Fausta's Blog

The article TRAFFICKING COCAINE IN THE NAME OF ALLAH highlights the terrorists’ sources of income,

But drug smuggling is not new to Africa. Latin American drug cartels have collaborated with Nigerian organized crime groups for decades; shipping heroin from Asia to the Europe and the U.S., and South American cocaine across the Sahara to Morocco, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, and by air and sea to Europe.

Not to be dismissed is Hezbollah, which for decades used its drug trafficking operations in South America’s Tri-border region and Mexico, to purchase used cars in the U.S. then ship them to Western African countries with large Middle Eastern communities. While the criminal activities of these groups are no secret, stopping their money laundering operations is difficult. Last summer’s seizure of $150 million from the now defunct Montreal brunch of the Beirut based Lebanese Canadian Bank, is an exception.

Drug trafficking’s enormous revenues have corrupted many countries in the region, and helped al Qaeda to buy the loyalty of public officials and law enforcement. The destitution of the Sahel region makes it easier.

Read the whole thing.

“to bolster President Obama’s reelection campaign”. Imagine that!

New special ops command in Mexico politically motivated, analysts claim

the e-mails, released by WikiLeaks last year, chronicle the political calculations that influenced planning meetings in 2010 between military and White House officials about extending American special forces into Mexico.

At those meetings, held at JSOC headquarters in Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, National Security Council members reportedly suggested that the new command — focused on fighting Mexican drug traffickers — could be “a possible window” to highlight Obama’s tough stance on drug violence, just as the White House was ramping up its reelection campaign.

“The matter is being looked at by the NSC as a possible advantage to Obama’s reelection campaign, however, State [Department] is raising objections,” Stratfor analyst Reva Bhalla wrote in a Nov. 2010 e-mail.

“The recent killings of [American citizens] . . . are being viewed as a possible window to ‘spin’ a get tough on drug violence [and] narcos” that would have been a part of the Obama admininstration’s reelection platform, Bhalla wrote at the time.

The decision “will be a political one,” she added regarding the possible creation of the new special operations command.

So, let me get this straight: In 2009,

the Obama administration was ordering gun dealers to sell gunsto individuals the dealers feared were criminals. Despite desparate warnings from Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive (BATF) agents, the guns were not traced. To top it off, Mexican officials were never informed.

U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was murdered with one of those guns, along with 300 Mexicans. Many questions remain unanswered.

And, not letting any crisis go to waste,

the creation of the Special Operations Command-North is timed to bolster President Obama’s reelection campaign? Instapundit asks, I wonder if there’s a “Fast And Furious” tie-in?

At the same time, the PRI is back in power in Mexico, while the

American military trainers attached to the new special-forces counternarcotics hub will school Mexican military, intelligence and law enforcement officials on how to track and target key traffickers within the country’s numerous drug cartels.

What could possibly go wrong?

Cross-posted at Liberty Unyielding.

This will not come as a surprise to long-term readers of this blog: Al-Qaeda’s at the center of drug trafficking.

Revealed: how Saharan caravans of cocaine help to fund al-Qaeda in terrorists’ North African domain
The 37 foreign workers who died in the assault on an Algerian gas plant were victims of terrorists whose weapons may have been paid for by cocaine users of Britain and Europe, reports Colin Freeman.

Unlike their ancestors’ cargoes of spices, salts and silks, the contraband that Gao’s smugglers bring in today from Colombia is deemed strictly “haram”, or forbidden, by Islam.
Yet the city’s ever-zealous Islamist morality police have a good reason for turning a blind eye. For it is thanks to the trans-Saharan cocaine trade that Islamist groups like al-Qaeda have become a power in the region, building up formidable war chests to buy both arms and recruits.

The cocaine trade first exploded in this region five years ago, as Latino cartels, faced with a saturated market in the US, sought new routes to get their product to Europe’s borders. First the drug is shipped or flown across the Atlantic to lawless, corrupt coastal states like Guinea Bissau, then it is moved thousands of miles across the Sahara to Algeria, Morocco and Libya.
…
Now, though, the trade’s potential to wreak far wider havoc has become horrifyingly clear, in helping to bankroll the al-Qaeda movements behind both the Islamist take-over of northern Mali and the murder of western workers at the Algerian gas facility earlier this month.

The planes into Gao fly in directly from Venezuela, drugs’ #1 point of departure in Latin America.

In addition to the profiting, al-Qaeda terrorists use stimulants – cocaine, meth – during battle.

The war on terror and the war on drugs have joined into a new stage.

Read the whole report.

Hundreds of dead Mexicans, and one American, but HOLDER BEGS COURT TO STOP DOCUMENT RELEASE ON FAST AND FURIOUS

Judicial Watch had filed, on June 22, 2012, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking all documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious and “specifically [a]ll records subject to the claim of executive privilege invoked by President Barack Obama on or about June 20, 2012.”

