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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.

Read more from this story HERE.

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.

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Gov’t idiocy on steroids: Illegal aliens to reap up to $7 billion in tax credits

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Photo credit: Gage Skidmore

Illegal immigrants could receive more than $7 billion this year in federal tax credits, according to one estimate, thanks to a loophole in the law that allows people not authorized to work to reap the government payments with no questions asked.

Sen. Jeff Sessions’ office calculated that, based on recent trends, illegal immigrants could receive roughly $7.4 billion through a provision known as the Additional Child Tax Credit. That’s more than quadruple what the payout was four years ago, but the payments have been steadily increasing over the past decade.

Though illegal immigrants are prohibited from receiving similar tax credits, a quirk in the law allows them to qualify for the child tax credit. And it’s a “refundable” credit, meaning recipients can reap the money — with average checks totaling about $1,800 — even if they’ve paid no taxes.

An aide to Sessions, R-Ala., the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said the issue is a “serious matter that deserves attention” and another sign of how “Washington is disconnected from reality.”

Illegal immigrants can qualify because even people not authorized to work in the U.S. are supposed to file returns with the IRS. If they don’t have a Social Security number, they are provided what’s known as an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number in order to file returns.

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Border conspiracy: local law manipulates crime stats for feds (+hidden video)

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Photo credit: Marion Doss

Every year, the federal government doles out roughly a billion taxpayer dollars to local law enforcement agencies in the form of grants. These agencies — city police and constables, state agencies, county sheriffs — apply for the grants through the Department of Justice’s COPS (for Community Oriented Policing Services) program and use them to hire more personnel, purchase vehicles and equipment, and enhance their crime-fighting capabilities.  But do the federal grants actually help fight crime?

Local law enforcement agencies insist that the grant money is vital to fighting crime and even to their departments’ survival. But is there a dark side to federalizing local law enforcement funding? PJ Media has obtained exclusive hidden camera video that shows federal grant money creates an incentive for local law enforcement to falsify their crime statistics. The fake stats tell a story that ends up benefiting the local agencies that clamor for the grants, while helping Washington sell its story that the border is safer than it really is:

 

Case in point: Hidalgo County, Texas. This border county is home to McAllen, one of the fastest-growing cities in the entire United States. Hidalgo County boasts the most border crossings of any county along the Texas-Mexico border. Property values are rising here despite the stagnant U.S. economy. The county is home both to gang-infested barrios and to a posh neighborhood that boasts fountains, manicured lawns, beautiful new custom homes, and many cars bearing Mexican license plates.

Hidalgo County sits across the border from Reynosa, Mexico, one of the most violent and troubled cities in the Mexican drug wars. But according to some local officials, Mexico’s drug war has not spilled over into their bustling Texas community. They say this even though U.S. forces engaged drug cartel members in a firefight at Chimney Park in Hidalgo County in 2011.

Hidalgo County elected Democrat Guadalupe “Lupe” Treviño sheriff in 2004 and then re-elected him in 2008, and this spring he reportedly spent more than a half a million dollars to clinch the Democratic nomination for a third term as the county’s sheriff. In this heavily Democratic county, Treviño is a cinch to win that third term. The former Austin police officer claims that Hidalgo County has seen a dramatic reduction of violent crime during his tenure. Sheriff Treviño dismisses the presence and influence of drug cartels in his border county. To hear Sheriff Treviño talk, domestic violence may be a bigger issue in Hidalgo County. But as a local news story that was published August 10, 2012, shows, many residents of Hidalgo County do not feel safe and do not believe that crime is down at all. They also do not believe that Sheriff Treviño’s office is concerned about them.

Read more from this story HERE.

CIA “Manages” Drug Trade, Mexican Official Says

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Photo credit: DonkeyHotey

The Central Intelligence Agency’s involvement in drug trafficking is back in the media spotlight after a spokesman for the violence-plagued Mexican state of Chihuahua became the latest high-profile individual to accuse the CIA, which has been linked to narcotics trafficking for decades, of ongoing efforts to “manage the drug trade.” The infamous American spy agency refused to comment.

In a recent interview, Chihuahua state spokesman Guillermo Terrazas Villanueva told Al Jazeera that the CIA and other international “security” outfits “don’t fight drug traffickers.” Instead, Villanueva argued, they try to control and manage the illegal drug market for their own benefit.

“It’s like pest control companies, they only control,” Villanueva told the Qatar-based media outlet last month at his office in Juarez. “If you finish off the pests, you are out of a job. If they finish the drug business, they finish their jobs.”

Another Mexican official, apparently a mid-level officer with Mexico’s equivalent of the U.S. Department of “Homeland Security,” echoed those remarks, saying he knew that the allegations against the CIA were correct based on talks with American agents in Mexico. “It’s true, they want to control it,” the official told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity.

Credibility issues with employees of the notoriously corrupt Mexican government aside, the latest accusations were hardly earth shattering — the American espionage agency has been implicated in drug trafficking from Afghanistan to Vietnam to Latin America and everywhere in between. Similar allegations of drug running have been made against the CIA for decades by former agents, American officials, lawmakers, investigators, and even drug traffickers themselves.

Read more from this story HERE.