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Hezbollah Joining Cartels in Mexico’s War

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The Mexican Drug War has killed an estimated 60,000 people since 2006, but the violence has stayed out of the minds of most US citizens. That is about to change as Islamic extremist groups setting up shop in Mexico.

The House Committee on Homeland Security released a November 2012 report that reveals Islamic terror organizations and networks are indeed exploiting profits from narcotics, and the ease of weapons attainment, and the vast technological abilities of Mexican and other southern cartels that are thriving in Mexico’s lawlessness, along with other southern regions. The report, titled A Line In The Sand: Countering Crime, Violence, and Terror at the Southwest Border, details the growing involvement of Iran and Hezbollah in Mexico and other countries south of the southern US border.

“In 2006, the Subcommittee reported on the presence of both Iran and Hezbollah in Latin America. Since then, that presence has continued to grow with Iran now having embassies in 11 Latin American countries that include Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Nicaragua and Uruguay.

This unsettling trend was the reason for a Subcommittee-led Congressional Delegation to Latin America in August 2012. The Delegation traveled to Mexico, Colombia, Paraguay, Argentina, as well as the Tri-Border Area (TBA) of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina, for a first- hand assessment of the increasing threat posed by Iran and Hezbollah in Latin America.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Jon Hammar, Marine Jailed in Mexico, Released From Prison (+video)

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The ordeal for Jon Hammar Jr., who languished under deplorable conditions in a violent Mexican prison for four months, is finally over.

Jon Hammar Sr. has confirmed that his 27-year-old son, a Marine combat veteran, is back on U.S. soil and with him in a rented car in Brownsville, Texas.

Hammar Sr. said his son was released from the notorious CEDES prison at 8 p.m. local time and made it back across the bridge between Matamoros, Mexico and Brownsville, Texas by around 8:30 p.m.

The ex-Marine, who was arrested at the same border crossing Aug. 13 after attempting to declare an antique shotgun, was suffering from a stomach virus, his father told Fox News as he and his son drove from the border looking for a hotel to spend the night.

“We’re both tired and at our wits end,” Hammar Sr. said. “We’re glad he’s out of there.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Rep. Hunter Calls for Americans to Boycott Mexico

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Rep. Duncan Hunter, a California Republican and Marine combat veteran, called on Americans Thursday to boycott Mexico until that nation releases Jon Hammar, a former U.S. marine, from prison.

Mr. Hunter also said he is prepared to go to Mexico personally to demand Mr. Hammar’s release.

Mexican authorities are holding Mr. Hammer on weapons charges after he carried his grandfather’s antique shotgun across the border into Mexico in August.

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Latest Hell for Ex-U.S. Marine: Chained to Bed in Mexican Jail

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MEXICO CITY — As a U.S. Marine, Jon Hammar endured nightmarish tension patrolling the war-ravaged streets of Iraq’s Fallujah. When he came home, the brutality of war still pinging around his brain, mental peace proved elusive. Surfing provided the only respite.

“The only time Hammar is not losing his mind is when he’s on the water,” said a fellow Marine veteran, Ian McDonough.

Hammar and McDonough devised a plan: They’d buy a used motor home, load on the surfboards and drive from the Miami area to Costa Rica to find “someplace to be left alone, someplace far off the grid,” McDonough said.

They made it to only the Mexican border. Hammar is in a Matamoros prison, where he spends much of his time chained to a bed and facing death threats from gangsters. He’s off the grid, for sure, in walking distance of the U.S. border. But it’s more of a black hole than a place to heal a troubled soul.

The reason might seem ludicrous. Hammar took a six-decade-old shotgun into Mexico. The .410 bore Sears & Roebuck shotgun once belonged to his great-grandfather. The firearm had been handed down through the generations, and it had become almost a part of Hammar, suitable for shooting birds and rabbits.

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Hillary Clinton: Iran ‘Exports Terrorism’ to Mexico

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(CNSNews.com) – Speaking at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 30, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that Iran “exports terrorism” in a global fashion that “stretches from Mexico to Thailand.

“We already know very well that the Iranian regime already exports terrorism, not only to Israel’s doorstep, but across the world,” Clinton said. “If we had a map I could put up there, I could show you what we track and plot on that map.

“The evidence of terrorism, mostly, thankfully, plots foiled or unsuccessful, unfortunately, as in Bulgaria, some that succeeded,” Clinton said. “But those plots, those activities of Iran directly or through their agents, stretches from Mexico to Thailand.”

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Head of Ruthless Zetas Cartel Arrested, Linked to Falcon Lake Shooting of US Citizen

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By Catherine E. Shoichet. For more than two years, details about the investigation into who killed David Hartley have been as murky as the waters where his body disappeared.