The administration has refused to comply with Judicial Watch’s FOIA request, and in mid-September the group filed a lawsuit challenging Holder’s denial. That lawsuit remains ongoing but within the past week President Barack Obama’s administration filed what’s called a “motion to stay” the suit. Such a motion is something that if granted would delay the lawsuit indefinitely.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said that Holder’s and Obama’s desire to continually hide these Fast and Furious documents is “ironic” now that they’re so gung-ho on gun control. “It is beyond ironic that the Obama administration has initiated an anti-gun violence push as it seeking to keep secret key documents about its very own Fast and Furious gun walking scandal,” Fitton said in a statement. “Getting beyond the Obama administration’s smokescreen, this lawsuit is about a very simple principle: the public’s right to know the full truth about an egregious political scandal that led to the death of at least one American and countless others in Mexico. The American people are sick and tired of the Obama administration trying to rewrite FOIA law to protect this president and his appointees. Americans want answers about Fast and Furious killings and lies.”
The only justification Holder uses to ask the court to indefinitely delay Judicial Watch’s suit is that there’s another lawsuit ongoing for the same documents – one filed by the U.S. House of Representatives. Judicial Watch has filed a brief opposing the DOJ’s motion to stay.

As the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was voting Holder into contempt of Congress for his refusal to cooperate with congressional investigators by failing to turn over tens of thousands of pages of Fast and Furious documents, Obama asserted the executive privilege over them. The full House of Representatives soon after voted on a bipartisan basis to hold Holder in contempt.

It’s ironic that one of [O]bama’s executive orders states “the DOJ will release a report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make it widely available to law enforcement”.

Mexican Authorities Find Smuggling Tunnel Equipped With Electricity Near Border

Mexican authorities have discovered a sophisticated smuggling tunnel equipped with electricity and ventilation not far from the Nogales port of entry into Arizona, U.S. and Mexican officials said Friday.

The Mexican army said the tunnel was found Thursday after authorities received an anonymous call in the border city of Nogales, Sonora, south of Arizona. U.S. law enforcement officials confirmed that the Mexican military had discovered the football field-long tunnel with elaborate electricity and ventilation systems.

U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Victor Brabble said the tunnel did not cross into the U.S.

This is not the first, nor the only; in fact,

More than 70 such tunnels have been found since October 2008, most of them concentrated along the border in California and Arizona. In Nogales, Arizona, smugglers tap into vast underground drainage canals.

In other drug war news, the war is not only against law enforcement, it’s also cartel vs. cartel, for territory:Nine slain in Mexican town as cartels clash in Sinaloa

A group of armed men stormed a town in the mountains of the western state of Sinaloa on Christmas Eve and shot nine men to death with assault weapons, then dumped their bodies on a sports field as part of a war between Mexico’s two most powerful cartels, officials said Wednesday.
Sinaloa state prosecutor Marco Antonio Higuera Gomez said the town of El Platanar de Los Ontiveros had become part of a dispute between the Sinaloa cartel controlled by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Mexico’s most-wanted man, and remnants of the Beltran-Leyva cartel who have allied themselves with the Zetas, a paramilitary organized-crime group founded by ex-members of the Mexican special forces.
…
Another cartel fight is raging to the south, along the border between the state of Jalisco and Michoacan. At least seven people have been killed in the area since Sunday. Officials in both states said Wednesday they could not confirm local media reports of more than a dozen new deaths in clashes in the area. Michoacan authorities did report the slaying of a mother and her three children in the capital, Morelia, which has been mostly spared the worst of the state’s drug violence.
Prosecutors said 41-year-old Maria Elena Lopez Bautista and her 19-year-old daughter and 18- and 13-year-old sons appeared to have been tied hand and foot with wire and burned to death inside their home on Monday.
Officials did not speculate on the motive for the crime, but the border with Jalisco has been hit by clashes between Michoacan’s dominant Knights Templar cartel, and the New Generation cartel that operates in much of Jalisco.

With the PRI back in power in Mexico, and marijuana legalization in the USA, 2013 will be an interesting year.

Cross-posted at Liberty Unyielding.

If you’re an American law-enforcement agent on duty in Mexico, you’re out of luck:

Because the official role of U.S. agents south of the border is limited to intelligence gathering and training their Mexican counterparts, they are barred by Mexico from carrying weapons.
…
U.S. agencies involved in intelligence and training operations in Mexico include the CIA, FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and others. Their presence has increased since the launching of the 2008 Merida Initiative, in which American operatives help Mexican law enforcement officials go after the violent and ruthless Mexican drug cartels, according to law enforcement sources.

President Obama gave tacit approval to Mexico’s prohibition against U.S. agents carrying weapons in March 2011, following the ambush killing of ICE agent Jaime Zapata and the wounding of his partner, Victor Avilla.

“There are laws in place in Mexico that say our agents should not be armed,” Obama said.

Too bad he forgot about those 2,000 Fast and Furious weapons the DoJ shipped to Mexico. But I digress.

And DEA spokesman Michael Rothermund said it’s for Mexico to decide if American agents can carry guns in Mexico, not the U.S.

