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TIJUANA, Mexico - Gunbattles broke out between suspected drug traffickers who fired at each other while speeding down heavily populated streets of this violent border city early Saturday, killing 13 people and wounding nine.

Dead bodies scattered along a road marked one of the deadliest shootouts in Mexico's three-year-old drug warfare.

All of the dead were believed to be drug traffickers, possibly rival members of the same cartel who were trying to settle scores, said Rommel Moreno, the attorney general of Baja California state, where Tijuana is located.

Two of the dead were believed to be senior hit men for the Arellano Felix cartel and were identified by the large gold rings on their fingers. The rings carried the icon of Saint Death, a ghoulish figure that gangsters believe protects them, police said.

"Today shows we are facing a terrible war never seen before on the (U.S.-Mexico) border,"  Moreno said during a news conference.

Police cordoned off all the surrounding roads, forcing workers at a nearby maquiladora to walk through the crime scene to get to work.

"Another shootout," said a woman who gave her name only as Lisa. "There are just too many, we are so afraid."

Others suspects hurt in gang warfare   
Eight suspects and one federal police officer were injured, said Agustin Perez Aguilar, a spokesman for the state public safety department. The suspects are being held on suspicion of weapons possession among other possible charges.

Police recovered 21 vehicles, many with bullet holes or U.S. license plates; a total of 54 guns; and more than 1,500 spent shell casings at various points in the city where the battles broke out, Perez Aguilar said.

"Evidently this is a confrontation between gangs," Moreno told reporters.

At one point, the alleged traffickers fired at one another as their sport utility vehicles sped down a busy six-lane boulevard lined with restaurants, car repair shops, medical offices and strip malls.

Bullet holes could be seen in the walls of a factory building and on the perimeter wall of a housing complex along the road, but no bystander deaths were reported. It was not clear how long the gunbattles lasted.

A mall security guard who did not want to give his name for fear of reprisals said he heard hundreds of gunshots fired, some of which passed near him.

"I hit the ground," the guard said. When he got up again, he said he saw bullet holes in the wall behind him, a dead man lying in a pool of blood and 11 abandoned, bullet-ridden SUVs on the street.

Tijuana's deadly turf
The first shootout claimed seven victims. Three subsequent gunbattles — one outside a hospital — claimed five more, police said. The body of a man police believe to be the 13th victim turned up at a city hospital.

Tijuana, a sprawling metropolis just across the border from San Diego, California, is pervaded by frequent violence, much of it blamed on drug cartels battling for control of lucrative trafficking routes. The city is home to the Arellano-Felix drug cartel.

In January, eight people died in a gunbattle at a Tijuana safe-house apparently used by drug hit men to hold kidnapped rivals. In that confrontation, hit men holed up inside the house battled police and soldiers with automatic weapons for three hours.

Mexico's drug battles
Heavily armed federal police patrolled across Tijuana following the gunfight. Soldiers and police guarded the city's main hospital where the wounded were being treated to prevent any attempt by drug gangs to pull them out.

Baja California state police chief Daniel de la Rosa said fresh troops from Mexico City were arriving in Tijuana, which borders San Diego, California.

President Felipe Calderon has sent thousands of troops to Tijuana and Baja California state since taking office in December 2006. Some 25,000 soldiers and federal police are deployed to fight cartels in drug hot spots across Mexico.

The army in Tijuana said it was on high alert for reprisals against soldiers and federal police following the shootout and the ensuing arrests.

"The risk of attacks against our agents after an event like this is extremely high," said Lt. Col Julian Leyzaola, Tijuana's police chief.

The Arellano Felix gang was long the dominant drug-trafficking organization in Tijuana, smuggling drugs into California. Recently the group has been under attack from a rival gang from the Pacific state of Sinaloa, led by Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman.

By Naomi Spencer

Worldwide food prices have risen sharply and supplies have dropped this year, according to the latest food outlook of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. The agency warned December 17 that the changes represent an “unforeseen and unprecedented” shift in the global food system, threatening billions with hunger and decreased access to food.

