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Mexico arrests figure in Fast and Furious gun-smuggling scandal REPORTING FROM MEXICO CITY -- Mexican authorities have arrested a reputed enforcer for the country's most powerful drug cartel -- a man also alleged to have amassed weapons from the U.S. government's failed Fast and Furious gun-smuggling operation (link, in Spanish, includes video). Jose Antonio Torres Marrufo, 33, is also wanted by U.S. officials on drug-trafficking charges in El Paso. Mexican and U.S. authorities say he served as a top lieutenant to Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and the Sinaloa Cartel and was in charge of operations in the border state of...

Some developing news in the case of Juan Jose Rojas Cardona, who is a fugitive on drug and fraud charges. In 2009 it was discovered that he was involved in a plot to assassinate a rival and bribe Mexican officials. This has gone public, as has his $200,000 in fundraising done for Barack Obama. Obama has now returned the money, but the scrutiny on Cardona continues. It now appears that Cardona's links to the organized crime world also ties him to the DEA, which ran Operation Fast and Furious. Cardona was allegedly involved with a top drug cartel across the...

Mexico Drug Cartels ... Steeped in Witchcraft, Human Sacrafice.. Demonic Influence? According to a Christian pastor who serves along the Texas-Mexican border drug cartels are tied to human sacrifice, witches, and " the adoration of death in ancient Aztec days." David Elijah says... "There are few places in America more evil, or more steeped in witchcraft and demonic influences, along with false prophets, divination and corruption, than the border region of northern Mexico and the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas.."

NEW YORK – A former employee of HSBC in New York has 1,000 pages of customer account records he claims are evidence of an international money-laundering scheme involving hundreds of billions of dollars by the global banking giant, which reportedly is under investigation by a U.S. Senate committee. John Cruz has delivered to WND customer account records he says he pulled from the HSBC computer system before he was fired. Cruz was terminated Feb. 17, 2010, after two years at HSBC for “poor performance,” but he contends he was let go because senior management didn’t want to him to pursue...

We can only link the Arizona Republic.

(CNN) -- Almost 13,000 people were killed in Mexico by suspected drug violence in the first three quarters of 2011, the country's federal attorney general's office said Wednesday. The figure was the first official tally given by the government for 2011. The exact number -- 12,903 -- corresponds to the deaths reported by state authorities to the federal government that they believe were the result of intercartel rivalry. The figure covers January to September of last year and is not broken down into categories such as how many victims were civilians, how many were innocent bystanders or how many were...

Degenerate meth heads in the United States have good reason to celebrate the new year. 2012 promises to be a banner year in meth supply as the powerful Sinalo cartel headed by Forbes-listed billinoaire Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is ramping up production in Guatemala as reported by The Associated Press: "Guzman is taking advantage of Guatemala's remote, isolated mountains and an alliance with a key Guatemalan trafficker to make the Central American nation a new international meth production base." China is a principal supplier to the Sinaloa cartel of the precursor chemicals used to manufacture methamphetamine, and within the last...

The Hizbullah terrorist organization is in hot water over a scheme to launder hundreds of millions of dollars in multi-national drug trafficking revenues. According to a report published by the World News Tribune, the Lebanon-based terrorist organization is using American banks and other financial institutions to process money earned from trafficking in South America. The complaint filed by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Justice, charges Hizbullah with using the money to buy used cars in the U.S. for transport to West Africa, where they are then sold, mostly in Benin. U.S. Attorney Preet Bhara noted, "It...

One might think that leading opinion makers in Western civilization, journalists, authors, academics, clergy and pundits would stand aghast and in deep condemnation of any society or organization that acted like “the Gambinos on steroids;” but somehow, when it comes to Hezbollah, one would be wrong. A New York Times article of December 13 revealed, for the first time in US mainstream media, Hezbollah’s complex involvement, deep cooperation, and in some cases partnership, with international crime cartels, Columbian drug smuggling organizations, international gem smuggling, and Mexican street gangs. Hezbollah’s motivation for involvement in these illegal endeavors, despite its name “Party...

‘Fast and Furious’ Linked to Immunity Deal Between U.S. and Sinaloa Cartel, Trafficking Defendant Alleges in Court PapersA Mexican drug trafficker awaiting trial in a Chicago federal court claims that the notorious Sinaloa cartel received weapons from "Operation Fast and Furious" under an alleged immunity agreement that the U.S. government made with cartel leaders, in exchange for information on rival gangs.The defendant in a trafficking case before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Vicente Jesus Zambada-Niebla, also claims the immunity deal allowed the criminal cartel to "continue to smuggle tons of illicit drugs" into the United...

