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Thursday, February 14, 2013

OBAMA BETRAYS HIS MEXICAN DRUG LORDS

Obama administration targets Mexican drug cartel figure

By Ben Goad - 02/05/13 05:58 PM ET

The Treasury Department announced action Tuesday against an alleged money launderer linked to one of Mexico’s most powerful drug cartels.
Filemon Garcia Ayala, a Mexican national and fugitive, leads an advanced laundering network that makes large international money transfers on behalf of the Los Zetas cartel, according to a statement issued by the agency.

Treasury, under 1999 legislation known as the “Kingpin Act,” moved to freeze Ayala’s assets within U.S. jurisdiction and prohibit Americans from doing business with him.

The agency also identified two companies in Mexico and three firms in the United States that are affiliated with Ayala. Those companies are subject to the same sanctions.

“By exposing another key money operation tied to Los Zetas, Treasury is depriving the Zetas of an important avenue to launder their narco-dollars,” said Adam J. Szubin, director of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC.) “We will continue to target individuals and businesses linked to Los Zetas and take any action necessary to protect the U.S. financial system from their illicit financial dealings.”

The Treasury Department has designated more than 1,200 individuals and entities pursuant to the Kingpin Act since June 2000.

Heriberto Lazcano's life was marked by betrayal: The Zetas drug lord was trained by the Mexican military to fight in its elite special forces,

Heriberto Lazcano's life was marked by betrayal: The Zetas drug lord was trained by the Mexican military to fight in its elite special forces, only to turn on them to create the country's most savage criminal group.
Mr. Lazcano, who Mexican officials said died in a firefight with the Navy on Monday, took his training to the heart of Mexico's crime machine, first working closely with the Gulf Cartel as an enforcer, then turning on his ex-employers under the banner of the Zetas.

European Pressphoto Agency

Heriberto Lazcano

Mexico Strikes Back Against Cartel

In the meantime, he built a church that bore a plaque in his honor, waged war along the U.S. border and played a cat-and-mouse game with the military that appears to have ended in his death Monday at either 37 or 41 years old, according to conflicting Mexican intelligence documents.
The Zetas name became synonymous with terror in Mexico. With its brutal tactics, the gang changed the world of drug trafficking in Mexico by expanding into crimes such as extortion and kidnapping.

Drug Crime in Mexico

Track the increasing violence in an interactive map.

View Interactive

More photos and interactive graphics

"He was a legend," said Alberto Islas, a Mexico City security expert. "In just 14 years, from when he left the special forces to today, he created a drug empire that has outposts world-wide—and one that's not disappearing with his death."
Unlike many of Mexico's kingpins, who grew up poor in the rugged Mexican sierra, Mr. Lazcano was the son of middle-class parents in the central city of Pachuca. A Mexican intelligence document seen by The Wall Street Journal said he entered the Mexican military at 17, eventually moving to the elite squad sent to uproot Mexico's drug mafia, which had been festering for decades.
In the late 1990s, Osiel Cardenas Guillén, then head of the powerful Gulf Cartel, made a deal with about 30 members of the elite squad, who traded their specialized training and connections to the military for jobs as bodyguards and hit men. They called themselves the Zetas. Mr. Lazcano, who reached the rank of corporal in the elite forces, became third in command. He was given the code name Z-3.
The soldier-turned-hit-man was responsible for instilling a military culture in the Zetas, designating new recruits with titles like "commander" and "lieutenant," and performing drills and army-style weapons training, Mr. Islas said.
"The introduction of the Zetas, with their specialized military background, increased the violence to never before seen levels," said Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a drug-trafficking expert at the University of Texas in Brownsville. "The Zetas brought with them a professionalization of the killing industry."
Mr. Lazcano became known for a punishment called "la paleta" or "the lollipop," in which victims would be stripped naked and beaten repeatedly with a board until nearly dead.
"He created a system of incentives and punishments," Mr. Islas said.
Ms. Correa-Cabrera said other drug-trafficking groups reacted by creating their own Zeta-like enforcer wings.
Mr. Lazcano's death, if confirmed, marks the end of an era for the Zetas. After more than a decade, Mr. Cárdenas Guillén was captured in 2003 and extradited to the U.S. in 2007.

Enlarge Image

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

The aftermath of a casino fire blamed on the Zetas in Monterrey that killed 52.

