Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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South American cocaine’s African routes

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.
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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.


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Benghazi “sloppiness”

Yesterday on Meet the Press,

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Some individuals have been held accountable inside of the State Department and what I’ve said is that we are going to fix this to make sure that this does not happen again, because these are folks that I send into the field. We understand that there are dangers involved but, you know, when you read the report and it confirms what we had already seen, you know, based on some of our internal reviews; there was just some sloppiness, not intentional, in terms of how we secure embassies in areas where you essentially don’t have governments that have a lot of capacity to protect those embassies. So we’re doing a thorough-going review. Not only will we implement all the recommendations that were made, but we’ll try to do more than that. You know, with respect to who carried it out, that’s an ongoing investigation. The FBI has sent individuals to Libya repeatedly. We have some very good leads, but this is not something that, you know, I’m going to be at liberty to talk about right now.

Plweez.

The murders of four Americans during a seven-hour long attack, due to “sloppiness”?

Twitter users are rightfully outraged by President Obama’s callous dismissal of the incompetence that caused the tragic deaths of four Americans in Benghazi.

Wizbang:

Again, Mr. President — you’re trying to install an unsupported narrative here. This embassy was vulnerable for at least the 6 months prior to the attack on September 11th; it had been attacks twiceprior.  The security of this consulate was already at a dangerously low level.  There were warningsthree days before the attack, which were ignored. Even the Ambassador himself asked multiple times for more security. Instead of granting those requests, his security was actually cut back. (Related: State Department withdrew 16-member special forces team from Benghazi one month before 9/11/12 terrorist attack)

This is not about sloppiness. Sloppiness implies security was implemented, but did it in a manner leaving things in a state disarray. Mr. President, you didn’t implement anything, you removed it and in doing so, thereby leaving your Ambassador Stevens and his staff wide open to attacks. Attacks this administration was warned about from several sources. What transpired wasn’t sloppiness, it was criminal.

In other news, Al-Qaida’s branch in Yemen has offered to pay tens of thousands of dollars to anyone who kills the U.S. ambassador in Sanaa or an American soldier in the country.

UPDATE:
Linked by Hot Air (thank you!),

Ahem. Obama conducted an unauthorized war against Moammar Qaddafi that decapitated the regime the previous year, which gave free reign to networks of Islamist terrorists in eastern Libya. That was no secret; in fact, it was pretty well known that those “militias” participated in the uprising we enabled. There had been a series of attacks on Western interests by these networks in 2012 before the September 11th attack that killed four Americans, including a few attempts on Americans before that. Despite all this data, State deliberately dismissed military security for the consulate and insisted it could rely on local militias for security.

And this is “just some sloppiness, not intentional”?

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Listen to Lara Logan

In her opinion, Obama’s Terror Victory Is A ‘Major Lie’

On the ground, the facts are inconvenient for the Obama victory narrative. That was the message delivered Monday, with all the subtlety of a live grenade, by CBS chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan. Speaking to Chicago’s Better Government Association, she skewered the administration story as a “major lie.”

Al-Qaida is not on the run, Logan noted. The Taliban are not being tamed. Pakistan is not cooperating with us. Our enemies are no less eager to kill Americans than they were before 9/11. They will not stop their war against us just because we stop fighting them.
As Logan put it, “You’re not listening to what the people who are fighting you say about this fight. In your arrogance, you think you write the script.”

Listen to the speech, read the article.

[Correction: I changed her name in the post title. It is now corrected to Lara.]

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“Say cheese!”, and today’s roundup

No, it was not photoshopped.

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Iran released the two Americans on $1 million bail.
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Report: At least 200 murders in Mexico now linked to Fast & Furious weapons, as Mexican officials learned of “Gunwalker” from news reports

In yesterday’s phone conference, Sen. Issa explained that the US- Mexico relationship has been seriously damaged. As the investigation finds more bodies, one has to wonder if the damage is irreparable

Around 1,500 of the guns went unaccounted for, about two-thirds of those guns ended up in Mexico, a border patrol agent was shot and killed with weapons that were sold as part of the operation, 57 Fast and Furious weapons have been connected to at least 11 violent crimes in the U.S., and in Mexico an unconfirmed toll of at least 200 people have been killed or wounded with other weapons linked to the botched effort.

And then there’s this: ATF agent suggests digging up dirt on Sen. Chuck Grassley to help forestall Gunwalker investigations

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Tetrachromats, anyone?
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I’ve only found this at El Herald, which is not yet in English-language media,
Spain arrested a Cuban accused of being a member of al-Qaeda. Among other activities, Ernesto Feliú Mora, age 26, allegedly posted 1,126 jihad-related videos.
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And, on a lighter mode, Claude: to know him is to love him.

