Showing posts with label cartels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cartels. Show all posts
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Mexico expels 26 cartel figures wanted by US authorities in deal with Trump administration
By Associated Press
The letters "CJNG" for the group's formal ...
WASHINGTONAP —
Mexico has expelled 26 high-ranking cartel figures to the United States in the latest major deal with the Trump administration as American authorities ratchet up pressure on criminal networks sending drugs across the border, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
The cartel leaders and other prominent figures were being flown from Mexico to the US on Tuesday, the person said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the operation that was still ongoing.
Those being handed over to US custody include Abigael González Valencia, a leader of “Los Cuinis,” a group closely aligned with notorious cartel Jalisco New Generation or CJNG. Another person, Roberto Salazar, is accused of participating in the 2008 killing of a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, the person said.
Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office and Security ministry confirmed the transfers, which were carried out after a promise from the US Justice Department that prosecutors would not seek the death penalty in any of the cases.
It’s the second time in months Mexico has expelled cartel figures accused of narcotics smuggling, murder and other crimes amid mounting pressure from the Trump administration to curb the flow of drugs across the border. In February, Mexico handed over to American authorities 29 cartel figures, including drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who was behind the killing of a US DEA agent in 1985.
WASHINGTONAP —
Mexico has expelled 26 high-ranking cartel figures to the United States in the latest major deal with the Trump administration as American authorities ratchet up pressure on criminal networks sending drugs across the border, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
The cartel leaders and other prominent figures were being flown from Mexico to the US on Tuesday, the person said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the operation that was still ongoing.
Those being handed over to US custody include Abigael González Valencia, a leader of “Los Cuinis,” a group closely aligned with notorious cartel Jalisco New Generation or CJNG. Another person, Roberto Salazar, is accused of participating in the 2008 killing of a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, the person said.
Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office and Security ministry confirmed the transfers, which were carried out after a promise from the US Justice Department that prosecutors would not seek the death penalty in any of the cases.
It’s the second time in months Mexico has expelled cartel figures accused of narcotics smuggling, murder and other crimes amid mounting pressure from the Trump administration to curb the flow of drugs across the border. In February, Mexico handed over to American authorities 29 cartel figures, including drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who was behind the killing of a US DEA agent in 1985.
Those transfers came days before 25% tariffs on Mexican imports were to take effect. Late last month, President Donald Trump spoke with Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum and agreed to put off threatened 30% tariffs for another 90 days to allow for negotiations.
Sheinbaum has shown a willingness to cooperate more on security than her predecessor, specifically being more aggressive in pursuit of Mexico’s cartels. But she has drawn a clear line when it comes to Mexico’s sovereignty, rejecting suggestions by Trump and others of intervention by the US military.
The Trump administration made dismantling dangerous drug cartels a key priority, designating CJNG and seven other Latin American organized crime groups foreign terrorist organizations.
Abigael González Valencia is the brother-in-law of CJNG leader Nemesio Rubén “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, a top target of the the US government. He was arrested in February 2015 in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco and had been fighting extradition to the United States since then.
Alongside his two brothers, he led “Los Cuinis,” which financed the the founding and growth of the CJNG, one of the most powerful and dangerous cartels in Mexico. CJNG traffics hundreds of tons of cocaine, methamphetamine, and fentanyl into the United States and other countries and is known for extreme violence, murders, torture, and corruption.
One of his brothers, José González Valencia, was sentenced in Washington’s federal court in June to 30 years in a US prison after pleading guilty to international cocaine trafficking. Jose González Valencia was arrested in 2017 under the first Trump administration at a beach resort in Brazil while vacationing with his family under a fake name.
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Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Catholic Mexico is persecuting converts to evangelical Christianity
by Mariusa Reyes - 3rd December 2014
President Peña Nieto, whose country's constitution guarantees freedom of religion, meeting Pope Francis in 2013. Photo: presidencia.gob.mx
FIDEL López Hernández is one of many evangelical Christians persecuted in Mexico for daring to practice Christianity in a way that differs from Catholicism, the country’s main religion.
‘Where I live, in Chiapas, when the local community leaders heard that a group of families had converted to the Pentecostal church, they told them that if they wanted to have a religious service it would have to be in their own homes, and only after paying a fine of 25,000 Mexican pesos (the equivalent of £1,000), which is illegal’, Hernández, a converted evangelical Christian told Lapido Media.
Hernández: expelled from his community for converting. Photo: CSW
Hernández himself has suffered persecution because of his decision three years ago to join an evangelical church. In 2012, he and his family along with 40 other Christians were violently removed from their houses by the local authorities.
‘They not only expelled us from our homes, they also took our plots of land and all our possessions. We had to leave with nothing’, Hernández said.
In this particular incident all the Protestant men and boys were arbitrarily imprisoned and forced to renounce their faith. The group included women, children and the elderly. Since then they have been living in an overcrowded former homeless shelter in another municipality.
‘They not only expelled us from our homes, they also took our plots of land and all our possessions. We had to leave with nothing’, Hernández said.
In this particular incident all the Protestant men and boys were arbitrarily imprisoned and forced to renounce their faith. The group included women, children and the elderly. Since then they have been living in an overcrowded former homeless shelter in another municipality.
Evangelical church service in rural Mexico. Photo: tiemposprofeticos.com
Religious intolerance is most prevalent in the southwest of Mexico, particularly in the states of Chiapas and Oaxaca, but also in some central states such as Michoacán, Hidalgo, Puebla and Guerrero. These are states with a high percentage of indigenous population.
‘Christians in these regions are threatened and persecuted by those who disagree with their choice to change their religion and beliefs,’ Dr Jorge Lee Gallardo, a specialist lawyer who has provided legal assistance to evangelical churches for over 20 years, told Lapido Media.
‘These authorities believe that their culture is being damaged and they do not accept that the freedom of the individual can take precedence over their cultural traditions.’
Gallardo leads Impulso 18, which heard first-hand accounts of violations of religious freedom at a recent conference in Mexico City hosted jointly with Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW).
‘The central conflict often arises around the financial contribution requested by local authorities and traditional religious leaders to be used for the ‘patron saint’ religious festivals. Protestant Christians refuse to pay these fees,' he said.
Protest slogan on T-shirts - Ser Evangelico, No Es Delito - reads: Being an evangelical is not a crime. Photo: beginningandend.com
Members of minority Christian groups are being forced to leave their faith, their children are banned from state-run schools, they are barred from access to electricity, water and farmland, and their modest religious buildings are destroyed.
The Mexican constitution in its article 24 guarantees religious freedom for all. However, the law is ignored by those who consider Catholicism to be the official religion in the country.
‘Our constitution does not talk of one church but of many churches. I don’t think the Catholic Church as an institution perpetrates these abuses against other churches. What happens, I believe, is that the Catholic leadership in our country does not have the control over the more traditional or conservative of their believers to persuade them to respect other churches,' Gallardo said.
A further growing threat to religious freedom in Mexico comes from the drug trafficking criminal networks operating in the country.
In a written statement to the US House of Representatives´ Foreign Affairs Committee, during a hearing on the Worldwide Persecution of Christians earlier this year, Galindo reported that ‘extortion aimed at houses of worship has become normal in the north of Mexico’.
According to his statement, pastors, priests and parishioners - Christians and Catholics alike - who refuse to cooperate with criminal activities, are threatened and kidnapped - in some cases in the middle of religious services.
Juan Sapien Sandoval has been an evangelical Christian for 15 years. He knows only too well what it means to be a Christian in his home town, ridden by crime and violence.
‘In Michoacán, where I live, we see these groups of armed men, most of whom were drug dealers before, now fighting the narco cartels’, he told Lapido Media.
‘They recruit children and teenagers for their cause. On one occasion, they threw us out of our community using sticks and machetes. They have threatened to kill me if I go back to my community’.
