Free Republic

@mrubin1971Two news stories from recent weeks, if true, should raise a red flag in the United States that Iran is preparing to use Hezbollah to strike at U.S. interests in Latin America, if not in the United States itself.First, this story from the Lebanese news portal Naharnet and sourced in part to Israeli radio. The Naharnet story was taken down shortly after it appeared: Hezbollah is using a training base established by Iran in northern Nicaragua near the border with Honduras, the Israeli radio reported on Thursday [September 6]. “The area is cordoned off and there are around 30 members...

In an effort to catch one of the world’s most notorious drug kingpins, the U.S. may use the same daring methods that took down Osama bin Laden. More than a year after the terror leader’s demise in Abottabad, Pakistan, Seal Team Six raid, the highly-trained commandos may be dispatched to Mexico to kill or capture Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman. Like the 9/11 Mastermind, Guzman has been the subject of a vast manhunt for the last ten years after he escaped from a Mexican high security prison in a complex breakout that reportedly cost him nearly $4million

Bank regulators to face tough questions over HSBC money laundering Mon Jul 16, 2012 9:57am IST * Connections to Iran, Mexico under the spotlight * HSBC crackdown on money laundering riddled with lapses * Senate investigation expected to guide Treasury, Justice By Carrick Mollenkamp July 16 (Reuters) - Current and former bank regulators are likely to face tough questions by a U.S. Senate panel Tuesday about their agency's oversight of HSBC Holdings Plc's efforts to stop illegal money flows between its U.S. and international offices, according to people familiar with the situation. The Senate investigation is expected to be a...

The ties between the cartels and violent terrorist groups like Hezbollah and al-Shabaab of Somalia are well-documented, and when put into context alongside other developing similarities between the two factions, it begs the question: are the cartels taking notes from terrorists? Only two weeks ago, a man in an Afghan soldier’s uniform shot and killed a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan, according to an Associated Press report. The Taliban later claimed responsibility for the attack. The shooting marked the 15th time in 2012 alone that Afghan soldiers or enemy combatants impersonating soldiers in military uniforms fired on foreign troops, according to...

Violence like this along the border is getting worse and is already spilling over into the US and Texas. When will the Obama Administration and the Federal Government step up to do more to protect our own border from this escalating violence? The car bomb article today from the associated press (see below) is yet another example of this escalating violence. If you live on the border, massive gun battles and explosions can be heard on a nearly daily basis. Here are some articles I have posted about border violence just in the last year. I barely even scratch the surface: SHOCKING Texas/Mexico Border WARZONE...

Note: The following text is a quote: Travel Warning United States Department of State Bureau of Consular Affairs Washington, DC 20520 This information is current as of today, Sun Mar 14 2010 15:23:05 GMT-0700 (PDT). MEXICO March 14, 2010 The Department of State has issued this Travel Warning to inform U.S. citizens traveling to and living in Mexico of concerns about the security situation in Mexico, and that it has authorized the departure of the dependents of U.S. government personnel from U.S. consulates in the Northern Mexican border cities of Tijuana, Nogales, Ciudad Juarez, Nuevo Laredo, Monterrey and Matamoros until...

EL PASO, TX — A critical opponent of drug law reform in Texas has been indicted on charges of trafficking 50 kilograms of marijuana and money laundering. El Paso County Commissioner Guillermo “Willie” Gandara Jr., 37, who is currently a Democratic candidate for the Texas legislature, along with Juan Canales, 50, were arrested late Wednesday night following a multi-agency investigation that included the DEA and FBI. A federal grand jury indictment charges the defendants with one count of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute 50 kilograms or more of marijuana, and one count of possession with intent to distribute...

Three beheadings in two different states and they happened here in the United States, not Mexico. Former DEA supervisor Phil Jordan says all three beheadings have cartel written all over them. They happened in Arizona and Oklahoma in the past year. A murder mystery is now unraveling on a stretch of North Reservation Road in Tucson, Ariz. County workers found a headless man lying on the side of the road Jan. 6. The man's hands and feet were reportedly missing, too. "It would lead me to believe the message wanted to be sent. This is one of the ways they...

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- The number of new prescription drug shortages in 2011 shot up to 267, well above the prior record and about four times the number of medication shortages in the middle of the last decade. Figures just released by the University of Utah Drug Information Service, which tracks national drug shortages, show there were 56 more newly reported drug shortages in the U.S. last year than in 2010, when there were 211. By contrast, there were only 58 drug shortages reported in 2004. As the drug shortages worsen, so does their impact on patient care, particularly...

Authorities are investigating human remains found at the same U.S. border lake where a Colorado man was reported to have been killed by Mexican drug cartel members last year. A professional fisherman found the skeletal remains on the Mexican side of Falcon Lake on the Texas-Mexico border, according to multiple reports. The skeleton was found about 15 miles from where 30-year-old David Hartley was last seen alive on Sept. 30, 2010. His wife, Tiffany Hartley, said the couple had set out on Wave Runners to take photos of a half-submerged church on the Mexican side of the lake when they...