The FAO’s food price index rose by 40 percent this year, on top of the already high 9 percent increase the year before, and the poorest countries spent 25 percent more this year on imported food. The prices for staple crops, including wheat, rice, corn and soybeans, all rose drastically in 2007, pushing up prices for grain-fed meat, eggs and dairy products and spurring inflation throughout the consumer food market.

Driving these increases are a complex range of developments, including rapid urbanization of populations and growing demand for food stuffs in key developing countries such as China and India, speculation in the commodities markets, increased diversion of feedstock crops into the production of biofuels, and extreme weather conditions and other natural disasters associated with climate change.

Because of the long-term and compounding nature of all of these factors, the problems of rising prices and decreasing supplies in the food system are not temporary or one-time occurrences, and cannot be understood as cyclical fluctuations in supply and demand.

The world reserves of cereals are dwindling. In the past year, wheat stores declined 11 percent. The FAO notes that this is the lowest level since the UN began keeping records in 1980, while the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has reported that world wheat stocks may have fallen to 47-year lows. By FAO figures, the falloff in wheat stores equals about 12 weeks worth of global consumption.

The USDA has cautioned that wheat exporters in the US have already sold more than 90 percent of what the department had expected to be exported during the fiscal year ending June 2008. This has dire consequences for the world’s poor, whose diets consist largely of cereal grains imported from the United States and other major producers.

More than 850 million people around the world suffer from chronic hunger and other associated miseries of extreme poverty. According to the FAO, 37 countries—20 in Africa, 9 in Asia, 6 in Latin America, and 2 in Eastern Europe—currently face exceptional shortfalls in food production and supplies.

Those most affected live in countries dependent on imports. The poorest people, whose diets consist heavily of cereal grains, are most vulnerable. Already the poor spend the majority of their income on staple foods—up to 80 percent in some regions, according to the FAO. Ever-rising prices will lead to a distinct deterioration in the diets of these sections of the population.

The food crisis is intensifying social discontent and raising the likelihood of social upheavals. The FAO notes that political unrest “directly linked to food markets” has developed in Morocco, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Guinea, Mauritania and Senegal. In the past year, cereal prices have triggered riots in several other countries, including Mexico, where tortilla prices were pushed up 60 percent. In Italy, the rising cost of pasta prompted nationwide protests. Unrest in China has also been linked to cooking oil shortages.

In addition to the cost of imports, war and civil strife, multiple years of drought and other disasters, and the impact of HIV/AIDS have crippled countries’ food supply mechanisms.

Iraq and Afghanistan both suffer severe shortfalls because of the US invasion and ongoing occupation. North African countries are hard hit by the soaring wheat prices because many staple foods require imported wheat.

Countries of the former Soviet Union are facing wheat shortages. People there spend upwards of 70 percent of their incomes on food; the price of bread in Kyrgyzstan has risen by 50 percent this year and the government released emergency reserves of wheat in the poorest areas to temporarily ease the crisis.

In Bangladesh, food prices have spiraled up 11 percent every month since July; rice prices have risen by nearly 50 percent in the past year.

Central American countries saw a 50 percent increase in the price of that region’s staple grain, corn. Several countries in South America have also been impacted by the high international wheat prices, compelling national governments to dispense with import taxes. The government in Bolivia, for example, has dispatched the military to operate industrial-scale bread bakeries.

All national governments are keenly aware of the possibility of civil unrest in the event of severe food shortages or famine, and many have taken minimal steps to ease the crisis in the short term, such as reducing import tariffs and erecting export restrictions. On December 20, China did away with food export rebates in an effort to stave off domestic shortfalls. Russia, Kazakhstan, and Argentina have also implemented export controls.

But such policies cannot adequately cope with the crisis in the food system because they do not address the causes, only the immediate symptoms. Behind the inflation are the complex inter-linkages of global markets and the fundamental incompatibility of the capitalist system with the needs of billions of poor and working people.

The volatility of the financial markets, driven by speculation and trading in equity and debt, intersects with the futures and options markets that have a direct bearing on agricultural commodity markets. As the housing market in the United States collapsed, compounding problems in the credit market and threatening recession, speculation shifted to the commodities markets, exacerbating inflation in basic goods and materials. The international food market is particularly prone to volatility because current prices are greatly influenced by speculation over future commodity prices. This speculation can then trigger more volatility, encouraging more speculation.