In 2010, the Zetas broke with their onetime employers, the Gulf Cartel, and began a turf war that turned Tamaulipas into one of Mexico's most violent states. Homicides linked to drug trafficking leapt from 90 in 2009 to 1,209 in 2010.
Meanwhile, the Zetas have branched out from drug trafficking into extortion, kidnapping and smuggling of undocumented aliens to the U.S. They are considered responsible for some of the worst atrocities in Mexico in recent years, including a casino fire in Monterrey that killed 52 people in 2011.
Early in President Felipe Calderón's six-year term, he sent out thousands of troops and federal police to reclaim vast areas where the country's drug lords hold sway.
Since then, more than 60,000 people have died in drug-linked violence, most of them victims of internecine conflict between warring cartels.
Under Mr. Lazcano, the Zetas expanded their operations across many Mexicans states and throughout Central America, especially in Guatemala, according to a Mexican government profile of the organization. The gang has links to drug organizations in Colombia and Bolivia.
Corrections & Amplifications
Former Gulf Cartel head Osiel Cardenas Guillén was extradited to the U.S. in 2007. An earlier version of this story misstated the year as 2009.

obama betrayed his mexican drug lords

'Fast And Furious' Just Might Be Obama's Watergate

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Two US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms an...

Image by AFP/Getty Images via @daylife

Frank Miniter, who wrote this piece, is the author of Saving the Bill of Rights and The Ultimate Man’s Survival Guide.

Why a gunrunning scandal codenamed “Fast and Furious,” a program run secretly by the U.S. government that sent thousands of firearms over an international border and directly into the hands of criminals, hasn’t been pursued by an army of reporters all trying to be the next Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein is a story in itself.
But the state of modern journalism aside, this scandal is so inflammatory few realize that official records show the current director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), B. Todd Jones — yes the individual the Obama administration brought in to replace ATF Director Kenneth Melson Aug. 30 in an effort to deflect congressional criticism — also has questions to answer about his involvement in this gunrunning scandal.
Fast and Furious was an operation so cloak-and-dagger Mexican authorities weren’t even notified that thousands of semi-automatic firearms were being sold to people in Arizona thought to have links to Mexican drug cartels. According to ATF whistleblowers, in 2009 the U.S. government began instructing gun storeowners to break the law by selling firearms to suspected criminals. ATF agents then, again according to testimony by ATF agents turned whistleblowers, were ordered not to intercept the smugglers but rather to let the guns “walk” across the U.S.-Mexican border and into the hands of Mexican drug-trafficking organizations.
When the Gunrunning Program Began
A Jan. 8, 2010 briefing paper from the ATF Phoenix Field Division Group VII says: “This investigation has currently identified more than 20 individual connected straw purchasers…. To date (September 2009-present) this group has purchased in excess of 650 firearms (mainly AK-47 variants) for which they have paid cash totaling more than $350,000.”
This is an important fact because the U.S. Justice Department hasn’t made it clear to tell congressional investigators when the Fast and Furious operation began and who authorized it; as a result, this ATF briefing paper’s mention of September 2009 is thus far the earliest we can trace the operation.
The next important event we know of occurred in October 2009 when the ATF’s Phoenix Field Division established a gun-trafficking group called “Group VII.” Group VII began using the strategy of allowing suspects to walk away with illegally purchased guns, according to a report from the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the staff of Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. The report says, “The purpose was to wait and watch, in hope that law enforcement could identify other members of a trafficking network and build a large, complex conspiracy case…. Group VII initially began using the new gunwalking tactics in one of its investigations to further the Department’s strategy. The case was soon renamed ‘Operation Fast and Furious.’”
This report and later official explanations from the ATF say the Fast and Furious program was created to deal with the problem that arresting low-level suspects doesn’t necessarily help ATF agents get to the heads of Mexican cartels.
On Oct. 26, 2009, a month or so after Fast and Furious seems to have been initiated, a document shows that a teleconference was held between 13 officials. One of the issues discussed was the possible “adoption of the Department’s strategy for Combating Mexican Drug Cartels.” The officials listed to have been in on the call included Kenneth Melson, who was then the director of the ATF, Robert Mueller, the director of the FBI and a number of attorneys with the U.S. Department of Justice. B. Todd Jones, the current director of the ATF, was not listed in the document, but the title he held in September 2009 is listed as being in on the conference call. It doesn’t take much reporting to find out that in September 2009 Jones was the chair of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee (AGAC) and so was at least supposed to be in on the conference call. (When asked about the teleconference, an ATF spokeswoman told us “we don’t discuss active investigations.”)

