Archive for the 'Mexico' Category

David Codrea:

When gun-grabbers first started throwing around that claim, they were assuring us it was “95 to 100 percent.” The con they’re pulling is limiting numbers to what is being submitted for tracing. The total population of guns recovered but not submitted is much larger. And the total number of guns in the hands of Mexico’s warring cartels equips armies.

Speaking of which, since KPBS brought up “grenades,” who thinks the cartels get their weapons onesie-twosie from U.S. gun stores and gun shows? How about their “U.S.-military issued rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers and explosives”?

In reality, many of the weapons are obtained from police, Army deserters and corrupt administrators.

The only thing this proves to me is that the best gunsmiths and machinists live in the U.S. and sell legally to the police and military in other countries.  Otherwise, what’s old is new again.  Always looking for a reason to control things.

Reuters:

The FBI on Saturday said it had arrested Larry Hopkins, the leader of an armed group that is stopping undocumented migrants after they cross the U.S.-Mexico border into New Mexico.

[ … ]

“We’re not worried about it, he’s going to be cleared,” said Jim Benvie, a spokesman for the United Constitutional Patriots (UCP), blaming his arrest on political pressure from Lujan Grisham.

Hopkins is the “national commander” of the UCP, which has had around half a dozen members camped out on a rotating basis near Sunland Park since late February.

This came after the New Mexico governor said this.

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Friday lashed out at members of a militia group who are stopping migrants at the border, declaring “regular citizens have no authority to arrest or detain anyone.”

Because they’re actually detaining and arresting them, rather than letting them go at bus stops in San Antonio and other cities like Customs and Border Patrol.  We can’t allow anyone to actually enforce the law.

In other news, the Mexican military disarmed a couple of U.S. troops on the U.S. side of the border.

Armed Mexican troops disarmed two United States soldiers while they were on the American side of the border, U.S. defense officials have said.

U.S. Northern Command said in a statement that “five to six Mexican military personnel questioned two U.S. Army soldiers who were conducting border support operations” this month. The U.S. soldiers were in an unmarked Customs and Border Protection [CBP] vehicle near the southwest border near Clint, Texas.

Officials confirmed that the Mexican troops were armed with what seemed to be rifles. They raised their weapons when they saw the two U.S. soldiers, and then took a pistol from one and put it in the CBP vehicle. According to officials talking to CNN, the two Americans obliged “in an attempt to de-escalate a potential volatile situation.”

That’s why they don’t want the U.S. Marine Corps on the border.  Those Mexican troops would be dead now.

But since no one in power wants to stop immigration – not the big business president, not the senate or house (the republicans in the pocket of big business, the democrats wanting more voters), and not Mexico, it won’t be stopped.

If you ever believed that immigration would come to an end at some point, disavow yourself of that notion right away, at least until the costs of covering the immigrants with medical care becomes so extreme that FedGov has to confiscate retirement accounts and 401Ks to pay for it all (they’ll “nationalize” it all, and promise to take care of everyone).

Military Times:

President Donald Trump said that he is considering sending even more troops to the southern U.S. border to help with security missions there, calling the situation there increasingly dangerous.

“I’m going to have to call up more military,” he said Wednesday during a roundtable with supporters in Texas related to his plans for a southern border wall and tighter immigration laws for Central and South American migrants.

Ain’t that something?  They’ll send sons of America to fight all sorts of police actions and “authorizations to use force” around the globe, but the one thing they are tasked by the constitution for doing – preventing and responding to foreign invasions – the elitists in charge call illegal under Posse Comitatus.

There’s nothing wrong with Posse Comitatus.  What’s wrong is in Washington, D.C., and the demons, gargoyles and pit vipers who ensconce there.

That’s my title because that’s the title of the video.  Forget for a moment where this is occurring, or that it’s a little dated (2016).  I found this profoundly interesting, and if you watch it with an open mind I think you’ll find all sorts of lessons and tactical applications.  I’ll let you fill in the details in the comments section.  And I think you’ll be surprised at some of what happens in the video.  I’m posting it for educational purposes only, of course.

Small Wars Journal:

Tunnels are dark and often wet, hot, and humid. They can contain tight spaces, low overhead clearances, and present a range of explosive and toxic environmental challenges. All of these impediments are enhanced by poor visibility, darkness, impeded sight lines, and amplified noise (echoes) facilitating sensory decrements that inhibit maneuver, engagement, and situational awareness. Tunnels also degrade intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance complicating tactical and operational decision-making. In addition to tactical challenges found in all confined space operations, illicit taps bring an additional explosion hazard both within the tunnel and in proximate inhabited spaces.

It reminds me of the tunnel in Sicario, except not as well-constructed.

I think I’ve said this before, but this poses not just a tactical challenge to anyone, regardless of persuasion, but a challenge to life as well.

