Thursday, April 2, 2020

ORANGE BABOON TRUMP SENDS SHIPS TO SOUTH AMERICA TO FIGHT 'THE DEADLY SCOURGE OF NARCOTICS'" AS THE MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS POUR OVER U.S. BORDERS AND NOW OPERATE IN ALL AMERICAN CITIES

NARCOMEX: MEX PRESIDENT SUCKS OFF BRIBES FROM DRUG CARTELS

Amid growing anger over criminal response to COVID-19 crisis, Washington threatens war

2 April 2020
The number of deaths in the US is set to top 5,000 today, amid a growing nationwide furor over the abject failure of the Trump administration to provide the essential medical equipment for doctors and nurses battling the COVID-19 pandemic to save their patients’ lives, not to mention their own.
Wildcat strikes have broken out among Amazon, Whole Foods and Instacart workers laboring under unsafe conditions to deliver essential supplies to the American population under a totally anarchic privately run system that reduces survival to every man and woman for themselves. Other protests have been carried out by industrial and medical workers in different parts of the country as popular anger steadily escalates over the incompetence and indifference of the US government to a crisis that threatens the lives of millions.
President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference about the coronavirus in the Rose Garden of the White House, March 13, 2020, in Washington [Credit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci]
It is under these conditions that the US president opened his daily press briefing on the coronavirus crisis Wednesday with the announcement that he is dispatching US Navy warships to South American waters in a supposed escalation of a war on “the deadly scourge of narcotics”. He claimed—without a shred of evidence—that drug cartels are attempting to exploit the deadly pandemic.
“We’re deploying additional Navy destroyers, combat ships, aircraft and helicopters, Coast Guard cutters and Air Force surveillance aircraft, doubling our capabilities in the region,” Trump declared.
US Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley were brought to the White House podium to make it clear that the military escalation is aimed first and foremost against Venezuela and includes the dispatch to the region of special forces units.
“Corrupt actors, like the illegitimate Maduro regime in Venezuela, rely on the profits derived from the sale of narcotics to maintain their oppressive hold on power,” Esper said.
This is entirely lunatic. The amount of narcotics moving through Venezuela is infinitesimal in comparison to that reaching the US, the world’s largest market for cocaine, from US allies such as Colombia and Honduras.
The naval buildup follows last week’s US Justice Department indictment—based on no evidence—of Nicolas Maduro and other top Venezuelan officials on drug trafficking and money-laundering charges. This came replete with a Wild West-style “wanted poster” placing a $15 million bounty on the Venezuelan president’s head.
US imperialism maintains a regime of “maximum pressure” economic sanctions against Venezuela that is tantamount to a state of war, suffocating the country’s economy by blocking its oil exports and preventing its importation of vitally needed medicine and food. This has only intensified since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which Washington views as a welcome ally in its campaign to bring the Venezuelan population to its knees and install a US puppet regime in the most oil-rich country on the planet.
Just hours before Trump began his Wednesday press conference, he used his Twitter account to make another war threat, stating, “Upon information and belief, Iran or its proxies are planning a sneak attack on US troops and/or assets in Iraq. If this happens, Iran will pay a very heavy price, indeed!”
Just as in Venezuela, Washington has continuously ratcheted up crippling economic sanctions against Iran as it faces one of the highest death rates from COVID-19 in the world. The Trump administration has cynically claimed that medicine and medical supplies are not sanctioned, even as it prevents Tehran from purchasing anything on the world market by blacklisting its central bank.
The Pentagon, meanwhile, has deployed Patriot missile batteries to Iraq, over the objection of the Iraqi government, whose parliament has demanded the immediate and complete withdrawal of the thousands of US troops that constitute an occupation force in the country. Baghdad fears that the missiles will be used to prepare a US war against Iran in which war-ravaged Iraq, which is also confronting mounting cases of the coronavirus, will become a battlefield.
Trump has repeatedly described himself in recent weeks as a “wartime president” because of the supposed war against the coronavirus. If it were a war, and Trump a general, he would have by now been court-martialed and sentenced as a traitor. While capable of sending warships against Venezuela and missiles against Iran, he cannot marshal masks, gowns and gloves to protect front-line health care workers, not to mention ventilators to stop the deaths of those stricken with COVID-19.
There is a palpable air of desperation and hysteria surrounding the US administration’s brazen attempt to change the subject with the escalation of military threats against Venezuela and Iran. Far from some grand plan to corral the US population behind a patriotic war fever, these reckless actions are symptomatic of a ruling regime beset by extreme crisis and instability.
What would a US war against Iran or Venezuela accomplish under present conditions? It could only serve to further discredit US capitalism, which is increasingly perceived as an abject failure as the world’s population stares horrified at scenes of COVID-19 victims standing in lines outside hospitals and corpses loaded onto refrigerated trucks with forklifts. The unleashing of military violence against either country could only serve to create massive human suffering, new flows of war refugees and the further spread of the pandemic.
Even within the US military, there is undoubtedly substantial dissension over the war threats. As warships are being dispatched to South America, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the supposed ultimate symbol of American military might, has been crippled by the coronavirus, with 100 sailors infected, its crew of over 4,000 threatened with disease and its captain pleading for them to be disembarked, stating, “We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die.” The Trump administration is as indifferent to their lives as it is to those of the Venezuelans and Iranians targeted by its aggression.
The wild lashing out of the White House Wednesday followed the publication of a United Nations report stating that the COVID-19 crisis constituted humanity’s greatest challenge since the Second World War, which claimed the lives of over 70 million. It warned against “the nightmare of the disease spreading like wildfire in the global South with millions of deaths and the prospect of the disease re-emerging where it was previously suppressed.”
Among boilerplate calls for global “solidarity” and international collaboration—amid the escalation of protectionism, trade war and xenophobia by capitalist governments around the world—the report called for the ending of sanctions and for a global “ceasefire,” for “all countries to lay down their weapons in support of the bigger battle against COVID-19, the common enemy that is now threatening all of humankind.”
Wednesday’s White House press conference makes it abundantly clear that this is a pipe dream under the existing capitalist order. The “common enemy” is viewed only as another weapon in the prosecution of wars for geo-strategic interests and control of markets and resources.
The UN report states, “The COVID-19 Pandemic is a defining moment for modern society, and history will judge the efficacy of our response not by the actions of any single set of government actors taken in isolation, but by the degree to which the response is coordinated globally across all sectors to the benefit of our human family.”
Indeed, it is a defining movement, but the judgment will not be left to history. Working and oppressed people across the planet are bearing witness to the criminality of the capitalist world order in the face of the global pandemic and the resulting mass sacrifice of human life. The consciousness of hundreds of millions is undergoing a profound transformation. Capitalism stands exposed as an economically, socially and morally bankrupt system. Acts of mass resistance are spreading across the planet, from call center workers in Brazil to ambulance drivers in India.


