Homeland Security - for Afghanistan!

Director of Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano is in Afghanistan to discuss border security to help protect that nation from militants and drug smugglers.  I say, the Afghan border better never be more secure than our own borders here in the United States of America while our troops are there.  Otherwise, we have a situation where we will bbe securing the border of another country better than our own.  Just another incredible outrage from the administration.  Imagine, HOMELAND security actually working, for years, to secure the Afghan border while leaving our own wide border open.

Secretary Napolitano Arrives in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan—Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano arrived in Kabul, Afghanistan today at approximately 7:42 a.m. AFT along with six additional DHS customs and border security officials who will join DHS personnel already deployed in the region to provide civilian assistance to local security officials.

While in Afghanistan, Secretary Napolitano will meet with senior U.S. and Afghan officials—including Afghan ministers as well as border security experts from DHS and other civilians from across the U.S. government—to discuss progress being made in securing the region. She will also spend New Year’s Eve with the military men and women serving their country on the front lines to combat terrorism and bring peace and stability to the region.

“For several years, the Department of Homeland Security has been contributing personnel to help bolster security in Afghanistan,” said Secretary Napolitano. “In the last twelve months, DHS has expanded its effort here in support of President Obama’s policy of civilian engagement. Today, I arrived in Kabul with six additional border security and customs officers who will join our ongoing efforts to advise and assist our Afghan counterparts on customs and border control. It is an honor to meet with our dedicated military and civilian men and women who are helping to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan, and I thank them for their continued efforts and sacrifices here to make the American homeland safer and more secure.”

Following her departure from Afghanistan, Secretary Napolitano will continue to Qatar on Jan. 2; Israel on Jan. 3-5; and Belgium on Jan. 5-6 to meet with her counterparts and discuss international efforts to ensure the security of our global aviation and supply chain systems against threats of terrorism and transnational crime, while facilitating the flow of legitimate travel and commerce. More details will be provided once they are finalized.

 

Federal Govt Employs Illegal Aliens

One more reason they refuse to enforce our border and our immigration laws and do everything they can to ensure no state or local law enforcement entities can either.

Illegal aliens caught on their way to work at a federal housing project

On Monday morning, state troopers pulled over a van with a broken windshield on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and discovered 10 illegal aliens inside the vehicle. According to Pennsylvania State Police Sgt. Anthony Deluca, three of the illegal aliens escaped during the traffic stop but were captured a short time later.

The nine Salvadoran nationals and one Honduran were all turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The illegal aliens were on their way from Maryland to work on a taxpayer-funded housing project in Jeannette, PA.

The federal project is being built by Homes Build Hope, a subsidiary of AdelphoiUSA.

Chad Ruffner, executive director of Homes Build Hope, told The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that the workers were hired by a subcontractor, in this case, O.C. Cluss of Uniontown.

Ruffner said: “That's their crew. They check their papers every day. I've seen them checking in. They do that every day. I've seen them check them off.”

Ruffner then shifted the responsibility to the general contractor, Steve Catranel Construction of Wilkins, which is supposed to check workers’ driver's licenses and other documents to verify their identities.

But, Catranel claims that he does not know the identities of the illegal aliens who were detained, and therefore cannot verify whether or not they were working on the Jeannette project.

Catranel did say: “We thought we had addressed the issue so it wouldn't be an issue. I don't know what else we can do. We have names, photos and sign-in sheets."

The contractor continued: “The guys on the job are very good carpenters. They work.”

O.C. Cluss officials have not commented on this matter.

As we have seen so many times, those who hire illegal aliens simply pass the buck of responsibility to everyone, but themselves.

With 1 in 5 Americans out of work, we simply cannot afford to allow one job go to an illegal alien. The issue of illegal immigration is now a fight for the survival of the American family.

As I always say…For every illegal alien with a job, there is an American without one.

