them into diverse forms of trafficking and exploitation. Every year thousands of Central Americans fall prey to drug cartels while crossing the southern border of Mexico. The victims are frequently extorted, assaulted, and trafficked for forced labor and sexual exploitation within the country and in the United States.

Jason Poblete writes,

Mexico and other Central American nations need to get serious about border security within their region, as well as fixing the primary reason people try to leave: poverty and lack of economic opportunities, as well as rampant corruption and crime, lack of rule of law, among many other indicators that make life tough in these countries. This latter issue is a more long-term issue (one that the U.S. companies can help with), but border security within Central America can start today.

Respect is earned. When Mexico and the Central American countries stop seeing the U.S. as a pressure-release valve for their own countries’ problems, they won’t need to be asking for respect, they will be earning it.

Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.

RELATED
Mexican woman arrested in Spain for inciting ISIS jihad

UPDATE
Mexican stand-off: Peña Nieto cancels next week’s meeting.
I was surprised Peña Nieto wanted to come this early in the game. Considering his popularity ratings, it would be insane for him to risk it.

And,
POBRE MEXICO, TAN LEJOS DE DIOS, TAN CERCA DE TRUMP

Nuestra angustia ante Trump debe ser una oportunidad y, en lugar de continuar montados en esa histeria colectiva, cambiemos nuestras actitudes para, enfocados, identificar esa oportunidad que el evento nos ofrece y no la vemos. Estamos furiosos porque Trump amenaza con deportar millones de paisanos. Vamos identificando el verdadero problema ¿Por qué esos millones de mexicanos fueron expulsados por Mexico? Trump quiere construir el muro ¿Por qué toneladas de droga cruzan esa frontera cada año? ¿Por qué miles de jovencitas son secuestradas por las mafias para, luego de cruzarlas ilegalmente, ser vendidas a los mercaderes del sexo? ¿Por qué la frontera es una zona de guerra por donde se trafican armas, dinero ilegal y cruzan hasta miembros de ISIS?

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