Eclipsed from the headlines by the ongoing carnage, there is an active
civil resistance in Iraq that opposes the occupation, the torture regime
it protects, and the jihadi and Ba'athist 'resistance' alike.
Submitted by Bill Weinberg on Mon, 05/07/2007 - 19:23.
When Antonio Villaraigosa's police were attacking Salvadoran immigrants in MacArthur Park, he was in San Salvador to offer the Central American republic the LAPD's expertise in crime-fighting. From Reuters, May 2:
SAN SALVADOR — Los Angeles will work with El Salvador to help combat the violent Central American crime gangs that also terrorize the California city, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said on Wednesday.
Villaraigosa, a Latino activist turned politician, said on a visit to El Salvador the accord included an exchange training program for Los Angeles and El Salvador police and policies to help El Salvador reinsert former gang members into society.
Many Los Angeles gangs trace their roots to Central America. The civil wars of the 1980s and 1990s in the region prompted a flow of migrants to the United States and the rise in Los Angeles of the Mara Salvatrucha gang, which sought to protect early Salvadoran immigrants.
The gang now has an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 members in the United States and tens of thousands in Central America, many of whom are returning migrants.
Central American governments have waged a war against the gangs, often seizing anyone with gang-like tattoos in the street to the dismay of human rights groups.
"In Los Angeles, we know you can't just use a strong arm, you have to also invest in young people, give them alternatives to violence and a gang life," Villaraigosa said at a news conference with Salvadoran President Tony Saca.
In February, police chiefs from El Salvador and other Central American nations met in Los Angeles for a conference on fighting cross-border gangs that are behind brutal murders and drug and weapons smuggling.
El Salvador, with a population of 6.8 million, had an average of 10 murders a day in 2006, about 70 percent of which were committed by gang members, the FBI reported in February.
Los Angeles, dubbed the gang capital of the United States, is home to more than 400 gangs that were blamed for more than half the city's 478 murders last year, and gang violence surged 14 percent last year, according to the FBI.
The inconvenient facts and unanswered questions surrounding the attacks are legion, but the endemic sloppiness of the self-styled "researchers" is delegitimizing the entire project of critiquing the "official version." The ostentatiously named "Truth movement" is not clearing the air, but muddying the water.
WW4 Report pamphlets
WAR AT THE CROSSROADS
An Historical Guide Through the Balkan Labyrinth
The Balkan region is intensely multicultural - a point of crossroads and clash for some of the world's major religions, cultural spheres, and economic systems. While there have been vicious wars in Balkan history, these have taken place in the context of manipulation by imperial powers and the self-serving local leaders who cater to them.
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Poetic irony?
When Antonio Villaraigosa's police were attacking Salvadoran immigrants in MacArthur Park, he was in San Salvador to offer the Central American republic the LAPD's expertise in crime-fighting. From Reuters, May 2:
See our last posts on El Salvador and Central America.