Death of Zetas Leader Confirmed, But Body Now Missing

PHOTO: Alleged Zeta drug cartel leader and founder Heriberto Lazcano is seen in this undated photo.

Alleged Zeta drug cartel leader and founder Heriberto Lazcano is seen in this undated photo. (Mexico Attorney General Office/AP Photo)

By RANDY KREIDER and MARK SCHONE

Oct. 9, 2012

The Mexican Navy said today that it had confirmed via fingerprints and photographs that the man killed by Marines in a Sunday shootout was Heriberto Lazcano, AKA The Executioner or "Z-3," the feared leader of Mexico's violent Zetas drug cartel.
"The photographic images of the criminal ... show that the physical features coincide with those of Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano," said the Navy in a statement. The Navy released two pictures of a dead man in a black, dirt-covered shirt on an autopsy table who resembles known photos of Lazcano.
The Navy also said that three fingerprints taken from the right hand of the dead man matched Lazcano's prints in a database.
The body, however, has now gone missing from the funeral home where it was taken. According to Homer Ramos Gloria, the attorney general of Coahuila state, the bodies of Lazcano and a man who died with him were stolen by armed men a 2 a.m. Monday morning.
The 37-year-old Lazcano, a deserter from the Mexican special forces, helped found the Zetas as the security wing of the Gulf Cartel, then the dominant drug organization in eastern Mexico, more than a dozen years ago. Members took aliases that combined the letter Z with a number representing their rank. Lazcano became known as Z 3. Other nicknames included El Lazca and the Executioner.

U.S. Smuggling Guns to Mexico Watch Video

The Zetas, who recruited from the ranks of the military and law enforcement in Mexico and Guatemala, quickly established a reputation for brutality. They massacred civilians and publicly displayed severed heads and corpses marked with Zs to intimidate rivals.
The Zetas eventually went into business for themselves, and now control the drug traffic in much of northern and eastern Mexico, fighting with the Sinaloa cartel for national dominance. Law enforcement officials, however, have said that in recent months a split had developed between Lazcano and fellow Zetas leader Miguel Trevino Morales, AKA Z 40 or El 40. According to some reports, Trevino, who has a more violent reputation than Lazcano, has seized control of the cartel.
George Grayson, a professor of government at the College of William and Mary and the co-author of a new book about the Zetas, speculates that Trevino Morales may have shared information with U.S. authorities to get better treatment for his brother, who is in U.S. custody. He notes that Zetas operative "El Taliban" Velazquez Caballero, who was captured by the Marines in September, has already accused "El 40" of betraying some of the Zetas' local bosses.
Grayson says that the apparent death of Lazcano benefits three parties: the Marines, who have scored a string of recent successes against kingpins; Trevino Morales, who emerges as the "uncontested" leader of the Zetas; and "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman, the head of the Sinaloa cartel, the Zetas' main rival.
"The big winner is El Chapo," says Grayson, "whose primary goal is taking over Nuevo Laredo, the home base of 'El 40,' with the help of the Gulf Cartel." Grayson warns of increased violence as the Zetas battle the Sinaloa Cartel and the Gulf Cartel for control of the city.
Grayson also says this would not be the first time that the Zetas have liberated the body of a fallen comrade. In 2007, they smashed open a grave in Veracruz to recover the corpse of Roberto Carlos Carmona, who was shot to death during a fight over a horse race.

Drug Lord's Pregnant Daughter Caught Sneaking Into US: Feds

Alejandrino Gisselle Guzman Salazar, as seen on this Facebook page launched, Oct. 16, 2012, was arrested trying to cross the border into the U.S. from Mexico, Oct. 13, 2012. (Facebook)

