OBAMA SEEMS TO DEFEND ISLAM RATHER THAN DEFENDING THE UNITED STATES? Who voted for this monkey?

One Citizen Speaking...

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OBAMA SEEMS TO DEFEND ISLAM RATHER THAN DEFENDING THE UNITED STATES? Posted: 05 Feb 2015 10:53 PM PST What can you say about the President of the United States, the military’s Commander-in-Chief, when he cannot bring himself to correctly identify our enemies and acts more like an apologist for those attacking America, Americans, and their allies throughout the world? Never before in the history of the United States, even under the Presidency of Jimmy Carter, did so many people wonder about the President’s loyalty and allegiance to the country that gave him everything: fame, power, riches, and its highest honor, the Presidency of the United States. In Obama’s own words (excerpted and annotated by me) … Remarks by the President at National Prayer Breakfast  Washington Hilton; Washington, D.C. As we speak, around the world, we see faith inspiring people to lift up one another -- to feed the hungry and care for the poor, and comfort the afflicted and make peace where there is strife.  We see faith driving us to do right. But we also see faith being twisted and distorted, used as a wedge -- or, worse, sometimes used as a weapon.  From a school in Pakistan to the streets of Paris, we have seen violence and terror perpetrated by those who profess to stand up for faith, their faith, professed to stand up for Islam, but, in fact, are betraying it. We see ISIL, a brutal, vicious death cult that, in the name of religion, carries out unspeakable acts of barbarism  -- terrorizing religious minorities like the Yezidis, subjecting women to rape as a weapon of war, and claiming the mantle of religious authority for such actions.  [Truth be told, ISIL is practicing the same brand of fundamental Islam that is practiced in Saudi Arabia by the state-sponsored Whabbists. In fact, it is the mainstream of religion that is perpetrating this acts; whereas the true “radicals” are those trying to reform the religion – regarded as apostates and worse than unbelievers. ISIL is no more a cult than Wahhabism – exported world-wide and funded by the Saudis. While it may be the leaders of these Islamic terrorists groups that are committing atrocities, it is their religious leaders, the Imams, that are putting forth their interpretation of the Qur’an and granting absolution to all who commit barbarous acts. Even worse than absolution, the promise of a reward in the hereafter. Obama’s lie exposed when one asks where are all the Islamic religious leaders standing in their pulpits, speaking in their own language, condemning these barbarians? Nowhere to be found, because in most instances, they agree with the fundamental commands of the Qur’an and want to see another Islamic Caliphate.] We see sectarian war in Syria, the murder of Muslims and Christians in Nigeria, religious war in the Central African Republic, a rising tide of anti-Semitism and hate crimes in Europe, so often perpetrated in the name of religion. [Sectarian war? He is speaking about a religious war that has been happening in Islam for hundreds of years. The fight between the Sunnis and the Shia over which sect is the true branch of Islam. A fight that is characterized by ethnic cleansing and barbarism – totally irrespective of Western culture or values, or the State of Israel. If Israel did not exist, these factions would still be at war and there would be nobody that the Palestinians could blame for the failure of their leadership and the inability to prosper in the region. Lest we forget, the Palestinians were ejected from Jordan and Egypt for subversion and attempts to overthrow the government; moving on to Lebanon where they brought about the conditions for a civil war that turned Lebanon from the Switzerland (or Paris) of the Middle East into crapistan.] So how do we, as people of faith, reconcile these realities -- the profound good, the strength, the tenacity, the compassion and love that can flow from all of our faiths, operating alongside those who seek to hijack religious for their own murderous ends?  [There is no moral equivalency between good and evil, there is no way to reconcile the differences between good and evil. You demand evil be reformed or you destroy it before the infection and contagion metastasizes into a cancer that will kill the patient. Again, the Islamic terrorists did not hijack a religion for their own murderous ends; the followed their religion to the letter in order to bring about a religious state that is compliant in all respects with their religion.] Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history.  And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.  [If President Obama hasn’t noticed, we are living in the 21st Century and the evils of the Crusades and its barbarism has long past. The same cannot be said of Islam which still dwells in the 6th Century and routinely imposes barbarism: beheading, torture, mutilation, and rape as prescriptive punishments. We are living in the here and now and there is no other religion committing such atrocities on a mass scale as the Muslims in the name of Islam.] In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.  [Does President Obama have no sense of history? It was the Africans – many of the Muslim faith – that sold their own people into slavery. A practice that continues to this very day. Does Obama even understand that Islam is the basis of slavery; where you are given three choices: death, conversion, or slavery – Dhimmitude.] Michelle and I returned from India -- an incredible, beautiful country, full of magnificent diversity -- but a place where, in past years, religious faiths of all types have, on occasion, been targeted by other peoples of faith, simply due to their heritage and their beliefs -- acts of intolerance that would have shocked Gandhi, the person who helped to liberate that nation.  [What President Obama failed to mention was the insurrection by the Muslims who attempted to control India; ending in a bloody civil war that created Pakistan, an Islamic state that is a regional hub for Islamic terrorist activity. The very people who hid and sheltered Osama bin Laden, the most wanted terrorist in the history of the United States. The nation that created the Taliban. And, the nation that wants nothing more than to destroy India. And, Obama conveniently forgot to mention that his next stop was Saudi Arabia, one of the worst Islamic human rights violators in the world.]  