WHILE THE U.S. SQUANDERS HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS AND TROOPS TO DEFEND THE BORDERS OF MUSLIM DICTATORS WHO HATE OUR GUTS, MEXICO IS OVERRUN AMERICAN WITH DRUGS!

GRAPHIC: Gulf Cartel Gunmen Burn Rivals Alive in Mexico near Texas Border


https://www.breitbart.com/border/2019/12/08/graphic-gulf-cartel-gunmen-burn-rivals-alive-in-mexico-near-texas-border/

Point/Counterpoint: Should Mexican Cartels Be Designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations?

Washington, D.C (December 2, 2019) – The Center for Immigration Studies presents arguments for and against the Trump administration’s actions to designate some Mexican drug trafficking cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO).  An FTO designation triggers powerful American authorities to freeze financial assets, prosecute for activities that support terrorism, and bar entry into the country.

CIS fellow Dan Cadman urges the designation of cartels as FTOs, arguing, “Nine dual-citizen U.S./Mexican Mormons were murdered recently in Mexico, U.S. diplomatic personnel have been brazenly attacked and U.S. enforcement agents murdered on the Mexican side when it suits cartel interests. In U.S. border states and major metropolitan areas, many drug-related murders are the direct result of struggles for control between cartels.” Cadman continues, “We must up our own game. Official designation brings with it a multiplicity of legal authorities and penalties that can make a difference in how the United States responds, in our own interest, to the struggle for control of Mexico.”

