Situation Worsens–Back Door Remains Open

by Paul Williams, a No Compromise Media Contributor

The Real Face of Obama's Open Immigration Policies

Something bad is taking place at the border.

“We’re seeing a lot of MS-13,” says Agent Mike Scioli of the U.S. Border Patrol. “They’re typically known to be guns for hire, they’re known to smuggle narcotics and human traffic across the border illegally.”

MS-13 stands for Mara Salvatrucha, the most violent street gang in the western hemisphere.

Last week Border Patrol agents arrested two MS-13 members: one in Tucson and one in Nogales.

The Nogales arrestee was identified by his tattoos – - the letter M on his right bicep; the letter S on his left; the number 1 on his right triceps; the number 3 on his left.

“He was already deported from Los Angeles back to Mexico and he was attempting to re-enter to join back up with his gang,” Scioli says.

Tucson’s Border Patrol Sector is the busiest in the U.S. Last year its agents arrested about 317,000 illegal immigrants. Scioli says 16 percent, or almost 50,000, had some type of criminal record.

But the presence of MS-13 merits special concern.

They specialize in transporting arms and drugs across the border. Most of the weapons come from El Salvador – - the homeland of most of the gang members – - where a hand grenade sells for $10; an M-16 rifle for $200; and an AK-47 for $1,500. The Maras have made a fortune by purchasing such weapons and selling them to members of other street gangs throughout the U.S.

In recent years, the Maras have taken over drug routes that had been established by other Latino gangs. At present, nearly 90 percent of the cocaine and marijuana that flows into the states comes from Mexico and the lion’s share from the trafficking remains under the control of MS. The drug business is so brisk that the gang has set up large warehouses to store the illicit drugs in Matamoros, Mexico, just south of Brownsville, Texas.

Along with importing, the Maras also engage in exporting stolen goods from the U.S. to Latin America – - including massive amounts of baby formula, health and beauty supplies, cologne and perfume, and diabetes test strips from Texas; electronics from Arizona and California; and automobiles from nearly every state in the Southwest.

According to gang investigators from the District Attorney’s Office in Orange County, California, 80% of the cars on the streets of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras have been stolen from the United States by members of Mara Salvatrucha.

Thousands of MS members now occupy prison cells from Maine to California for such crimes as trafficking in illegal narcotics, home invasion, burglary, carjacking, extortion, witness intimidation, rape and murder, including the assassinations of three federal agents.

Many migrants who want to cross the 1,820 mile border between Mexico and the United States must come to terms with more than three thousand MS gang members who keep watch over the border crossings like turkey vultures.

The going rate for safe passage is $5,000. Families without the requisite cash are compelled to relinquish all their possessions – - family heirlooms, gold necklaces, silver bracelets, wedding rings, even their shoes and sombreros. Those with neither money nor tangible goods must come up with other offerings, including the sexual favors of their wives and children.

Those who resist payment are often hacked to pieces or tossed from moving trains. “There are hundreds who are pushed off trains by the Maras if they resist the robberies,” says Asdrubal Aguilar Zepeda, the Salvadoran counsel in Tapachula, Mexico, near the Guatemalan border. The bodies and body parts of dead migrants are often strewn along the railroad tracks from Tapachula to the northern regions of Mexico.

By controlling the leading passageways into the U.S., Mara Salvatrucha has transmogrified into a multimillion dollar enterprise, and, by so doing, has become a leading international Mafia.

 NC Sez:  According to Reuters, Obama is bringing Chicago realpolitic to Middle Asia.  

U.S. reverses Afghan drug policy, eyes August vote

By Phil Stewart and Daniel Flynn

Obama Stimulates the Heroin Market

TRIESTE, Italy, June 27 (Reuters) – Washington is to dramatically overhaul its Afghan anti-drug strategy, phasing out opium poppy eradication, the U.S. envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan told allies on Saturday.

Richard Holbrooke, attending a G8 conference on stabilising Afghanistan, also discussed efforts to support its Aug. 20 election. Washington has nearly doubled its troops to combat a growing Taliban insurgency and provide security for the vote.

