Free Republic

The evidence is mounting that the Fast and Furious gun giveaway was orchestrated and/or initiated from the top of the Obama administration. Forbes Magazine is calling it “Obama’s Watergate.” Are we to believe that they gave away enough guns to equip a small army of narcoterrorists out of a simple error? We would have to be pretty gullible to believe that. We have to ask just what they intended to achieve by doing this. It was a truly extravagant gift to the Sinaloa Federation Cartel. It was not just expensive in tax dollars; it was expensive in political capital, and...

A massive marijuana-growing operation uncovered in Liberty County may have links to a major drug cartel, authorities were told, but nobody's saying which one. "The state and federal authorities do have some individuals they are possibly looking at," said Capt. Rex Evans, spokesman for the Liberty County Sheriff's Office. "They are in contact with folks in South Texas and south of the border. They say not to release any information (about cartels) at this time." Investigators early Tuesday uncovered a sophisticated marijuana growing and cultivation operation at CR 2055 and CR 2050 in Liberty County, just outside Hardin. They pulled...

On Sunday, I wrote a story detailing the presence of the La Familia cartel in Austin, and in particular a group led by men from the central Mexican region of Luvianos.On Monday, after reading the story, officials with the Austin Independent School District canceled a scheduled football game between Travis High and the team from Monterrey Tech, citing safety concerns. If the game really was nixed simply on the basis of our story, it struck me as a curious decision. While I tried to explain how and why La Familia came to use Austin as a distribution hub, the presence...

"In Blog del Narco [they] are amplifying the public relations efforts the cartels had already started," says Rosental Alves, a journalism professor at the University of Texas, Austin, who follows new media in Latin America.

(CNN) -- Two bodies dangling from a pedestrian bridge in the border town of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, created an image as gruesome as any in the four years of the country's offensive against the drug cartels. A man and a woman, both in their early 20s, were left hanging like cuts of meat. The woman was hogtied and disemboweled, her intestines protruding from three deep cuts on her abdomen. She was then hung from the bridge by her feet and hands, topless. The bloodied man was suspended next to her by his hands, his right shoulder severed so deeply you...

Jean Baptiste Kingery seems to be yet another thug that took advantage of the Obama Administration's criminal stimulus package for the southwest, building grenades and IEDs for the Sinaloa cartel. So what did the Department of Justice do when they caught him. They released him free as a bird within hours.Federal authorities are probing why the U.S. in 2010 let go an Arizona man accused of supplying grenades to a Mexican drug cartel, a case that played a role in the ouster last week of the nation's top firearms regulator and the U.S. attorney in Phoenix. U.S. officials said missteps...

Officials with the federal Drug Enforcement Administration say they took down several bosses from the Sinaloa Cartel in a move they say "decimated" a Utah-based cell of the Mexican crime ring. At least seven arrests came Tuesday .. part of an 18-month investigation that has yielded more than 30 arrests in Utah, California and Nevada. Authorities have also seized more than 30 pounds of methamphetamine, 200 pounds of marijuana, a kilogram of heroin and a kilogram of cocaine, as well as more than $322,000 and guns.

The death toll climbed as workers continued to pull bodies out of a burned casino in northern Mexico, where gunmen spread gasoline and ignited a fire that trapped and killed at least 53 gamblers and employees. ... Attorney General Leon Adrian de la Garza said a drug cartel was apparently responsible for the attack, though he didn't name which one. Cartels often extort casinos and other businesses, threatening to attack them or burn them to the ground if they refuse to pay. It was the second time in three months that the Casino Royale was targeted. Gunmen struck it and...

In recent weeks, small numbers of C.I.A. operatives and American civilian military employees have been posted at a Mexican military base… Genaro García Luna, put a helicopter in the air within five minutes after receiving a call for help from Mr. Zapata’s partner, the authorities said. Then he invited American officials to the police intelligence center – an underground location known as “the bunker” – to work directly with Mexican security forces in tracking down the suspects. Mexican officials hand-carried shell casings recovered from the scene of the shooting to Washington for forensics tests, allowed American officials to conduct their...

MEXICO CITY -- A key drug cartel figure who acknowledged ordering 1,500 killings has been captured in northern Mexico, federal officials said Sunday. Jose Antonio Acosta Hernandez also is a suspect in last year's slaying of a U.S. consulate employee near a border crossing in Ciudad Juarez.