Last month, 14 illegal aliens were arrested in Panama City, Florida, all of whom had been working on a federally-funded construction project, where U.S. workers had actually been turned away. Read that story here.

It gets alot worse.  Not only are they hiring illegals for Federal projects, but they are turning Americans away for the jobs while unemployment reaches to levels not seen in decades.

Illegal aliens caught building public housing project in Florida...U.S. workers turned away

On Tuesday, Bay County Sheriff Frank McKeithen announced that his deputies arrested 14 illegal aliens who had been working at a taxpayer-funded construction site on the corner of 11tth Street and Sherman Avenue in Panama City.

Deputies stopped a truck being driven erratically just after it left the construction site, when they discovered the driver had a suspended license, he admitted to being in the country illegally. The driver also told the deputies that he lived with 16 other illegal aliens in two nearby homes.

When Bay County deputies arrived at the houses, five people crawled out of a window, but were caught a short time later. The rest surrendered without incident and were processed into the ICE 287g program. Fourteen illegal aliens were arrested, six of whom were charged with criminal use of personal information for using stolen Social Security numbers.

Those charged with identity fraud are: Felix Martinez Ramos of Mexico, Enrique Gomez Mejia of Guatemala, Modesto Najera Gonzalez of Mexico, Alejandro Gonzalez Cruz of Mexico, Juan Carlos Gonzalez Gonzalez of Mexico and Mario Mansillo Martinez of Mexico.

All fourteen illegal aliens were brought in from Atlanta by a contractor, specifically to work on the Panama Commons public housing project being built at the corner of 11th Street and Sherman Avenue.

Sheriff McKeithen told reporters: “I have received information that within the last 24 hours local construction workers have been to this particular construction site seeking work and were denied employment. It is a shame that a multi-million dollar site is being constructed in Bay County where they are not only hiring out of state contractors but are hiring illegal aliens. The local economy will only improve when locals start getting jobs. We are continuing this investigation to determine if any other charges are applicable.”

Harden Contracting, the firm building the housing project, has blamed a sub-contractor called "Spurs" out of Atlanta for employing the illegal aliens.

Fed up with excuses, Sheriff McKeithen said: “Someone needs to take responsibility here that’s in charge of these major jobs like this. I just think that there are some steps that need to be taken here to make sure that we hire locals.”

All of the illegal aliens have been turned over the ICE for deportation.

As I always say…For every illegal alien with a job, there is an American without one.

With U.S. unemployment now at depression levels, we simply can no longer tolerate an illegal alien population numbering in the tens of millions.

So, tell me.  If they were trying to destroy us, what exactly would they be doing differently?  For the record, "they" are Obama, Napolitano (who I think is just too stupid, greedy, and ambitious to be at the top to get what's going on), the Clintons... the whole lot of them.

Mexican Drug War interrupted and delayed Voyage of The Dawn Treader

It may be obvious by the links to my photo albums that I'm a big Lord of the Rings fan - seriously, it's a real geek who goes on a Lord of the Rings Movie Location Tour (with Red Carpet Tours).  Before my elementary school teacher introduced The Lord of the Rings, he introduced The Hobbit.  Before that, The Chronicles of Narnia.  And I discovered Harry Potter in the last couple of years.  The most recent movie for these stories is The Voyage of The Dawn Treader.  Being the geeky fangirl that I am, I like to watch the extra stuff and the interviews and such.  In doing so, I came across something very interesting.  Very interesting indeed here.

The filming of The Voyage of The Dawn Treader was delayed and moved due to the Mexican Drug War.  They were to film at Rosarita Studios (built for Titanic and used for Master and Commander).  Unfortunately, the drug war interfered and they moved to safer havens in Australia.  The violence of the drug war damages more than just the border areas or limited locales within Mexico.  Mexico is our neighbor and I want them to be prosperous, secure, and happy - a state of being which would naturally make Mexico a desirable neighbor.