MEXICO CITY – The Mexican army says it has dealt a significant blow to the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel with the arrest of the cartel leader's security chief. The army says special military forces seized computer files and other data when they detained Felipe Cabrera Sarabia. But Chief Army spokesman Gen. Ricardo Trevillo offered few details about the hunt for cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. Trevillo told a news conference Monday that Cabrera was captured without a shot being fired Friday in the capital of Sinaloa state, headquarters of the cartel allegedly run by

Drug Enforcement Administration agents have raided an Oklahoma car dealership that the government suspects may be one of about 30 such businesses in the U.S. involved in funding the terrorist group Hezbollah. DEA agents say the car lot of Ace Auto Leasing in Tulsa is part of a huge network that is selling cars and drugs -- and then using the money to support terrorism against the U.S., myfoxphoenix.com reports. During Friday's raid, agents could be seen carryout out filing cabinets and other items. They also questioned employees and took inventory. "They're making big time money and it's going right...

SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) - The recent arrests of three alleged drug gang leaders from Mexico and the shooting of a sheriff's deputy in South Texas are raising fears among some Lone Star State officials that the brutal drug wars plaguing Mexico are taking hold north of the Rio Grande. On Sunday, Deputy Hugo Rodriguez of Hidalgo County in the southern tip of Texas was shot several times when he pulled over a vehicle containing a person kidnapped by members of Mexico's Gulf Cartel, County Sheriff Lupe Trevino said. Rodriguez's bulletproof vest saved his life, Trevino said. "I have always said...

WASHINGTON - US President Barack Obama said on Thursday "individuals in the Iranian government" were aware of the alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington, and they must be held accountable. "We believe that even if at the highest levels there was not detailed operational knowledge, there has to be accountability," Obama told a joint news conference with the visiting South Korean president.

Ms Valles, 21, fled Mexico in fear of her life, hustling her parents, sisters, husband and one-year-old son into a 4 x 4 vehicle and hurtling across the border to seek asylum in the United States. They left just in time. That night a squad of hit men arrived at their small bungalow and ransacked the rooms. "I would like to go back home," she said. "But if I hadn't left my country I wouldn't be alive now." In spite of her diminutive size and sweet, girlish manner, Ms Valles had some powerful and vicious enemies. The criminology graduate was...

Gunmen in northern Mexico have shot dead three relatives of a police officer being held over a deadly arson attack on a casino last month. The officer's father, stepmother and stepbrother were killed in their home in the city of Monterrey. Police believe it was an act of revenge by the Zetas drugs cartel, after the officer named gang members allegedly involved in the casino attack. The blaze killed 52 people and caused revulsion across Mexico. Police officer Miguel Angel Barraza is one of six suspects detained in connection with the 25 August arson attack on the Casino Royale in...

The DEA announced Thursday the results of Project Delirium. Agents said it was a 20-month long investigation that spanned the country with the La Familia Michoacana cartel as its target. DEA Administrator Michele M. Leonhart said the operation resulted in 1,985 arrests, $62 million in cash, and around 2,773 pounds of meth, 2,722 kilos of cocaine, 1,005 pounds of heroin, 14,818 pounds of marijuana and $3.8 million in other assets. Of those arrested, 35 were in Austin after law enforcement executed search warrants at 11 homes in the area on Wednesday.

In one of the most chilling revelations yet about the violence in Mexico, a drug cartel-connected trafficker claims fellow gangsters have kidnapped highway bus passengers and forced them into gladiatorlike fights to groom fresh assassins. The elderly are killed. Women raped. And able-bodied men are given hammers, machetes and sticks and forced to fight to the death. In an interview arranged by intermediaries on condition neither his name nor the location of his Texas visit be published, the trafficker also admitted to helping push $5 million to $10 million a month worth of cocaine into the U.S. Law-enforcement sources confirm...

The signature crimes of the most violent drug cartel in Mexico are its beheading and dismemberment of rival gang members, military personnel, law enforcement officers and public officials, and the random kidnappings and killings of civilians who get caught in its butchery and bloodletting. But this disparate band of criminals known as Los Zetas is no longer just a concern in Mexico. It has expanded its deadly operations across the southwestern border, establishing footholds and alliances in states from New York to California. Just last year, federal agents tied a cocaine operation in Baltimore to the Zetas. “Those of us...

The U.S. is offering a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the capture of whoever is responsible for the slaying of an American federal agent in Mexico, suggesting Washington seeks to snare the person who ordered the killing or doubts those in Mexican custody acted alone. [snip] Mike Vigil, a retired Drug Enforcement Administration executive who was based in Mexico, said....."They have arrested a few lowlifes that apparently were involved, but what is not known is if they were the only ones responsible," Vigil said. ...Alonzo Pena, who recently retired as deputy director of Immigration and...