A series of recent law enforcement actions indicates the depth of Iranian-tied criminal activity in Mexico may be greater than previously known. In October, a Texas-car salesman was arrested in connection with an Iranian plot to kill Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington. Prosecutors say officials in Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps believed they were dealing with a "large and sophisticated" Mexican drug cartel to carry out the hit. A $100,000 down payment on the hit shows the Iranians were comfortable dealing with the cartel representative, who in fact was a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) informant. Earlier this month, prosecutors in Virginia...

two cities that, while separated only by a narrow river, are rapidly growing further apart. Ciudad Juarez is undergoing wrenching change as dysfunctional state institutions confront powerful, hyper-violent criminal groups. El Paso has witnessed an unprecedented buildup of the U.S. government’s security and law enforcement apparatus. The flow of migrants from Mexico into the El Paso region has nearly ground to a halt due to greatly increased U.S. security-force presence, the poor U.S. economy, and the danger that organized-crime groups pose for migrants on the Mexican side of the border. The flow of drugs, meanwhile, continues at or near the...

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Three U.S. citizens were among those killed when gunmen attacked buses in the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz, said a U.S. State Department official said on Saturday. The three were traveling for the holidays when they and several other passengers on the bus were killed by gunmen on Thursday, according to the U.S. official and local media. The incident was one of several that day in which gunmen attacked busses in the eastern state, a major oil export hub that has lately become a flashpoint for drug gang violence. On Friday, the tortured bodies of 10...

MEXICO CITY (AP) — When convoys of soldiers or federal police move through the scrubland of northern Mexico, the Zetas drug cartel knows they are coming. The alert goes out from a taxi driver or a street vendor, equipped with a high-end handheld radio and paid to work as a lookout known as a "halcon," or hawk. The radio signal travels deep into the arid countryside, hours by foot from the nearest road. There, the 8-foot-tall (2-meter-tall) dark-green branches of the rockrose bush conceal a radio tower painted to match. A cable buried in the dirt draws power from a...

Ecuador has deployed some 10,000 security forces to its border with Colombia to deal with a "most grave" security problem, President Rafael Correa said Saturday. Correa said the troops and police forces were deployed to bolster security amid concerns about "organized crime, drug trafficking (and) irregular groups," including paramilitary groups and Marxist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia known as FARC.

Drug Enforcement Administration agents have raided an Oklahoma car dealership that the government suspects may be one of about 30 such businesses in the U.S. involved in funding the terrorist group Hezbollah. DEA agents say the car lot of Ace Auto Leasing in Tulsa is part of a huge network that is selling cars and drugs -- and then using the money to support terrorism against the U.S., myfoxphoenix.com reports. During Friday's raid, agents could be seen carryout out filing cabinets and other items. They also questioned employees and took inventory. "They're making big time money and it's going right...

A "Lebanese drug kingpin who allegedly has connections to the Zeta drug cartel and Hezbollah has been charged with drug dealing and money laundering" as reported by Jason Ryan for ABC News: "Ayman Joumaa, a.k.a 'Junior,' and his associates allegedly shipped an estimated 85,000 kilograms of cocaine into the United States and laundered more than $850 million in drug money coming out of Mexico from the Zeta cartel through front companies and The Lebanese Canadian Bank (LCB)." According to a former U.S. intelligence agent terror group Hezbollah has established itself in Mexico, and is providing explosives training to the drug...

When it comes to the subject of marijuana, Barack Obama appears to talk out of both sides of his mouth. As a candidate, Obama intimated that he would respect state laws regarding medicinal marijuana and would not prosecute medicinal marijuana sales and use in states where it is legal. “It’s not a good use of our resources,” he said at the time. When Obama took office, the Justice Department released a memo that seemed to confirm that position. But in the years since Obama’s inauguration, his administration has shifted course. Now, Attorney General Eric Holder is vigorously prosecuting medicinal marijuana...

Elaborate tunnel and discovery of more than 32 tons of marijuana are the latest in recent record busts as a new group boosts production after the decline of the Arellano Felix cartel. Reporting from San Diego— Smugglers stacked the bundles of dope on a freight elevator that descended to an underground staging area, where electric carts whisked the marijuana down a tunnel into California. The passageway linked a warehouse in Tijuana with another nondescript building in San Diego, and just like several other drug tunnels, its discovery this week yielded another jackpot seizure.

