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Recent updates in American Airlines Flight Ticket Sea To Cabo San Jose - Airline

Getting To Mexico Gets Tricky

• Aug 02, 2010 from nbcbayarea(NBC Bay Area) in World news
  Heads up if you have a ticket on Mexicana Airlines. The company is having big financial problems that has lead to flight cancellations.So far, San Jose's daily flight to Guadalajara and Mexico City has not be effected. The daily flight out of SFO is still happening as well, although the spokesman said there is a change in the standard schedule.You don't have to go far though to find canceled flights. KCRA is reporting Mexicana has suspended operations out of the Sacramento airport.Stranded travelers there had to scramble this past weekend to find a new way to their destination.Some may have made their way to Bay Area airports. A Mineta spokesman said that the counters in San Jose were hopping this weekend. In part because the airline had system-wide computer problems.Patrick White of Sacramento was planning to fly on Mexicana, but had to scramble to find another way to get to Cabo San Lucas. He said he and his wife ended up spending several hundred dollars more to get another flight.White asked about a refund, and was told that would take up to two months. He took it all in stride. "That's the price you pay," he said.Mexicana pilots and flight attendants picketed at the airport in Mexico City. The employees are fearful of job cuts.The president of the pilots' union was told that the airline may be filing for bankruptcy.A spokeswoman for Mexicana would only say that flights were being canceled in a wide region and blamed it on "operational needs."KCRA.com contributed to this report.

How to Buy a Round-the-World Plane Ticket (That Kicks Ass)

• Oct 08, 2010 from timferriss in Lifestyle
  (Photo: Norman B. Leventhal Map Center)
  Chris Guillebeau travels the world and writes for a small army of remarkable people at The Art of Non-Conformity blog. He is a master of clever air travel (among other things), and this is a guest post on perfecting one of the rare gems that can truly change your life: Round-the-World (RTW) tickets.
  Enter Chris
  
  To outsiders, buying a Round-the-World plane ticket is a mysterious process. How does it work? Where can you go? How much does it cost? Unlike buying a simple one-way or round-trip ticket, you dont just go to Kayak and click the Everywhere tab. (You dont have to look there is no such thing.)
  Over the past three years Ive spent at least 60 hours, probably more by now, learning the ins and outs of Round-the-World travel. In this post, Ill explain a) why Round-the-World tickets can be an excellent value even if youre not trying to visit every country in the world like I am, b) how to plan your trip, c) how much it costs, d) 7 bonus tips on optimization.
  The Time Investment
  Planning and shopping for a Round-the-World (RTW) ticket is a labor-intensive process. If you dont enjoy planning a short trip, youll find it much more difficult to plan a complicated RTW itinerary. Personally, I enjoy the process, but then again, I also like airports and flying.
  Also, before you can actually buy a Round-the-World ticket, you need to be willing to do all these things:
  - Spend a couple of hours of initial reading
  - Spend at least a couple of hours planning and optimizing
  - Place an initial phone call (usually at least 30 minutes) setting up the trip
  - Place a secondary phone call a few days later after the ticket has been validated
  - Make any adjustments due to lack of availability or invalid routings
  - Arrange to pay for the ticket with a local office in the originating country (this step may be optional, depending on how you structure the trip)
  Those are the minimum time costs for getting a Round-the-World trip set up well. Keep in mind that you can use a RTW ticket for up to a full year, so taking the time to do it well is important. The value I receive from my tickets well exceeds the planning time it requires, but as noted, the practice is not for everyone.
  Good Reasons to Use Round-the-World Tickets
  If youre willing and able to invest your time, the benefits youll receive from using these kinds of tickets are significant.
  Tremendous Value. RTW tickets are not especially cheap (see below for a cost outline), but a well-optimized ticket can provide value far beyond what it would cost to otherwise buy a series of one-way tickets.
  Freedom and Flexibility. I change my flights all the time, and with RTW tickets, its easy. Date and time changes are free, and you can make changes anytime from far in advance all the way up to the day of departure. For a fee, you can even reroute the entire ticket after youve begun the trip.
  One Full Year. You get an entire year to use the ticket, which means that you can have up to 365 days of going from place to place, or you can get even more creative like I do and spread out the ticket into a series of shorter trips by finding a way to come home in the middle.
  Miles and Elite Status. I carry the highest-level elite status in two airlines thanks to my RTW travel. I also earned more than 200,000 Frequent Flyer miles with American Airlines in 2009, thanks to double-mileage bonuses and a lot of time in the air. With the status, Im now first on the upgrade list, can hang out in nice airline lounges around the world, and dont have to wait on hold when I call the airline.
  Creative Opportunities to Travel. You can get to a lot of places in the world with simple round-trip tickets, but because RTW tickets are priced by mileage or by segment, you can visit destinations that are otherwise cost-prohibitive when using regular tickets.
  What to Do First
  If you know this is what you want to do, or even if youre just curious and want to create a sample itinerary, start by downloading these two free tools:
  Star Alliance Mileage Calculator
  OneWorld Timetable and Itinerary Planner
  Spend some time getting to understand how they work. Youll also want to check out the OneWorld interactive route map and the Star Alliance Downloadable Timetables to better understand where you can go.
  WARNING: This software can be hazardous to your productivity. Many a workday has been lost at World Domination HQ because of the attraction of these tools. Dont say I didnt warn you.
  Next, you need to answer a few questions: where do you want to go? Whats the goal of your trip? How much time do you have?
  Star Alliance versus OneWorld
  Each airline alliance has its own rules for how the ticket works. The one from Star Alliance is mileage based, meaning youll have a limit of 26,000, 29,000, 34,000 or 39,000 miles on your ticket. The trick here is to optimize your route to where you are just below one of the tiers, getting the best possible value without spending more money than...