So this is not unique to one group or one religion.   [Perhaps Obama should recognize the danger of moral equivalency, multiculturalism, and political correctness. And acknowledge that no organized religious body other than Islam remains intolerant of other religions and viewpoints and represents an existential threat to others cultures – even to the extent of targeting individual sects within Islam.]  There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency that can pervert and distort our faith.  In today’s world, when hate groups have their own Twitter accounts and bigotry can fester in hidden places in cyberspace, it can be even harder to counteract such intolerance. But God compels us to try.  And in this mission, I believe there are a few principles that can guide us, particularly those of us who profess to believe. [The Muslims see hate speech as everything that doesn’t promote their faith and agenda – condemning those who speak about their faith or other religions to death if they do not espouse pure Islam. The Muslims riot over cartoons as an insult to Islam – virtually unheard of in any other religion. The Muslims in the United Nation continue to attempt the criminalization of anything or anyone that speaks the truth about Islam and its toxicity toward other viewpoints.] And, first, we should start with some basic humility.  I believe that the starting point of faith is some doubt -- not being so full of yourself and so confident that you are right and that God speaks only to us, and doesn’t speak to others, that God only cares about us and doesn’t care about others, that somehow we alone are in possession of the truth.  [This is bafflegab … there is but one God, and he may have many names, but he clearly demarcates the difference between good and evil. According to my religious teachings, he does not demand or command us to kill everyone who does not believe or worship as we do. He does not demand or command us to worship in a prescribed and rigorous way. And, he certainly does not condone the killing of innocents in His name because these innocents might have been born outside the “official” faith. God is about: truth, justice, mercy, and compassion; not about spreading one’s religion at the point of the sword.  And, lest we forget, the Crusaders were defending their religion from the Islamic world – not trying to expand Christendom. The stated purpose of the First Crusade was to restore Christian access to holy places in and near Jerusalem. The Crusades were a defensive move against the expansion of Islam at the point of a sword.] Our job is not to ask that God respond to our notion of truth -- our job is to be true to Him, His word, and His commandments.  And we should assume humbly that we’re confused and don’t always know what we’re doing and we’re staggering and stumbling towards Him, and have some humility in that process.  And that means we have to speak up against those who would misuse His name to justify oppression, or violence, or hatred with that fierce certainty.  No God condones terror.  No grievance justifies the taking of innocent lives, or the oppression of those who are weaker or fewer in number. [Obama’s own words condemn Islam; even though he will not acknowledge that ISIL or other terrorist groups are practicing the Islamic faith.] And so, as people of faith, we are summoned to push back against those who try to distort our religion -- any religion -- for their own nihilistic ends.  And here at home and around the world, we will constantly reaffirm that fundamental freedom -- freedom of religion -- the right to practice our faith how we choose, to change our faith if we choose, to practice no faith at all if we choose, and to do so free of persecution and fear and discrimination. [One cannot believe Obama’s self-serving high-flying rhetoric, but must observe his actions. And, his actions around the world condemn his lack of action and his apparent aid and comfort to our enemies; while disparaging and disadvantaging our friends and allies.  Here is a man that demands justice for terrorists in the Gaza Strip and West Bank while simultaneously condemning the only democracy with religious freedom in the region, Israel. Here is a man that draws a red line in Syria and does nothing when that line is crossed. Here is a man who has provided weapons to our enemies and refuses to account for his whereabouts and actions during the 9/11 anniversary terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. Here is a man that has aided and abetted the terrorists – allowing Iraq to be dominated by Iran, to allow Libya to disintegrate into Islamic lawlessness. And, a man that dithers while Iran, an existential threat to Israel and the region, gets closer and closer to producing nuclear weaponry and intercontinental ballistic missiles. His actions belie his words and make him a stone cold hypocrite and liar.] There’s wisdom in our founders writing in those documents that help found this nation the notion of freedom of religion, because they understood the need for humility.  They also understood the need to uphold freedom of speech, that there was a connection between freedom of speech and freedom of religion.  For to infringe on one right under the pretext of protecting another is a betrayal of both.   [Here is a man attempting to circumvent the Constitution of the United States and the rule of law that governs us. Here is a man that wants to infringe the First and Second Amendments to advance his political agenda. He has positioned himself as a Constitutional Scholar, but he not only seems unable to understand and abide by the Constitution’s provisions, but seeks to destroy the very freedoms that document protects. As for being a scholar, there are no scholarly writings or any evidence that Obama has produced any act of legal or Constitutional scholarship.] But part of humility is also recognizing in modern, complicated, diverse societies, the functioning of these rights, the concern for the protection of these rights calls for each of us to exercise civility and restraint and judgment.  And if, in fact, we defend the legal right of a person to insult another’s religion, we’re equally obligated to use our free speech to condemn such insults -- (applause) -- and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with religious communities, particularly religious minorities who are the targets of such attacks.  