Border Patrol Agent Jesus Diaz did not have a great Thanksgiving. He spent it in solitary confinement as a virtual political prisoner of Barack Obama's Department of Injustice. What did he do? He made what should have been a routine arrest of a Mexican teenage drug smuggler hauling 75 pounds of marijuana into the U.S. The arrest was reviewed by Homeland Security and determined to be righteous and lawful. But then the Mexican government got involved, calling on Obama's Injustice Department to review it. At that point, the illegal alien drug perp was given immunity to testify against Diaz. Lo...

An advocacy organization for U.S. Border Patrol agents has posted online a series of files containing the discovery documentation in the case against Agent Jesus Diaz, who is serving a 24-month prison term for his encounter with a teenage drug smuggler. The posting by the Law Enforcement Officers Advocates Council came even though a federal judge had issued an order forbidding the disclosure of the documents by defense counsel. The order from U.S. District Judge Alia Moses came on the heels of a WND report based on some of the targeted documents revealing that the unidentified teenage drug smuggler had...

With Operation Fast and Furious headlining the news, there is no doubt civilian arms have been trafficked into Mexico. However, many of the arms used by Mexican cartels are NOT supplied by civilian gun outlets in the United States. Based upon the statistics I have compiled, our State and Defense Departments may be the premier suppliers of weaponry to Mexican drug cartels — not the US civilian.From 2003-2009, over 150,000 Mexican soldiers deserted from their ranks. Drug cartels became so confident in their recruitment of military personnel that they posted help wanted ads for hit men, traffickers, and guards. When...

Authorities say Mexican drug cartels are becoming a growing presence in parts of northern New Mexico. The Farmington Daily Times reports ( http://bit.ly/sTqxR7 ) that Region II Narcotics Task Force Director Neil Haws says the Juarez cartel has been operating for two years in San Juan County, for example, but that the Sinaloa and Michoacan cartels also have gained ground

The Mexican drug cartels have supply lines, distribution networks and operational cells in hundreds of communties throughout the United States, and in New Mexico the state's Region II Narcotics Task Force Director Neil Haws has a dire warning as reported by Leigh Irvin for The Daily Times: "What's happening here is reflective of what's occurring in Mexico," said Haws. * * * Drug-related crimes such as kidnapping, homicide and money laundering are picking up. * * * "These people are already here . . . and I believe it's just a matter of time before what's happening in the U.S....

Just reported Mexico's Interior Minister dead in Helicopter crash. (Can anyone say missing Libyan ground to air missle)

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- The decapitated body of a man was left Wednesday at the same monument in the border city of Nuevo Laredo where the corpse of a woman purportedly killed in retaliation for her postings on an anti-crime website had been left previously, authorities said. A photo of the scene indicates the man was killed for reporting criminals on social media sites, raising fears drug cartels are increasingly targeting bloggers.

With the violence surrounding the drug cartels reaching explosive levels within the last several years in Mexico, the Mexican Catholic Church has been outspoken in its criticism of the violence and the drug trade, but the Catholic Church has found itself in an awkward position of having accepted funds from suspected drug cartel leaders. By Zachary Deibel In the 1970s, grassroots movements seeking to instill principles of social justice, freedom for the oppressed, and equity under law through dogma and spirituality spread among Catholic priests, bishops, and laity throughout Latin America. While corrupt governments subjugated their meanest citizens, Gustavo Gutiérrez...

WESLACO - It's been six years since CHANNEL 5 NEWS spoke with members of Los Zetas. Back then, they told us they were already in the United States and it was only going to get worse. Now CHANNEL 5 NEWS is speaking with a law enforcement officer about how things have changed since 2006. The officer has asked we conceal his identity so the cartels or his peers can't find out. We're going to call him "Pete". "There's people that wait to see when you leave work," he says. "Pete" says his family would be in danger if his identity...

70 minute VIDEO- Former President of Mexico Vincente Fox speaks on ending the drug war.

While the Obama Administration downplays violence along the U.S.-Mexico border, authorities in Texas reveal that Mexican drug cartels have transformed parts of the state into a war zone where shootings, beheadings, kidnappings and murders are common. In fact, drug-cartel violence is so severe that Texas counties along the Mexican border are under attack around the clock, according to an alarming report published by the state’s Department of Agriculture. The agency was ordered by the state legislature to conduct an assessment of the impact of illegal activity along the Texas-Mexico border on rural landowners and the agriculture industry. Texas Agriculture...