For those haven't seen the evidence of Tuesday's blatant silver manipulation (which we expected beforehand here), where the cartel sold 250,000,000 paper ounces of silver (1/4th of Global world silver production) in 1 minute to smack down silver, prepare to have your eyes opened. 5 times the volume of all silver mined in the US annually was sold in 1 minute to knock silver below $40. We have said repeatedly to expect the cartel to become more and more like a caged animal as the silver manipulation end game nears.

Another Mexico Drug Cartel Lead Has Been Arrested And He Says The Cartel’s Guns Have Been Supplied Directly By The U.S Government, And The CIA Has Infiltrated (AKA RuA leader of another Mexico Drug Cartel has been arrested and says U.S government supplied gunsnning) The Columbia Drug Cartels. As previously reported, a hacker data release revealed the arrested leader of the La Familia drug cartel in Mexico was in fact the feds point man for the U.S government drug smuggling operation to Mexico drug cartels. As Obama supplies the cartels with guns he uses the cartel’s violence as a justification...

MEXICO CITY – Federal authorities apprehended the leader of the cult-like, pseudo-Christian La Familia cartel on Tuesday, saying they had dealt a debilitating blow to a major organized crime group that terrorized western Mexico. Jose de Jesus Mendez Vargas, alias El Chango, or "The Monkey," was arrested in the central state of Aguascalientes without confrontation or casualties, said federal security spokesman Alejandro Poire. A state official who was not authorized to speak on the record said Mendez was taken at a federal police checkpoint, but authorities didn't provide more details.

Get ready for higher gas prices. The push to get higher production from OPEC ran into “unexpected” resistance as the oil-production cartel’s meeting turned into a bickering mess. As a result, the group will not hike oil production, and reaction to the decision by the market came swiftly: In a decision that surprised oil markets and sent oil prices higher, OPEC officals said Wednesday the group had failed to reach consensus to boost output. …Gulf delegates have been pushing in recent days for an increase of one million to 1.5 million barrels a day. But some other OPEC members have...

Link only Five women brutally murdered in Mexico beach resort

National Security: The Defense Department warns that the cartels making Mexico a war zone are operating easily here too. And a secret U.S. report leaked in Mexico warns of even worse. So why isn't anyone talking about it? To hear Janet Napolitano tell it, as she did March 25 at El Paso's Bridge of the Americas, security at the U.S.-Mexican border "is better now than it ever has been." The secretary of homeland security has since denounced those warning of Mexico's war spilling into the U.S. as "simply inaccurate" and dismissed warnings from state leaders from Texas to California as...

Although labor unions have been celebrated in folk songs and stories as fearless champions of the downtrodden working man, this is not how economists see them. Economists who study unions—including some who are avowedly prounion—analyze them as cartels that raise wages above competitive levels by restricting the supply of labor to various firms and industries. Many unions have won higher wages and better working conditions for their members. In doing so, however, they have reduced the number of jobs available in unionized companies. That second effect occurs because of the basic law of demand: if unions successfully raise the price...

A cartel is a group of people, organizations, or companies which cooperates together to control production, marketing, and pricing of a product. Under antitrust laws in many regions of the world, cartels are explicitly illegal, because they eliminate fair market competition. However, several international cartels continue to exist despite these laws, and within nations, private cartels may secretly control the market for certain commodities. For the members of a cartel, cooperating together has a distinct advantage. By agreeing to not compete, the members of the cartel mutually benefit. Cartels are often successful in driving the price of the commodity they...

The decapitated bodies of 15 young men have been found in the Mexican beach resort of Acapulco. Police said they were discovered near a shopping centre and were all aged between 15 and 25. They were dumped there by drug cartel members fighting over the control of the drugs business in the city. SNIP In this latest violent incident, police responding to a report of a burning vehicle near Acapulco's Plaza Senderos shopping centre shortly after midnight found five other abandoned vehicles and the decapitated bodies. Media reports say that three messages signed by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, leader of...

Many still remember the movie True Grit, with John Wayne playing Rooster Cogburn, the irascible drunk who reluctantly agrees to help Mattie track down Tom Chaney who murdered Mattie’s father. The phrase “true grit” defines one who knows right from wrong and then does something about it. When a Mexican drug cartel delivered an ultimatum to Don Alejo to give up his ranch or suffer the consequences, it was expected that within 24 hours the place would be vacant, and it would be just another asset captured by the cartel. But they didn’t know they were dealing with someone with...