This is a confined space.  It has the following hazards (not an all-inclusive list): civil engineering (collapse of roofing or siding), access to breathable oxygen, lighting, noise, concentration of various bacteriological hazards (such as legionella), temperature, humidity, submergence during rain from flash flooding, concentration of explosive gases, concentration of explosive dusts, etc., etc.

Stay out of confined spaces.  They mean death to you.  I think I’ve mentioned it before, but I don’t go spelunking.

The Washington Times:

ICE officers who endorsed President Trump in 2016 now say he has failed to follow through on his get-tough promises, saying catch-and-release of immigrants living illegally in the U.S. is not only still happening, but has gone into “overdrive.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers say they’re being roped into such mundane tasks as opening the doors on vans to release immigrants already caught by Border Patrol agents. That’s dragging the officers from their usual duties of nabbing fugitives, or scouring local prisons and jails for immigrant criminals who lived illegally in the U.S. ready to be deported.

The shell game is all the more “ridiculous,” the officers said, because Border Patrol agents could fill out paperwork and open the doors themselves, but the agency’s leaders don’t want to be part of catch-and-release.

“Hundreds of man hours are wasted each day at a time of crisis on the border,” the leaders of the National ICE Council, the union that represents ICE officers, said in a letter sent directly to Mr. Trump on Monday.

[ … ]

“You frequently speak publicly of the great public safety work ICE is doing under your leadership. To be direct Mr. President — the rhetoric doesn’t match reality and we hope that this letter shows you the complete and total nonsense that is really taking place under the Trump Administration on the southern border,” the ICE officers said.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The letter comes as the situation at the southwestern border has grown out of control for Homeland Security.

Some 160,000 migrant children and family members have been encountered at the border over the last five months, shattering previous records.

Most are arrested by the Border Patrol, though 10-15 percent are encountered by Customs and Border Protection officers trying to come through a border crossing without permission.

Because of the overwhelming numbers, lack of bed space and court rulings, Homeland Security usually processes and quickly releases most of them, with the vain hope that they’ll come back for hearings and eventual deportation.

That’s been dubbed “catch-and-release,” and Mr. Trump took office promising to stop it.

Instead the rate has increased, and it’s spurred the bureaucratic sparring.

Mr. Crane says Border Patrol agents have the power to fill out the release paperwork and to do the releases on their own, but they don’t want to face the embarrassment. So they make ICE officers fill out the release paperwork, and when they drive the immigrants to bus stations to be dropped off, they make an ICE officer actually open the van doors.

Because if Trump ever did intend to do anything about immigration and the border (and he was probably being dishonest about immigration), he intended to wait until after he no longer had the House of Representatives to make it a big deal so that he would be blocked and could make it a re-election issue.

Because he thinks Americans are tools.  By my calculations the only good thing we’ve gotten from Trump is Neil Gorsuch.

Via WiscoDave, Iotwreport.com:

Americans in border towns in New Mexico are leery of reporting crimes and suspicious activities by illegal immigrants because they fear they will be retaliated against by drug cartels, according to a  Washington Examiner report.

Seven residents who live within 30 to 50 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border told the paper that calling local or federal law enforcement for help after discovering they have been victims of illegal immigrant crime could lead to “nasty consequences.”

One cattle rancher from Hidalgo County told the Examiner he calls in every crime, but not without punishment from the cartels.

“I turned in 700 pounds [of marijuana] up here … I called it in [to Border Patrol]. They went and got it. That night, they [smugglers] came back. They … broke off all the floats off my troughs — chopped ’em up, drained all of it,” he said.

Brave rancher.  But most people won’t be that brave, nor do they have the wherewithal to engage in battle with the cartel(s).

Here is the step-by-step process for the destruction of a country and culture.

[1] Corrupt enough powerful people with money and power – money for powerful corporations like Monsanto, or Archer Daniels Midland, who want immigrant workers, or even for smaller entities like local roofing and siding companies, and power for the democrats who want voters.

[2] Convince enough idiot voters that the immigrants just “come for love” and appeal to compassion.

[3] Underfund border security, and in any event, make it nearly impossible for them to perform their mission.

[4] Get enough lawyers involved that no one could ever successfully craft rules for the use of force or rules of engagement (RUF/ROE) for the border that would make the international community happy.

[5] Never, ever, send the military to the border under arming orders.  Let them do things like paperwork (and maybe string some wire) for looks and theater.

[6] Corrupt the churches so they teach that Jesus was a Bohemian, pacifist, flowerchild beatnik, and you will be too if you want to be a Christian.  No real Christian can be a warrior, at least not unless recognized by the state.

[7] Weaken the armed forces so that if they ever do deploy to the border, they won’t be fit to serve in any meaningful capacity anyway.

