THE GUNS OF MEXICO

[JohnDoe2]

SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL

THE GUNS OF MEXICO


Congress must act to slow the flow

2:00 a.m. March 6, 2009

Horrific drug cartel violence recently prompted the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command to rank Mexico alongside Pakistan as a nation at risk of “rapid and sudden collapse.” And it prompted the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to urge American students to avoid spring break trips to Tijuana and other parts of Baja California. But the violence in Mexico is not just a problem for Mexico. It is America's problem, too.

San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders said in a nationally televised interview last weekend that there have been four homicides in this county in the last two years related to the Mexican cartels. He also said there have been cartel-related kidnappings in this county.

In Arizona, according to The New York Times, there were an astounding 241 border-related kidnappings or hostage-takings in the Phoenix area just last year – a figure that authorities said was actually understated. Texas, too, has felt the spillover of Mexico's violence.

There are at least two other factors that make Mexico's problem our problem.

First, it is, after all, America's insatiable demand for drugs that fuels the $10 billion drug-trafficking business in Mexico. Second, the tens of thousands of weapons used by the Mexican cartels in their unrelenting campaign of intimidation and mayhem – from small-caliber pistols to military-style assault weapons and the armor-piercing ammunition to go with them – come largely from north of the border. U.S. and Mexican officials say fully 90 percent of the cartels' weapons come from the United States.

This country's demand for drugs has long been understood. But the gun issue has only recently begun to get the widespread attention it deserves.

There are numerous steps the U.S. Congress and the Obama administration need to take to slow the cascade of arms to Mexico and help curb the violence:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., says she will introduce legislation to reinstate a federal ban on assault weapons such as the AK-47 rifle, which has become the Mexican cartels' weapon of choice. Feinstein needs to act quickly, and Congress should enact it without delay.

ATF reportely has only 200 agents assigned to monitor the thousands of licensed gun dealers in the country, more than 6,600 of which are along the border. The agency clearly needs more resources, and Congress should provide them.

Only 17 states, thankfully including California, impose significant regulation on gun shows. Congress should enact federal legislation requiring at the very least that sales at gun shows be subject to the same computerized FBI background checks that apply to sales at licensed gun stores.

There are no federal limits on the number of guns that can be legally purchased at one time. In fact, though sales of more than one handgun at a time must be reported to ATF, a single buyer can purchase as many long guns, including military-style semiautomatics, as he or she wants with no report of the sale to the federal government. That's crazy.

In a recent interview with The San Diego Union-Tribune editorial board, Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico's ambassador to the United States, endorsed most of the above proposals.

He also said the paradigm that both countries have used for decades to secure borders and interdict contraband “needs a twitching – a fine tuning.” Specifically, he suggested that the American government consider placing more resources at the border, on the U.S. side, to inspect traffic headed south into Mexico for guns.

We respectfully disagree with Sarukhan on that point. Border inspection of traffic headed into Mexico is Mexico's responsibility, just as inspection of traffic headed north into the United States is our responsibility.

Still, Sarukhan's government is right to ask the United States to do more.
Drug cartel violence reportedly killed 6,290 people in Mexico last year. It has taken the lives of more than 1,000 people already in 2009.

Most of the weapons used in those vicious killings came from the United States. It is our problem, too.

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/mar/06/lz1ed6top2143-guns-mexico/?uniontrib

[MountainDog]

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MEXIDATA . INFO
Media 071408 Cartels




Monday, July 14, 2008

Mexican Drug Cartels & Islamic Radicals Working Together

By J. Jesús Esquivel, Proceso

[Translation] *

· According to a U.S. government intelligence report obtained by Proceso, Hamas, Hezbollah and other radical Islamic groups have become associates of the Mexican drug trafficking cartels: they are furnishing them weapons and helping them to distribute drugs in Europe and the Middle East. Ahead of time, DEA and Justice Department officials told this weekly that "in coming days" they will conduct an operation in the border area shared by Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay – where the radical Islamic groups have settled – that will show their ties with the Mexican drug traffickers.



Washington – Islamic terrorist groups are selling arms to Mexican drug trafficking cartels and collaborating with them in order to distribute narcotics in Europe and the Middle East.

