Narco Wars: it's murder in Arizona

TWT: "EDITORIAL: Murder on the border - Americans are dying because of White House inaction"

Brian Terry died for President Obama's sins. Mr. Terry, a U.S. Border Patrol agent, was killed during operations against bandits near the southern Arizona town of Rio Rico, approximately 15 miles inside the U.S. border. Here and along other infiltration routes, gangsters prey on illegal aliens and drug smugglers or serve as private security forces for gangs engaged in illegal activities. Agent Terry was part of a four-man Border Patrol Tactical Unit sent to engage the bandits, and he was shot down in the resulting firefight. (...)

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano offered condolences to Mr. Terry's family but met a sharp rejoinder from his father, Kent, who said, "You gotta wake your man up in the White House." (...) Mr. Obama's most notable actions have been to unleash the Justice Department on Arizona for taking small steps to try to deal with the problem of illegals and to push the Dream Act, a backdoor amnesty nightmare that thankfully ended when the Senate woke up and defeated it. (...) >>>

Dec. 29, 2010
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Mexico's insurgency -

Pat Dollard: "Mexican Narco-Insurgents Adopt Iraq, Afghanistan Tactics, Use Car Bomb For First Time"

A drug cartel has used a car bomb for the first time in Mexico’s decades-long fight against traffickers, setting a deadly trap against federal police in a city across the border from Texas, the mayor of Ciudad Juarez said Friday. Mayor Jose Reyes said federal police have confirmed to him that a car bomb was used in the attack that killed three people Thursday. It was the first time a drug cartel has used a bomb to attack Mexican security forces, marking an escalation in the country’s already raging drug war.

Federal police and paramedics were lured to the scene by a phone call reporting that shots were fired at a major intersection and a municipal police officer lay wounded at a major intersection, Reyes told The Associated Press. As the paramedics were working on the wounded man, a parked car exploded, he said. Reyes said authorities later determined that the wounded man was not a policeman, although he was wearing a fake uniform. The man was among the three people who died in the attack. The others were a federal police officer and a medical technician. (...) >>>

Jul 18, 2010
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Hezbollah's back in business -

AP: "Renewed Lebanese drug trade hikes Mideast tensions", by Bassem Mroue

Dec. 23, 2009
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... but experts say war on drugs causes drug trafficking ... don't connect insidious Narco-Islamofascist dots Venezuela-Iran:

BBC: "Africa drug trade fuelling terrorism and crime, says UN"

The head of the UN drugs agency (UNODC) has warned that widespread drug trafficking is transforming Africa into a major crime hub. Antonio Maria Costa said huge amounts of heroin and cocaine were being traded by "terrorists and anti-government forces" to fund their operations. He called for a trans-Saharan network to be set up to tackle criminal groups.
Last month the wreckage of a Boeing 727 was found in Mali with up to 10 tonnes of cocaine from Venezuela on board. "It is scary that this new example of the links between drugs, crime and terrorism was discovered by chance," Mr Costa told the UN Security Council. (...)

He also warned that the continent was seeing "a dramatic increase in drug addiction", which was helping to spread Aids. (...) Alfred McCoy, an expert in the international drug trade, told the BBC's World Today programme (...) "The problem is not the traffickers or the traffic, the problem is the whole drug war - we're brining the blunt baton of repression down on a global commodity and the results have generally been negative." (...) >>>

Dec. 9, 2009
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Netherlands cracks down on grass growers in major liberal policy U-turn:

After decades of soft drugs liberalization the present center-left coalition believes it is time for a crack-down. It's not just that the quality of marijuana has increased ten-fold, they've also discovered (!) this form of crime goes hand-in-hand with other serious organized crime, such as terrorism and human trafficking ...

DutchNews: "'Organised' marijuana growers face crackdown"

Police and justice ministry officials are launching a major crack down on organised gangs who engage in large-scale marijuana growing, the public prosecution department said on Sunday.