At all levels in society there seems to be a general acceptance that this problem of religious persecution exists but what is lacking is the political will to resolve it.
‘Government officials usually try to find excuses, putting the blame on the regional authorities. There is very little political will to address the issue in any meaningful way,' said CSW´s Anna Lee.
Non-Catholic churches, like the Assemblies of God, are growing in Mexico. Photo: CC/Rayttc
Despite their plight, non-Catholic churches in Mexico – Protestant, Pentecostal, Christian and evangelical – continue to grow. In the 2010 census out of a total population of 112 million inhabitants, eight million people said they belong to any of these denominations, as opposed to six and a half million people in 2000.
Lapido Media asked the Mexican Episcopal Conference, the leadership body of the Catholic church in Mexico, to comment on the treatment of minority Christians. Monsignor Leopoldo González González, Bishop of Tapachula (Chiapas) and President of the Episcopal Commission for the Interfaith Dialogue said the Catholic Church is tolerant of believers who convert to other denominations, but, for example in Chiapas 'evangelicals accuse and offend Catholics, calling them idolaters and drunks. These offences provoke a normal reaction of intolerance from our believers towards evangelicals'.
He added that indigenous people have a 'very high sense of community life' and when someone else doesn't respect their tradition and rules 'they expel them from their communities'.
Mariusa Reyes is a former BBC correspondent in Mexico and Central America.
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Tuesday, November 26, 2013
A Foray Into The Blood-Soaked 'Cultura' Of Mexico's Cartels
by
November 21, 2013 5:00 PM
In Narco Cultura, director and photojournalist Shaul Schwarz interrogates the collision of pop culture and Mexico's drug cartels — as personified by bands like Los Bukanas de Culiacan (above), who perform narcocorridos, or songs glorifying the drug trade. Shaul Schwarz/Cinedigm
Narco Cultura
Director: Shaul Schwarz
Genre: Documentary
Running Time: 103 minutes
Rated R for grisly graphic images of disturbing violent content, drug material, language and brief nudity.
In Spanish and English.
Following police through Mexico's Ciudad Juárez — reputedly the world's homicide capital — the Israeli filmmaker Shaul Schwarz finds mutilated corpses and gutters running with blood. But the resulting documentary, Narco Cultura, is not nearly so vivid as its most gruesome footage.
One reason for this is Schwarz's attempt at ironic juxtaposition: His principal characters are Richi Soto, a Juarez crime-scene investigator; and Edgar Quintero, an LA singer-songwriter. The latter performs narcocorridos, or ballads that extol drug lords and their murderous thugs as heroic outlaws. The idea may be shocking, but the songs are pretty dull.
As stage props, Quintero and other narcocorrido singers employ bazookas and machine guns — but their music is traditional norteño, a blend of Mexican folk and Germanic polka performed with guitar, accordion and the occasional tuba. It sounds about as ominous as something from a Lawrence Welk Show rerun, even if the lyrics do celebrate sociopaths.
"I think we can be the next hip-hop," boasts a narcocorrido impresario, who's surely kidding himself.
Schwarz talks briefly with journalist Sandra Rodriguez and includes clips from Anderson Cooper's 60 Minutes coverage of Mexico's killing fields. A few statistics encapsulate the horror: In just six years, Juárez's annual murders rose more than tenfold, from 320 in 2006 to 3,622 in 2012.
To flesh out these grim numbers, the director relies heavily on Soto and Quintero. Neither of them proves especially thoughtful.
The cop can't really explain why he stays at his job as his colleagues are picked off by the drug cartel that's invaded Juárez. (Like many lawmen in Mexico, he routinely wears masks in public, so he won't be identified and targeted.)
Even in a conversation with his mother, who wants him to relocate to the safety of nearby El Paso, Soto can't rationalize the risks he's taking.
The singer shows even less self-awareness. From the relative safety of Los Angeles, he fantasizes about traveling to the cartel's hometown, where he'd meet some of the killers he glorifies. The father of two young children, Quintero eventually makes his pilgrimage, over his wife's perfectly sensible objections.
The movie shows narcocorrido concerts that attract fervent singalong crowds, and not just in cities along the border. (Seattle and Atlanta are also on the circuit.) It also introduces promoters and producers who brag about such successes as getting their product into Wal-Mart, whose executives reportedly resisted carrying narcocorrido CDs — until they discovered just how well they'd move.
Mostly, however, the narrative circles back to Soto and Quintero, even though the recurring visits never further illuminate their characters or circumstances. Set to Jeremy Turner's spare and mournful score, Narco Cultura is ultimately more pensive than lurid.
A veteran war photographer, the director shot the movie himself, and he doesn't flinch from the carnage. He depicts singed and dismembered bodies and vehicles laced with bullet holes, often emphasizing the crispness of the highlighted subject with an exceedingly narrow focal plane.
The two most powerful images, however, are landscapes. In the movie's opening scene, a camera positioned on the border shows a verdant USA and a desiccated Mexico. Later, Schwarz turns his camera to plots full of baroque structures, each one testifying to narco riches. They're not McMansions, though — they're mausoleums.
As a picture of a culture besotted with gold and death, that vignette is more chilling than a hundred bloody cadavers.
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The country where exorcisms are on the rise
25 November 2013 Last updated at 19:10 ET
By Vladimir Hernandez BBC Mundo
Does God exist? Does the Devil exist? The Catholic church believes they both do - and some priests say they are currently having an immense battle in Mexico.
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To some it may seem extraordinary, but priests say the country is under attack by Satan, and that more exorcists are needed to fight him.
This attack, they say, is showing itself in the gruesome drug-related violence, including human sacrifice, that has engulfed the country since 2006.
According to the latest official figures available, at least 70,000 people have died in this period, including gunmen, members of the security forces, and many innocent civilians.
But, the priests say, it's not just the numbers. The savagery also stands out.
In recent years it has not been uncommon in many parts of Mexico for children to find dismembered bodies on the streets on their way to school. Or for commuters on busy roads to drive past bridges with severely tortured corpses hanging from them. Scenes from hell.
A mass exorcism at a church in Veracruz in Mexico
"We believe that behind all these big and structural evils there is a dark agent and his name is The Demon. That is why the Lord wants to have here a ministry of exorcism and liberation, for the fight against the Devil," says Father Carlos Triana, a priest, and an exorcist, in Mexico City.
"As much as we believe that the Devil was behind Adolf Hitler, possessing and directing him, we also believe that he (the Devil) is here behind the drug cartels."
Mexico's exorcists say there is unprecedented demand for their services.
Some are even not taking new cases, as they are having to exorcise demons almost every day.
Vatican view on Saint Death
Earlier this year, a senior Vatican official condemned the cult of Santa Muerte
"It's not religion just because it's dressed up like religion; it's a blasphemy against religion," said Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Culture
Vatican denounces Mexico 'saint'
"This didn't happen before", says Father Francisco Bautista, another exorcist in Mexico City.
Most of the cases, he explains, require a lesser form of exorcism, called liberation prayers - effective when a person still controls part of his or her mind and body.
Only rarely does the Devil possess someone completely, he says, but when that happens, the bishop of the diocese must intervene.
In Bautista's view, the rising demand for exorcism is partly explained by the large numbers of Mexicans joining the cult of Saint Death, or Santa Muerte.
It is estimated that the cult, whose followers worship a skull in a wedding dress carrying a scythe, has some eight million followers in Mexico - and more among Mexican migrants in Central America, the US and Canada.
"It has also been adopted by the drug traffickers who ask her for help to avoid arrest and to make money," Bautista says. "In exchange they offer human sacrifices. And this has increased the violence in Mexico."
Another reason for the surge in exorcisms, he argues, is the decriminalisation of abortions in Mexico City, in 2007. Both the cult and abortion have given evil spirits a foothold in the country, he insists.
