RIGHTS-US: Lawmakers Urged to Stem Wave of Hate Crimes

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Alison Raphael*

WASHINGTON, Nov 24 (IPS) – Leading civil rights groups Monday denounced the rise in hate crimes taking place in the United States, especially against Hispanics, and called for passage of the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crime Prevention Act (LLEHCP) to ensure federal jurisdiction when local officials fail to act.

Hate crimes against Hispanics have risen steadily for the last four years, and crimes against African-American, Asian-American and Jewish people, as well as gays and lesbians, all increased last year, according to FBI statistics gathered for the Uniform Crime Reporting Programme.

In recent weeks alone several incidents have taken place, including the murder of 37-year-old Ecuadorian citizen Marcello Lucero by a group of Long Island teenagers, cross-burnings in New Jersey, and the timely arrest of skinheads planning to assassinate President-elect Barack Obama in Tennessee.

”The wave of hate that is seeping through our communities threatens the fabric of our nation and is costing lives. Americans will not be cowed by those trying to advance intolerance — we must stand up to the presence of hate groups and extremists in our communities and speak with one voice to say we will not be dehumanised,” argued Janet Murguía, director of the National Council of La Raza, the oldest and largest Hispanic American civil rights organisation.
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ACTIVE DEFENCE OF INDIAN SHIPPING AGAINST SOMALI PIRACY

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO.470

Global Intel Net

B.RAMAN

The policy of the Indian Navy in its operations against Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden area can be characterised as one of active defence of Indian shipping. That means, protection of Indian commercial ships and foreign ships with a large complement of Indian crew transiting through these waters and action in self-defence against pirate boats and ships, which threaten Indian lives and interests and threaten to attack Indian naval ships patrolling the seas in this area. The indications till now are that their role will not be extended to cover active intervention to free already hijacked ships. If preventive measures fail, the responsibility for getting a hijacked ship released from the custody of the pirates will be largely that of the company owning the ship.

2. Any active intervention role will require the presence of more ships with more specially-trained commandos on board. Moreover, if the intervention attempt fails, there could be diplomatic and other complications. It has been reported that the Ministry of Shipping of the Government of India is keen that at least four ships of the Navy should be on anti-piracy patrol. The present policy seems to be to have one ship on rotation on permanent anti-piracy patrol. At the most, this may be increased to two if resources and circumstances permit. Admiral Sureesh Mehta, the Chief of the Naval Staff, told the media on November 20, 2008,that the Navy was also considering the option of an aerial recce of the region. He has also been quoted as saying: “We are considering augmenting our efforts to keep the Indian traffic in the region safe.”
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RULES OF ENGAGEMENT IN MARITIME COUNTER-TERRORISM & COUNTER-PIRACY

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR: PAPER NO.469

Global Intel Net

B.RAMAN

On October 12,2000, a boat filled with explosives with a suicide bomber of Al Qaeda rammed against a US destroyer named USS Cole in the Aden harbour. In the resulting explosion, 17 US naval personnel were killed and the ship was severely damaged. A subsequent enquiry brought out that a US naval officer on watch duty on the deck of USS Cole had seen the boat approaching USS Cole at high speed, but he did not fire on it and sink it. The rules of engagement of the US Navy then in force reportedly provided that US naval personnel should fire upon inside a harbour only if fired at. Since the Al Qaeda boat did not open fire, it was not fired at and sunk before it could ram against USS Cole. In justification of the seeming inaction of the officer on watch duty, it was stated during the enquiry that inside busy harbours such as that of Aden, many small boats operated by the harbour management keep moving around for providing logistics. It would have been difficult to assess the hostile intent of an approaching boat inside the harbour.
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IF PIRATES CAN HIJACK AN OIL SUPER-TANKER WITH SUCH EASE, SO CAN AL QAEDA

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—-PAPER NO.468

Global Intel Net
Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Copyright © B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group
www.southasiaanalysis.org

B. RAMAN

(To be read in continuation of my article of October 19,2008, titled “India At Long Last Wiser To Maritime Threats From The West ” available at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers29/paper2884.html )

Lt. Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for the US Navy’s 5th Fleet, said on November 17,2008, that “Sirius Star”, a Saudi-owned oil super-tanker, was hijacked by Somali pirates off the Kenyan coast on November 15. The tanker, owned by Saudi oil company Aramco, is 330 meters (1,080 feet), about the length of an aircraft carrier. It can carry about two million barrels of oil. He stated that the Sirius Star was carrying crude at the time of the hijacking, but he did not know what quantity, but, according to some news agency reports, it was carrying crude worth US $ 100 million. He also did not know where the ship was sailing from and where it was going with the crude.
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Latin America’s Response to Narco-Fueled Transnational Crime

Republished on the Global Intel Net – Global Geopolitics Net Sites

Read this article in its original form on the Council for Hemispheric Affairs, COHA, website.

By Tomás Ayuso, COHA Research Asssociate

Intra-Mexican Violence

2008 has proven to be one of the most violent years witnessed by Latin America in decades. A massive crime wave seemingly striking all corners of the region is being recorded in daily horrific figures. Nowhere has this been more painfully obvious than in Mexico, the crime wave’s epicenter. Homegrown drug cartels operating from both within and outside the country are engaging in a vicious turf war to seize control of major trafficking corridors while engaging in almost open warfare against the mobilized forces of the state. These brutal confrontations between rival cartels and those fighting the combined forces of the Mexican police and military have left over 4,300 people dead through November, 2008. By comparison, total deaths due to drug-related violence in all of 2007 were approximately 2700. This confrontation is shaping up to be a war of master proportions. Due to pervasive corruption at the highest levels of the Mexican government, and the almost effortless infiltration of the porous security forces by the cartel, an ultimate victory by the state is far from certain. Finally, and alarmingly, the Mexican citizenry is gripped by a grim debate over whether the death of Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mouriño and drug prosecutor José Luis Santiago in a plane crash on November 4 of this year was an act of murder or a regrettable accident.

President Felipe Calderón’s administration, with renewed aid and expanded support from the United States (the so-called Merida Initiative) has fiercely pursued the local drug barons and their minions since his controversial electoral victory in 2006. Despite these efforts, the cartels’ penetration of Mexico’s anti-drug forces and the stepped up tempo of its violent victories have shown no sign of relenting. Their tactics have, if anything, only grown more sanguinary and their weapons more deadly.
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BALKANS: Organised Crime Knows No Boundaries

Global Intel News / IPS

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Nov 14 (IPS) – Inter-ethnic hatred has remained alive among many Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs through the years since the wars of the disintegration of former Yugoslavia. But the ‘brotherhood’ imposed by communist rulers to keep people together remains alive in organised crime that knows no boundaries, or religious and ethnic divisions.

This was evident again in the killing last month of Ivo Pukanic (47), owner of the weekly Nacional. His paper ran a campaign to expose organised crime in the region.

Two weeks before Pukanic was killed, a young female lawyer Ivana Hodak died in a mafia-style ambush. She and her father, also a lawyer, were involved in one of the most spectacular cases against war-time generals-turned businessmen, who were accused of abusing state funds for private purposes at the time of Croatia’s war of independence in the 1990s.

Investigation of the latest killing, the first violent death of a journalist in Croatia since its independence war of the 1990s, has exposed a close-knit network of Bosniak, Croat, Montenegrin and Serb criminals who conspired in the act.
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Popularity: 27% [?]