El Gobierno de Estados Unidos por fin respondió a la petición de Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) para que suspendiera el financiamiento a organizaciones no gubernamentales en México como Mexicanos Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad (MCCI) que lideran el empresario Claudio X. González y María Amparo Casar. 

Y su respuesta fue que mantendrá el financiamiento económico a las organizaciones no gubernamentales y equipos periodísticos de investigación del mundo con la finalidad de que se denuncie y se combata la corrupción en los gobiernos, y se promueva “la buena gobernanza”.

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The United States Government has finally responded to Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO —the 65th president of Mexico since 1 December 2018) 's request to suspend funding for non-governmental organisations in Mexico, such as Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI) led by United States businessman Claudio X. Gonzáles and by María Amparo Casar. [Note: Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI) is considered allied to “a political party”.]

And Biden's response was that he will maintain funding for non-governmental organisations and investigative journalistic teams around the world in order to denounce and combat corruption in governments, and promote "good governance."

The announcement was made by two officials from the White House National Security Council, who provided details of the directive and memorandum from the Government of President Joe Biden.

According to the first reports of the videoconference held by the National Security Council team, it will be Vice President Kamala Harris who will enforce this measure in the fight against corruption in her next visits to Mexico and Guatemala.

"We will see it in this (western) hemisphere, the fight against corruption is an essential part of Vice President Kamala Harris' agenda for her first international trip (to Mexico and Guatemala) next week," the officials stressed.

The journalist Dolia Estévez made public part of the guideline document.

In the document shown, it can be read that this guideline seeks to strengthen the capacity of national and international institutions to establish global anti-corruption standards and promote financial transparency.

"Strengthening the frameworks of financial institutions to prevent corruption in development financing projects and the fight against money laundering, illicit financing and bribery," points out #"d" of the memorandum.

In addition, the measure aims to support and strengthen the capacity of civil society, the media and other accountability agents to carry out analytical research on corruption trends, and based on them, promote preventive measures, demand justice and hold governments to account.

In the last point made in the image shown by the journalist Estévez that the US Government seeks joint work with “international partners to counteract the strategic corruption of foreign leaders, foreign state companies or affiliates, criminal organisations, transnationals and other foreign actors. and their national collaborators, even closing the loopholes that these actors exploit to interfere in democratic processes ”

Last Tuesday AMLO regretted that the United States did not respond to his demand to stop the distribution of resources to organisations such as Mexicanos Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad (MCCI), by Claudio X. González. And this Wednesday he raised the tone.

The President said that the US Embassy in Mexico distributes "beans with weevil."

“Before, nothing was reported, everything was working. Journalism was totally submissive and subordinate while the intellectuals were well-known. What we are seeing now, is that those of the so-called civil society are going to demand money from the US Embassy, that is to say that the Embassy distributes corn with weevils”, he said.

And a little less than a month ago, López Obrador said that Mexico will consider interventionism if it is confirmed that a US agency has been funded the MCCI.

Claudio X., as he is known colloquially, is the main promoter of the opposition alliance “Va por México”, which unites the National Action Party (PAN), the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) in the 2021 elections.

The president recalled that MCCI has received from the United States Government 50 million pesos since 2018, the year of the beginning of his six-year term, although the amount that was subsequently given indicates that there was only 41 million.

“You cannot give money to political groups in another country, the Constitution prohibits it […]. It is interference, it is interventionism, it is a coup,” he added a few hours after he held a meeting with the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris.

https://polemon.mx/biden-rechaza-peticion-de-amlo-y-se-niega-a-retirar-apoyo-a-ongs/

Andrés Manuel López Obrador is a centre-left President in Mexico, but the USA, even in the (fake) lefty Biden Administration see him as a "socialist". They are trying to unseat him by basically bribing other political parties... This is why the "Economist" and other newspaper are trying to expose him as ineffective against the drug cartels and against Covid-19. Talking of kettles calling pots black: the USA is far more corrupt than Mexico with the use of industry lobbyists — and having Philanthropists financing political parties and US Senators favourite "charities"... 

Corruption in the United States is a growing problem across many areas, particularly in the political spectrum. In 2020, Transparency International ranked the United States as the 25th least corrupt country (of 180 countries ranked),[1] falling from 18th since 2016.[2] This ranking places the United States between Bhutan (24) and Chile (26) on corrupt practices in government and other institutions. In 2019, Transparency International stated that the United States is "experiencing threats to its system of checks and balances", along with an "erosion of ethical norms at the highest levels of power".

see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_the_United_States

What is more serious is the "corruption of ideas and ideals" in the USA with orgs such as Qanon and Antifa, and secret/overt CIA manipulations of news...

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In a speech on Tuesday, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador labeled allegations that the previous administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto spied on him and his associates as “shameful.” 

“They had sophisticated equipment to listen to all phone calls, not only from the person who was the target, but from everyone around them,” he claimed, adding that it wasn’t just him they allegedly spied on, but his wife, children, doctor and dozens more.

Obrador said that he did not believe that the Pegasus contract with Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group still existed, but said the government must investigate the allegations.

The president claimed he could list a hundred things that "used to be done [in Mexico] and are no longer done today,” including corruption, torture and repression, adding that there are no longer massacres or espionage. 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/529758-lopez-obrador-pegasus-mexico-israel/

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The government accuses gun makers and suppliers of knowingly flooding the market with firearms attractive to drug cartels.