"Both things are closely related. There is an infestation of demons in Mexico because we have opened our doors to Death."
If it is surprising how many Mexicans believe in Saint Death, it may also be surprising how many believe, like Father Triana and Father Bautista, that the Devil and demons are at work in the country.
Mexico's war on drugs
Drug traffic from Mexico to US worth estimated $13bn annually
Two main players in recent years have been Sinaloa (or Pacific) cartel and Zetas
Estimated 60,000 people killed in drug-related violence since late 2006
Q&A: Mexico's drug-related violence
Exorcism is an ancient practice and one that appears in many different religions, but many believers doubt the existence of demons.
A frontline of sorts for Mexico's exorcists is the northern region of the country where, for the last seven years, the Mexican military has been waging war against the heavily armed and cash-rich drug cartels.
In parallel with the soldiers, priests have been waging a spiritual conflict. One is Father Ernesto Caro, based in Monterrey, a city blighted by frequent shootouts and kidnappings.
He has exorcised several members of the drug cartels - and there is one case he cannot forget. It was a gang hitman, who confessed to horrific crimes. Father Caro said the man had been in charge of cutting the bodies into pieces and he said he enjoyed hearing them cry as he did so. Others he burned alive.
The priest says the man had committed his life to the service of Saint Death.
"The cult is the first step into Satanism and then into this band of people [the drug traffickers], that's why he was chosen for that job."
"Santa Muerte is being used by all our drug dealers and those linked to these brutal murders. We've found that most of them, if not all, follow Santa Muerte," he adds.
The cult is also followed by criminals, policemen, politicians and artists.
"The biggest presence is in the poorest sectors of Mexican society," says journalist Jose Gil Olmos, who has published two books on Saint Death.
The first references to Saint Death occur in the 18th Century, he says, not in Aztec times, as many believe.
"In modern times the numbers of followers exploded, especially after the early 1990s economic meltdown."
Many middle-class Mexicans found themselves in misery. In despair they searched for hope, and some turned to Saint Death, Olmos says.
"From approximately eight years ago we have seen Santa Muerte having a big presence with drug cartel members, from the bosses all the way down. Why? Because these people say that Jesus or the Virgin Mary can't provide what they ask for, which is to be protected from soldiers, police and their enemies."
I went to see what this cult was all about at its biggest annual ceremony in the neighbourhood of Tepito, in Mexico City, a place riddled with drug trafficking and crime.
It's here that one of the biggest sanctuaries of Saint Death in Mexico is located. It's kept tidy by Enriqueta Romero, a woman in her sixties, whose life changed dramatically 12 years ago when she shocked her neighbours by putting a Saint Death figure in her window.
Over the years, more and more people started arriving to pay tribute to the skull figure in a dress. And now thousands gather for the cult's most important ceremony on 31 October, the eve of Mexico's Day of the Dead festival.
"She loves us and heals us. People come here to ask her for help - a son in prison or with Aids, or something to eat," says Romero.
During my visit, some people reach the shrine walking on their knees. One of them is a man who carries a 20-day-old baby in his arms. He's come to present his daughter to the skull.
I also see ordinary working-class families, pregnant women asking Death to protect the life of their unborn child, and plenty of people heavily tattooed with the female skull.
Are these people possessed, as the church says?
"No, I also believe in God, in the Virgin, and all the saints, but I am more devout to [Saint] Death. She is the one that helps me the most," says Jose Roberto Jaimes, a man in his 20s who's come on his knees to thank the skull after surviving three years in jail.
I get similar answers from all of the cult followers I talk to.
More from the Magazine
A film of a woman being beheaded in Mexico caused an international outcry in October when Facebook refused to remove it from its site. There have been hundreds of reports about the video - but why has no-one identified the victim in it?
Facebook beheading video: Who was Mexico's Jane Doe? (4 November)
Romero says the church itself bears responsibility for the rise of the cult, having shot itself in the foot with the worldwide child abuse scandal.
"They finished off our faith with the things that the priests did. What can they criticise? That we believe in Death? That is not bad. What's bad is what they did," says Romero.
But does she feel comfortable knowing that people behind horrific crimes also follow this cult?
"We are in a free country and everyone can do what they want. We all will have to answer to God at some point," she says.
It was former President Felipe Calderon who launched the offensive against drug cartels in Mexico in 2006, by deploying troops to the worst-hit areas.
Over the years the military has discovered numerous shrines, temples and even churches of Saint Death across the region, and plenty of evidence of human sacrifice.
"He [Calderon] started a war against them and he started a war as well against the cult of Saint Death, and he asked the church to help him," says Father Ernesto Caro.
"The Church is not going to go on TV and say: 'Look, we think that Mexico is going to get better and be saved if we do exorcisms because the Devil is behind all of this.' We have to be discreet [with exorcisms] or else we may be ridiculed, even by our own followers," adds Father Carlos Triana.
Whether exorcisms can help reduce the drug-related violence in Mexico - especially the sadistic killings - is debatable. Although at this point, many in Mexico would probably welcome any help if it brings them some peace.
You can hear and see more about this topic in Crossing Continents, BBC Radio 4 on 28 November 2013 at 11:00 GMT, and Our World, on BBC News Channel or BBC World on the weekend 30 November/1 December 2013, or catch up later on BBC iPlayer.
Source
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Thursday, December 29, 2011
Sarah Palin: Fire Eric Holder
CyHawkThoughts: Week 11 In Honor of America’s Veterans
It’s tempting to get distracted with the horse race aspect of electoral politics during a primary season. But as pundits talk about “who’s up and who’s down” in the 24 hour news cycle, we must keep our eye on the ball with the Obama administration. They rely on distraction to skirt responsibility, but we’re going to hold them accountable for their corruption and incompetence.
When the stories about Operation Fast and Furious first broke, it sounded too crazy even for this administration.
Why would any government official with an ounce of common sense think it’s a good idea to facilitate the smuggling of thousands of guns into the hands of violent Mexican drug cartels? That’s what Operation Fast and Furious did.
You might think Eric Holder’s Department of Justice was setting up a sting operation in which our federal agents would swoop down and arrest the bad guys the minute the guns traded hands. But that’s not what happened. Eric Holder’s DOJ had American gun dealers sell weapons to “straw purchasers” tied to drug cartels without actually following the movement of the guns as they were then sold to Mexican drug lords. They apparently thought this so-called “gun-walking” operation would help them chart the path of gun smuggling, but they didn’t have a plan to actually control the weapons’ movements as the guns were allowed to “walk” into Mexico. All Holder’s DOJ did was arm violent criminals. What manner of fools do we have working in this administration? What’s next? Supplying nuclear weapons components to the Iranians so we can track their activities?
Fast and Furious isn’t just your typical government incompetence. This is a deadly tragedy. U.S. border agent Brian Terry was gunned down with weapons connected to Holder’s debacle. At least 200 Mexican citizens were also killed by criminals using Fast and Furious weapons. We can only imagine how many more people will be murdered by criminals our government armed.
When an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives blew the whistle on this operation, the DOJ leaked sensitive information about him to the press. This week, the former U.S. Attorney for Arizona, who was ousted in the wake of the scandal, admitted to being the leaker.
And where is President Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder in all of this? When did he first know about the operation? In his testimony to the House Oversight Committee on May 3, 2011, Holder stated, “I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.” But the DOJ’s own documents prove that Holder had been receiving briefings on Fast and Furious for nearly a year before that date. In other words, our government’s top law enforcement official, Eric Holder, lied to the American public. He finally admitted this week to the Senate Judiciary Committee, “In my testimony before the House committee [on May 3], I did say a few weeks. I probably could have said a couple of months. What I said about a few weeks was inaccurate based on what happened.”
When the nation’s highest law enforcement official lies to the American people, he must go.