Face of evil: MOHSEN RABBANI The Islamic Shiite cleric active in Latin America since the early 1990s. Responsible for the 1992 and 1994 anti-Jewish massacres in Argentina. Wanted in that country and by the Interpol for the crimes. Called for Israel to be "wiped off," in 1994. 'Chief' Islamic operator of Hezbollah - Quds activities of: Islamizaton --including 'recruting converts for Islam'-- and terror networks in Latin America, resides in Brazil. Lightning Out of Lebanon: Hezbollah Terrorists on American Soil - Pages 122-3Tom Diaz, Barbara Newman - Random House Digital, Inc., 2006 - History - 272 pagesThe man directly responsible for this cell-building...

INDIANAPOLIS -- Texas Gov. Rick Perry says an Iranian-backed terror plot coordinated in Mexico proves the U.S. must secure its southern border. The Republican presidential hopeful used Tuesday's announcement that Iranian forces had sought to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. to call for more border troops, improved fencing along the Mexican border and increased border patrols including the use of predator drone surveillance. Perry opened his speech to Republican activists in Indianapolis on Wednesday with a call for increased border security. He called allegations that Iranian forces sought to kill the Saudi diplomat "business as usual" for Iran.

Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sent a subpoena Wednesday to Attorney General Eric Holder as part of his investigation into the gun trafficking operation known as "Fast and Furious." "Top Justice Department officials, including Attorney General Holder, know more about Operation Fast and Furious than they have publicly acknowledged," the California Republican said in a statement. "The documents this subpoena demands will provide answers to questions that Justice officials have tried to avoid since this investigation began eight months ago. It's time we know the whole truth." The subpoena seeks, among other things,...

WASHINGTON—U.S. authorities said Tuesday they had charged two men in an Iranian-directed plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S. The alleged assassination plot would represent an escalation in the confrontation between mostly Shiite Iran and mostly Sunni Saudi Arabia, two longtime Middle East rivals. The charges are also a rare instance of Washington accusing Iranian groups of fomenting terrorism on U.S. soil. Elements of the Iranian government were ready to spend $1.5 million to hire what they believed was a drug-cartel hit squad from Mexico, said U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Prosecutors filed several criminal charges against...

Victory in Colombia comes at a price, and part of that is finding out which government officials were corrupted by the drug gangs and the leftist rebels. Indictments, prosecutions, and convictions of current, or former, officials are increasing. As more bad guys are busted, their captured documents and testimony, reveals more dirty officials. Investigations, and often indictments, follow. Another remaining problem is the culture of violence, a persistent artifact of over half a century of communal violence. There are still too many armed gangs, killers for hire, and people who believe murder is an acceptable way to settle a dispute....

It happened in Colombia, and it may be happening in Mexico, too. A group calling itself a people's defense organization has declared that it has taken armed action against a drug cartel. The group issued a press statement on video and claimed that it had killed 49 members of Los Zetas, in and around the city of Veracruz (Veracruz State). Hence the group’s name: the Zeta Killers (Mata Zetas). The group said that it respects the Mexican military but understands that the military is handcuffed by the law. The extortion, kidnapping, and murders committed by Zetas gang members are so...

The US government should consider sending troops to Mexico to combat drug-related violence, Texas Governor Rick Perry, who is seeking the Republican nomination for US president, said Sunday. "It may require our military in Mexico working in concert with them to kill these At present Barack Obama’s administration is providing serious financial support to Mexican security services, while the security services of two countries are closely cooperation, Radio Liberty reports.

Since Obama’s inauguration in January 2009 there have been several major scandals in which his Administration has been involved, principally, Operation Fast and Furious the government sponsored sale of guns to small time gun sellers along our border with Mexico; the failed ‘Stimulus’ loan of multi-millions to Solyndra and LightSquared, two small businesses that were Obama preferred for loans. All three of these Obama Administration ventures were major failures involving scandalous behavior. ...Is the entire communications arm of our country becoming beholden to Obama and his scandal ridden administration peopled by socialist, communists who break our laws with impunity and...

Big-league Mexican drug traffickers imprisoned in the United States are contending that unnecessarily harsh conditions - locked up alone in ultra-high-security confinement - take a physical and psychological toll and may violate U.S.-Mexico extradition treaties.

Scandal: New documents reveal the Department of Justice lied to Congress and show how U.S. officials bought guns with tax dollars and then made sure no one stopped their transfer to Mexican drug cartels. The funneling of thousands of American guns into the hands of Mexican drug cartels in the operation known as Fast and Furious was not a botched sting operation or the result of bureaucratic incompetence. It was not designed to interdict gun trafficking, but to facilitate it. We now know that it involved not just the use of straw buyers, but also agents of the federal government...

