Eideard

Guns, marijuana and cocaine seized during Operation Pipeline Express
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

At least 70 suspected drug smugglers with alleged ties to the powerful Sinaloa cartel have been arrested in Arizona, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

The massive take-down of the drug trafficking network in Arizona included arrests of Mexican and U.S. suspects who allegedly smuggled more than 330 tons of illegal narcotics a year through Arizona.

More than 20 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies were involved in the 17-month multiagency investigation called Operation Pipeline Express. Speaking at a news conference Monday in Phoenix, law enforcement officials said the organization was responsible for smuggling more than $33 million worth of drugs a month…

Officials say the ring, organized around cells based in the Arizona communities of Chandler, Stanfield and Maricopa, used backpackers and vehicles to move loads of marijuana and other drugs from the Arizona-Mexico border to a network of “stash” houses in the Phoenix area. After arriving in Phoenix, the contraband was sold to distributors from multiple states nationwide.

Law enforcement officials seized thousands of pounds of marijuana, cocaine and heroin in a series of raids. They also seized more than 100 weapons, including multiple assault rifles and ammunition.

Authorities say the organization has been around for at least five years. According to a news release, officials say they “conservatively estimate the ring has smuggled more than 3.3 million pounds of marijuana, 20,000 pounds of cocaine and 10,000 pounds of heroin into to the United States, generating almost $2 billion in illicit proceeds.”

Most folks who feel – as I do – that drug use should be decriminalized, managed through price-fixed clinics still have nothing but contempt for the slimy gangsters who run the import business for American habits and addiction.

Throw away the key.

Police in Spain seized 162 kilos (356 pounds) of cocaine hidden inside plastic bananas that had been concealed in a 20-tonne shipment of real fruit from Ecuador.

“The imitations with the drugs, which were very similar to real bananas, were hidden amongst a shipment of real fruit,” it said in a statement.

The cocaine was wrapped in clear plastic sheets inside the fake green bananas, pictures released by police showed.

Four people were arrested in the operation surrounding the shipment which arrived at the Mediterranean port of Algeciras from Guayaquil, the largest and the most populous city in Ecuador. Police believe one of the four arrested is the leader of the ring who was responsible for maintaining contacts with the Colombian drug cartels that supplied the narcotics.

“These contacts led him to travel to the interior of the Colombian jungle to personally supervise the shipment of the cocaine and inspect its quality,” the statement said.

No one inspected the quality of his brains. Though, plastic green bananas is a pretty good stunt.

In the first public incident of its kind, cartels are making direct death threats to U.S. law enforcement officials in Nogales, Arizona, the police chief there told CNN Monday…

The threats began less than two weeks ago, after off-duty police officers from the Nogales police department seized several hundred pounds of marijuana from a drug smuggling operation they stumbled upon while horseback riding in the eastern fringes of Nogales, the chief said.

The smugglers in the incident managed to flee into Mexico before they could be detained.

Home free!

“We are taking the threats very seriously,” Kirkham told CNN. “We have received information from informants who work in Mexico that the drug cartel running that operation was unhappy about our seizure. They told our informant that they understand uniformed police officers have a job to do, but anyone out of uniform who gets involved in their operation will be targeted.”

“America is based on freedom. We’re not going to be intimidated by the threats, but we are taking them seriously. I’ve told my officers if they venture into that area off duty to be armed,” Kirkham said.

I presume someone will pass that suggestion along to ordinary civilians as well as off-duty police officers. Seems reasonable to me.

A quiet Xmas celebration at Ayala’s modest home in Texas

When soldiers raided a drug cartel’s Christmas party south of Mexico City, they found 16 automatic rifles, $280,000 in cash — and a Latin Grammy winner.

The presence of the Texas-based norteno singer Ramon Ayala at the gathering in a wealthy, gated-community and the lavish festivities showed the audacity of Mexico’s drug cartels amid a government crackdown that has sent thousands of soldiers and police to track them down.

A spokesman for the federal Attorney General’s Office said Monday that Ayala was released after being questioned because authorities found no grounds for charging him with a crime.

Mexican norteno bands often sing about drug trafficking and violence and many have been rumored to perform at drug traffickers’ weddings and other parties, but few have been caught.

Ayala and his norteno band, Los Bravos del Norte, were performing in a gated community of mansions outside the mountain town of Tepoztlan when sailors raided the house and a shootout ensued before dawn Friday, said the official, who was not authorized to be quoted by name.

Three gunmen were killed…

Predictable excuses will be offered, e.g., it was just a holiday gig, blah, blah. Meanwhile you still have the right to refuse to work for criminals.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Media giant News Corp. is holding talks with other newspaper publishers on forming a consortium that would charge for news online and on portable devices, The Los Angeles Times reported.

The newspaper said News Corp.’s chief digital officer, Jonathan Miller, is believed to have met with representatives of The New York Times Co., Washington Post Co., Hearst Corp. and Tribune Co., publisher of The Los Angeles Times…

News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch said earlier this month he would begin charging readers of online versions of his newspapers in the coming year.

News Corp already charges for its Wall Street Journal website and claims it is the most successful paid news site on the Internet.

Other Murdoch papers include the New York Post, The Times of London, the Sun and The Australian, among others.

Journalism Online, a company launched in April which seeks to help news organizations make money on the Web, announced last week that more than 500 newspapers and magazines have agreed to join the venture as affliliates.

It said a payment platform would go online in the fall which would allow subscribers to access paid content at the websites of the affiliates using a universal Journalism Online account.

Does it matter that this violates anti-trust regulations in most Western democracies? Yes, the Web lives independent of national laws in many cases. But, I doubt if commerce and access to information would be exempt from regulation.

Like anyone who favors a corporate trust – in this instance a newspaper trust online – the Prime Minister wants to be king. Murdoch thinks he should be the Boss of Bosses in this Mafia..

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Drug gangs have forced open a bloody new front in Mexico’s drugs war, extending their battles over smuggling routes into a formerly quiet northwestern state and further stretching the army.

A fight for control of the mountainous state of Durango has killed some 235 people this year, a jump in violence that poses a new challenge to troops already struggling to contain bloodshed along the U.S. border. With only a few hundred soldiers in Durango, drug hitmen from eastern Mexico are taking over towns, kidnapping police, shooting up local government offices and slaughtering rivals.

It poses a fresh threat to President Felipe Calderon, who has staked his reputation on pushing back the cartels, and could fuel U.S. concerns that violence is overwhelming its southern neighbor…

The outbreak of violence in Durango also marks a new challenge to top drug fugitive Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman on a formerly quiet patch of his home turf in northwestern Mexico.

Officials and analysts say Guzman, who has long been battling rivals in other parts of the country, is being attacked in Durango by the Gulf cartel and its brutal “Zetas” armed wing as they fan out from their base in northeastern Mexico, near Texas…

But the killings in Durango may be a sign of how hard it is to crush drug gangs as military pressure in one region drives organized crime into less guarded areas. Durango’s Oliveria Reza calls it “the cockroach effect.”

Before retiring I occasionally worked with a few terrific young guys, brothers, from Durango. Hard-working, honest, you could count on them for any job. Every holiday they would car pool with friends and head back to Durango for a short stay – because, after all, that was home. They loved Durango.

I’m not certain a reference from someone who’s spent so much of his life opposing reactionary U.S. politics is useful – but, of course, I agreed. He would be a positive addition to any country.