[8] Make sure that the police and judiciary are essentially one and the same, on the same side as it were, and make sure that the public is scared of ever taking any kind of action they deem illegal or vigilante.  Make the cost too high for them to bear to defend themselves or their property.

[9] Allow the criminal elements of the hordes to roam freely and perpetrate their desires at will.  This is advantageous for the controllers, as it keeps the fearful people in check and without recourse.  They cannot turn to each other, cannot turn to the state, and cannot turn to the criminals.  And they won’t act for themselves.

[10] Make the promise of provision of “free” health care for everyone who crosses the border, illegal or not.  This “free” health care hides the real cost of illegal immigration, but it’s advantageous to the corporations, so it must come to pass.

[11] Finally, invade the schools from elementary to college with socialists who do not believe in liberty, and this will ensure a vast supply of idiots as future voters, thus creating power in perpetuity.  These voters will never allow turning this death spiral around.

And thus you have a recipe for utter disaster for a nation.  It’s almost as if it were happening before our very eyes, yes?

Military Times:

U.S. officials say the Pentagon is finalizing plans that would send hundreds of additional active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border for several more months to support the Department of Homeland Security.

The troops would install another 160 miles of concertina wire in Arizona and California.

Details are being worked out, but the plan likely would extend the military’s border mission though the end of September.

None of this makes a hill of beans of difference.  They won’t be under arming orders.  They will have no mission except to perform administrative and assistance duties.

I believe that virtually the only constitutional imperative of the U.S. military is to protect and defend the country against invasion and protect the borders (with the exception of the Navy and Marines who protect and defend Americans abroad and trade on the high seas).  Therefore, I support an armed mission in which invaders are shot.

However, the lawyers, the Congress, the Senate, the military, the judiciary, and just about everyone in power, interprets Posse Comitatus as preventing the use of the military this way, even though their actions wouldn’t be taken against U.S. citizens.

So they will arm the FBI, BLM, ATF and most other federal agencies like an army and allow them to perpetrate armed actions against U.S. citizens, while preventing the military from stopping invasion.

Light is called darkness, and darkness is called light.  But until the country has the stomach to force this action, it won’t happen.  The military lawyers won’t even bother to bind the hands of Soldiers and Marines at the border by issuing ROE/RUF.  They just won’t arm them at all.

Falko Ernst writing for International Crisis Group:

Grillo is here to kill.

Why? He can’t express a reason beyond that he’s been given a name and a face. Maybe he doesn’t need to explain any further than that. Maybe he just needs to be able to take orders from the cerro, the hills overlooking Tierra Caliente, the Hot Land, as this Michoacán region is known. Up on the cerro, the crime lords decide life and death for the people below.

Philosophy aside, Grillo kills because he’s paid for it, micha antes, micha después, half before, half after. It’s a performance bonus to complement the base salary of a sicario, or hitman, which is close to nothing.

[ … ]

On the Saturday before he goes to the park, Grillo is given a name and handed a photo showing a face, as usual. Then he spends the night in a safe house, a non-descript shanty on the outskirts of town, one in a warren of grey brick dwellings, unpainted and unfinished. Here, in the domain of the economically crushed, he’s right at home.

Inside, there’s just a bare, stained mattress with no sheets. The next day, he putters around until early evening, staring at the no-paint, no-plaster walls, wasting time on Facebook, uploading a post honouring his santita, his little saint, a death dispenser’s spiritual partner of choice. La Santa Muerte. The Holy Death.

[ … ]

Grillo’s got the face’s photo, but he needs confirmation. So he says the face’s name, when he’s just a few arm’s lengths away. The man turns around, and that seals his fate. Grillo delivers the death sentence with two shots to the face – always two shots. He’s got to be sure.

The face goes down, and Grillo leans over it. It’s part of what he does, his custom. He reenacts it for me later in the dimly lit, dusty track on the way up to his barrio, his neighbourhood in his birthplace of Apatzingán – a town known as La A in local narco-parlance – where we sit by the iron cross erected for another of his victims, struck down in exactly the same way.

There’s no life coming back to this one.

[ … ]

Grillo has a reputation in this part of town. And even if he didn’t, most folks wouldn’t want his type around. The crystal meth has gotten the better of him, his eyes beginning to retreat into his skull, his naturally dark skin fading to an ashen grey, paper-thin, precariously suspended over protruding cheekbones, threatening to rupture at any moment.

[ … ]

“Anywhere else in the world, psychopaths are a problem. But here, they’re an asset”, an adviser to the group tells me. Grillo is valuable to them – a psychopath perhaps, but a useful one.

Not to worry, I’m certain that there are no warlords or killers in any of the good folk coming across the border on a daily basis.  As Jeb Bush said, “they come for love.”  And I’m certain that there are no war refugees in the crowds either.