Just because you have the right to say something doesn’t mean the rest of us shouldn’t question those who would insult others in the name of free speech.  Because we know that our nations are stronger when people of all faiths feel that they are welcome, that they, too, are full and equal members of our countries. [There is no need to exercise restraint and civility when it comes to Islam. Telling the truth about the religion and its practitioners will portray them in a bad light – but that is not hate speech. Likewise, our nation is made weaker, not stronger, when we allow our enemies – who self-segregate and refuse to assimilate – to become a potent political force and use our own laws against us. As long as Islam is the religion of war, barbarism, and conquest, they should be banned from our shores.] So humility I think is needed.  And the second thing we need is to uphold the distinction between our faith and our governments.  Between church and between state.  The United States is one of the most religious countries in the world -- far more religious than most Western developed countries.  And one of the reasons is that our founders wisely embraced the separation of church and state.  Our government does not sponsor a religion, nor does it pressure anyone to practice a particular faith, or any faith at all.  And the result is a culture where people of all backgrounds and beliefs can freely and proudly worship, without fear, or coercion …  [By these words, Obama once again points out a fundamental truth. There is no separation of church and state when it comes to Islam as the Qur’an is the governing document and the state is subordinate to religion. Therefore, no Islamic nation can be truly trusted until their religion is reformed and the holy war between the Islamic sects is extinguished, resolved, or is mitigated.]    That’s not the case in theocracies that restrict people’s choice of faith.  It's not the case in authoritarian governments that elevate an individual leader or a political party above the people, or in some cases, above the concept of God Himself.  So the freedom of religion is a value we will continue to protect here at home and stand up for around the world, and is one that we guard vigilantly here in the United States. Humility; a suspicion of government getting between us and our faiths, or trying to dictate our faiths, or elevate one faith over another.  And, finally, let’s remember that if there is one law that we can all be most certain of that seems to bind people of all faiths, and people who are still finding their way towards faith but have a sense of ethics and morality in them -- that one law, that Golden Rule that we should treat one another as we wish to be treated.  The Torah says “Love thy neighbor as yourself.”  In Islam, there is a Hadith that states: "None of you truly believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.”  The Holy Bible tells us to “put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.”  Put on love. [There can be no moral equivalence when it comes to regarding the Torah, the Bible and the Qur’an as simply religious texts. Both the Torah and the Bible were written by man and subject to commentaries and interpretation. Whereas the Qur’an is the literal word of Allah as dictated to the warlord and Prophet Mohammed. Unable to be changed, modified, and interpretation is extremely limited. Where does the Torah or Bible command the faithful to seek out the apostates and unfaithful and kill them.  Allah is an enemy to unbelievers. - 2:98 On unbelievers is the curse of Allah. - 2:161 Fighting is obligatory for you, much as you dislike it. - 2:216 Those who believe fight in the cause of God, and those who reject faith fight in the cause of evil. - 4:76 But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever you find them. - 4:89O believers, take not Jews and Christians as friends; they are friends of each other. Those of you who make them his friends is one of them. God does not guide an unjust people. - 5:54 As for those who are slain in the cause of Allah, He will not allow their works to perish. He will vouchsafe them guidance and ennoble their state; He will admit them to the Paradise He has made known to them. - 10:4-15 Allah has cursed the unbelievers and proposed for them a blazing hell. - 33:60 Unbelievers are enemies of Allah and they will roast in hell. - 41:14  When you meet the unbelievers, smite their necks, then when you have made wide slaughter among them, tie fast the bonds, then set them free, either by grace or ransom, until the war lays down its burdens. - 47:4    It should also be noted that the Bible’s verses relating to killing are specified in historical context; whereas the Qur’an’s demands are open-ended and never-ending.] Whatever our beliefs, whatever our traditions, we must seek to be instruments of peace, and bringing light where there is darkness, and sowing love where there is hatred.  And this is the loving message of His Holiness, Pope Francis.  And like so many people around the world, I’ve been touched by his call to relieve suffering, and to show justice and mercy and compassion to the most vulnerable; to walk with The Lord and ask “Who am I to judge?” [How can we seek to be instruments of peace and do nothing about the Boko Haram who has kidnapped, raped, tortured, and killed innocent boys and girls? How can we do nothing about the Taliban who killed innocent school children? And, how can be do nothing about the hundreds of thousands of innocent Africans who have been slaughtered in the name of religion and ethnic cleansing? But most importantly, how can we do nothing about those nations like Saudi Arabia and Iran who are state sponsors of terrorism and proxy wars.]  Source: Remarks by the President at National Prayer Breakfast | The White House Bottom line … Obama reads the words written by others and displayed upon the TelePrompTer with feigned sincerity, but acts with impunity to disadvantage America, Americans, and our friends and allies when it comes to combatting the threat of radical Islamism – which he refused, to this day, to name. How this man, who would be considered an apostate for converting from Islam to Christianity and would be killed before any infidel, can continue to support Islamism makes me believe he may be lying (Taqiyya) and is a true believer – or he is a socialist/communist sociopath. -- steve