CIS fellow Todd Bensman argues that the U.S. hold off designating Mexican Cartels as FTOs as the action could dilute “America's war on some 70 currently designated Islamic terrorist groups that aspire, emphatically unlike any of Mexico's cartels, to kill as many Americans as possible on American soil the present war on Jihadists.” He continues, “The sometimes shrill calls, with each new gun battle or atrocity, that Mexican cartels imminently threaten U.S. national security don't hold up under scrutiny, at least not without more evidence. If the U.S. government insists on adding a massive layer of new terrorists to existing U.S. counterterrorism systems, plans for how to resource it and allocate the greater burden among agencies, without taking from the war on terror, should be laid out first.”

FTO designation is a powerful tool. So should the U.S. designate Mexico's major cartels as foreign terrorist organizations under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA)?  Section 219 provides that the secretary of state may designate a group as a FTO on finding that it engages in terrorist activity as defined at INA Section 212(a)(3) or terrorism as defined at 22 U.S.C. Section 2656f(d)(2). Does Mexican Cartel conduct meet the threshold definitions, including specifically as a threat to the national security of the United States?
 


Mexico Will Reject U.S. Designations of Cartels as Terrorists, Says AMLO


Mexico’s president announced Monday that he will reject any designation of cartels as terrorist organizations by the U.S. government.

During his morning press conference, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) said he would not accept the U.S.’s potential designation of cartels as foreign terrorist organizations–which could enable direct actions in Mexico.
“We will never accept that, we are not ‘vendepatrias’ (nation sellers),” Lopez Obrador said.
The president’s statements come after the relatives of nine U.S. women and children who died in a cartel ambush in Sonora revealed they would be meeting with President Donald Trump. The family is expected to ask for some cartels to be labeled as terrorist organizations.
Last week, Tamaulipas Governor Francisco Cabeza de Vaca used the term “narco-terrorism” to refer to the brazen attacks on citizens of Nuevo Laredo by a faction of Los Zetas Cartel called Cartel Del Noreste. Cabeza de Vaca publicly called out Mexico City for past inaction in confronting Los Zetas.
Earlier this year, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) filed legislation for the most violent cartels in Mexico to be labeled as a foreign terrorist organizations, a move that would limit cartel members’ abilities to travel and provide tools to better clamp down on financial transactions, Breitbart Texas reported.
On Monday morning, Lopez Obrador’s foreign relations minister Marcelo Ebrard called designations unnecessary and inconvenient, adding that the U.S. and Mexico have a healthy working relationship in fighting cartels. According to Ebrard, terrorist designations would give the U.S. the legal avenue to take direct action on cartels on Mexican soil.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com. 
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.     

Enough Is Enough’: Josh Hawley Calls for Sanctions on Mexican Cartels


Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said Wednesday that “enough is enough” and called on the U.S. government to sanction Mexican officials and cartel members complicit in trafficking meth and killing Americans.

Hawley called for harsh retribution against the Mexican cartels complicit in ambushing and murdering nine American women and children near the New Mexico border.
In the wake of the attack on Americans, as well as the Mexican cartels’ complicity in Missouri’s meth crisis, the Missouri conservative called for the U.S. government to sanction the cartel members who are “openly slaughtering American citizens.”
“With Mexico, enough is enough. US government should impose sanctions on Mexican officials, including freezing assets, who won’t confront cartels,” Hawley tweeted Wednesday. “Cartels are flooding MO [Missouri] w/ meth, trafficking children, & openly slaughtering American citizens. And Mexico looks the other way.”
Hawley said that just over the last 14 days, there had been over 40 drug overdoses coming from drugs across America’s southern border.
Hawley continued, “In SW Mo last two weeks alone, over 40 drug overdoses & multiple deaths from drugs coming across [the] southern border. Story is the same all over the state. Cartels increasingly call the shots in Mexico, and for our own security, we cannot allow this to continue.”