And if he claims that he didn’t lie, then how else do we explain this situation? He’s either lying or he’s so grossly incompetent and lazy that he didn’t read important life and death briefings from his deputy attorney general and didn’t know about this deadly operation run by people under him. So, which is it? Incompetent, lazy, or lying? No matter which explanation fits, he needs to go.
Holder conceded this week, “I have ultimate responsibility for what happens in the department.” He can prove it by resigning. And if he refuses to resign, then President Obama – with whom the bucks ultimately stop – can prove that he respects honesty, transparency, and accountability in his administration by firing Holder.
I stand with the members of Congress who are calling for Holder’s resignation. I stand with the family members of Brian Terry who are demanding transparency and accountability. Mr. President, where do you stand?
Source
Posted by Guest Posts .
Nov 10, 2011.
Nov 10, 2011.
By Sarah Palin
It’s tempting to get distracted with the horse race aspect of electoral politics during a primary season. But as pundits talk about “who’s up and who’s down” in the 24 hour news cycle, we must keep our eye on the ball with the Obama administration. They rely on distraction to skirt responsibility, but we’re going to hold them accountable for their corruption and incompetence.
When the stories about Operation Fast and Furious first broke, it sounded too crazy even for this administration.
Why would any government official with an ounce of common sense think it’s a good idea to facilitate the smuggling of thousands of guns into the hands of violent Mexican drug cartels? That’s what Operation Fast and Furious did.
You might think Eric Holder’s Department of Justice was setting up a sting operation in which our federal agents would swoop down and arrest the bad guys the minute the guns traded hands. But that’s not what happened. Eric Holder’s DOJ had American gun dealers sell weapons to “straw purchasers” tied to drug cartels without actually following the movement of the guns as they were then sold to Mexican drug lords. They apparently thought this so-called “gun-walking” operation would help them chart the path of gun smuggling, but they didn’t have a plan to actually control the weapons’ movements as the guns were allowed to “walk” into Mexico. All Holder’s DOJ did was arm violent criminals. What manner of fools do we have working in this administration? What’s next? Supplying nuclear weapons components to the Iranians so we can track their activities?
Fast and Furious isn’t just your typical government incompetence. This is a deadly tragedy. U.S. border agent Brian Terry was gunned down with weapons connected to Holder’s debacle. At least 200 Mexican citizens were also killed by criminals using Fast and Furious weapons. We can only imagine how many more people will be murdered by criminals our government armed.
When an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives blew the whistle on this operation, the DOJ leaked sensitive information about him to the press. This week, the former U.S. Attorney for Arizona, who was ousted in the wake of the scandal, admitted to being the leaker.
And where is President Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder in all of this? When did he first know about the operation? In his testimony to the House Oversight Committee on May 3, 2011, Holder stated, “I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.” But the DOJ’s own documents prove that Holder had been receiving briefings on Fast and Furious for nearly a year before that date. In other words, our government’s top law enforcement official, Eric Holder, lied to the American public. He finally admitted this week to the Senate Judiciary Committee, “In my testimony before the House committee [on May 3], I did say a few weeks. I probably could have said a couple of months. What I said about a few weeks was inaccurate based on what happened.”
When the nation’s highest law enforcement official lies to the American people, he must go.
And if he claims that he didn’t lie, then how else do we explain this situation? He’s either lying or he’s so grossly incompetent and lazy that he didn’t read important life and death briefings from his deputy attorney general and didn’t know about this deadly operation run by people under him. So, which is it? Incompetent, lazy, or lying? No matter which explanation fits, he needs to go.
Holder conceded this week, “I have ultimate responsibility for what happens in the department.” He can prove it by resigning. And if he refuses to resign, then President Obama – with whom the bucks ultimately stop – can prove that he respects honesty, transparency, and accountability in his administration by firing Holder.
I stand with the members of Congress who are calling for Holder’s resignation. I stand with the family members of Brian Terry who are demanding transparency and accountability. Mr. President, where do you stand?
Source
Tuesday, December 06, 2011
U.S. Agents Launder Mexican Profits of Drug Cartels
Josue Gonzalez/Reuters
A crime scene in Monterrey, Mexico, last week. Drug-related violence has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 people since late 2006, Mexican officials say.
By GINGER THOMPSON
Published: December 3, 2011
WASHINGTON — Undercover American narcotics agents have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washington’s expanding role in Mexico’s fight against drug cartels, according to current and former federal law enforcement officials.
The agents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders, those officials said, to identify how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and, most important, who their leaders are.
They said agents had deposited the drug proceeds in accounts designated by traffickers, or in shell accounts set up by agents.
The officials said that while the D.E.A. conducted such operations in other countries, it began doing so in Mexico only in the past few years. The high-risk activities raise delicate questions about the agency’s effectiveness in bringing down drug kingpins, underscore diplomatic concerns about Mexican sovereignty, and blur the line between surveillance and facilitating crime. As it launders drug money, the agency often allows cartels to continue their operations over months or even years before making seizures or arrests.
Agency officials declined to publicly discuss details of their work, citing concerns about compromising their investigations. But Michael S. Vigil, a former senior agency official who is currently working for a private contracting company called Mission Essential Personnel, said, “We tried to make sure there was always close supervision of these operations so that we were accomplishing our objectives, and agents weren’t laundering money for the sake of laundering money.”
Another former agency official, who asked not to be identified speaking publicly about delicate operations, said, “My rule was that if we are going to launder money, we better show results. Otherwise, the D.E.A. could wind up being the largest money launderer in the business, and that money results in violence and deaths.”
Those are precisely the kinds of concerns members of Congress have raised about a gun-smuggling operation known as Fast and Furious, in which agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed people suspected of being low-level smugglers to buy and transport guns across the border in the hope that they would lead to higher-level operatives working for Mexican cartels. After the agency lost track of hundreds of weapons, some later turned up in Mexico; two were found on the United States side of the border where an American Border Patrol agent had been shot to death.
Former D.E.A. officials rejected comparisons between letting guns and money walk away. Money, they said, poses far less of a threat to public safety. And unlike guns, it can lead more directly to the top ranks of criminal organizations.
“These are not the people whose faces are known on the street,” said Robert Mazur, a former D.E.A. agent and the author of a book about his years as an undercover agent inside the Medellín cartel in Colombia. “They are super-insulated. And the only way to get to them is to follow their money.”
Another former drug agency official offered this explanation for the laundering operations: “Building up the evidence to connect the cash to drugs, and connect the first cash pickup to a cartel’s command and control, is a very time consuming process. These people aren’t running a drugstore in downtown L.A. that we can go and lock the doors and place a seizure sticker on the window. These are sophisticated, international operations that practice very tight security. And as far as the Mexican cartels go, they operate in a corrupt country, from cities that the cops can’t even go into.”
The laundering operations that the United States conducts elsewhere — about 50 so-called Attorney General Exempt Operations are under way around the world — had been forbidden in Mexico after American customs agents conducted a cross-border sting without notifying Mexican authorities in 1998, which was how most American undercover work was conducted there up to that point.
But that changed in recent years after President Felipe Calderón declared war against the country’s drug cartels and enlisted the United States to play a leading role in fighting them because of concerns that his security forces had little experience and long histories of corruption.
Today, in operations supervised by the Justice Department and orchestrated to get around sovereignty restrictions, the United States is running numerous undercover laundering investigations against Mexico’s most powerful cartels. One D.E.A. official said it was not unusual for American agents to pick up two or three loads of Mexican drug money each week. A second official said that as Mexican cartels extended their operations from Latin America to Africa, Europe and the Middle East, the reach of the operations had grown as well. When asked how much money had been laundered as a part of the operations, the official would only say, “A lot.”
“If you’re going to get into the business of laundering money,” the official added, “then you have to be able to launder money.”