Future grain prices are a striking example of this disastrous cycle. On December 17, speculation on wheat and rice for delivery in March 2008 forced prices to historic highs on the Chicago Board of Trade. Wheat jumped to more than $10 a bushel on projections of worsening shortages and inflation. This level is double the $5-a-bushel price of wheat at the beginning of 2007.

Japan, the largest wheat importer in Asia, announced December 19 that it may raise wheat prices by 30 percent. The same day, Indian government officials warned of impending food security problems. These were due, according to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, to “clouds on global financial markets following the sub-prime lending crisis.”

Soybean and corn prices have also been pushed up to 34-year and 11-year highs, respectively, on the projected shortages and demand for biofuel. These new trading levels become the agricultural benchmarks for subsequent trading, and, as the Financial Times put it December 17, have the consequence of “raising inflationary pressure and constraining the ability of central banks to mitigate economic slowdown.”

Higher fuel costs ultimately lead to higher food prices, via higher shipping charges, particularly for nations that import a large proportion of their staple foods. Shipping costs for bulk commodities have increased by more than 80 percent in the past year and 57 percent since June, according to the Baltic Exchange Dry Index.

The FAO report noted that the enormous increase in freight costs has had the effect of dis-integrating the world market in certain regions because many import-heavy countries have opted to purchase from closer suppliers, resulting in “prices at regional or localized levels falling out of line with world levels.”

The rising oil price not only affects the costs of transportation and importation. It also has a direct impact on the costs of farm operation in the working of agricultural and industrial processing machinery. Moreover, fertilizer, which takes its key component, nitrogen, from natural gas, is also spiking in price because of the impact of rising oil prices on the demand and costs of other fuels. By the same token, as oil prices rise, the demand for biofuel sources such as corn, sugarcane, and soybeans also rises, resulting in more and more feedstock crops being devoted to fuel and additives production.

In the US, the use of corn for ethanol production has doubled since 2003, and is projected by the FAO to increase from 55 million metric tons to 110 million metric tons by 2016. The US government is more ambitious. On December 19, President Bush signed a new energy bill into law which contains a mandate for expanding domestic biofuel production five-fold over the next 15 years, to more than 36 billion gallons a year. Already a third of the US corn harvest is devoted to ethanol production, surpassing the amount of corn bound for the world food markets.

As more US cropland is devoted to ethanol-bound corn, other major agricultural regions are struggling with weather disasters associated with climate change. Australia and the Ukraine, both significant exporters of wheat, have suffered extreme weather that damaged crops. A prolonged drought in southern Australia has curtailed farming to such a degree that many farmers have sold their land.

Current research suggests that as temperatures rise over the next fifty years by 1 to 2 degrees Celsius, poor countries may lose 135 million hectares (334 million acres) of arable land because of lost rainfall. In new studies published earlier this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers have cautioned that this estimate may be conservative, and that the impact of climate change on food production has been over-simplified.

According to NASA/Goddard Institute of Space Studies researcher Francesco Tubiello, complications of climate change on the world food supply may be far worse than previously predicted: “The projections show a smooth curve, but a smooth curve has never happened in history. Things happen suddenly, and then you can’t respond to them.”

Tubiello’s research focuses on extreme weather events that have devastated entire crops when they coincided with germination and blossoming periods, as was the case with Italy’s corn crop in 2003. Tubiello noted that corn yield in the Po valley growing region fell to 36 percent following a heat wave that raised Italy’s temperatures 6 degrees over the long-term average.

In addition to the survival thresholds of plants, researchers have begun studying the effects of higher temperatures on the physiology and diseases of livestock, as well as the spread of pests, molds and viruses native to tropical zones. Goddard Institute research has suggested that bluetongue, a viral disease of cattle and sheep, will move outward from the tropics into regions including southern Australia. According to the Earth Institute at Columbia University, higher temperatures will lead to higher infertility in livestock and lower dairy yields.