Listen to what  the director, Mr. Apted, and the star, Ben Barnes say. in the video below.. "Worse than Bahgdad" ... "Thousands of dead every weekend" .... "Headless bodies in the street" ... "terrrifying" ... They would have had to stay in military style compounds for their own safety.  There were gun emplacements on the streets.  They would have needed 24 hour body guards.  Two of the three stars of this film are underage children!

He is wrong when he says that people didn't know much about it, even in America.  We know here in the Southwestern United States of America, Mr. Apted. We've been screaming it from the rooftops!  It's our government which denies the carnage and the danger.  And the Mexican government, of course.

If the vid won't play, you can watch it here.



It's a strange intersection of my interests.  You won't find that everywhere!

Napolitano says illegals could be excellent citizens

Watch Department of Homeland Security head and former Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano from 1:00 to 2:00 in this video lecture us about how wrong we are to enforce our own laws because "these young people" ... "show by the actions" ... that they have "the potential to be excellent citizens of our country".

No, they don't.  The only way to demonstrate that they could indeed be excellent citizens of our country is if they go to their country of citizenship and enter legally.  There is no acceptable compromise.  Not if they were brought here before the age of 16 nor 16 minutes.  No compromise.  If we compromise on this, the flood will just become larger and large due to the violence in Mexico and the lure of a possibly better life north of the border.  Mexico needs to clean up itself, secure its interior and borders, eliminate corruption, establish the rule of law.  That is the only way.

You can also see the moronic statements of Dick Durbin and Luis Gutierrez.  Both traitors in my estimation.

Chaos in Michoacan, Mexico

I found this video posted at the bottom of this posting at  Borderland Beat.  Watch it.  All of it.  It's a bit confusing unless you can understand what the 2 fellows doing the filming are saying.  But, from the explanation provided in the comments at Borderland Beat, it seems that the undamaged vehicles you see at the beginning of the video, the trucks and buses, are clustering together in an effort to achieve safety in numbers.  Later in the video you see vehicles which have been wrecked both accidentally and deliberately and then just abandoned.  Other vechicles are destroyed and burned to block the roads.

It seems that the Government of Mexico is going after these repugnant murderers very hard.  And, allegations are that the USA is helping them.  Good.

Michoacan is not a border state.  Rather, it is an illustration of what is happening inside Mexico.  The place is falling apart.  If this is not stopped, it will spread to all of Mexico and it will further impact our borders.  You American pot heads and coke heads and other idiotic users of various other substances need to understand that this is the fruit of your drug use unless you are growing / making your own.  Not that I approve of the use regardless of the source, but that's another issue entirely.

What makes no sense in the normal adult world is why Americans tolerate the drug use.  Have we no shame?

Tennessee Considers Arizona-style Law

From Fox News Latino

Tennessee’s legislators plan to consider a bill next year styled after Arizona’s SB 1070, even though the state already has strict laws targeting illegal immigrants.

State Sen. Bill Ketron and Rep. Joe Carr, both Republicans, are preparing a bill that criminalizes illegal immigrants and authorizes local law enforcement authorities to detain “any person” suspected of being in the country unlawfully.

“You can’t deny how [illegal immigration] is affecting us, from education to healthcare to the judicial system to incarceration, and more importantly the number of jobs it’s taken away,” Ketron said.

Like Tennessee, other nearby states, including North Carolina and South Carolina, have expressed an interest in starting out the new legislative session in 2011 reviewing measures similar to the law in Arizona, the first in the nation to criminalize being in the country unlawfully.

Tennessee, where foreign-born people account for roughly four percent of the total population, already has restrictive measures that will take effect on Jan. 1.

The most controversial is SB 1141/HB 670, which requires local jails -- despite no training, funds, supervision or access to federal immigration databases -- to verify the immigration status of all those detained. There is also a measure that allows businesses to insist that employees speak only English for “security and efficiency.”