Heroin Industry Honors Obama with His own Brand--Photo courtesy of NYPD

“The Western policies against the opium crop, the poppy crop, have been a failure. They did not result in any damage to the Taliban, but they put farmers out of work,” Holbrooke told Reuters after a series of bilateral meetings in Italy.

“We are not going to support crop eradication. We’re going to phase it out,” he said. The emphasis would instead be on intercepting drugs and chemicals used to make them, and going after drug lords.

He said some crop eradication may still be allowed, but only in limited areas.

Afghanistan supplies more than 90 percent of the world’s heroin.

Despite the millions of dollars spent on counter-narcotics efforts, drug production kept rising dramatically until last year — U.N. figures indicate Afghanistan’s opiate output has risen more than 40-fold since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Holbrooke told delegates the United States planned to cut back funding for eradication while allocating several hundred million dollars to support legal crop cultivation.

The head of the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime, told Reuters the old U.S. eradication strategy had been “a sad joke”.

“Sad because many, many Afghan policemen and soldiers … have been killed and only about 5,000 hectares were eradicated, about 3 percent of the volume,” Antonio Maria Costa said.

Iran declined to attend the event but Antonio Maria Costa, head of the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime, told Reuters it was strongly committed to a regional effort to tackle trafficking from Afghanistan and had begun joint counter-narcotics operations with Afghan and Pakistani authorities.

“This is very new, it has not happened in the past.”

U.S. President Barack Obama has put Afghanistan and Pakistan at the centre of his foreign agenda and launched a new strategy aimed at defeating al Qaeda and stabilising Afghanistan.

The 45 nations and multilateral organisations at the conference issued a statement pledging to look at ways to boost humanitarian aid to Pakistan, where nearly 2 million people have been displaced by fighting.

Holbrooke said allies were not doing enough.

“The U.S. is by far the largest contributor (of aid) to the refugee relief crisis in Pakistan. I don’t mind that … But other countries are not doing the right amount in my view,” he said, adding some foreign ministers had told him privately that their countries could do more.

CRUCIAL MOMENT

Stimulus Package Approved for Heroin Industry

Afghanistan’s upcoming vote is seen as a crucial moment for Afghan President Hamid Karzai and for Washington and delegates — with Iranian post-election turmoil fresh in their minds — stressed the importance of it being free, fair and credible.

Karzai called on the Taliban and their allies on Saturday to vote rather than attempt to disrupt the polls, a call applauded by Frattini, who said Arab League and Gulf countries were “particularly interested” in encouraging them to vote.

Holbrooke said senior members of the U.S. government were calling the vote “the most important event of the year”.

“The fairness of those elections will determine the credibility and legitimacy of the government. We have just seen a spectacularly bad example just next door in Iran,” he said.

“And in these situations, governance becomes more difficult. So, at the end of the process, we would like to see a government elected by its people in a way that is credible and viewed as legitimate by the people and the international community.”

Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta told Reuters that Kabul aimed for a free and fair election, but added: “We have to recognise the reality, and the reality of Afghanistan, regarding violence, regarding the weak state.”

Holbrooke said it was too soon for Pakistan to declare victory in its Swat valley, where the army has driven back Taliban insurgents.

“The true test is when the refugees go back to Swat. Will they have security? Will they be protected?”, he said.

“Will the army be able to keep the Taliban from coming back down over the hills? And the bill for reconstruction in Swat is going to be enormous — over a billion dollars, maybe over 2 billion.” (Additional reporting by Adrian Croft; Writing by Phil Stewart; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

ThoughtRogue:  We certainly have physical beauty here in the NW, such as our world-class tulips, but it’s the politics here that necessitate dubbing our special territory The Soviet of Washington.  As evidence, I offer the following story occurring near Spokane.

I heard this poor guy interviewed on the radio yesterday.  Not only does this 81-year-old retiree on fixed income simply want to live in peace, but the “squatters” have stolen thousands of dollars of tools from his shop/garage – hocked most likely to feed their drugged-out lifestyle.  When the cops forced him to hand over a key-ring to these scum, so they could access his property unfettered, it also contained a key to a truck, among other things, which is now missing.

