When I first started blogging there was no such thing as a blog. I was known as El Paso’s Drudge Report back in the day. I started my blog as a direct result of Bob Moore’s insistence on using his newspaper to propel and support Ray Caballero and his public policy agenda. My first and only goal was to show Bob Moore that I wasn’t going to sit by and let him use his newspaper to attack me and my family. Moore used his newspaper to attack anyone that opposed the Caballero regime. As my writing matured I started attempting to create an alternative news outlet and from there it has evolved into what it is today. In the meantime, as the Internet came unto its own the news media in general started to spiral into oblivion and news consumers realized that the news wasn’t the domain of the so-called professional news outlets like the local paper. Like the news I have evolved in what and how I write about issues. As 2015 starts out I want to share with you what my plans are.
El Paso is the epicenter of two of the issues that interest me the most – border politics and immigration. Although border politics seems to be a much generalized issue, it is my belief that the local politics of El Paso represents the microcosm of immigration, liberalism vs. conservatism politics and the War on Drugs. To many it may seem like El Paso isn’t even on the political radar of national and international political observers and in many ways this is reflected in the ineffective representation of the El Paso delegates at the state and national levels. El Paso, nonetheless, is the epicenter of immigration, US-Mexico politics, narcotics politics and even international intrigue. What many people do not understand of El Paso’s place on the national and international scene is the direct result of El Paso’s politicians fomenting the lie of the “safest city in the nation” and an ineffective news media. Take for example, the case of Luis Posada Carriles, a CIA operative and terrorist who was held, tried and released in El Paso. Posada Carriles ties directly today with the topical issue of US-Cuban relations and terrorism, and yet the local media is oblivious to this.
Although the local news media has covered the case, the commentary and context were severely lacking. I’m still not sure if the lack of context is indifference, misunderstanding the significance or a concerted effort to keep the lie of the “safest city” that extends to “least controversial city” in the nation that is epitomized in the “lithium in the water” running joke around town. Whatever the case, El Paso continues to pretend it is a sleepy little town where everything is good.
There was a recent murderous drug war in El Paso’s sister city, Cd. Juárez and instead of understanding the context of the role El Paso plays as the drug conduit into the nation, the community commentary focused on the “safest city” lie. These are but only two examples of many where El Paso is centric on current regional, national and international news events yet completely ignored around town.
I spent last week at the nation’s capital contemplating 2015 and I decided on how I want to proceed with my blog. Last year I spent the year reinventing my business model and it is now time to focus more on my blog. Bloggers, by their nature, are magnets for those who want to silence an informed community. Politicians do not want an informed electorate. The news media conglomerates have no interest in informing the communities they serve because facts expose nefarious activities and that activity results in angry moneymen who silence dissention through economic terrorism. Because of this I needed to sever the ability of those who do not want an informed constituency to silence me through ostracizing me economically. I have now successfully made it impossible to use economic pressures to silence me by changing how I conduct business.
Through my company, Cognent, we create digital content. By digital content, I mean the images, the graphics, the infographics, the words and the content the fills the pages of the websites you visit daily. Every word you read, every photograph and every video or advertising you see online is created by an agency. At Cognent we do that for companies that take what we create and either use it on their own websites or sell it to other website owners. In other words, at Cognent we create the content someone else takes credit for.
The result is that you have probably seen some of the content we develop as you visit your daily websites but you do not know that we created it. This allows me to separate my blogging activities from my business activities. Thus anyone intent on silencing me through client intimidation is unable to do so because our clients are secret by the nature of my business model. You can’t call up a client to tell him to stop doing business with me if the caller doesn’t know who my customers are.
This now gives me the opportunity to focus on blogging unimpeded by those intent on silencing me. I have no allegiance to anyone or any entity. As such I have complete liberty to focus on exposing what I see and believe to be the hypocrisy and/or an attempt to manipulate facts for a political agenda. As I hold no allegiance to either the Democrat or the Republican parties I am not boxed in by their ideological constraints. I do not vote in US politics, because I am not a US citizen and as such I have the freedom to express any viewpoint irrespective of political ideology. As an immigrant I have the perspective of looking at national politics from an outsider’s perspective. As a citizen of Mexico, who has lived in several places, I see and understand the dynamics of US-Mexico geopolitics that are played out on the international arena. As a Mexican I have lived the life of the smoke-and-mirrors dynamic that dominates our culture and I am therefore outwardly conservative yet inwardly liberal. You’ll have to take my word about this because to give you a full explanation of the smoke-and-mirrors mind set would require a concise in depth article that would be thousands of words long and far beyond the scope of this article. You can use the search function on my blog, if you like, to read previous posts on this topic that I have written. Because of this mindset I do not believe that I’m ideologically boxed in a conservative or liberal bias.
However, as a human being I have to acknowledge that I do have biases. I am biased towards the Mexican perspective in most things. I am biased in that I believe El Paso is corrupt to the core and has always been that way from the onset. It is not the residents of El Paso but rather the ruling elite that benefits from the endemic and institutionalized corruption. The residents of El Paso must exist under the corruption.
Because I have no driving ideology nor do I support one political faction over another I will invariably anger most of you at one time or another. In order to expose the unvarnished truth I must write what I perceive is hypocritical and/or politically driven regardless of who is driving it or what it supports.
This leads to me where I want to take my blog in 2015.
I am going to focus more on my blogging activities in 2015. I plan on making my blog more of a blog therefore I am going to strive to write more than one article a day, Monday through Friday but I will publish at least one article a day during the week. For those who have subscribed to my newsletter, rest assured that at most you will receive two emails a day showing you the first article of the day and the last one. Any blog posts in between will not be forwarded to you. However, you can always read them by coming to my website.