His grieving widow told police that attackers shot him in the head on a lake that straddles the U.S.-Mexico border. She said she was forced to flee and leave his body behind.

Some blamed her for his death. Then the severed head of the case’s lead investigator was delivered in a suitcase to a Mexican military post.

The trail seemed to go cold until Monday, when Mexican authorities said they had arrested a leader of the ruthless Zetas drug cartel and linked him to the Falcon Lake killing.

Salvador Alfonso Martinez Escobedo also is a suspect connected to the slaying of the Mexican state police investigator who was heading the investigation into Hartley’s killing until he turned up dead himself nine days later, the Mexican navy said in a written statement. Read more from this story HERE.

Reuters Reporting that Head of Zeta Cartel May Have Been Killed by Mexican Marines

By Michael O’Boyle. Mexican marines may have killed the leader of the brutal Zetas drug cartel in a gun battle in northern Mexico, in what would be one of the biggest victories yet in the government’s six-year war on organized crime.

The Navy said late on Monday there was “strong evidence” Heriberto Lazcano had been killed in a firefight with marines in the northern state of Coahuila on Sunday afternoon.

If the death of Lazcano, alias “The Executioner,” is confirmed, he would be the most powerful capo to fall in President Felipe Calderon’s military offensive on the gangs.

The Zetas, considered one of the two most powerful drug gangs in Mexico, have perpetrated some of the most sickening acts seen in the country’s drug war that has killed about 60,000 people during Calderon’s term.

Two suspected Zetas gang members who attacked the marines with grenades from a moving car were killed in the gunfight and initial forensic tests suggested one of the bodies was the former soldier Lazcano, the Navy said in a statement. Read more from this story HERE.

Leaked Emails: US Allowed Sinaloa Cartel to “Smuggle Tons of Drugs into Chicago”

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Leaked emails from the private U.S. security firm Stratfor cite a Mexican diplomat who says the U.S. government works with Mexican cartels to traffic drugs into the United States and has sided with the Sinaloa cartel in an attempt to limit the violence in Mexico.

Many people have doubted the quality of Stratfor’s intelligence, but the information from MX1—a Mexican foreign service officer who doubled as a confidential source for Stratfor—seems to corroborate recent claims about U.S. involvement in the drug war in Mexico.

Most notably, the reports from MX1 line up with assertions by a Sinaloa cartel insider that cartel boss Joaquin Guzman is a U.S. informant, the Sinaloa cartel was “given carte blanche to continue to smuggle tons of illicit drugs into Chicago,” and Operation Fast and Furious was part of an agreement to finance and arm the Sinaloa cartel in exchange for information used to take down rival cartels.

Read more from this story HERE.

Video Bombshell Report: Over a Dozen Mexican Teenagers Slaughtered by Holder’s Fast & Furious Guns

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From the Hispanic Univision network comes an explosive report about over a dozen Mexican youths’ murders at the hands of a cartel with weapons provided to them by the Obama administration under Fast and Furious. Warning: the following video includes explicitly violent images:

Iran’s Hezbollah on U.S. Doorstep

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Photo credit: upyernoz

With America’s attention turned to elections, there have been some pretty creepy dealings in the hemisphere that haven’t gotten much note. Iran, which is trying to develop an illegal nuclear weapon and is openly threatening Israel, is not only laughing off any tough talk from the Obama administration, it also made it clear that it means to take any prospect of war from the U.S. to our door to deter it. That’s right, to our door, using Latin America, with Hezb’allah terrorists.

It’s happening fast.

Doing as the Soviets did in the 1980s, Iran’s been creating alliances with America’s enemies and setting up networks of Hezb’allah operatives in places along critical smuggling routes – such as Nicaragua. Last week, Israeli Radio reported a new Hezb’allah base for 30 terrorists in the country, financed by Iran. Any ideas what those bases are really there for?

Not only is Iran bringing its act to our hemisphere, it has advantages the Soviets never did: a wealthy reliable ally in Venezuela’s anti-American Hugo Chavez – who has allowed his country to become a narcotrafficking state and has given Hezb’allah another base of operations, as well as links to Mexico’s drug cartels, whose tentacles extend deep into the U.S. through our unguarded border aided by the Obama administration’s refusal to enforce immigration laws. Cartels are present in 1800 U.S. towns and cities, according to U.S. lawmen and Hezb’allah has made connection with the cartels. Today’s news shows that three Hezb’allah operatives were arrested in Merida, Mexico – a first, because Mexican authorities have long denied the presence of terrorists in their country.

Read more from this story HERE.