Former counternarcotics officials, who also would speak only on the condition of anonymity about clandestine operations, offered a clearer glimpse of their scale and how they worked. In some cases, the officials said, Mexican agents, posing as smugglers and accompanied by American authorities, pick up traffickers’ cash in Mexico. American agents transport the cash on government flights to the United States, where it is deposited into traffickers’ accounts, and then wired to companies that provide goods and services to the cartel.
In other cases, D.E.A. agents, posing as launderers, pick up drug proceeds in the United States, deposit them in banks in this country and then wire them to the traffickers in Mexico.
The former officials said that the drug agency tried to seize as much money as it laundered — partly in the fees the operatives charged traffickers for their services and another part in carefully choreographed arrests at pickup points identified by their undercover operatives.
And the former officials said that federal law enforcement agencies had to seek Justice Department approval to launder amounts greater than $10 million in any single operation. But they said that the cap was treated more as a guideline than a rule, and that it had been waived on many occasions to attract the interest of high-value targets.
“They tell you they’re bringing you $250,000, and they bring you a million,” one former agent said of the traffickers. “What’s the agent supposed to do then, tell them no, he can’t do it? They’ll kill him.”
It is not clear whether such operations are worth the risks. So far there are few signs that following the money has disrupted the cartels’ operations, and little evidence that Mexican drug traffickers are feeling any serious financial pain. Last year, the D.E.A. seized about $1 billion in cash and drug assets, while Mexico seized an estimated $26 million in money laundering investigations, a tiny fraction of the estimated $18 billion to $39 billion in drug money that flows between the countries each year.
Mexico has tightened restrictions on large cash purchases and on bank deposits in dollars in the past five years. But a proposed overhaul of the Mexican attorney general’s office has stalled, its architects said, as have proposed laws that would crack down on money laundered through big corporations and retail chains.
“Mexico still thinks the best way to seize dirty money is to arrest a trafficker, then turn him upside down to see how much change falls out of his pockets,” said Sergio Ferragut, a professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico and the author of a book on money laundering, which he said was “still a sensitive subject for Mexican authorities.”
Mr. Calderón boasts that his government’s efforts — deploying the military across the country — have fractured many of the country’s powerful cartels and led to the arrests of about two dozen high-level and midlevel traffickers.
But there has been no significant dip in the volume of drugs moving across the country. Reports of human rights violations by police officers and soldiers have soared. And drug-related violence has left more than 40,000 people dead since Mr. Calderón took office in December 2006.
The death toll is greater than in any period since Mexico’s revolution a century ago, and the policy of close cooperation with Washington may not survive.
“We need to concentrate all our efforts on combating violence and crime that affects people, instead of concentrating on the drug issue,” said a former foreign minister, Jorge G. Castañeda, at a conference hosted last month by the Cato Institute in Washington. “It makes absolutely no sense for us to put up 50,000 body bags to stop drugs from entering the United States.”
A version of this article appeared in print on December 4, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: D.E.A. Launders Mexican Profits of Drug Cartels.
A crime scene in Monterrey, Mexico, last week. Drug-related violence has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 people since late 2006, Mexican officials say.
By GINGER THOMPSON
Published: December 3, 2011
WASHINGTON — Undercover American narcotics agents have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washington’s expanding role in Mexico’s fight against drug cartels, according to current and former federal law enforcement officials.
The agents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders, those officials said, to identify how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and, most important, who their leaders are.
They said agents had deposited the drug proceeds in accounts designated by traffickers, or in shell accounts set up by agents.
The officials said that while the D.E.A. conducted such operations in other countries, it began doing so in Mexico only in the past few years. The high-risk activities raise delicate questions about the agency’s effectiveness in bringing down drug kingpins, underscore diplomatic concerns about Mexican sovereignty, and blur the line between surveillance and facilitating crime. As it launders drug money, the agency often allows cartels to continue their operations over months or even years before making seizures or arrests.
Agency officials declined to publicly discuss details of their work, citing concerns about compromising their investigations. But Michael S. Vigil, a former senior agency official who is currently working for a private contracting company called Mission Essential Personnel, said, “We tried to make sure there was always close supervision of these operations so that we were accomplishing our objectives, and agents weren’t laundering money for the sake of laundering money.”
Another former agency official, who asked not to be identified speaking publicly about delicate operations, said, “My rule was that if we are going to launder money, we better show results. Otherwise, the D.E.A. could wind up being the largest money launderer in the business, and that money results in violence and deaths.”
Those are precisely the kinds of concerns members of Congress have raised about a gun-smuggling operation known as Fast and Furious, in which agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed people suspected of being low-level smugglers to buy and transport guns across the border in the hope that they would lead to higher-level operatives working for Mexican cartels. After the agency lost track of hundreds of weapons, some later turned up in Mexico; two were found on the United States side of the border where an American Border Patrol agent had been shot to death.
Former D.E.A. officials rejected comparisons between letting guns and money walk away. Money, they said, poses far less of a threat to public safety. And unlike guns, it can lead more directly to the top ranks of criminal organizations.
“These are not the people whose faces are known on the street,” said Robert Mazur, a former D.E.A. agent and the author of a book about his years as an undercover agent inside the Medellín cartel in Colombia. “They are super-insulated. And the only way to get to them is to follow their money.”
Another former drug agency official offered this explanation for the laundering operations: “Building up the evidence to connect the cash to drugs, and connect the first cash pickup to a cartel’s command and control, is a very time consuming process. These people aren’t running a drugstore in downtown L.A. that we can go and lock the doors and place a seizure sticker on the window. These are sophisticated, international operations that practice very tight security. And as far as the Mexican cartels go, they operate in a corrupt country, from cities that the cops can’t even go into.”
The laundering operations that the United States conducts elsewhere — about 50 so-called Attorney General Exempt Operations are under way around the world — had been forbidden in Mexico after American customs agents conducted a cross-border sting without notifying Mexican authorities in 1998, which was how most American undercover work was conducted there up to that point.
But that changed in recent years after President Felipe Calderón declared war against the country’s drug cartels and enlisted the United States to play a leading role in fighting them because of concerns that his security forces had little experience and long histories of corruption.
Today, in operations supervised by the Justice Department and orchestrated to get around sovereignty restrictions, the United States is running numerous undercover laundering investigations against Mexico’s most powerful cartels. One D.E.A. official said it was not unusual for American agents to pick up two or three loads of Mexican drug money each week. A second official said that as Mexican cartels extended their operations from Latin America to Africa, Europe and the Middle East, the reach of the operations had grown as well. When asked how much money had been laundered as a part of the operations, the official would only say, “A lot.”
“If you’re going to get into the business of laundering money,” the official added, “then you have to be able to launder money.”
Former counternarcotics officials, who also would speak only on the condition of anonymity about clandestine operations, offered a clearer glimpse of their scale and how they worked. In some cases, the officials said, Mexican agents, posing as smugglers and accompanied by American authorities, pick up traffickers’ cash in Mexico. American agents transport the cash on government flights to the United States, where it is deposited into traffickers’ accounts, and then wired to companies that provide goods and services to the cartel.
In other cases, D.E.A. agents, posing as launderers, pick up drug proceeds in the United States, deposit them in banks in this country and then wire them to the traffickers in Mexico.
The former officials said that the drug agency tried to seize as much money as it laundered — partly in the fees the operatives charged traffickers for their services and another part in carefully choreographed arrests at pickup points identified by their undercover operatives.
And the former officials said that federal law enforcement agencies had to seek Justice Department approval to launder amounts greater than $10 million in any single operation. But they said that the cap was treated more as a guideline than a rule, and that it had been waived on many occasions to attract the interest of high-value targets.
“They tell you they’re bringing you $250,000, and they bring you a million,” one former agent said of the traffickers. “What’s the agent supposed to do then, tell them no, he can’t do it? They’ll kill him.”