The implications of these studies are that farming adaptations such as hardier crops and shifts in planting times may initially mitigate anticipated global warming. Yet over the coming decades, the stress of climate change on the food supply will also intensify in abrupt and catastrophic ways for which the capitalist system and its ruling elites are entirely unprepared and which they are unable to prevent.

Republican presumptive nominee John McCain has ignored official campaign expenditure limits and has overspent millions in the primary.  According to spending reports filed last week by McCain’s campaign, the Arizona senator has broken the limits set by the presidential public financing system.  Candidates such as McCain, who have committed to public financing, are only allowed to spend up to $54 million on the primary. McCain, however, spent $58.4 million.  This is while lawyers of the 71-year-old senator contend that the spending cap does not apply in the current situation.  They allege since the Republican hopeful announced after February 6’s Super Tuesday victories that he would withdraw from the matching-funds program he had entered last year, the spending cap does not apply to him. ”The FEC regulations specifically state that candidates who do not receive public funding payments from the US Treasury are exempt from the primary spending ceiling,” expounded one of his senior campaign officials.  Chairman of the commission David Mason, however, warned McCain last month that his withdrawal request had not yet been granted. “McCain has 2 problems with this issue. 1: If the FEC allows McCain to withdraw from FED matching funds he will be revoked from many delegates in states that he was able to be on the ballot without the required number of signatures therefore he will lose any delegates for him in those states.  2: If the FEC doesn’t release him from matching funds he will be capped at 50 million dollars and will kill his run for president because he will not have the money to compete. The problem is even more complicated than this.  McCain used the matching funds eligibility to avoid having to collect signatures to qualify for ballot access in several states, including Ohio, Pennsylvania and Delaware.  Those state wins must be voided according to most experts on the issue.  That means he does not have the necessary delegates.  Ironic that it was his law (McCain-Feingold) that got him in this mess. McCain broke the law…I was one of the people that have addressed this and did so on record on the radio.  You people can not wait for the FEC to rule on this.  The delegates in these states need to file the motion at their conventions for McCain to be revoked of all his delegates in those states for failure to comply with election ballot state law requirements.  Find out if your state allowed McCain to be on the ballot without obtaining petition
signatures.” — Dr.Steve Parent

This is what I have come up with so far in this draft and any more thoughts would be appreciated. Keep in mind the more you have the stronger your resolutions are.

This should also be brought to your convention as proof to support the claim in this resolution. http://www.fec.gov/press/...

RESOLUTION to deny Senator John McCain of Arizona (hereafter, "John McCain") any (STATE) delegate votes at the 2008 county, state, and national Republican Party conventions:

WHEREAS John McCain was placed on the ballot in (STATE) without obtaining the required number of petition signatures, due to his prospective acceptance of Federal matching funds; and

WHEREAS John McCain ostensibly won the 2008 Republican Party primary in (STATE) as a result of being placed on the ballot solely due to his prospective acceptance of Federal matching funds; and

WHEREAS John McCain has willfully withdrawn from the Federal matching funds program, violating the sole condition whereby he qualified to be on the ballot in (STATE); and

WHEREAS John McCain must therefore be deemed ineligible to have been on the ballot for the 2008 Republican Party primary in (STATE), rendering all votes for him null and void; and

WHEREAS John McCain cannot therefore be deemed to have actually won the 2008 Republican Party primary in (STATE), and thus no (STATE) Republican Party delegates can be obligated to vote for John McCain at county, state, and national Republican Party conventions; and

WHEREAS, by participating in the (STATE) Republican Party primary on a fraudulent basis, John McCain has clearly failed in his obligation to respect and honor both the integrity of the Republican Party in (STATE) and the election laws of (STATE); and

WHEREAS the Republican Party has the responsibility and obligation to hold any prospective nominee of its party accountable for any violations of the law in any state, at a minimum by refusing to allow such an individual to win its nomination; and

WHEREAS the delegates for the Republican Party have the responsibility to maintain the integrity of the Republican Party by withholding their votes from any candidate who has violated either the integrity of the Party or the election laws of (STATE); and

WHEREAS it is impossible to determine how votes cast for John McCain in the 2008 (STATE) Republican Party primary would otherwise have been distributed;