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Car bomb responsible for Oslo explosion

UPDATE:
Gun attack,

Shortly after the explosions, which appeared to be a bomb attack, a man dressed as a police officer opened fire on a summer camp for young members of the ruling Labor Party on the island of Utoya in the Oslo fjord, about 25 miles from the city, and wounded at least five, a Norwegian security official said.
…
A terror group, Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami, or the Helpers of the Global Jihad, issued a statement claiming responsibility for the attack, according to Will McCants, a terrorism analyst at C.N.A., a research institute that studies terrorism. The message said the attack was a response to Norwegian forces’ presence in Afghanistan and to unspecified insults to the Prophet Muhammad. “We have warned since the Stockholm raid of more operations,” the group said, according to Mr. McCants’ translation, apparently referring to a bombing in Sweden in December 2010. “What you see is only the beginning, and there is more to come.” The claim could not be confirmed.

H/t Instapundit.

Gates of Vienna and The Guardian have constant updates.

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Earlier today,

Oslo Explosion: One of Two Blasts Result of Massive Vehicle Bomb, Sources Say

At least one of two explosions that rocked a Norwegian government building in Oslo today was result of a massive vehicle bomb, according to U.S. government sources on the scene.

The tangled wreckage of a vehicle was seen near the Norwegian government building that was targeted in the blast, officials said. It was not clear if the car was a bomb vehicle or near the site of a blast. At least one explosion was the result of a massive vehicle bomb, U.S. government sources said.

Richard Fernandez:

Now that human agency has been identified the next question will be who did it? No arrests or official accusations have yet been made, but Will Heaven, blogging in the Telegraph, cites three possible motives for an attack, all standard reasons for having incurred the wrath of al-Qaeda or a similar group. Others cite Norway’s attempts to deport an Islamic cleric, Mullah Krekar, who predicted dire consequences for Norwegian officialdom should they attempt to move against him. “Krekar’s defense attorney Brynjar Meling has tried to downplay Krekar’s remarks, saying they were merely a response to threats made against Krekar himself and in line with the teachings of the Koran.”

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Mixed metaphor toss salad, and roundup

Out of the purple prose and mixed metaphors, errant insults and flattery of the boss, emerged Newt Gingrich — oral action hero: Newt Grinrich’s press secretary wins this week’s award for the most mixed metaphors. James Taranto explains,

Woolly Bully
The Puffington Host, whose founder was an early proponent of a Newt Gingrich presidential run, quotes a response from Gingrich’s press secretary Rick Tyler to a query about media coverage of the kerfuffle we discussed above:

“The literati sent out their minions to do their bidding,” Tyler wrote. “Washington cannot tolerate threats from outsiders who might disrupt their comfortable world. The firefight started when the cowardly sensed weakness. They fired timidly at first, then the sheep not wanting to be dropped from the establishment’s cocktail party invite list unloaded their entire clip, firing without taking aim their distortions and falsehoods. Now they are left exposed by their bylines and handles. But surely they had killed him off. This is the way it always worked. A lesser person could not have survived the first few minutes of the onslaught. But out of the billowing smoke and dust of tweets and trivia emerged Gingrich, once again ready to lead those who won’t be intimated by the political elite and are ready to take on the challenges America faces.”

This thing goes bad with the second word. If we’re discussing sheep, the word is not “literati” but “critterati.” And the ovine partygoers are sipping cocktails and emptying their clips, exposed by their handles amid dust of tweets? There is only one man alive who can write this badly: Thomas Friedman.

On the other hand, Tyler, or whoever actually wrote this, has a point about sheep at cocktail parties. They’re really baaad conversationalists, and it’s awkward as hell when the waiter comes around with those delicious lamb-chop lollipops.

One time we went to a cocktail party at a Washington establishment and the place was filled with sheep. What’s more, the ratio was terrible–of the few humans in attendance, almost all were guys. It was so bad, we complained to the proprietor. To his credit, he was apologetic. “There will be many other nights like this,” he promised. “But there will never be another ewe.”

LATIN AMERICA
Silvio Canto celebrates Happy Cuba Independence Day

I came across an Argentinian talk radio station, and it’s fascinating (if you understand Spanish): Radio El Mundo.

Sending a message with a mass killing in Guatemala (subscription only)

Corruption: Why Texas is Not Mexico

WORLD
BREAKING: Ayman al-Zawahiri is Al Qaeda’s New ‘Emir’

THE END IS NEAR!
At least the kids have perspective: Make My Bed? But You Say the World’s Ending At least Ronald McDonald gets to keep his job.

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Al-Qaeda’s glossy mag Inspire: Gaddafi is so last year

The recruiting tool for English-speaking Jihadists,

The magazine also seeks to encourage these jihadists to conduct lone wolf attacks. Lone wolf assailants are really the most difficult type for government intelligence and security agencies to gather intelligence about. Really to find a lone wolf assailant, you need to monitor his activities closely and understand what’s going on inside his head if he doesn’t communicate to other people. Because of this, the lone wolf really presents a challenge to Western security and intelligence agencies.

Now, like the other editions of “Inspire” magazine, this magazine also is very slick production-wise. It’s meant to be appealing especially to younger aspiring jihadis in the English-speaking world. Places like the U.S., the U.K., Canada, even countries like Pakistan and India. One of the hooks that Samir Khan uses in this magazine to kind of draw in his readers is the use of lampoons with these fake advertisements that he puts in the magazine. In this current edition we see ads put in ridiculing Moammar Gadhafi, the Libyan leader, also the Yemeni president, Saleh.

Video below the fold,
(more…)

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