I am going to focus more on commentary on various topics and less on “news” items. However, I will not abandon exposing the corruption which means I will sometimes have to publish “news” pieces.
This means that I will make more use of open records requests both at the local, state, national and even filing more requests to the Mexican government. However because of the time necessary to research and correlate the various data points there will be less published materials based on sourced materials and more commentary on the daily news.
Successful blogs depend on regular readers and readers want content that is current and relevant. The three major topics that I’m going to focus on are – immigration, cross-border politics to include the drug trade and international political topics. Through the years I have noticed that these three topics are the ones that consume the most political commentary. Of course, being in the technology sector there will also be the occasional technology related topic.
I will also be experimenting with more multimedia such as infographics and video.
Although I am likely to anger you at one time or another I encourage you to read and participate on my blog. I only promise one thing, I will write what my perspective is on each topic I tackle regardless of what toes it steps on. Just remember that today you may be angry but tomorrow you might actually like what I write. If I don’t anger you at least once this year then I’m just writing to your needs and not exposing the hypocrisy.
As I have written numerous times before, my blog is the vehicle I use to express my thoughts on each topic. I believe the comment section is your opportunity to express your thoughts on each topic I cover. Because of this I try not to get into a tit-for-tat with those who leave comments on my blog. I want each of you to feel free to express your own perspective on each topic without having to play to see who gets to have the last word.
If a topic generates a discussion that merits clarification or more detail then I’ll write a follow up piece on it.
There have been several of you who wonder why I do not link to other blogs or link to articles that I comment on. Let me clarify this for everyone. There are many reasons for this but the bottom line is search engine optimization (SEO).
I have spent a considerable amount of time positioning my blog on the search engines. Linking to other sites creates a myriad of problems. It requires consistently policing old posts to see if the links are still relevant or have not been hijacked by link-squatters looking to capitalize on indexed links. It also means that I am not going to give away free SEO ranking to another blog.
Yes, I read the other blogs. I will sometimes comment on them as well. When I write commentary on other published materials I will provide you enough information such as the author, title of the piece and date so that you can simply Google it to read the source material.
I encourage and welcome all commentary on my articles especially if you disagree with me. As long as you remain civil and do not use the commentary to silence discussion I will let you express yourself as much as you like.
Most important of all is that I appreciate each of you for taking the time to read what I write. Without you this blog would not exist. This is your blog as much as it is mine. Without you there would be no blog.
Thank you and I hope you will enjoy our journey together in 2015.
So if you call El Paso corrupt (and I agree), then WTF is a country where a mayor can phone the police chief and have 44 students murdered? It is definitely NOT a civilized country.
As for Juarez, the urban nightmare next door, well the headless body count was 3 last week, and improvement, I suppose.
Funny, I agree with you Rotten, and I like what you have planned for 2015, Martín. Both cities, Juarez and El Paso, are vastly corrupt, but El Paso government and special
groups and corporations hide it better by limiting info and using their controlled media to convey allowed material. Thank you for this blog to help reveal the corruption, but I agree with, RP about the level of murders. Does El Paso political elite reach the level of criminal conduct like the kind involved with the multitude of discovered headless bodies, or the killing of people for speaking out on something that maybe a little embarrassing for as political figure?
It is good that there is at least one blogger and one newspaper, el Diario that willing to expose and report the truth.
Corruption exists in El Paso because the voters or lack of voters allow it to exist. Don’t blame the corrupt officials, we give them the job despite their reputations and back room deals.
The corruption is a result of the intermixing of the mexican corruption that has become acceptable and cultural and being transferred to border cities. Part of el Paso’s inability to break the stigma of being corrupt is the constant reference to “sister city”. While some find that as endearing, in the rest of the world it presents the perception that El Paso is as bad as Juarez. Which could be true. The only difference being, Mexican officials openly take your money while El Paso takes your money via shell games or convince you that being raped is good.
The only reason tourists used to visit El Paso, is because it was a gateway to cheap drinking, drugging, prostitution and bizzare behavior. Since it is no longer considered safe to visit Juarez, there is no real desire to visit El Paso. But to insist that El Paso and juarez are one and the same only provides the perception that we are the same cheap, dusty, backward sin city. Maybe we are !
What is it about some Pasenos that they cannot accept the truth about how stand-alone- corrupt their city, their state, and their country are, and ask what can we do to limit corruption? Immediately they jump oh-ever so high to drag Mexico and/or Cd Juarez into the fray because I suppose if it weren’t for those pesky Mexicans there would be no corruption in the US of A.
Let’s review some recent ‘mistakes’ that I hope have not yet been chucked to the memory hole:
Governors – heading to-, are in-, or were in prison for –quess what?
Virgina – the once Honorable Bob McDonnell (My personal favorite, enjoyed how he threw his wife under the bus and declared how the white-man’s god was going to save him – because of course he wasn’t a bought and paid for politico).
Illinois – remember Blago? That is Rod Blagojevich. Before this ’honorable American’ there was George Ryan.
OK, it’s too much bloody effort to list all the Norte Americano-corruption so here is an article by Reid Wilson in The Washington Post dated Jan 22, 2014 titled “The Most Corrupt State(s) in America”. Please note that neither the author nor those commenting blame the Mexicans, seems they are pretty savvy and understand where to direct the blame and outrage.
Accept the Blame….El Paso is not corrupt because of Mexicans. The white guys are the most corrupt.
While I agree there are other corrupt cities, my concern is about the corruption in the El Paso area. It’s where I live and corruption directly affects me.
I apologize if my comments were understood that Mexicans are the cause of corruption here. My point was that because of the intermixing of cultures, the influence of complacency and indifference has led to wide spread corruption. Thus the attitude “ni modo” is prevalent in the area.
Btw, I am a proud Mex-American.