It is not clear whether such operations are worth the risks. So far there are few signs that following the money has disrupted the cartels’ operations, and little evidence that Mexican drug traffickers are feeling any serious financial pain. Last year, the D.E.A. seized about $1 billion in cash and drug assets, while Mexico seized an estimated $26 million in money laundering investigations, a tiny fraction of the estimated $18 billion to $39 billion in drug money that flows between the countries each year.
Mexico has tightened restrictions on large cash purchases and on bank deposits in dollars in the past five years. But a proposed overhaul of the Mexican attorney general’s office has stalled, its architects said, as have proposed laws that would crack down on money laundered through big corporations and retail chains.
“Mexico still thinks the best way to seize dirty money is to arrest a trafficker, then turn him upside down to see how much change falls out of his pockets,” said Sergio Ferragut, a professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico and the author of a book on money laundering, which he said was “still a sensitive subject for Mexican authorities.”
Mr. Calderón boasts that his government’s efforts — deploying the military across the country — have fractured many of the country’s powerful cartels and led to the arrests of about two dozen high-level and midlevel traffickers.
But there has been no significant dip in the volume of drugs moving across the country. Reports of human rights violations by police officers and soldiers have soared. And drug-related violence has left more than 40,000 people dead since Mr. Calderón took office in December 2006.
The death toll is greater than in any period since Mexico’s revolution a century ago, and the policy of close cooperation with Washington may not survive.
“We need to concentrate all our efforts on combating violence and crime that affects people, instead of concentrating on the drug issue,” said a former foreign minister, Jorge G. Castañeda, at a conference hosted last month by the Cato Institute in Washington. “It makes absolutely no sense for us to put up 50,000 body bags to stop drugs from entering the United States.”
A version of this article appeared in print on December 4, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: D.E.A. Launders Mexican Profits of Drug Cartels.
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Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Senate votes to end 'Fast and Furious' gun program
Updated: Oct 18, 2011 - 17:46PM
AP
WASHINGTON -The Senate voted Tuesday to effectively block the Justice Department from undertaking gun-smuggling probes like the flawed "Operation Fast and Furious" aimed at breaking up networks running guns to Mexican drug cartels but that lost track of hundreds of the weapons, some of which were used to commit crimes in Mexico and the United States.
The 99-0 vote would block the government from transferring guns to drug cartels unless federal agents "continuously monitor or control" the weapons. The amendment's sponsor, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, called the vote "just the first step towards ensuring that such a foolish operation can never be repeated by our own law enforcement."
The Justice Department has already stopped the program.
The vote came as the Senate debated a $128 billion spending measure that would fund Justice Department operations and those of several other Cabinet agencies for the 2012 budget year already under way.
Operation Fast and Furious was a gun-smuggling investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives aimed at tracking small-time illicit gun buyers up the chain to major traffickers in an effort to take down arms networks. In the process, ATF agents lost track of many of the weapons.
Fast and Furious came to light after two assault rifles purchased by a now-indicted small-time buyer under scrutiny in the operation turned up at a shootout in Arizona where Customs and Border Protection agent Brian Terry was killed.
The operation has caused something of a firestorm in Washington and is the focus of an investigation by House Republicans, who have questioned whether Attorney General Eric Holder has been candid about all he knows about the botched operation.
Holder already has called a halt to the practice of allowing guns to "walk" in an effort to track them to arms traffickers, saying in a recent letter to lawmakers that "those tactics should never again be adopted in any investigation."
The operation was designed to respond to criticism that the agency had focused on small-time gun arrests while major traffickers had eluded prosecution.
As recently as 11 months ago, the Justice Department's inspector general criticized ATF for focusing "largely on inspections of gun dealers and investigations of straw purchasers, rather than on higher-level traffickers, smugglers and the ultimate recipients of the trafficked guns."
The IG said some ATF managers discourage agents from conducting complex conspiracy investigations that target high-level traffickers.
Source
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The 99-0 vote would block the government from transferring guns to drug cartels unless federal agents "continuously monitor or control" the weapons. The amendment's sponsor, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, called the vote "just the first step towards ensuring that such a foolish operation can never be repeated by our own law enforcement."
The Justice Department has already stopped the program.
The vote came as the Senate debated a $128 billion spending measure that would fund Justice Department operations and those of several other Cabinet agencies for the 2012 budget year already under way.
Operation Fast and Furious was a gun-smuggling investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives aimed at tracking small-time illicit gun buyers up the chain to major traffickers in an effort to take down arms networks. In the process, ATF agents lost track of many of the weapons.
Fast and Furious came to light after two assault rifles purchased by a now-indicted small-time buyer under scrutiny in the operation turned up at a shootout in Arizona where Customs and Border Protection agent Brian Terry was killed.
The operation has caused something of a firestorm in Washington and is the focus of an investigation by House Republicans, who have questioned whether Attorney General Eric Holder has been candid about all he knows about the botched operation.
Holder already has called a halt to the practice of allowing guns to "walk" in an effort to track them to arms traffickers, saying in a recent letter to lawmakers that "those tactics should never again be adopted in any investigation."
The operation was designed to respond to criticism that the agency had focused on small-time gun arrests while major traffickers had eluded prosecution.
As recently as 11 months ago, the Justice Department's inspector general criticized ATF for focusing "largely on inspections of gun dealers and investigations of straw purchasers, rather than on higher-level traffickers, smugglers and the ultimate recipients of the trafficked guns."
The IG said some ATF managers discourage agents from conducting complex conspiracy investigations that target high-level traffickers.
Source
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Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Holder, Issa Spar Over "Fast and Furious"
| WRITTEN BY RAVEN CLABOUGH |
| WEDNESDAY, 12 OCTOBER 2011 00:00 |
Operation Fast and Furious was launched in 2009 in an effort to target major gunrunners. The stated plan was to follow gun purchasers in the hopes that the suspects would lead the ATF to major heads of Mexican cartels. Unfortunately, some of those same deadly weapons were found at crime scenes in both Mexico and the United States, and were involved in the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry last year. Attorney General Holder has done his best to distance himself from the failed gunwalking operation. However, one week ago, Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), a ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, distributed five separate memos from July and August of 2010 addressed to Holder, which cite Operation Fast and Furious by name. The documents implicate Holder, proving he likely knew about the program for at least a year. Republicans contend that memos prove what they have been saying all along: that Holder was aware of Operation Fast and Furious sooner than he indicated. The accusations prompted the Attorney General to ventilate in a scathing letter to Issa and other Republicans, accusing them of “irresponsible and inflammatory rhetoric.” In his letter, Holder insisted: I have no recollection of knowing about "Fast and Furious" or of hearing its name prior to the public controversy about it. Prior to early 2011, I certainly never knew about the tactics employed in the operation. Issa contends, however, that after the release of the memos last week, Holder’s assertions are simply unbelievable. According to Issa, Holder “has failed to give Congress and the American people an honest account of what he and others knew about gun-walking and Operation Fast and Furious.” Issa called Holder’s lack of honesty “deeply disturbing.” "If Attorney General Holder had said these things five months ago when Congress asked him about 'Operation Fast and Furious,' it might have been more believable," House Oversight Committee spokesman Frederick Hill remarked, adding, "At this point, however, it's hard to take at face value a defense that is factually questionable, entirely self-serving, and a still incomplete account of what senior Justice Department officials knew about gun walking." Holder’s letter provoked an equally biting letter to the Attorney General from Issa which declared in part: The current paper trail … creates the strong perception that your statement in front of Congress was less than truthful. Your staff … was certainly aware of "Fast and Furious" over a year ago. Issa’s letter offered specifics, including the following: Gary Grindler, the then-Deputy Attorney General and currently your chief of staff, received an extremely detailed briefing on "Operation Fast and Furious" on March 12, 2010. In this briefing, Grindler learned such minutiae as the number of times that Uriel Patino, a straw purchaser on food stamps who ultimately acquired 720 firearms, went in to a cooperating gun store and the amount of guns that he had bought. When former Acting ATF Director Ken Melson, a career federal prosecutor, learned similar information, he became sick to his stomach. Pointing to such data as this, Issa is convinced that there was “widespread knowledge” within the Justice Department’s “senior ranks” that “gunwalking [was] occurring.” Issa’s letter accuses Holder of attempting to “shift blame” and “hide behind [his staff] for failing to inform you about Operation Fast and Furious when they reviewed the memos sent to you last summer,” Issa continued: Your letter ... did little but obfuscate, shift blame, berate, and attempt to change the topic away from the department's responsibility in the creation, implementation, and authorization of this reckless program. You claim that, after months of silence, you "must now address these issues" over Fast and Furious because of the harmful discourse of the past few days. Yet, the only major development of these past few days has been the release of multiple documents showing that you and your senior staff had been briefed, on numerous occasions, about "Fast and Furious." It simply is not believable that you were not briefed on Fast and Furious until a few weeks before your testimony. At the very least, you should have known about Fast and Furious well before then. Appearing on Fox and Friends, Issa asserted, [Holder] wants us to believe that he came to a hearing, having read about some terrible allegations [and] only having just learned of it, and not asking any additional questions, at least the ones in his weekly briefings, that if he read his weekly briefings, he would have known about what he now says he didn’t know. Justice Department officials continue to insist that they have in fact been cooperative in the investigation, and will continue to be. A Department spokeswoman stated, “The department will continue to cooperate with both the inspector general and congressional investigations. In the meantime, what the American people deserve is less partisan showboating and more responsible solutions to stopping gun violence.” Issa has indicated that he will be sending a new set of subpoenas to the Justice Department in order to seek further information. Photo: Rep. Darrell Issa |
The controversy surrounding the disastrous Source
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
A White House 'Gunrunner'?