CONSPIRACY THEORY: DO THE DEMOCRATS WANT TO HANG 9/11 'COVER-UP' ON THE GOP TO WIN SUPPORT IN 2016? Posted: 04 Feb 2015 10:32 PM PST Why is the New York Times publishing a story that appears to be white-washing the Saudi involvement in 9/11, the Bush family, and the Obama Administration, when the article’s findings only raise further red flags?  Pre-9/11 Ties Haunt Saudis as New Accusations Surface During the 1980s and ’90s, the historic alliance between the wealthy monarchy of Saudi Arabia and the country’s powerful clerics emerged as the major financier of international jihad, channeling tens of millions of dollars to Muslim fighters in Afghanistan, Bosnia and elsewhere. Among the project’s major patrons was Prince Salman Bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, who last month became Saudi Arabia’s king. Some of those fighters later formed Al Qaeda, which declared war on the United States and later mounted major attacks inside Saudi Arabia as well. In the past decade, according to officials of both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, the Saudi government has become a valuable partner against terrorism, battling Al Qaeda at home and last year joining the American-led coalition against the extremists of the Islamic State. Yet Saudi Arabia continues to be haunted by what some suspect was a tacit alliance with Al Qaeda in the years before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Those suspicions burst out in the open again this week with the disclosure of a prison deposition of a former al Qaeda operative, Zacarias Moussaoui, who claimed that more than a dozen prominent Saudi figures were donors to the terror group and that a Saudi diplomat in Washington discussed with him a plot to shoot down Air Force One. But Mr. Moussaoui’s sensational allegations have drawn attention in part because far more credible figures, including some members of the national 9/11 Commission, believe the Saudi role in the attacks has never been adequately examined. More broadly, the episode has drawn new attention to Saudi Arabia’s longtime policy of using its oil wealth to try to shape foreign battlefields, currently by backing militants in Syria and Libya, and the reactionary religious ideology that underlies its society. <Source: New York Times> The Bush Administration, and now the Obama Administration, still refuse to declassify 28-pages of heavily redacted text dealing with foreign involvement in 9/11 …  Re-Open the 9/11 Investigation Now From the outset of the Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11, it seemed implausible that the hijackers -- most of whom spoke no English and had never been to the U.S. -- could have executed the heinous plot on their own. The inquiry proved those suspicions justified, and a 28-page chapter in its report centered on sources of foreign support for some of the September 11 hijackers while they were in the United States. That chapter remains censored, denied to the American people. Sadly, those 28 pages represent only a fraction of the evidence of Saudi complicity that our government continues to shield from the public, under a flawed classification program which appears to be part of a systematic effort to protect Saudi Arabia from any real accountability for its actions. For example, after a nearly eight year delay, the CIA recently responded to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests submitted on behalf of the 9/11 families in 2004, for reports and documents cited in the notes of the 9/11 Commission's Final Report. Unfortunately, when it came to documents such as a 16-page CIA report titled "Saudi Based Financial Support for Terrorist Organizations," our own government redacted every word of substantive text. [Let us not forget that President Bush 41 was also the head of the CIA] Despite the carefully orchestrated campaign to protect our Saudi "friends," ample evidence of Saudi Arabia's intimate ties to al-Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks has come to light. The executive director of the 9/11Commission, Dr. Philip Zelikow, stated in 2007 that while at that time he did not feel the evidence established "Saudi government agents," were involved "there is persuasive evidence of a possible support network..." The information indicating there were networks, foreign sources of support within the United States other than al-Qaeda, and that those networks had the backing of Saudi Arabia, is today stronger than ever.<Source: Huffington Post> A quote from an “unbiased” researcher?   Pre-9/11 Ties Haunt Saudis as New Accusations Surface (Continued)    The investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks, in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, would most likely have turned up such high-level support if it existed, said F. Gregory Gause III, a professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A & M University, who studies Saudi Arabia.  <Source: New York Times> So who is F. Gregory Gause? Dr. F. Gregory Gause, III, joined the Bush School in 2014 as the head of the Department of International Affairs and holds the John H. Lindsey ’44 Chair. Dr. Gause served on the faculty at Columbia University (1987-1995) and was Fellow for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York (1993-94). He was the Kuwait Foundation visiting professor of international affairs at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (2009-10), and a Fulbright scholar at the American University in Kuwait (spring 2009). In spring 2010, he was a research fellow at the King Faisal Center for Islamic Studies and Research in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Why should we give any credence to a researcher with close ties to a Bush-dominated program and who has not seen the unredacted reports before pointing out that the investigation “would most likely have turned up such high-level support if it existed?” While I do not doubt the Professor’s academic credentials or scholarship, I can’t help but wonder about his allegiance to his new employer. The Bush-Saudi connection is not a secret … There is little or no doubt that the Bush family and President Bush himself benefited from his Saudi Connections. Veteran, and highly-esteemed Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward’s book, "Plan of Attack," details a nearly six-decades-long U.S.-Saudi relationship. The Tangled Web Of U.S.-Saudi Ties Woodward charges that President Bush decided to invade Iraq by Jan. 11, 2003 (the White House says it was March). He argues that on Jan. 11, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington was informed of the war plan before the president told Secretary of State Colin Powell.  Woodward also charges that the Saudi ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, pledged to increase oil production in order to lower gasoline prices so that the economy would improve in time for the presidential election. The U.S.-Saudi relationship dates back to when President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with the founder of the modern Saudi state, King Abdulaziz ibn Saud, in 1945 aboard a ship in the Suez Canal. The Americans offered security and the Saudis offered oil. Neither country has been perfectly happy since. But the reality of foreign relations is that policy is often based on the best of bad options. Presidents since F.D.R., have seen this agreement as just that. The relationship peaked under the presidency of George H.W. Bush. This is both due to personal and financial ties, but moreover because the Saudi royal family supported (was even grateful) for the first Iraqi war, when the United States ousted Iraqi troops from Kuwait.  Both then-president Bush and the current president [Bush 43] have had personal and deep financial ties with the Saudi royal family.  Author and journalist Craig Unger documents $1.4 billion that has "made its way" from the Saudi royal family to "entities tied" to the Bush family, according to Unger's controversial book "House of Bush, House of Saud." Unger contends that the documented oil holdings and affiliations of both Bush presidents has led to a policy of inaction in the post-Sept. 11 world. <Source: CBS News> There is no doubt that there is a connection between the Bush family and those who rule Saudi Arabia. And, of course, the parties involve strongly deny any and all allegations. Those involved are our “friends?”   Pre-9/11 Ties Haunt Saudis as New Accusations Surface (Continued)    Among the donors Mr. Moussaoui said were in a Qaeda database that he helped create were Prince Turki al-Faisal, then the head of Saudi intelligence, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan [a good friend to the Bush family], the Saudi ambassador to Washington. Both held high positions in the very government that Al Qaeda was by the late 1990s seeking to destroy, Mr. Gause said. A third prominent name Mr. Moussaoui listed was Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a fabulously wealthy investor who whose television channels air racy music videos and who employs men and women side by side in his offices. “I doubt he would be a natural supporter of Al Qaeda,” Mr. Gause said. In an emailed response to questions, Prince Alwaleed’s office said that “the charges made by Mr. Moussaoui, a convicted criminal, are patently and absurdly false,” adding that “Prince Alwaleed has never hesitated to condemn Al Qaeda and its allies.” More can be found at” Pre-9/11 Ties Haunt Saudis as New Accusations Surface - NYTimes.com Bottom line … There is no doubt in my mind that the redacted portions of the Joint Inquiry and the CIA should be made available to the public. At least then we will know who are friends, both foreign and domestic, might be. As for the conspiracy theory, considering the low regard in which the progressive socialist democrats are now held, it looks likely that the GOP will take the House, the Senate, and the Presidency if nothing turns the American people against the GOP. Certainly the un-redacted reports would make a hell of an “October Surprise” if released before the election cycle. Killing any chance for a Bush or the GOP to win big. That we can’t trust our government and self-serving elected officials – along with increasing political corruption – will be the downfall of America as we know it. The only remedy is to return to the Constitution of the United States and negate all of the twisted, tortured interpretations by a partisan Supreme Court. -- steve