My main question is, beyond the obvious WTF?! is happening to America, if these squatters, full of rights to usurp others’ property, can simply imbue their friends and associates to partake in the occupation of others’ property, thus propagating these so-called “squatter’s rights”, then what is there to stop the perpetual cascading effect of taking all property from the law-abiding, legal property owners.  And the police ENABLED all of this f*ing nonsense all along the way!!

Homeowners say ‘squatters’ in garage are uninvited, unwelcome and immovable

By Shawn Vestal, The Spokesman-Review

Hi! We're Here to Help Squatters!

When people Don Bain didn’t know took up residence in the garage-slash-apartment in his backyard a couple of weeks ago, he thought he’d be able to have them thrown out.

He didn’t figure the police would side with the “squatters,” as he calls them. He didn’t expect that after installing new locks to keep them out, he’d be asked by an officer to open the doors and let them back in. He could not have predicted that, on another occasion, the police would allow the people to break a window to get back in, he said.

Bain and his wife, Peggy, feel trapped in their home, with a rotating cast of people living in the large detached shop that sits several yards from the back door of their house. An eviction case is proceeding, but it probably won’t be concluded for at least two weeks.

Meanwhile, the police have been to the Bains’ home on North McCabe Road in Spokane Valley 10 times in recent weeks for various reasons – the Bains complaining about the tenants, the tenants complaining about the Bains – and several of the parties involved have taken out restraining orders against one another.

“We’re both 81 years old, and we wanted all our lives to have a nice home,” Don Bain said. “We lost control.”

The police say the case falls under the Landlord-Tenant Act, because people moved into the shop at the invitation of Peggy Bain’s son, and a court order is needed for an eviction. The Bains’ attorney says it’s a case of trespassing or burglary – no lease was ever considered, no rent paid, no permission of any kind granted by the property owners – and that police should have moved the people out.

“This seems to be very unusual,” said the attorney, Pete Schweda. “I’m surprised the (Spokane Valley) Police Department didn’t do something about these people. … If you follow the logic of the Police Department, they can bring anybody on that property they want.”

Moving in
The problem dates to last fall, when Peggy Bain’s son, Skippy Ray Davis, moved into the shop with the Bains’ permission. The shop has room for two vehicles, but it also includes living quarters. Davis and a woman who identifies herself as Susan Pierce lived there; they got a lot of nighttime visitors, had a lot of parties and tore up the Bains’ lawn driving in and out, the Bains said. They weren’t happy about that, but Davis was there with their permission.

Then Davis was arrested and booked into Geiger Corrections Center on April 1 for failing to pay fines associated with convictions for drug possession. Pierce and several others kept living there. The Bains say that the others never had their permission to move in – they didn’t even know them – and that they’d made it clear to Davis that he wasn’t to have other people in the garage.

It’s unclear how many people have lived there during the subsequent weeks. Pierce has been the most consistent resident, though at least three others have lived there at different times, and perhaps more.

“They don’t have any business here,” Peggy Bain said. “They don’t.”

Attempts to contact Pierce for comment were unsuccessful.

The Bains and a neighbor who witnessed their initial efforts to have the people evicted say police officers went out of their way to tell Pierce she had rights as a resident and couldn’t be removed without a court order.

“They were ready to leave,” Don Bain said. Then, he said, one officer told the woman, “ ‘You’re a squatter. You’ve got rights.’ ”

Bain said the officer repeated that two more times. “He said, ‘You can live here the rest of your life until the court throws you out. …’ ”

“He didn’t need to say that.”

When Pierce produced a piece of mail addressed to her at the shop, it established her residency, and meant it would take a court order to have her removed, police said.

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$207 Million seized in Mexico . . . . Wonder what they did with all of it? No Wonder we aren’t winning the war on drugs. This is unbelievable.

Hat Tip to Jefferson Paine!

Ayea, Carumba!

Make sure you check out this movie called Drug Wars:  Silver or Lead discussing this paricular case!