Posted 06:01 PM ET
The Law: Operation Gunwalker, the rogue ATF operation to arm Mexico's cartels, extends now to three White House officials. A bell goes off with the one named Dan Restrepo.
Late last Friday, CBS News and the Los Angeles Times almost buried the news that Restrepo, the National Security Council's top man for Latin America, and two other officials, were in on ATF memos from the Gunwalker operation called "Fast and Furious."
That blows apart White House claims that it had no idea the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was encouraging frontmen for Mexico's cartels to buy weapons from U.S. gun dealers — to "trace" them afterward.
Some 2,000 U.S. guns were sold in Gunwalker but simply disappeared — until they turned up at massacres in Mexico and at the murder scenes of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata.
But outgoing ATF acting director Ken Melson and others who've been the fall guys in this scandal darkly hint that their orders came from the White House, and domestic critics think Gunwalker can only be explained as a White House bid to boost support for gun control. Restrepo's involvement distinctly raises both possibilities.
Restrepo is a political operative whose interests are more domestic than Latin American. As a result, he's botched every Latin American operation he's had his hand in, appeasing enemies and blaming the U.S.:
• Honduras: In 2009, Restrepo was behind a U.S. bid to swiftly declare Honduras' constitutional ouster of its president "a coup" and sanctioned the country, playing into the hands of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, who had attempted to make Honduras a colony.
• Cuba: Restrepo was behind loosening sanctions on Castro's Cuba, which has emboldened the regime to act against Americans. While Castro imprisoned Alan Gross, a U.S. contractor who was distributing satellite phones to dissidents, the Obama administration said nothing.
Subscribe to the IBD Editorials Podcast • Colombia: Its troops captured drug "kingpin of kingpins" Walid Makled, who had extensive knowledge of Venezuelan official involvement in trafficking. U.S. attorneys wanted him extradited, but Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos said President Obama never asked. When IBD asked Restrepo whether he advised Obama to ask, Restrepo defensively said he did. But that's at odds with what Santos said.
• Venezuela: Treasury Department officials complained Restrepo kept names of high-ranking Venezuelan officials with ties to drug dealers off its "Kingpin List," in a naive effort to keep pressure off Chavez.
• Now Restrepo tries to pin Mexico's drug war not on Hugo Chavez's trafficker allies, but on gun dealers from the U.S.
There's little doubt that's his line, because blaming U.S. gun dealers and calling for a U.S. assault weapon ban were his ideas from his days spent at the Center for American Progress, an Obama-linked think tank.
The U.S. "will work to inhibit the flow of weapons ... across our border," Restrepo told Mexican media.
Meanwhile, when Obama met with Mexico's President Felipe Calderon, both erroneously declared that U.S. weapons fueled Mexico's drug war — on Restrepo's advice.
Blogger Mike Vanderbroegh thinks that if Restrepo wasn't the author of Gunwalker he'd know who is and should be called to tell Congress. Either he's kept Obama in the dark about Gunwalker, or Obama should be impeached.
Source
.
The Law: Operation Gunwalker, the rogue ATF operation to arm Mexico's cartels, extends now to three White House officials. A bell goes off with the one named Dan Restrepo.
Late last Friday, CBS News and the Los Angeles Times almost buried the news that Restrepo, the National Security Council's top man for Latin America, and two other officials, were in on ATF memos from the Gunwalker operation called "Fast and Furious."
That blows apart White House claims that it had no idea the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was encouraging frontmen for Mexico's cartels to buy weapons from U.S. gun dealers — to "trace" them afterward.
Some 2,000 U.S. guns were sold in Gunwalker but simply disappeared — until they turned up at massacres in Mexico and at the murder scenes of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata.
But outgoing ATF acting director Ken Melson and others who've been the fall guys in this scandal darkly hint that their orders came from the White House, and domestic critics think Gunwalker can only be explained as a White House bid to boost support for gun control. Restrepo's involvement distinctly raises both possibilities.
Restrepo is a political operative whose interests are more domestic than Latin American. As a result, he's botched every Latin American operation he's had his hand in, appeasing enemies and blaming the U.S.:
• Honduras: In 2009, Restrepo was behind a U.S. bid to swiftly declare Honduras' constitutional ouster of its president "a coup" and sanctioned the country, playing into the hands of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, who had attempted to make Honduras a colony.
• Cuba: Restrepo was behind loosening sanctions on Castro's Cuba, which has emboldened the regime to act against Americans. While Castro imprisoned Alan Gross, a U.S. contractor who was distributing satellite phones to dissidents, the Obama administration said nothing.
Subscribe to the IBD Editorials Podcast • Colombia: Its troops captured drug "kingpin of kingpins" Walid Makled, who had extensive knowledge of Venezuelan official involvement in trafficking. U.S. attorneys wanted him extradited, but Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos said President Obama never asked. When IBD asked Restrepo whether he advised Obama to ask, Restrepo defensively said he did. But that's at odds with what Santos said.
• Venezuela: Treasury Department officials complained Restrepo kept names of high-ranking Venezuelan officials with ties to drug dealers off its "Kingpin List," in a naive effort to keep pressure off Chavez.
• Now Restrepo tries to pin Mexico's drug war not on Hugo Chavez's trafficker allies, but on gun dealers from the U.S.
There's little doubt that's his line, because blaming U.S. gun dealers and calling for a U.S. assault weapon ban were his ideas from his days spent at the Center for American Progress, an Obama-linked think tank.
The U.S. "will work to inhibit the flow of weapons ... across our border," Restrepo told Mexican media.
Meanwhile, when Obama met with Mexico's President Felipe Calderon, both erroneously declared that U.S. weapons fueled Mexico's drug war — on Restrepo's advice.
Blogger Mike Vanderbroegh thinks that if Restrepo wasn't the author of Gunwalker he'd know who is and should be called to tell Congress. Either he's kept Obama in the dark about Gunwalker, or Obama should be impeached.
Source
.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
'Knights Templars' resurface; Here and There.