WINNING BRITISH JOKE ...

An Italian doctor  says:  "In Italy, medicine is so 
advanced that we cut off a man's  testicles, put
them on another man, and in 6 weeks, he is 
looking for  work.

The Dutch doctor  says:  "That's nothing, in 
Holland we take part of a brain,  put it in 
another man, and in 4 weeks he is looking 
for  work."

The Canadian  doctor says:  "Gentlemen,
we take half a heart from a man, put  it in 
another's chest, and in 2 weeks he is 
looking for  work."

The American  doctor laughs:  "You all
are behind us.  Six years ago, we took
a man  with no brains, no heart, and 
no balls  and made him President.  
Now, the  whole country is looking
for work!"

 ---This joke actually won an award  for 
the best joke in a competition held in
Britain.---

Presidents Day HOT COFFEE Gotta love those grand-kids .. ,

 

 Presidents Day

HOT COFFEE

       Gotta love those grand-kids ..

       I was eating breakfast with my 10-year-old Granddaughter and I asked her,

       What day is tomorrow?"

       Without skipping a beat she said, "It's Presidents Day!" ..

       She's smart, so I asked her "What does Presidents Day mean?" ..

       I was waiting for something about Obama, Bush or Clinton, etc.

       She replied, "Presidents Day is when the President steps out of the White House, And if he sees his shadow, we have another year of Bull Shit."

       You know, it hurts when hot coffee spurts out your nose.

In Our Lifetime - Photo of the Century...

In Our Lifetime - Photo of the Century...

 

 

You have probably seen the world's most famous photograph, "Earthrise".  It's been on the cover of TIME and on stamps.  But did you know it almost didn't happen?  This occurred over 45 years ago, on Christmas Eve, 1968.  The site below is outstanding.  It takes you right onto the module with the 3 astronauts and you hear them as they see it for the first time.  (It begins occurring around 3 minutes, 38 seconds.)  Just think we were alive and watching when this happened.  A picture like this, taken by a human, is not likely to happen even in the distant future. Click below.

 

The Untold Story Of The World's Most Famous Photo

 

 

Judge brakes extradition to USA of "El Flaco Salgueiro" of Gente Nueva Death and Twitter in Reynosa "La Tuta" audio; I regret commanding Los Viagra...