 · 6h

With Mexico, enough is enough. US government should impose sanctions on Mexican officials, including freezing assets, who won’t confront cartels. Cartels are flooding MO w/ meth, trafficking children, & openly slaughtering American citizens. And Mexico looks the other way

In SW Mo last two weeks alone, over 40 drug overdoses & multiple deaths from drugs coming across southern border. Story is the same all over the state. Cartels increasingly call the shots in Mexico, and for our own security, we cannot allow this to continue


Hawley spent much of his August recess traveling across rural Missouri, learning what matters to the average Missourian.


This AM I had the great privilege of meeting Brittany Tune, a nurse, a mother of two, a follower of God, and a remarkable woman. Born & raised in rural Shannon Co., she has raised two kids on her own while putting herself through nursing school & dedicating her life to others





Brittany says meth is hammering this community. She has many friends & family members who have been touched by this epidemic. She worries about what it means for her own kids, ages 15 & 10. It’s much worse now than when she was growing up, she says






In an interview with Breitbart News in September, Hawley said that meth coming from Mexico is destroying local Missouri communities.
“Come with me to any town, any town in the state of Missouri of any size, and I will show you communities that are drowning in meth, drowning in it. It is literally killing people; it is destroying families it is destroying schools and whole communities,” he said.
“Missouri is a border state,” Hawley said, adding that “we have to got to secure the border to stop the meth” and “stop the flow of illegal immigration.”
Hawley’s remarks about the Mexican cartel attack on Americans mirrors that of President Donald Trump, who said Tuesday that the United States was ready for war against the drug cartels.
“This is the time for Mexico, with the help of the United States, to wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of the earth,” the president tweeted.
Trump has campaigned on cracking down on violence on the southern border as well as handling the drug cartels.
During an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, Trump said he is “very seriously” thinking of designating the drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs).
“It’s psychological, but it’s also economic,” Trump told Breitbart News in March. “As terrorists — as terrorist organizations, the answer is yes. They are.”
Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) told Breitbart News in May that he would back Trump’s potential designation of the Mexican cartels as FTOs and that seizing cartel leader El Chapo’s assets would build the wall and make the cartels pay for it. In a similar manner to Missouri, Daines told Breitbart News about how Montana has been ravaged by meth from Mexican cartels.
Daines said that by seizing “billions” of El Chapo’s assets, it “would absolutely fulfill President Trump’s promise to build the wall and make Mexico pay for it. In this case, it would be a Mexican cartel paying for it would be an excellent idea.”
Sean Moran is a congressional reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.


The architect of Mexico's war on cartels was just arrested in Texas and accused of drug trafficking and taking bribes

Business Insider•December 10, 2019
LUIS ACOSTA/AFP via Getty Images
·         Genaro Garcia Luna, who was Mexico's public-security secretary between 2006 and 2012, was arrested in Texas on Monday.
·         Garcia Luna, the architect of Mexico's campaign against organized crime in the late 2000s, is the latest Mexican official accused of corruption and involvement in drug trafficking.
A former high-ranking Mexican security official who led the country's crackdown on organized crime in the mid-2000s was arrested in the US and been charged with drug-trafficking conspiracy and making false statements.
Genaro Garcia Luna, 51, was arrested in Dallas by US federal agents, according to the US district attorney for the Eastern District of New York, which said it plans to seek his removal to face charges in New York.
"Garcia Luna stands accused of taking millions of dollars in bribes from 'El Chapo' Guzman's Sinaloa Cartel while he controlled Mexico's Federal Police Force and was responsible for ensuring public safety in Mexico," US Attorney Richard P. Donoghue said in the release.
Garcia Luna faces three counts of conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine and a fourth count of making false statements with regard to an immigration naturalization application.
Garcia Luna began his career with Mexico's Center for National Security and Investigation in the late 1980s before moving to the federal police in the late 1990s. He was then head of Mexico's federal investigation agency, AFI, between 2001 and 2005 and secretary of public security, then a cabinet-level position in control of the federal police, between 2006 and 2012.
Genaro Garcia Luna Felipe Calderon Mexico
ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/GettyImages
He was 38 when appointed to the latter position by then-President Felipe Calderon but already had nearly 20 years of experience in Mexico's security services, much of it spent tracking organized crime and drug trafficking.
"By his late 20s, he was considered something of a wunderkind," according to a 2008 New York Times profile.
"He really was the architect of Calderon's war on drugs," said Mike Vigil, former chief of international operations for the US Drug Enforcement Administration, who worked with Garcia Luna in Mexico in the 1990s.
That war comprised major military deployments inside the country and the kingpin strategy, which entailed targeting high-level cartel figures in an effort to weaken the cartels. This approach has been criticized for fostering more violence, both by state forces and fragmented cartels.
According to the release, Garcia Luna received millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa cartel. In return, the release states, the cartel received safe passage for drug shipments, sensitive law-enforcement information about investigations targeting it, and information about rival cartels — all of which allowed it to move multiton quantities of drugs into the US.
Financial records obtained by the US government showed that by the time Garcia Luna relocated to the US in 2012, he had a personal fortune worth millions of dollars, according to the release, which said he is also accused of lying about those alleged criminal acts on an application for naturalization submitted in 2018.