During the vehement debate over the implementation of SB 1070 in Arizona, a group of Tennessee legislators sent a letter to that state’s governor, Jan Brewer, praising her for signing the bill into law.

Recently, another Tennessee legislator, Republican Curry Todd, who supports strict immigration measures, gained notoriety when he said that illegal immigrants “multiply like rats.”

Todd later apologized for the comment, but maintains his opposition to illegal immigration.

Translated by Fox News Latino.

Yes, saying a population mutiplies like rats isn't very nice - unless it's true like the once-Christian country of Lebanon which is now a moslem country.  Anyway, maybe "like bunnies" would have been less rude.  Or, how about no analogy at all and just describing it literally.  Why be insulting when the bare truth is ugly enough?  The illegal immigrant population has far more children than the native born population and thus, like the once-Christian country of Lebanon which is now a moslem country, the native culture and / or population can be overwhelmed in the space of 40 years.

WikiLeaks on Mexicos Drug Cartel Violence

While President Obama, DHS Secretary Napalitano, and Secretary of State Clinton have said all this year that our border was more secure than ever, they knew that Mexico was less secure and more in danger of literally falling apart than ever.  All the while they, and the administrations and previous Congress(es), have refused to build a fence.

Mexico is on the brink and our government has known it all along including while they were demonizing and suing Arizona for attempting to enforce federal law.  Immigration is the only category of federal law which states, counties, cities, etc are not allowed to enforce - or is it that only Arizona is not allowed to enforce because we are the only ones trying to do so?

US has lost faith in Mexico's ability to win drugs war, WikiLeaks cables show
American diplomats paint scathing picture of Mexican army, branding it as unfit to combat drug traffickers

The US has lost confidence in the Mexican army's ability to win the country's drugs war, branding it slow, clumsy and no match for "sophisticated" narco-traffickers.

Classified diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks also reveal a growing sense of alarm within Mexico's government that time is running out in the battle against organised crime and that it could "lose" entire regions.

The memos detail blunders in the fight against drug cartels and a desperate search for a new strategy to save President Felipe Calderón's administration from a bloodsoaked fiasco.

The assessments, made in a cable to Washington earlier this year, are bleak contrast to Mexican insistence that the state is prevailing in a war declared by Calderón in 2006. Four years later drug-related violence has killed more than 28,000 people and brought cities such as Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana to the brink of anarchy, with mayors, police chiefs and ordinary people gunned down with impunity and beheadings shockingly common.

Geronimo Gutierrez Fernandez, the undersecretary for governance, told US diplomats that "pervasive, debilitating fear" had infected even relatively safe parts of the country. "He expressed a real concern with 'losing' certain regions."

US diplomats painted a scathing picture of Mexico's armed forces, singling out the army as bureaucratic, parochial, outdated and unfit to combat drug trafficking organisations (DTOs).

"Mexican security institutions are often locked in a zero-sum competition in which one agency's success is viewed as another's failure, information is closely guarded, and joint operations are all but unheard of. Official corruption is widespread, leading to a compartmentalized siege mentality among 'clean' law enforcement leaders and their lieutenants."

The cable laments that only 2% of those detained for organised crime-related offences were brought to trial and said the army was "incapable" of processing information and evidence for judicial cases. "It has taken a serious beating on human rights issues from international and domestic human rights organizations, who argue with considerable basis, in fact that the military is ill-equipped for a domestic policing role."

It was a stinging verdict on the decision of Calderón, a White House ally, to deploy tens of thousands of troops, especially in Ciudad Juárez where narcos ran rings around them.

"The DTOs are sophisticated players: they can wait out a military deployment; they have an almost unlimited human resource pool to draw from in the marginalised neighborhoods; and they can fan complaints about human rights violations to undermine any progress the military might make with hearts and minds."

The diplomats also criticised the "dysfunctionally low level of collaboration" between Mexican military and civilian authorities along the border.