Borderland Beat

---

• Judge brakes extradition to USA of "El Flaco Salgueiro" of Gente Nueva
• Death and Twitter in Reynosa
• "La Tuta" audio; I regret commanding Los Viagra

Judge brakes extradition to USA of "El Flaco Salgueiro" of Gente Nueva Posted: 03 Feb 2015 02:12 PM PST Translated for Borderland Beat from a Reforma Article by Otis B Fly-Wheel "El Flaco Salgueiro" Agency Reforma A Federal Tribunal denied the extradition to USA of Noel Salgueiro Nevarez "El Flaco Salgueiro", leader of Gente Nueva, a group sent by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, to fight for the Ciudad Juarez Plaza. The Fifth Collegiate Mexico City Criminal Court ordered yesterday a reset of the trial for extradition of Salgueiro, because USA representatives did not compile a third experts report on him, to remove any doubt that he is the person being sought by the USA. Thus the Amparo Court reviewed case 223/2014 based on a draft of a judgement by the Magistrate Juan Gutierrez Wilfrido Cruz, voted yesterday in the plenary session. The presumed operator of "El Chapo", it is claimed in an arrest warrant by the Federal Court of West Texas District, El Paso, is wanted on charges of trafficking in cocaine, marijuana and conspiracy. According to the information provided in the extradition process 7/2004 that the Federal Judge Olga Sanchez Contreras instructed the PGR, offered an expertise of identification through physio gnomic studies to assert that the detainee and the person sought by the USA are the same person. But the defence of "El Flaco Salgueiro" offered their own opinion where the contrary is established. By the discord of conclusions, the Judicial Authority ordered that a third party conduct the study of physio gnomic change. "El Flaco" is one of the most important players in the wave of violence that plagued Ciudad Juarez from 2008 to 2011 and that led to the city being declared the " most dangerous in the world". Original article in Spanish at Somosfrontera part of El Paso Times