As I foretold, the troops at the border aren’t armed because they aren’t under arming orders and do not have border security as their mission.  But even if they did, they should never use weapons and the borders should be flung wide open.  If you don’t think so, you’re a hater and a racist.  As I’m sure you’ve been told many times.

Recall I said this?

To point to Roman Catholicism and claim that Hispanics will vote GOP because of socially conservative viewpoints misses the bigger picture of the state of Catholicism in South and Central America.  It is a synthesis, or a hybrid mixture, of Catholicism, superstition, Marxism, and in some cases evil “patron saints” for the cartel criminals.”

Or perhaps you don’t.  Read it again.  And perhaps you recall this?

Father José Antonio Fortea, a leading Mexican exorcist, who once ordered the mass exorcism of the whole country, has warned of an increase in satanic ritual killings.

Brace yourself, and read this very carefully.

Edgar is a young man of twenty-six years, and he is doing a ten-year sentence for illegal possession of firearms and kidnapping. He says he has killed nearly sixty people working as a sicario for the Juárez Cartel, but since there is no proof—he is not sharing the details—he cannot be convicted for these murders.

Edgar was born in Juárez, but his mother separated early from his father and when Edgar was two, they moved to Kansas City. His mother was involved in dealing large quantities of cocaine, which the young Edgar discovers. When she runs into trouble, she has to flee back to Juárez. Edgar, at that age around eleven, is shocked by the poverty and filth of Juárez. His mother starts to work as a hairdresser but they cannot afford the rather comfortable lifestyle they had before. Edgar is a good student at school, but he starts to hang out with ‘bad people’ and gang members. He starts to deal weed and is caught when he is thirteen years old. A juvenile offender, he was still convicted to six months, but managed to pay his way out. At age fourteen, he hangs out with friends and gets into a fight. He hits one of his attackers with a big stone and the boy actually bleeds to death. This is Edgar’s first kill. He says he did not mean to kill the person and runs away from the scene of the fight, feeling afraid, guilty, and nervous at the same time. This unintentional murder will haunt him for half a year. His second murder is a drive by shooting he carries out with a gang. He does not know if his bullets actually killed someone during that drive-by, but there were deaths.

Being in a gang selling drugs, he goes down a slippery slope. He learns shooting from his stepfather, who is a private detective. At one point, he starts to work for the Juárez Cartel as a sicario. He is not too specific as to how he started to work for a cartel. But he says the cartel seeks people out, and it is not people who seek the cartels out. He sees killing strictly as work. He receives orders and he carries them out. Saying no is simply not possible. Still, he does not shift moral responsibility onto the boss, it is still him who carried out the orders, who pulled the trigger. Edgar manages to separate work from private business. ‘I love persons, I kill persons.’ ‘No tiene que estar mezclado. el amor a mi familia es muy diferente a lo que hago’, Don’t mix things. The love for my family is very different from my work.’ He realizes he kills people who have a mother or a wife, even more since he has children himself. Still, he does what he has to do, ‘it is either them or you’.

He talks with professional pride about his work. ‘I do it quickly.’ He does not like to waste many bullets. A few in the body and a final shot in the head. Sometimes they work with teams of two or three people. Edgar says he once stopped an ambulance to finish his victim that had not died. He mentions bystanders and witnesses, in that they are too shocked to absorb what they see or they are too scared to testify. Still, he has an honor code; he never kills women and children. He says other cartels do this, like Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Cartel.

Edgar believes God exists, but says it is not his god. Satan is his God, and he prays to Santa Muerte. Ever since Santa Muerte appeared to him in a dream and gave lifesaving advice, he worships her. Edgar also has a bruja, or a witch, that functions as his personal spiritual adviser. Before a hit, he prays to Santa Muerte that all goes well. ‘I actually sacrifice people for my Santa Muerte. The thing is that I kill for ordering, but I talk to her and say, hey, I go to a job. Just make me hit, I am gonna give you that life, it is for you.’

Santa Muerte actually whispers to him to carry out killings. Edgar is honest and admits he actually enjoys killing. ‘I feel powerful. My god always tell me to do it. I don’t know why, but I could hear, “hey, hey, do it, do it.” I am not crazy, ‘cause I know I ain’t crazy. I still could count I still could eat. I still could sleep’. Edgar admits he has developed an addiction to killing. ‘It gives me a feeling of power. But that moment last only for the moment. There were days that he felt ‘I need to kill somebody. I feel that I need it.’ At the prison, there is an Adictos Anonymous group that handles all sorts of addictions, including addiction to killing.

But be of good cheer.  I’m certain that we’re vetting the good, hard working folks coming across the border so that the masses don’t include people like this, and I’m certain that there is no corruption of border patrol or local LEOs with money or intimidation.

Or perhaps that’s not the case and you should be prepared for this.  You be the judge.