They praised Mexico's navy as a nimbler force which took down the drug lord Arturo Beltrán Leyva but even that risked a downside of making the army, the navy's institutional rival, more defensive and risk-averse.

The classified cables reveal the depth of US concern about its neighbour and partly explain why in September Hillary Clinton compared Mexico to insurgency-plagued 1980s Colombia and floated the possibility of US troops intervening. Mexican officials indignantly rejected the secretary of state's comments.

Privately, Gutierrez Fernandez admitted to US officials that Mexico bungled the early phase of the Mérida Initiative, a security pact between the US, Mexico and central America, by focusing too much on equipment rather than competent personnel and institutions.

"Gutierrez went on to say, however, that he now realizes there is not even time for the institution building to take hold in the remaining years of the Calderon administration." If there was no tangible success within 18 months the next government would have difficulty sustaining the drugs war, said the minister.

Gutierrez and Jorge Tello Péon, the national security system coordinator, said despite setbacks Mexico would "stay the course" and asked the Americans to aid a new strategy focusing on the most violent cities.

"If we could turn around Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, and one other city such as Culiacán, it would solve 60% of the violence, and send a signal to the Mexican people that the war can be won," reported the cable. It urged Washington to back the strategy.

The US diplomats noted that Mexico's president had recognised the failure of army deployments and replaced troops with federal police. "Calderón has openly admitted to having a tough year … and contacts have told (political officers) that he has seemed 'down' in meetings."

Last month, in an interview with the BBC, Calderón insisted that as long as the US remained the biggest consumer of drugs in the world, the terror wrought by the drug cartels in Mexico would continue.

"They [the Americans] have a clear responsibility in this because they are providing the market for the drug dealers and the criminals," President Calderón said. "They need to do a lot more in terms of reducing the consumption of drugs and to stop the flow of weapons towards Mexico.

It's called a fence.  A fence!  You put up a fence and restrict the flow of everything in both directions.  Anyone, like the former Governor of Arizona and current head of DHS, Napolitano, who says well, they'll just get a bigger ladder is either an idiot or something who wants the chaos here.  I wonder if, in the face of a leak in the Hoover Dam, if she would say, well, it'll just spring a bigger leak someplace else.

I firmly believe that no fence will ever be built by this country unless we begin to endure a murder rate close to that of Mexico.  That is an extremely high price to pay.  Those of us with weaspons have a slight chance of protecting ourselves but many of these murders are random and from a distance since they are just letting the locals know that their government cannot protect them.

Happy Hanukah

Happy Hanukah once again from me to all my Jewish friends and to my Christian friends who know their spiritual history.  Last year I posted pictures of some menorahs I found interesting.  I liked that so I found some more this year.  I'm obviously partial to the more modern metal ones.

The season did sneak up on me and I have neglected to appeal for donations to the International Federation of Christians and Jews.

A very interesting modern Menorah from the 50s.

Taken from here.

I think this might be one of my all-time favorites!

Taken from here where there are a number of wonderful images.

This is so cute!

Taken from here.

War Stories on the Border: The Third Front

I got home from the annual Thanksgiving trip to visit the last remaining members of the generation preceding mine on the paternal side of the family yesterday.  Back pain keeps me awake now so sometime during the night I woke and turned on FNC and was able to watch a bit of Oliver North's War Stories (which isn't on often enough, if you ask me!).  This episode was all about our Southern Border.  It was quite good and well worth your time.  There was a bit about the border patrol telling the crew to get out of a certain area and they seemed rather threatening to me.  So, there you have it - the border patrol throwing American citizens out of American territory.  I don't think that is their mandate.

'War Stories on the Border: The Third Front'

With an onslaught of gruesome images and a death toll that rises daily, our 2,000-mile long southwest border truly has become a third front.