Be a fair drug lord: Mexican 'Knights Templar' gang distributes good conduct guide
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 3:06 PM on 20th July 2011
An organised Mexican crime group calling itself the Knights Templar is distributing booklets – claiming to fight a war against poverty, tyranny and injustice.
The group, blamed for murders, extortion, drug trafficking and attacks on police, are appealing to citizens in a part of the country where the government claims to have largely taken down major drug traffickers.
Analysts say the propaganda is trying to transform a drug cartel into a social movement, like what right-wing paramilitary groups did in Colombia in the 1990s against leftist rebels — a fight in which both sides used the drug trade to finance their causes.
'Life requires chivalry and humility': the Knights Templar are a Mexican crime group accused of murder, extortion and drug trafficking
‘I think the main intent is to create a social base in Michoacán ... and that way they are different from other criminal organisations,’ said Jorge Chabat, a veteran analyst of the drug trade in Mexico.
‘They say they are defending the people against attacks. In the case of Colombia it was the guerrillas; here it is against who knows what.’
A copy of the 22-page ‘The Code of the Knights Templar of Michoacán,’ handbook shows illustrated knights on horseback bearing lances and crosses. It says the group ‘will begin a challenging ideological battle to defend the values of a society based on ethics.’
Looking for followers: The group are issuing pocket-size quasi-religious propaganda booklets
Anders Behring Breivik (aka Andrew Berwick) and his thoughts.
"One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100 000 who have only interests."
"Multiculturalism is an anti-European hate-ideology designed to deconstruct European cultures and traditions. European identities, European Christendom and even European nation states. And as such, it is an evil genocidal ideology created for the sole purpose of annihilation everything European."
The song used in this video is called "The Dreaming Anew- Memories of Cimmeria" and its from /Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures/ written by Morten Sørlie,Simon Pool,Helene Bøksle (female singer),Turbonegro, Tord D. Nikolaisen, Fredrik Martol and Knut Avenstroup Haugen.
To read his "2083 - A European Declaration of Independence" http://www.2shared.com/file/DMq-Ob7z/2083-AEuropeanDeclarationofInd.htm
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By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 3:06 PM on 20th July 2011
An organised Mexican crime group calling itself the Knights Templar is distributing booklets – claiming to fight a war against poverty, tyranny and injustice.
The group, blamed for murders, extortion, drug trafficking and attacks on police, are appealing to citizens in a part of the country where the government claims to have largely taken down major drug traffickers.
Analysts say the propaganda is trying to transform a drug cartel into a social movement, like what right-wing paramilitary groups did in Colombia in the 1990s against leftist rebels — a fight in which both sides used the drug trade to finance their causes.
'Life requires chivalry and humility': the Knights Templar are a Mexican crime group accused of murder, extortion and drug trafficking
‘I think the main intent is to create a social base in Michoacán ... and that way they are different from other criminal organisations,’ said Jorge Chabat, a veteran analyst of the drug trade in Mexico.
‘They say they are defending the people against attacks. In the case of Colombia it was the guerrillas; here it is against who knows what.’
A copy of the 22-page ‘The Code of the Knights Templar of Michoacán,’ handbook shows illustrated knights on horseback bearing lances and crosses. It says the group ‘will begin a challenging ideological battle to defend the values of a society based on ethics.’
Looking for followers: The group are issuing pocket-size quasi-religious propaganda booklets
The Knights Templar was founded in March, according to the booklet, whose illustrations were lifted from an artist, a website of a company that sells swords and another promoting the 2007 Swedish film ‘Arn: The Knight Templar’.
Named for a medieval Roman Catholic order of religious warriors who fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem, Knights Templar is a splinter group of La Familia, another cult-like cartel whose leader, Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, published a motivational pamphlet called ‘The Sayings of the Craziest One.’
La Familia claimed strict codes of conduct among its members, including prohibiting using or selling drugs within Mexican territory, it didn't distribute its booklets publicly.
The contents of its ‘bible,’ reportedly based on the teachings of U.S. evangelist John Eldredge, have never been revealed by authorities. The cartel became one of Mexico's major sources of methamphetamine.
The Mexican government claims to have all but dismantled La Familia since Moreno was killed in a shootout with federal police last December and another founder, Jose de Jesus Mendez Vargas, was arrested last month.
But the mayhem and killing has continued in Michoacan as Knights Templar gunmen battle both the Zetas cartel and remnants of La Familia seeking to control President Felipe Calderon's home state more than 4½ years after Calderon launched his crackdown on organised crime here in 2006.
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More than 35,000 people have died in drug violence across Mexico since then, according to government figures, and some groups put the number at more than 40,000.
President Calderon has said he took on the cartels to prevent organised crime from spreading to the roots of Mexican society.
The Knights Templar claims to be highly religious, distributing its teachings to the general public with kitschy but florid posters, banners, emblems and even medieval robes.
The groups mandate: 'A man with ideas is strong, but a man with ideals is invincible'‘
God is the truth and there is no truth without God,’ reads one passage in the booklet.
A source said two men in regular clothing gave him the book earlier this month aboard a bus traveling in rural Michoacan. He said the men then got off at the next stop.
The booklet says cartel members ‘must fight against materialism,’ and respect women and children. It prohibits them from killing for money and says, ‘for all members of the order, the use of any drugs or any hallucinogen is strictly prohibited.’ It mandates drug testing for members.
The Knights Templar have criticised federal police for failing to protect Michoacan against incursions by the ultra-violent Zetas.
The group may have helped organise a demonstration last week in the Michoacan city of Apatzingan, where people chanted ‘Federal police, get out!’ Some young men scrawled slogans like ‘100 percent Knights Templar’ on their T-shirts.
Government security spokesman Alejandro Poire did not respond to a reporter's question about whether the cartel had organised last Wednesday's demonstration, but said it had been known to do so in the past.
‘It would not be the first time that various criminal organisations seek to use propaganda or publicity tools, but I stress that there is no criminal propaganda that can weaken the efforts of federal forces,’
Mr Poire said Tuesday. ‘The stepped-up federal police presence will remain there.’
Along with the booklet, which also preaches loyalty to family and country, police also have confiscated banners with messages from the gang, trucks emblazoned with Templar ‘shields,’ and even white robes with red crosses like the ones worn by the original Knights Templar order.
The original knights were outlawed in Europe and executed and their order dismantled beginning in 1307.Photos from a Mexican army raid the previous day on a Templar training camp in Zacapu, Michoacan, show pages like those in the booklet as well as a medieval-style helmet made of steel grating and the white tunics.
National security expert Javier Oliva at Mexico's National Autonomous University said the propaganda may have some pull in rural areas where the government is weak and lawlessness and violence are rampant.
‘They mirror a bit the sociological, anthropological logic of the Mafia,’ he said. ‘They seek to take justice into their own hands in a Mexico where no functional justice system exists.’
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2016886/Mexican-drug-group-calling-Knights-Templar-distributing-cartoon-religious-handbooks-recruit-followers.html#ixzz1T5AzXWrf
More Knights Templars:
Anders Breivik's 2083 † Knights Templar
Anders Behring Breivik (aka Andrew Berwick) and his thoughts.
"One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100 000 who have only interests."
"Multiculturalism is an anti-European hate-ideology designed to deconstruct European cultures and traditions. European identities, European Christendom and even European nation states. And as such, it is an evil genocidal ideology created for the sole purpose of annihilation everything European."
The song used in this video is called "The Dreaming Anew- Memories of Cimmeria" and its from /Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures/ written by Morten Sørlie,Simon Pool,Helene Bøksle (female singer),Turbonegro, Tord D. Nikolaisen, Fredrik Martol and Knut Avenstroup Haugen.
To read his "2083 - A European Declaration of Independence" http://www.2shared.com/file/DMq-Ob7z/2083-AEuropeanDeclarationofInd.htm
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