'Another black eye for Mexico'

El Chapo Joaquin Guzman
Reuters
One detail in the release mirrors allegations made during the trial of Sinaloa cartel chief Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who was convicted on drug trafficking and other charges in the Eastern District of New York in February.
"On two occasions, the cartel personally delivered bribe payments to Garcia Luna in briefcases containing between three and five million dollars," the release states.
During testimony in November 2018, Jesus "El Rey" Zambada — the youngest brother of Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, who is considered Guzman's peer at the top of the Sinaloa cartel and now its de facto leader — said the cartel twice made multimillion-dollar payments to Garcia Luna.
A $3 million payment, which "El Rey" said was to Garcia Luna at a restaurant in Mexico City between 2005 and 2006, was to ensure he would pick a specific official as police chief in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state and the cartel's home turf.
"El Rey" said the other payment, between $3 million and $5 million, was in 2007 and was to make sure "he didn't interfere in the drug business" and that "El Mayo" was not arrested. Zambada also said that the Sinaloa cartel and its partners also pooled $50 million in protection money for Garcia Luna.
A press officer for the Eastern District of New York did not immediately respond when asked by email whether the charges unsealed Tuesday against Garcia Luna stemmed from allegations made during Guzman's trial.
At the time, Garcia Luna denied Zambada's claims, calling them a "lie, defamation and perjury." On Tuesday, Calderon said he had heard of Garcia Luna's arrest but was awaiting confirmation and further details, tweeting that his "position will always be in favor of justice and the law."
El Chapo Guzman home town
REUTERS/Roberto Armenta
Vigil, who was the DEA assistant country attache to Mexico during the 1990s, was skeptical of the allegations made during the Guzman trial and said he was "surprised" by the arrest on Tuesday.
"I worked with Genaro Garcia Luna," Vigil said. "We, DEA, had a very good working relationship with Genaro. At that time there were no allegations of corruption. There we coordinated investigations with them, and we never saw any evidence of compromise."
The allegations made during that trial seemed "less than credible," Vigil said, in large part because Guzman was arrested twice during the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto, who followed Calderon into office in 2012.
But it was possible that a high-ranking Mexican official could obscure activities in one area from their work with the US in another area.
"In terms of what the US sees, [it's] very different than what occurs within the Mexican government, but through time if he were taking bribes, obviously some of those investigations, you would've known if they had been compromised," Vigil said. "But there's some areas that could be compartmentalized in terms of efforts by the Mexican government."
If convicted on the drug-conspiracy charge, Garcia Luna faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years and a maximum of life in jail.
"Today's arrest demonstrates our resolve to bring to justice those who help cartels inflict devastating harm on the United States and Mexico, regardless of the positions they held while committing their crimes." Donoghue, the US attorney, said in the release, thanking the DEA, the Department of Homeland Security Investigations, as well as police in New York City and New York state.
Regardless of the outcome of the case, it tarnishes a bilateral relationship in which cooperation against organized crime and drug trafficking has been a major component.
"I don't know what the evidence is against Genaro Garcia Luna," Vigil said Tuesday, "but it certainly is another black eye for Mexico."
Read the original article on Business Insider



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