More than 29,000 people have been killed in Mexico since 2006. Our southern neighbors are living in a bloodbath created by vicious drug cartels battling to dominate smuggling routes into America worth upwards of $50 billion. Beheadings and mass murders are now an everyday, grim reality. Narco-terrorists have already infiltrated over 230 U.S. cities.

Oliver North and his "War Stories" team traveled to the states bordering this frontline to bring you the real story behind the war for the border.

From California's Pacific coast to the deserts of Arizona and the banks of the Rio Grande in Texas, we met with everyday Americans who say they're under siege and a Mexican journalist who was kidnapped and tortured by brutal drug lords vowing to kill him.

We joined federal agents as they hunted down cartel operatives living deep inside America. And, unbelievable as it may seem, visited parts of our country that are so dangerous, they're off limits to American citizens.

Photo Essay, part 1 and part 2

Video Preview here and here.

Later, I found this article about it:

BorderSheriffs.com’s Larry Dever and Paul Babeu featured on “War Stories with Oliver North”
Sunday, November 28th, 2010
NEWS RELEASE

When Fox News special correspondent Lt. Col. Oliver North set his sights on covering the border security crisis, he turned to Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever and Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu for perspective.

A documentary entitled “War Stories on the Border: The Third Front” outlines the dangers of drug violence in Mexico and the threat it poses in the United States.

This is how the producers of the show describe the situation in Mexico: “More than 29,000 people have been killed in Mexico since 2006. Our southern neighbors are living in a bloodbath created by vicious drug cartels battling to dominate smuggling routes into America worth upwards of $50 billion.”

The documentary featured Dever, who has been sheriff of the border county since 1996, and Babeu, who has made it a priority to address the illegal immigration problem.

Sheriff Dever said, “So much of the coverage we see on illegal immigration is tarnished by the open borders crowd who fail to understand this is about national security not politics. This documentary has given the nation a vivid picture of the dangers we face.”

Babeu’s Pinal County county lies between the border and the urban areas that are attractive to drug and human smugglers. As a result, the citizens he serves are threatened by the perils of living in an area that serves as a corridor for dangerous smugglers.

Sheriff Babeu said, “It was a pleasure to assist in the making of this documentary and bring the dangers we face in Arizona to a national audience.”

BorderSheriffs.com was formed to defend law enforcement against lawsuits attempting to prevent enforcement of Arizona’s SB1070. The organization was also formed to give law enforcement a much-needed voice on the issue.

What Happens When The Cartels Take Over A Modern City

From Bordland Beat...

A glimpse of the future of San Diego, Tucson, El Paso... ?

Monterrey, Mexico's Wealthiest City, Succumbs To Drug War

...drug violence has painted Monterrey with the look and feel of the gritty border 100 miles (160 kilometers) to the north as two former allies, the Gulf and Zetas gangs, fight for control of Mexico's third-largest – and wealthiest – city.

The deterioration happened nearly overnight, laying bare issues that plague the entire country: a lack of credible policing and the Mexican habit of looking the other way at the drug trade as long as it was orderly and peaceful. (This is what so-called legalization advocates fail to recognize, imo - Kirls)

"To a certain extent, we saw ourselves as a privileged city and very isolated from Mexico's problems," said Blanca Trevino, Monterrey-based president and CEO of Softtek, the largest information technology consulting firm in Latin America. "The violence hit us because we were not accustomed to having it and therefore to handling it. Now we live in a sort of psychosis."

The Mexican government announced Wednesday it is ordering a significant boost in military troops and federal police in the northeastern border state of Tamaulipas and neighboring Nuevo Leon, home to Monterrey.

The two states are under the heaviest attack since the cartel split earlier this year. Both have witnessed increasingly horrific violence spilling into daily life and claiming civilians, while politicians and journalists are either silenced or killed.

Earlier this month, residents fleeing gunbattles in Tamaulipas' once-picturesque town of Ciudad Mier ended up in Mexico's first drug-war refugee shelter in a nearby town, only to duck bullets from a gunbattle there.

