August 3, 2007: Last March, Mexican police found over $200 million in cash in a mansion. The rumor mill continues to claim that the cash will be stolen by the police, or government, or - name it. There has been another arrest in the case and a new accounting. First of all, all $207 million in cash remains in a bank and accounted for. Second, the owner of the mansion was identified as Zhenli Ye Gon. Mr. Zhenli "fled for the border" after the raid on his mansion. He went to the US and holed up in a suburb of Washington, DC. Last week a US grand jury indicted Zhenli for conspiring to produced methamphetamine to be sold in the US. It's not clear whether he will be tried in the US or Mexico, or in both nations.

July 30. 2007: The Mexican government was surprised and then embarrassed, by the July 12 attacks by the EPR on pipeline and petroleum facilities in Mexico. Mexico's Interior Ministry and it National Security and Investigation Center (CISEN) had apparently lost track of the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), which launched the attacks. The EPR has launched attacks in the middle of President Calderon's new "war on drugs." It may not be a coincidence. The fear is that the EPR has been bought off by drug cartels. This has happened before, with Colombia and Peru as recent examples where former leftist guerrilla organizations began working for drug lords.

July 29, 2007: The EPR claimed that it attacked a government confinement facility in Chiapas state. The rebel statement also demanded the release of two members who are being held by the police.

July 28, 2007: It's estimated that at least 1000 businesses and manufacturing sites in central Mexico had to curtail operations in the week after the EPR attack on a PEMEX pipelines. The businesses had to reduce operations due to fuel shortages. In total the businesses lost an estimated five to ten million dollars a day This means the EPR's attack had very real economic consequences, which was no doubt one of the rebels' goals. The EPR claimed to have attacked three pipelines and a switching station in Queretaro and Guanajuato states.

July 21, 2007: The EPR may be but one face in a new surge of leftist political violence. Mexican intelligence has identified four other left-wing "splinter groups": the Popular Revolutionary Democratic Party (PDPR); Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI); Revolutionary Armed Forces of the People (FARP); and Villista Revolutionary Army of the People (EVRP). The "Villistas" pay homage to Mexican revolutionary warlord Pancho Villa. Like the EPR, all four groups have leadership cadres that either trained with or were influenced by the Clandestine Revolutionary Workers Party (PROCUP). PROCUP was a 1960s-era "Marxist" organization.

July 15, 2007: In the wake of the July 12 bombings of PEMEX facilities, the Mexican government has sent 5000 soldiers to guard "strategic sites" in Mexico. The sites include dams and refineries as well as other petroleum industry infrastructure. The soldiers are drawn from The Corps of Federal Support Forces, a Mexican Army command created in May 2007 and tasked with fighting the on-going war against drug cartels.