Partners in Crime: The U.S. Secret State and Mexicos War on Drugs Tom Burghardt

• Sep 19, 2010 from sakerfa(Dprogram Dot Net) in *
  (AntifascistCalling) For decades, investigative journalists, researchers and analysts have noted the symbiotic relationships forged amongst international drug syndicates, neofascists and U.S. intelligence agencies, documenting the long and bloody history of U.S. complicity in the global drugs trade.
  While the United States has pumped billions of dollars into failed drug eradication schemes in target countries through ill-conceived programs such as Plan Colombia and the Mrida Initiative, in the bizarro world of the War on Drugs, corporate interests and geopolitics always trump law enforcement efforts to fight organized crime, particularly when the criminals are partners in crimes perpetrated by the secret state.
  Since 2006, when Mexican President Felipe Caldern turned the Army loose, allegedly to dismantle the drug cartels slowly transforming Mexico into a killing field some 28,000 people, primarily along Mexicos northern border with the U.S., have lost their lives. Countless others have been wounded, forced to flee or simply disappeared.
  Writing in The Guardian, journalist Simon Jenkins tells us that cocaine supplies routed through Mexico have made that country the drugs equivalent of a Gulf oil state.
  Rather than try to stem its own voracious appetite for drugs, Jenkins writes, rich America shifts guilt on to poor supplier countries. Never was the law of economicsdemand always evokes supplyso traduced as in Washingtons drugs policy. America spends $40bn a year on narcotics policy, imprisoning a staggering 1.5m of its citizens under it.
  Judging the results, one might even think the drug war solely exists as the principle means through which wealthy elites organize crime.
  Scenes from the Atrocity Exhibition
  December 13, 2009: The Observer reported that drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis. Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he saw evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were the only liquid investment capital available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result. The Observer informed us that this will raise questions about crimes influence on the economic system at times of crisis. Costa told the British newspaper that in many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking systems main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor. Although the UNs drug czar declined to identify the countries or banks that benefited from narcotics investments, he said that inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities There were signs that some banks were rescued that way.
  February 26, 2010: Responding to charges by left-wing critics and academics, Mexican president Felipe Caldern was forced to counter evidence that his governments offensive against narcotraffickers has left the largest and most powerful of the cartels relatively unscathed, the Los Angeles Times disclosed. Critics accused the government of favoritism towards the Sinaloa cartel, claiming it has been allowed to escape most of the governments firepower and carry on with its illegal business as usual. During a news conference, Caldern said such charges were absolutely false. The president said the suggestion was painful, and went on to say: I can assure you that this government has attacked without discrimination all criminal groups in Mexico without taking into consideration whether its the cartel of so-and-so or whats-his-name. Weve fought them all. Edgardo Buscaglia, an academic expert on organized crime challenged the president and said that arrest figures skew heavily toward the other cartels. By his calculation, the Times reported, of more than 53,000 people arrested in drug-trafficking cases in the three years since Caldern took office, fewer than 1,000 worked for the Sinaloa organization. Commanded by Joaqun El Chapo Guzmn, the Sinaloa cartel crime boss placed 937 on Forbes 2010 survey of the worlds billionaires with an estimated net worth of $1 billion. A similar modus operandi is standard practice where foreign policy and corporate concerns of Americas wealthiest clients overseas override efforts by law enforcement to choke-off the flow of narcotics. In Colombia, secret state agencies such as the CIA have long-favored drug organizations that have served as intelligence assets or death squads. Examples abound. Consider the untouchable status enjoyed by the Rodrguez Orejuela brothers Cali cartel. During the 1980s, at the height of Americas Central American interventions, cocaine shipped into the United States as part of the U.S. governments guns-for-drugs arrangement with Nicaraguan Contra rebels, was principally...