In particular, police efforts will focus on international drugs gangs who oversee the entire process, from 'production to exports and laundering the criminal proceeds' the department said in a statement. (...) >>>

Nov. 30, 2009
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Fausta's Blog: "Islamic militants and the drug trade"

Image via Wikipedia

The sea lanes of the South Atlantic have become a favored route for drug traffickers carrying narcotics from Latin America to West and North Africa, where al Qaeda-related groups are increasingly involved in transporting the drugs to Europe, intelligence officials and counternarcotics specialists say. A Middle Eastern intelligence official said his agency has picked up “very worrisome reports” of rapidly growing cooperation between Islamic militants operating in North and West Africa and drug lords in Latin America. With U.S. attention focused on the Caribbean and Africans lacking the means to police their shores, the vast sea lanes of the South Atlantic are wide open to illegal navigation, the official said. “The South Atlantic has become a no-man’s sea,” said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity owing to the nature of his work. A spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) confirmed the new route. (...) >>>

Nov. 17, 2009
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Facts and illegal immigration

Pajamas TV/The Hicks File: "Why Are Some Illegals Going Home? NO JOBS!"

Sept. 30th, 2009
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"Border", the movie (includes trailer)

If you don't think the U.S. has a southern border problem, there is a reason that Phoenix had more kidnappings than any other city in the WORLD outside of Mexico City.

Change cannot come without debate. Chris Burgard's award winning documentary film BORDER takes an impartial look at the agonizing and complex issue of our southern U.S. border. This film goes a long way to fostering debate, discussion and, hopefully, a more balanced outlook towards a national problem that has polarized our nation.

As we face the demand for new taxes for increased social services, reformation of our healthcare system, an increasingly violent narco war with Mexican drug cartels, you need to see BORDER to understand how we got here. America is at a crossroads and has some serious problems to face and difficult decisions to make. These problems are fixable, but first we have to have the courage to honestly face and understand how we got here. BORDER takes the first step in this necessary process... you can make a difference!

Sept. 15, 2009
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WSJ: "U.S. Slams Caracas on Drugs", by Jose de Cordoba

Venezuela is fast becoming a major hub for cocaine trafficking in the Western Hemisphere, according to a report written by the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress. The report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office is sure to raise tensions between Venezuela and the U.S. at a delicate moment in the two countries' often testy relations. The report, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, blames widespread government corruption for increases in cocaine transshipments through Venezuela. Such shipments have soared more than fourfold to 260 metric tons in 2007 from 60 metric tons in 2004 as the government of President Hugo Chávez has systematically slashed its antinarcotics cooperation efforts with the U.S., according to the report. (...)

Many of the drug shipments come from Colombian "illegal armed groups" such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the report says, which the Venezuelan government provides with "a lifeline" of support and a haven within Venezuela. FARC is a communist guerrilla group. (...) The biggest problem: corruption of Venezuelan officials at all levels (...) because the "Guard reports directly to President Chávez and controls Venezuela's airports, borders and ports." In some cases, the report says, drugs captured by the National Guard and Venezuela's Investigative Police, who are often themselves involved in drug trafficking, aren't destroyed, but are taken by the officials or returned to drug traffickers. (...)

The report also comes as Mr. Chávez and the Obama administration have formed an unlikely alliance to restore Honduras's ousted President Manuel Zelaya, one of Mr. Chávez's closest regional allies, who was deposed last month. (...) But Mr. Chávez, who is funding Mr. Zelaya's efforts to make a comeback, has excoriated a U.S.-backed mediation effort to restore Mr. Zelaya, and angrily threatened to depose the interim government. (...) In the past few years, drug trafficking through Honduras has risen sharply, with many shipments of cocaine arriving in flights from Venezuela on their way to Mexico and the U.S., say officials in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital. >>>

July 18, 2009
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Enter Stage Right: "The war on our southern border", by Alan Caruba

Among the latest news out of Mexico was the discovery of four U.S. citizens found in a van, strangled, beaten and stabbed in the border city of Tijuana. The victims, ages 19 to 21, were two men and two women from San Diego and Chula Vista areas. In 2008, 6,292 Mexicans were killed in the drug wars between the drug cartels. In the first eight weeks of 2009, there were already a thousand casualties, some of them beheaded. By way of comparison, in six years of war in Iraq, this exceeds U.S. losses by more than three thousand.

In mid-March, however, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, third in the line of succession to lead the nation, told a crowd of legal and illegal Hispanics that enforcement of federal or even local laws regarding immigration is "un-American." She called the illegal aliens in the audience, "very, very patriotic."No, Madame Speaker, the patriotic, indeed the constitutionally responsible thing to do is to enforce the laws of the nation. You even took an oath of office to do so. (...) >>>

May 19, 2009
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