This is one of the conclusions in the report titled "Accomplishments, Fiscal Year 2007," done by the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), an agency of the U.S. Department of Justice.

"Information from intelligence and investigations on narcoterrorism that we have carried out identifies ties between Mexican narcotics traffickers, [and] those of the Philippines and Colombia, with elements belonging to foreign organizations designated as terrorists by the [U.S.] Department of State," the NDIC document indicates. Based on information from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the NDIC document emphasized: "The results of 74 investigations of narcoterrorism that have been carried out by the Special Operations Division of the DEA document that Islamic groups present on the common border of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay launder money, sell arms and traffic drugs of the main Mexican criminal organizations."

Narcoterrorism

The document indicates that the majority of the Islamic groups represented in South America are tied to the Palestinians, and that they use their earnings gained from relationship with narcotics traffickers from Mexico and the rest of Latin America to finance their causes.

It identifies the groups Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestine Liberation Front, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine as the Arab associates of narcotrafficking cartels from Mexico.

"Groups like Hezbollah and Hamas," it states, "have trafficked large amounts of heroin and cocaine in Europe and the Middle East sold to them by narcotics traffickers of Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil."

And it adds: "Furthermore, these terrorist groups have established multimillion [dollar] contracts in order to sell weapons to Mexican and Colombian narcotics traffickers," that are commercialized by "criminal providers from Yemen, Kuwait, Syria, Argentina, Brazil and Bulgaria."

A NDIC official told Proceso, regarding the contents of the intelligence document: "In the last five or six years the drug cartels of Mexico have been positioned as the most powerful criminal organizations of Latin America. And since they now have an intercontinental reach in the transfer of narcotics, the Middle Eastern terrorist groups have not wanted to lose the opportunity to [make] money from them."

"There is a great deal of talk about weapons used by the main cartels of Mexico coming from the United States, but what is seldom mentioned is that many of these, seized from narcotics traffickers by Mexican authorities, are made in Europe or the Middle East and that they are the type used by Islamic groups that support the Palestinian cause," the NDIC official who asked for anonymity as his comments referred to an intelligence document that has not been declassified said.

That document notes: "A link of cooperation between Mexico's organized crime and southern Philippines area drug traffickers, and elements of the terrorist organizations Adu Sayyaf and Jamayah Islamiyah, was also identified."

The NDIC document does not identify the Mexican drug trafficking cartels related with the radical Islamic groups directly or indirectly. However, a Justice Department official consulted by this weekly said that it would deal with the Gulf, Sinaloa, [and] Arellano Félix cartels, as well as The Zetas. A DEA spokesman confirmed for Proceso that it deals with "three or four main cartels" that operate in Mexican territory.

"Right now we cannot name them (the cartels), because in coming days we will conduct an operation in South America (on the common border of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay) against Hezbollah due to its relationship with South American and Mexican narcotics traffickers," said the DEA spokesman who also asked for anonymity due to this being an ongoing investigation.

Words to the wise

Since the 1970s, U.S. agencies began to warn that Islamic groups established in South America were dedicated to arms trafficking in the area. However, in the past five years Mexican drug traffickers have become their main clients.

"The most notable change is that now the Islamic groups located in South America work as drug distributors in Europe and the Middle East for the Mexican narcotics traffickers. Moreover, we have information that Mexico's cartels pay [for] arms that the terrorist groups sell with drugs (heroin, methamphetamines and cocaine)," said the DEA spokesman.

On January 30, 2006, Michael Brown, chief of operations of the Federal Antidrug Agency, told the Western Hemisphere Affairs subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives that since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, federal agencies [have] intensified their investigations into the presence of Islamic terrorist groups in South America, and that as a result they discovered that they had ties with the narcotrafficking organizations in the region.

Brown explained that the Islamic groups earn large amounts from this, and he gave examples: "An investment of US$6,000.00, to buy a kilogram of cocaine from Mexican or Colombian drug traffickers, could yield a minimum profit of US$30,000.00 from the sale of this drug in Spain (…), US$110,000.00 in Hungary or Israel, and up to US$150,000.00 in Saudi Arabia."