Suspected Mexican drug traffickers from the Zetas drug cartel on 20 September drove two trucks to a main avenue in the Mexican Gulf coast city of Boca del Rio in Veracruz state and dumped 35 corpses during rush hour while gunmen stood guard, menacing frightened motorists with automatic weapons. So, why is this being written about here? Well, if for no other reason, Mexico’s drug cartels have declared a de facto war with the government for control of the country’s northern provinces for exports routes into the United States. Meanwhile, Washington, fixated on the decade-old war on terror, the Middle...

The stench from Washington is getting stronger. Rep. Darrell Issa has called for a special prosecutor to get to the bottom of the festering mess known as Operation Fast and Furious. Hatched somewhere in the bowels of the Justice Department, that misbegotten scheme had the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives deliberately allowing high-powered guns to “walk” from Arizona and elsewhere into Mexico: Our agents turned a blind eye toward the straw purchasers who were funneling the weapons to the drug cartels. The (dumb) idea was to trace cross-border arms trafficking, and so prove the (false) claim that 90...

Drip. Drip. Drip. Whether it is Solyndra, Obamacare, or Fast and Furious, President Obama’s push for his “American Jobs Act” has been drowned out this week by the failure of his past policies. Every night it seems there is a new angle on the Energy Department’s failed loan to the bankrupt solar panel manufacturer Solyndra. Not only was there a headline-grabbing hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee yesterday (at which Obama officials tried to blame Bush) , but the Treasury Department separately announced that their Inspector General (IG) would join the FBI and Energy Department IG in their...

Start rattling the chains. Start ratcheting up the hue and cry. Fire up the masses. It's long past time to force mass resignations at, and possible prosecutions of members of, the Obama Justice Department --and, more broadly, of the West Wing itself. Forgive all the links, but the scope of the corruption is so large as to defy adequate descriptions, in a single column, of each abomination. The reality is that these Obama/Holder minions at DoJ are dangerous to the very heart of constitutional, republican (small 'r') government.

NORTHPORT — Professor Allen Wells discussed major challenges facing Mexico at the monthly meeting of the Mid-Coast Forum on Foreign Relations on Sept. 7 at Point Lookout in Northport. Two of those challenges — political gridlock and drug violence — are linked to a move to open democratic elections. Wells said drug traffickers and the former ruling political party had a “working relationship” going back to World War II. He said there were patronage networks with drug cartels, like other parts of the economy. “This arrangement limited violence against public officials and top traffickers and made sure judicial investigations never...

WASHINGTON — Some have described Hurricane Irene as "the most over-hyped event in history." Americans in the Northeast who were flooded out of their homes and businesses and those without electricity, fuel or water don't agree. But a U.S. official I spoke with this week told me, "The next storm coming from down south is already deadlier than Irene, and nobody is paying attention." My source wants to remain anonymous because he is not authorized to talk about these matters with the media. He doesn't work for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency or...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Tuesday replaced two top Justice Department officials associated with an ill-fated investigation into a gun-trafficking network in Arizona that has been at the center of a political conflagration. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced the resignation of the United States attorney in Phoenix, Dennis K. Burke, and the reassignment of the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Kenneth E. Melson. The two officials became the highest-profile political casualties yet in the fallout from a disputed effort to take down a weapons-smuggling ring based in Arizona and linked to...

ACAPULCO, Mexico (AP) — Two decapitated bodies and scalped heads were dumped outside a Sam's Club store in Acapulco while three headless corpses were found nearby on the resort city's main tourist strip, authorities in Mexico said Saturday. The bodies discovered outside the Sam's Club were cut into more than 20 pieces, Guerrero state's Public Security Department said in a statement.

Texas-Mexico Border It's not a sales pitch heard too often in the Rio Grande Valley. Farmers and ranchers here — used to haggling over the price of feed, irrigation rights and labor costs — have a new, tax-deductible option for improving their businesses. And the company offering it promises to take a bullet for its client. International Security Agency, a private security firm with offices in Colorado and Houston, announced last week in McAllen that it has received the required licenses from the Texas Department of Public Safety to operate locally. Its mission is to stop cartel-style violence in the...

La Línea: Network, gang, and mercenary army La Línea, an enforcer gang, is influential in the contested and lucrative region adjacent to El Paso, Texas By John P. Sullivan and Samual Logan Mexico is embroiled in a complex, irregular conflict often described as a drug war, a criminal insurgency, and a narco-conflict. A protean mix of criminal enterprises (cartels and gangs) fight for control of illicit economic circuits, drug-trafficking plazas and corridors, and freedom from state interference. The cartels and gangs fight each other (both against rival cartels and internally between competing factions) and against the state, attacking police and...