By RANDY KREIDER

Oct. 16, 2012

The pregnant daughter of Mexico's most famous and elusive drug lord has been caught trying to use false papers to sneak into the U.S. and give birth, say officials.
Alejandrina Gisselle Guzman Salazar, 31, was arrested on Friday afternoon at the San Ysidro crossing south of San Diego, the nation's busiest. Officials told the Associated Press that when the woman's false documents didn't match her fingerprints she admitted that she was the daughter of Joaquin "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman, the Sinaloa cartel chieftain long sought by both Mexican and U.S. authorities.
Guzman Salazar, who attempted to enter the U.S. on foot, reportedly told authorities she was seven months pregnant. According to the criminal complaint against Guzman Salazar, "Defendant stated that her intent was to enter into the United States and travel to Los Angeles, California in order to give birth to her child." She has been charged with fraud and appeared before a federal judge today.
In 2011, according to the Los Angeles Times, Chapo Guzman's wife crossed the border into California to give birth to twin girls at a hospital outside Los Angeles. Authorities said at the time they had no legal reason to hold Emma Coronel, a 22-year-old Mexican beauty queen and U.S. citizen.
Chapo Guzman, 54, has had at least three wives, according to authorities, including his first wife, Maria, who is Guzman Salazar's mother. The U.S. Treasury Department has imposed sanctions on Maria and on Chapo Guzman's second wife, Griselda.
A bail hearing is scheduled for Guzman Salazar on Oct. 25. She is represented by Jan Ronis, a prominent San Diego attorney who previously represented Mexican drug lord Benjamin Arellano Felix. Arellano Felix pled guilty to racketeering and money laundering in federal court earlier this year. Authorities captured Arellano after tracking his daughter's trips to San Diego.
The U.S. Attorney's office in San Diego declined to comment on defendant Guzman Salazar's identity or relationship with Chapo Guzman

The Nature of Islam Legacy of Hate; Born of deception, weaned on violence. Islam = "Submission"? Originally: that strength which characterized a desert warrior who, even when faced with impossible odds, would fight to the death for his tribe. (3) Allah = AI-Ilah. Arabic for "the god." pre-Islamic name, corresponding to the Babylonian Bel. The Moon-god; crescent moon. (4)

Islamic divisions of the universe:

1. Dar Al Islam: the domain of the faithful (to Islam)

2. Dar Al Harb: those with whom they are at war until Judgment Day.
(Not just the Jews: all non-Muslims!)

Islam is the fastest growing religion today: There are more Muslims than evangelical Christians in Britain; 900 churches have been converted to mosques in the UK. There are 1100 mosques in the US; there are more Muslims than Jews in North America.

Pre-Islamic Arabia

Ur of the Chaldees is first mentioned in the account of Abraham's journey in Genesis 12:1. The
spiritual ruler of Ur was the moon-god. This god would ultimately become the supreme deity of the entire Babylonian empire. The root names of many individuals in Babylon preserves links to the gods of the Babylonian pantheon:

Sennacherib, or "Sin Ech-erib" = "Sin multiplies his brothers."

The god "Sin" was elevated to the top of the Babylonian pantheon by Nabu-na'id (Nabonidus) in an effort to make Babylonian religion more acceptable to subjects like the Arabians and Arameans. The Arabians esteemed the moon god, but had more difficulty identifying with Marduk, the supreme Babylonian deity associated primarily with the city of Babylon.

The god Sin, "The Controller of the Night," had the crescent moon as his emblem, and the lunar-based calendar, which became the primary religious symbols of Islam, was worshiped in Arabia as AI-Ilah. Mecca became the center of all pagan religions of Arabia before Mohammed. AI-Ilah, the Moon God, was the "Lord of the Ka'aba" ("cube") which was formerly the center of pagan worship, ruling over 360 idols. Lucrative trade routes resulted. The Ka'aba black cube in Mecca is of course the center of Islamic worship today.

Islam incorporates beliefs in jinns ( which are genies, fairies); in spells, magic stones, fetishes; and animistic beliefs (spirits living in inanimate objects). See: Suras 55; 72; 113, 114.

Such beliefs are contrary to Biblical injunctions found for example in Deut. 4:19; 17:3; Job 31:26-28. Penalties: Deut. 17:6; 2 Ki 23:5.

The Sabeans' Religion (pre-Muhammad)

Astral religion, which involves worshiping heavenly bodies ("the host of heaven") is strongly warned against in the Bible. In such idolatrous systems the Moon is often viewed as a male deity; and the Sun, a female deity; with the Stars their offspring. A Lunar cyclical calendar results. For example the practice of fasting from crescent moon to crescent moon. Derived from these forms of worship of the host of heaven are the practices of bowing and prayer toward Mecca; the requirement for a Holy Pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca, in order to circle the Ka'aba, the site of the protective black stone. Al-Ilah was Lord of the Ka'aba; is to be circled 7 times and kissed. Pilgrims then run to the Wadi Mina to throw stones at the Devil. These rites are practiced in Islam today.