Other intelligence documents from the Department of Justice, copies of which Proceso also obtained, show that Mexican narcotics traffickers made their first contacts with Islamic radical groups, like Hezbollah, at the beginning of this decade, this through the intermediation of Colombian, Brazilian [and] Peruvian drug dealers, as well as members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

"The tripartite border (of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay) is used as the central point for the trafficking of cocaine that is taken to Europe and other regions of the world. Groups like Hezbollah and Hamas are getting huge amounts of money from the drugs sold to them mainly by the Mexican narcotics dealers," according to one of the documents from the Department of Justice, dated May 9, 2006.

With respect to the weapons that the Islamic groups sell to the Mexican narcotics traffickers, the NDIC intelligence report shows that these come from the Middle East and Europe. They first arrive in South America. Subsequently, the "criminal contacts of the Islamic groups" and "their Lebanese agents" – who are found throughout the continent, but with "ample concentration in Central America" – transport them to Mexico by "air, land and sea."

"They sell them all kinds of weapons, from the most elementary to equipment to shoot down helicopters or destroy tanks (…) like those that Hezbollah or Hamas use in order to attack the Israeli Army in the Occupied Territories of Palestine or in Lebanon," the document indicates.

"We also have evidence that Central American gangs, like the Mara Salvatrucha of El Salvador, are also collaborating with the Islamic terrorist groups in the transportation of weapons and munitions that have Mexico as their final destination," stated the earlier mentioned Justice Department official. One of the documents from that U.S. government agency points out that the political atmosphere favoring leftists in South America, that tends to be at odds with the foreign policy of President George W. Bush, is exploited by groups like Hamas and Hezbollah that have found a kind of refuge on the common border of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, as well as a center of transnational operations both to sell arms to Mexico and to traffic in drugs to Europe and Asia. For their part, according to said document, almost inadvertently Mexican drug traffickers [are] indirectly financing terrorist acts that radical Islamic groups commit against Israel.

"The operation against Hezbollah that we will make public in coming days will offer into evidence the clear relationship that exists between narcotics trafficking and the Islamic groups, but above all it will show Latin American governments the huge current criminal potential of organized crime organizations of the region. Particularly, it will show Mexican authorities that these (Islamic) organizations are a great threat to the national security of their country, the United States, and even some South American countries," concluded the Justice Department official.

——————————

* The Proceso translation[s], from English to Spanish of information in the National Drug Intelligence Center report cited in the article (translated above into, and back into, English), take poetic license. Some of the quotes are used in altered context; others are disjointed excerpts put together with added text in an order other than that presented in the NDIC report; and some quotes tie in referenced Mexican criminal organizations whereas they do not appear in the aforementioned report.

[ALIPAC]

1. Mexico has some of the most strict gun laws in the world and it has created an environment where the corrupt government and cartels and gangs have guns but average citizens do not. Thus, the citizenry needs guns as they are powerless between the warring factions and cartels. The Mexican citizens cannot defend themselves or exert themselves for stability and security. We need more US guns going into Mexico, just into the hands of law abiding Mexican citizens.

2. The Mexican government and police cannot even protect elected officials, journalists, or their own soldiers and police from the Cartels which we now know have over 125,000 soldiers many of which are here on US soil!

American citizens need all sorts of guns for self defense because if the Mexican government can't protect their citizens from the cartels it is likely our government will not be able to if the US Citizenry is disarmed or underarmed.

3. The absolutely last thing that the current unpopular government of the United States needs to do is come anywhere close to abridging any of the freedoms guaranteed by the US Constitution. US lawmakers are smoking political crack if they think the citizens of America are in any mood to give up more power and freedoms to this bunch of sellouts in Washington.

4. The best thing Americans can do to help Mexico is to secure our borders and stop the flow of cocaine, meth, and illegal aliens from coming north as these are the main cash generators for the drug and illegal alien importing cartels.

Securing our borders and enforcing our existing immigration laws is the best thing we could do for Mexico.

It appears that the illegal aliens and their supporters are going to try to use the Mexican war to take American guns and freedoms away while pushing for some TPS or asylum status for illegals from Mexico currently in the US.

W

[NoBueno]

The strict gun laws of mexico would seem to suggest that more gun laws do not work. Criminals who are intent on getting guns will do so, irrespective of laws passed. At the end of the day, as mexico has demonstrated, it's law abidding citizens (and our own Constitution) who will be infringed upon by additional gun control.