“The Drug Enforcement Administration respects the sovereignty and rules of the Government of Mexico that says United States Law Enforcement is not allowed to carry firearms,” Rothermund said.

Javier Manjarres asks,

In light of Obama’s recent “amnesty pact” with Mexico’s new Socialist President Enrique Pena Nieto, is the work of the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies becoming more difficult to execute? If the two leaders are on the same page with regards to both border security and Obama’s immigration policy as they say they are, it’s Americans citizens who on the front lines of the drug war that will suffer the consequences.

Will Mexico Yield the Next Benghazi-Style Attack?

Did he, or didn’t he?

French media reported on Friday that Mr. [Dominique] Straus-Kahn, 63, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, would pay $6 million to the housekeeper, Nafissatou Diallo, who accused him of attacking her at a Midtown Manhattan hotel.

Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s lawyer, William W. Taylor III, said in a telephone interview on Friday morning that the French reports were “completely false” and that the $6 million figure “is off by orders of magnitude,” but he would not elaborate and details of the agreement could not immediately be determined. One of the people with knowledge of the matter had cautioned on Thursday that no settlement had yet been signed.

The only lesson so far is that the priapic are likely to get sued.

No, he wasn’t making 99 and 44/100% pure anything; Paul Frampton just got duped by a babe in bikini* into carrying a whopping 4 pounds of cocaine.

I linked to the story six months ago,

Today Instapundit has an update: Frampton’s been sentenced to four years and eight months of jail.

Here’s a bit of advice: Do not do anything involving drugs of any kind when traveling. You don’t have any rights other than what the host country may or may not grant you.

If I’m not making myself clear, watch Midnight Express.

UPDATE,
* It’s not quite clear whether he actually met the aforementioned babe in bikini.

AND,
I do mean all drugs. Always carry a prescription for any medications you have to take in your trip. Stay away from everything else, and of course, never take any packages, luggage, etc. that are not yours.

Cross-posted at Liberty Unyielding.

Last week the US House of Representatives Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Management issued a report updating its 2006 A Line in the Sand findings.

The new report (pdf file), A LINE IN THE SAND: COUNTERING CRIME,
VIOLENCE AND TERROR AT THE SOUTHWEST BORDER found (emphasis added):

 Although the United States tightened security at airports and land ports of entry in thewake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the U.S.-Mexico border remains an obvious weak link in the chain.

 Despite the near doubling of Border Patrol personnel, the Government Accountability Office found that only 44 percent of the Southwest border was under operational control.

 In 2012, National Guard presence on the Southwest border was reduced to 300 soldiers.

 Since October 2008, 138 Customs and Border Protection officers or agents have been arrested or indicted on corruption related charges.

 The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) reports that there have been 58 incidents of shots fired at Texas lawmen by Mexican cartel operatives since 2009.

 Experts believe the Southwest border has become the great threat of terrorist infiltration into the United States.

 Iran and Hezbollah have a growing presence in Latin America.

 Hezbollah has a significant presence in the United States that could be utilized in terror attacks intended to deter U.S. efforts to curtail Iran’s nuclear program.

 Latin America has become a money laundering and major fundraising center for Hezbollah.

 Hezbollah’s relationship with Mexican drug cartels, which control secured smuggling routes into the United States, is documented as early as 2005.

 If Iran’s assassination plot against the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington, D.C. had been successful, Iran’s Qods Force intended to use the Los Zetas drug cartel for other attacks in the future.

Long-term readers of my blog are certainly not surprised by this information, as I have been blogging on the subject for years. Neither would the readers of Jon Perdue’s excellent book, The War of All the People: The Nexus of Latin American Radicalism and Middle Eastern Terrorism.

The Mexican government, however, strongly denies the report’s findings: Mexico disputes House GOP report alleging Iran, Hezbollah are using Mexican drug cartels

A spokesman for Mexico’s ambassador to the United States, Arturo Sarukhán, told The Daily Caller his country’s government disputes a recent House GOP report alleging that Iranian and Hezbollah terror operatives are using Mexican drug cartels as a conduit to infiltrate the United States.

As Matthew Boyle points out, on October 11 last year, two men were arrested in New York and charged with taking part in an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US. You can read the full details of the plot in the Department of Justice’s report.

While its government denies these findings, Mexico is the deadliest country on earth for journalists.

Also last week, the head of Mexico’s organized crime unit stepped down on Thursday, just weeks after announcing that members of his team had been charged with having links to the Sinaloa drug cartel.

Cross-posted at Liberty Unyielding.

While one of the most wonderfully front-loaded distraction campaigns in recent memory continues to work like a charm, the news from Belize is that John McAfee is Wanted for the Murder of American expatriate Gregory Faull.

Stacy explains the whole sordid tale: When You’re Down to Your Last $4 Million, Hallucinogens May Seem Fun.

In case you wonder where the hey is Belize, McAfee went south in more ways than one,

UPDATE,
Wired reporter live-tweets murder suspect McAfee’s run from police