Monterrey was used to being Mexico's definition of opportunity. The city of 4 million "regios" – a nickname for Monterrey residents that means "people of the regal mountains" – represented the future as money poured into northern Mexico from free trade and the opening of scores of assembly plants.

The city's many CEOs drove their own luxury cars unaccompanied to the trendiest Japanese restaurant or the top spot for roasted goat, the state's specialty, in the wealthy enclave of San Pedro Garza Garcia.

Some drug lords and their families retreated to the safety of Monterrey as well. In the home of the country's industrial heavyweights, including the world's third-largest cement maker, Cemex, and bottling giant Femsa, they could easily blend in with executives showing off their wealth.

Then-leader of the Gulf cartel, Juan Garcia Abrego, was arrested in the nearby town of Juarez in 1996. Two years later, a U.S. sting led to criminal charges of money laundering against employees at three Monterrey-based Mexican banks.

Despite sporadic violence and the known presence of drug traffickers, the city enjoyed a tranquility that gave it a provincial feel.

That started to change four years ago, when the Sinaloa cartel began battling the Gulf cartel for a piece of Monterrey's lucrative domestic drug market. The violence subsided after the cartels reportedly agreed to share the turf.

With the Gulf-Zeta split, the downfall was swift – "extremely so," in the words of U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Carlos Pascual – for a city with huge American interests that in some ways identifies more closely with the U.S. than Mexico.

"It's part of the risk of accommodating or allowing criminal groups to be able to live and operate quote `safely' in an area for the sake of peace," Pascual told The Associated Press. "But then this rupture occurs and turns into a massive battle."

As in much of Mexico, there was no viable law enforcement to counter the onslaught. The Zetas control the local police, Pascual said. Other police forces aligned with the Gulf cartel in the fight against them.

About half of the 750 police officers in Monterrey have been fired on suspicion of links to organized crime.

"Rather than becoming part of the solution, they become part of the problem," Pascual said. "When criminal groups want to contest one another for territory, if you don't have strong local law enforcement capable of immediately reacting and putting that down, then the violence has the capacity to continue."

More than 500 people have died in drug violence in the first 10 months of the year, compared to 56 slayings for all of 2009, according to tallies kept by the city's El Norte newspaper.

Residents are used to having their daily routines interrupted by carjackings and "narcobloqueos" – roadblocks with stolen vehicles designed to keep police and soldiers at bay as the cartels do their business.

They drive simple cars and avoid night clubs and bars and go to parties with their pajamas, ready to spend the night in case it's too dangerous to venture home.

In March, two students at the prestigious Monterrey Tech University, Mexico's equivalent of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, died when they were caught in a gunfight between soldiers and gunmen outside the campus.

Five months later, the U.S. State Department ordered diplomats to remove their children from the area after a shooting outside the American Foundation School, a private school attended by many Americans and the children of some of Monterrey's wealthiest families. Two security guards working for the Femsa bottling company died in the gunbattle.

The city's businesspeople are now becoming the targets of extortion and kidnappings as drug traffickers look for other ways to make money. Common criminals also take advantage of the chaos. Now almost everyone knows someone who has been a victim of a crime.

The traditional weekend shopping trips to McAllen or Laredo, Texas, have stopped – it's too risky to drive along highways patrolled by gunmen. Those who still travel to South Padre Island, where the rich own weekend condos, do it by airplane.

The business community published a letter in national newspapers as far back as August demanding President Felipe Calderon and Nuevo Leon Gov. Rodrigo Medina send more troops. Now it will get its wish, though the government didn't detail how many would be sent, citing security.

But Aldo Fasci Zuazua thinks regios can make the difference. The former state public safety secretary and assistant attorney general is helping to lead a peace movement to galvanize people to stand up to the cartels.

"In Italy, in Colombia, things calmed down among the cartels, among the mafia, when people took to the streets and said, `Enough!'" he said.