Pagans who lived in Saudi Arabia before Muhammad was born worshiped toward Mecca because Mecca is where their idols were located. Because this pagan worship centered on Mecca was so widespread, a rapid acceptance of Muhammad's new religion was possible. Thus, Islam is a previously heathen religion modified into a monotheistic form by discarding all the other pagan gods except for Al-Ilah.

Particular attention should be paid to the pioneering work on Islam of Julius Welhausen, Theordor
Noldeke, Joseph Halevvy, Edward Glaser, William F. Albright, Frank P. Albright, Richard
Bell, J. Arberry, Wendell Phillips, W. Montgomery Watt, Alfred Guilllaume, and Arthur Jeffery. (1)

Archaeological and linguistic work done since the latter part of the 19th century has discovered overwhelming evidence that Muhammad constructed his religion and the Quran from pre- existing material in Arabian culture.

The Life of Muhammad

The Quraysh tribe (Muhammad's tribe ) was previously devoted to Allah, the moon god. Muhammad's father was Abd-Allah. His Uncle, Obied-Allah. His mother, Aminah, was known to have been involved in the occult. (2)

Muhammad's Wives: (Sura 4:3 forbids more than 4 wives; Muhammad, however had 16 official wives, and 6 others as well.)

1. Khadija
2. Sawda
3. Aesah (8 or 9 years old)
4. Omm Salama
5. Hafsa
6. Zaynab (originally Jahsh's, Muhammad's adopted son's wife.)
7. Jowayriya
8. Omm Habiba
9. Safiya
10. Maymuna (of Hareth)
11. Fatima
12. Hend
13. Asma (of Saba)
14. Zaynab (of Khozayma)
15. Habla
16. Asma (of Noman)

Other wives:

17. Mary (the Coptic Christian; chose to remain a slave rather than convert.)
18. Rayhana
19. Omm Shank
20. Maymuna
21. Zaynab (a 3rd one)
22. Khawla

White House Extends Executive Privilege to Holder Over Fast and Furious Documents

By Jon E. Dougherty at 20 Jun 2012

(Newsroom America) -- The White House on Wednesday extended executive privilege to Attorney General Eric Holder regarding documents related to the botched "Fast and Furious" gun-walking operation, a move that increases the administration's political stake in an ongoing congressional investigation that may lead to a vote of contempt against the Justice Department's top official.
Holder was scheduled to meet with Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., head of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, to turn over scores of documents sought for months by the panel, which has been investigating the operation, which has been tied to the death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent, and the attorney general's role in it.
Prior to his agreement to meet with Issa, the California lawmaker had said his panel would hold a vote on whether to hold Holder in contempt for his refusal to hand over the documents. Executive privilege will enable the Justice Department to withhold documents from Congress, even if a subpoena for them has been issued, as Issa has done.
The decision to grant Holder executive privilege marks a dramatic shift from developments earlier this week, in which Holder and Issa appeared close to resolving a dispute over the documents and Issa's threat to hold Holder in contempt. A meeting late Tuesday to reach an agreement, however, failed to produce results.
"If we receive no documents, we'll go forward. If we receive documents we will evaluate them," Issa told reporters following the meeting.
Issa's committee is looking for documents dating from February to December 2011 on how the Justice Department handled the Fast and Furious case, CBS News reported.
Holder has said he made Issa an "extraordinary" offer to provide access to, and briefings of, some of the documents, an offer he says Issa has rejected.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who attended the Tuesday meeting, said Issa was right to proceed with a contempt vote.
In a letter to Issa Monday, Holder said the Justice Department "has offered a serious, good faith proposal to bring this matter to an amicable resolution in the form of a briefing based on documents that the committee could retain."
Issa and his committee have regularly demanded scores of documents from the Justice Department pertaining to the botched operation, in which the BATF allowed straw purchasers to buy guns from the U.S. and supply them to Mexican drug cartels south of the border. The notion was to follow the guns to the cartels but the U.S. agency lost track of most of the 2,000 or so guns purchased. At least two of them - AK-47 rifles - were found at the scene of a shoot-out where U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed.
The California congressman has also demanded to know who prepared a now-retracted letter from Feb. 4, 2011, in which Justice claimed the U.S. did not knowingly help smuggle guns across the border into Mexico, including those later found at Terry's murder scene.
© 2012 Newsroom America.