MEXICO CITY — For years, Mexican officials have complained that lax U.S. gun control was responsible for devastating bloodshed in Mexico. On Wednesday, they moved their campaign into American courts, filing a lawsuit against 10 gun companies. 

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Massachusetts, was the first time that a national government has sued gun makers in the United States, officials said. The suit accuses the companies of negligently facilitating the flow of weapons to powerful drug cartels, and fueling a traffic in which 70 percent of guns traced in Mexico are found to have come from the United States.

“For decades, the government and its citizens have been victimized by a deadly flood of military-style and other particularly lethal guns that flows from the U.S. across the border,” the lawsuit reads. The flood of weaponry is “the foreseeable result of the defendants’ deliberate actions and business practices.”

The government cited as an example three guns made by Colt that appear to directly target a Mexican audience, with Spanish nicknames and themes that resonate in Mexico. One of them, a special edition .38 pistol, is engraved with the face of the Mexican revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata and a quote that has been attributed to him: “It is better to die standing than to live on your knees.”

That was the pistol used by a gunman in 2017 to kill the Mexican investigative journalist Miroslava Breach Velducea, the government said. A member of a group linked to the powerful Sinaloa cartel was convicted of her murder last year.

Legal experts questioned the lawsuit’s ultimate chances, given that U.S. federal law guarantees gun manufacturers a strong shield against being sued by victims of gun violence and their relatives. But some said the lawsuit could lend political support to the strengthening of gun regulations in the United States, which are among the loosest in the hemisphere.

“It’s a bit of a long shot,” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond. “It may just be a way to get the attention of the federal government and Biden and the White House so they can sit down and make a deal.”

Mexico has strict laws regulating the sale and private use of guns, and the nation’s drug trafficking groups often arm themselves with American weapons. The Justice Department found that 70 percent of the firearms submitted for tracing in Mexico between 2014 and 2018 originated in the United States.

“These weapons are intimately linked to the violence that Mexico is living through today,” Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said at a news conference on Wednesday.

The government argues in the lawsuit that American gunmakers knowingly facilitate the sale of arms to criminal groups in Mexico by marketing their wares in ways that appeal to drug traffickers and refusing to put responsible restrictions on sales. 

Gunmakers sell to any distributor with a license, the suit says, “despite blazing red flags indicating that a gun dealer is conspiring with straw purchasers or others to traffic defendants’ guns into Mexico.”

For years, Mexico had focused on pressing American officials to crack down on gun smuggling at the border. Smugglers routinely enlist Americans with clean criminal records to buy several guns at a time, often from different shops, and then drive the guns across the border, officials say. 

With its move on Wednesday, Mexico is expanding the effort to targeting gun companies themselves. Mexican government officials said they had been closely watching several recent U.S. cases involving gun manufacturers, including the lawsuit brought against Remington by families of the children killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012. 

The families are now considering a $33 million settlement offered by the company, after legal proceedings that lasted seven years and, experts say, opened a new path for victims of gun violence to hold manufacturers accountable. The Sandy Hook case took advantage of an exemption written into the federal law protecting gunmakers that allows for litigation against the companies if their marketing practices violate state or federal laws. 

But legal experts cast doubt on whether the Mexican government could convince the Massachusetts court that gunmakers had knowingly facilitated the sale of firearms to cartels or had engaged in illegal marketing. Selling to retailers who may have links to criminal groups isn’t necessarily a crime. 

“Even if it’s careless, they’re not liable,” said Tim Lytton, a law professor at Georgia State University.

And it will be difficult to show that companies that put Mexican icons on their guns were trying to appeal to cartel hit men, the experts said. 

“It’s perfectly legal to have Mexican revolutionary heroes on your gun,” said Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA. “There’s no law that prohibits that.”

In Washington, the White House noted that President Biden has urged Congress to repeal the federal statute that shields gunmakers from lawsuits. “President Biden remains committed to Congressional repeal,” said Michael Gwin, a White House spokesman. “While that law remains on the books, gun manufacturers and distributors should be held accountable — to the extent legally possible — when they violate the law.”

American gun laws have clear links to the ebb and flow of violence in Mexico, experts say. When the U.S. assault weapons ban ended in 2004, the government noted in the suit, gun makers “exploited the opening to vastly increase production, particularly of the military-style assault weapons favored by the drug cartels.”

At the same time, killings in Mexico began to rise, reaching record levels in 2018, when more than 36,000 people were murdered across the country.

The Mexican government is being represented by lawyers from Hilliard Shadowen, a Texas law firm specializing in class-action lawsuits, and by Jonathan Lowy, chief counsel for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the gun control organization. 

The suit was filed the day after Mr. Ebrard, the foreign minister, attended a ceremony commemorating the two-year anniversary of the mass shooting in an El Paso, Texas, Walmart store that killed 23 people, including several Mexican citizens. 

Despite President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s campaign promise to stanch the bloodshed by tackling the root cause of violence, a strategy he called “hugs not bullets,” the authorities have so far been unable to make much headway.

Read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/04/world/americas/mexico-lawsuit-gun-companies.html

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