BE IT RESOLVED that we the people of the Republican Party of (STATE) hereby release all delegates from any obligation, legal or moral, to vote in convention for John McCain based on his illegitimate participation in the 2008 (STATE) Republican Party primary; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that we the people of the Republican Party of (STATE) enjoin all our delegates to NOT vote in convention for John McCain, and to vote for whichever remaining candidate(s) they believe best uphold(s) the platform and traditions of the Republican Party and the Constitution of the United States of America.

by Andy Barnett

BLAINE, Minn. – Ron Paul supporters shook things up in at least three of Minnesota's congressional district conventions yesterday when they captured nearly all of the national delegates and alternates for the Republican National Convention this fall.

There was controversy at Minnesota's 6th Congressional District Convention. The district covers part of the Twin Cities metro area and extends to the west and into nearby St. Cloud, Minn. Paul supporters were accused of dirty tricks.

"They hijacked the convention," said Jeff Johnson who serves as Minnesota's Senate District 15 co-chairman.

Two out of three national delegates elected were Ron Paul supporters and all three of the alternates supported Paul. After the election results were announced at the convention, they were immediately disputed when it was discovered that the candidates had agreed to support John McCain in pre-screening questions. 

"I had people coming up to me saying that they wanted to ensure that Ron Paul has a chance to speak at the convention," said   Andy Aplikowsky, the vice chairman of the 6th District in Anoka County, "These people hid what their intentions were and that's deceptive."

Prior to the voting, candidates running to be national delegates were screened by a nominating committee and asked two questions.

"We asked them if they were Republican and then asked if they would support John McCain at the national convention" said Aplikowsky. "They had the option to answer yes, no, or maybe."

The answers to these questions were then presented to the body of congressional delegates to take into consideration in the voting process. When it was discovered the elected national delegates were Paul supporters despite saying they would support McCain, the convention erupted in debate.

A motion was made to ensure the delegates supported McCain at the national convention.

"I moved that we bind the national delegates and alternates to what they told the nominating committee which is what was reported to the voters," said Aplikowsky.

A heated debate lasting more than an hour followed the motion. Eventually, the motion passed by a slim margin, but not without harsh words and harsh exchanges.

The feeling among many of the congressional delegates who voted was that the Paul supporters had been dishonest. Ron Baert, one of the elected national delegates and a Ron Paul supporter disagreed.

"I don't recall the exact wording of the question (about McCain), and so I wanted to clarify it," he said. "So I said that the endorsement hasn't even taken place yet, but that if McCain were endorsed I would support him, however I did not say I would vote to endorse him at the national convention."

Could the wording of the pre-screening questions have been confusing? Aplikowsky who helped in the process didn't think that was likely.

"There were 98 people who went through the questions and it was explained very thoroughly at the time the nominations report was given to the voters," he said.

The 98 candidate names, and their answers to the pre-screening questions were displayed on an overhead projector as well as on a handout available to voters.

Some Paul supporters wanted to know why the pre-screening questions were asked in the first place, and Baert said he and other Paul backers felt intimidated. So what was the purpose of the questions?

"The intention was to identify people and who they were going to support," said Aplikowski. "It wasn't to keep out Ron Paul supporters but to present that information to the body of delegates to vote on, which is one of the purposes of the nominating committee."

The RNC was contacted by phone while the debate was going on, and, according to party rules, the national delegates must endorse John McCain or their votes won't count. That left some angry.

"If they intended to bind candidates to vote for the presumptive nominee (John McCain), they should've announced this at the beginning," said Paul supporter Jim Sutton. "This convention has never bound delegates to a candidate before. It was a torpedo job against us!"

The Ron Paul Revolution also struck Minnesota's 4th and 5th districts where Paul supporters swept the votes for national delegates and alternates. Minnesota Chairman Ron Carey said that the delegates' decision to not unite behind McCain only hurts the Republican party.

Paul has remained in the presidential race despite the fact McCain has now earned enough delegates to become the Republican nominee for president.

This is the news story I (Andy Barnett) wrote based on the events that happened at Minnesota's 6th Congressional District GOP Convention. This was written as a news story and my goal was to present the details fair and balanced with perspectives from both sides present.