Death and Twitter in Reynosa Posted: 03 Feb 2015 01:23 PM PST Borderland Beat posted by DD republished from Texas Monthly. On Oct. 16, 2014,  Chivis posted on Borderland Beat the story of the apparent murder of  Dr. Maria del Rosario Fuentes in Reynosa, Tamaulipas and a follow up on Oct.27th.  The Dr. was active on several social media sites. using the name "Felina" and even though there were several messages via her Twitter acct. that she was kidnapped and murdered, there are several different theories as to why she was killed.  Her apparent death caused great dissension among the social media users and further complicated the difficult task of getting accurate and reliable news from the cartel war torn state.   Texas Monthly sent reporter Eric Benson to Reynosa to find out how it affected social media in the city.   Photo by Adam Voorhes A mysterious murder silences citizen journalists in Reynosa.      The truth is an elusive, much disputed, and highly valuable commodity in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, a sprawling border city fifteen minutes south of McAllen. Residents witness a shootout that leaves dozens dead, and the government reports a minor disturbance. A businessman receives a call from “kidnappers” demanding immediate ransom, then discovers there is no actual kidnapping. Fireworks are mistaken for grenades. Grenades are mistaken for fireworks. The bloody conflict over turf and power that has taken the lives of tens of thousands of people isn’t the only war going on in Mexico. There is a second conflict over the story of what is happening—a clash that involves far fewer bullets but is no less real.  On a night early in December, Reynosa appears, at least for the moment, to be bustling but at peace. The main thoroughfare, Boulevard Hidalgo, is packed. Men lounge at roadside taquerias. After-work exercisers sweat through a Zumba class. “This used to be a ghost town,” Sergio Chapa, a Harlingen TV reporter, tells me as we zoom through the city in the back of a cab. After the Gulf cartel and its former enforcement wing, Los Zetas, went to war in 2010, Boulevard Hidalgo would often lie empty at night. Now life is returning to a semblance of normalcy. “It’s good to see it with traffic,” he says, staring out the window. This particular night is uneventful, but Reynosans know better than to trust the calm and know much better than to trust stories about it. The Reynosa and Tamaulipas governments have an interest in understating the violence, and the Reynosa press essentially stopped reporting on the cartels years ago out of fear. (Reporters Without Borders ranks Mexico between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Iraq on its World Press Freedom Index.) It has become common practice for organized crime to infiltrate Mexican newsrooms and instruct journalists on what they can and cannot write. This black hole of credible information has led to the emergence of new voices. Over the past five years, one of Reynosa’s most trusted news sources has been the man whom Chapa and I have come to meet: an anonymous Twitter user known as Chuy. Chuy, who tweets under the handle @MrCruzStar, meets us at a mall a few miles up Boulevard Hidalgo, and the three of us make our way by taxi to his house. In the cab, it’s all small talk. His Twitter activities, after all, are secret. But once we arrive safely at his home, we discuss how he helps coordinate a network of three thousand or so Twitter users who report disturbances throughout the city using the hashtag #ReynosaFollow. On any given day or night, #ReynosaFollow collects dozens of posts warning of a shootout or a blockade or a column of armored vehicles. It’s essentially a 24-hour neighborhood watch for a city of nearly one million people, enabling citizens to know where they can—and can’t—travel safely. “If we didn’t have that information, the fear would make you stay at home,” Chuy says. But just two months before, early on the morning of October 16, #ReynosaFollow became a vehicle for spreading fear rather than assuaging it. At 3:04 a.m., a tweet was posted from the account of a much-followed user known as Felina. “Friends and family, my name is María del Rosario Fuentes Rubio, I am a doctor, today my life has come to an end,” it read, in Spanish. Two more tweets arrived over the next five minutes: “I have nothing else to say but do not make the same mistake as I did. You do not win anything. Photo of Dr. Fuentes in tweet (from Chiis story 10/16/14 on Borderland Beat)  On the contrary I now realize that I found death in exchange for nothing. They are closer than you think.” The final tweet came at 3:11 a.m.: “Close your accounts, do not risk your families as I did with mine. I ask for forgiveness.” Embedded in that tweet were two photographs, one of a woman, presumably Fuentes, staring impassively into a camera, another of the same woman faceup on the ground, blood trickling from her nose, apparently executed. Photo of  "Felina" in death that was in tweet ((from Chiis story 10/16/14 on Borderland Beat)  In a matter of hours, Chuy noticed that accounts were disappearing by the dozen. “We lost reliable sources who self-censored out of fear,” he says. “Now, if something happens, we won’t have the same panorama we had before. We’ll be missing those eyes.” The first tweet bearing the #ReynosaFollow hashtag appeared on February 23, 2010, at 1:15 p.m. Before the night was out, hundreds of tweets had appeared. A month earlier the Gulf cartel–Zetas split had taken place, and violent clashes were now routine throughout the city. At first, Chuy says, the authorities “tried to paint us as paranoid liars.” But the violence was so bad and the evidence on Twitter so irrefutable that soon the Tamaulipas and Reynosa governments began to issue warnings about “situations of risk” on their official online accounts.  The pioneering #ReynosaFollow users weren’t trained journalists, but they adopted a set of best practices that would fit comfortably in any newsroom. Wary of spreading rumors and misinformation, they privileged primary-source reports—“I’m seeing,” “I’m hearing,” “My mom called and told me.” But Chuy would treat even a purported eyewitness account skeptically; only after seeing three users describing the same event would he consider the information credible. Then he would try to confirm it himself before posting an update to his Twitter feed, which has more than 10,000 followers. Early on, an inner circle of users forged a community, meeting at “tweet posadas,” essentially #ReynosaFollow barbecues. But social media is an open platform, and the drug war in Mexico has many actors with many agendas. As #ReynosaFollow grew, so did online currents of misinformation, deception, and sabotage. Anonymous accounts issued false reports via #ReynosaFollow, and bots—automatically generated accounts—published thousands of tweets bearing the hashtag, effectively burying citizen updates under an avalanche of erroneous information. Chuy also remembers seeing tweets from shadowy users who seemed to have “way too much information” about the inner workings of cartels. “They wanted us to become a mouthpiece for them,” he says. In May of last year, after the government launched a new security strategy, which included a call for citizens to report anonymous tips on cartel members and criminal activities, another contingent made itself known. Chuy noticed a preponderance of new accounts repeating the same message: “Don’t be a coward. If you don’t help, this will never end,” and concluded that many of the accounts were, in fact, “sock puppets”: bogus citizen accounts that were created by law enforcement, military, or paramilitary interests. “The way they write, the phrases they use—it isn’t the local language or the language of the people,” Chuy tells me. Sometimes the attacks were more personal. In December, after Chuy contributed to two articles on the website Diario19 documenting the possible paramilitary affiliation of the popular online “citizen journalist” group Valor Por Tamaulipas, a new account called Mr. Fashion Cruz (a riff on Chuy’s handle) started tweeting angrily at him. The account’s avatar was a photograph of the real-life Chuy, a chilling message that someone had identified the man behind @MrCruzStar. (Valor Por Tamaulipas launched its own attack in early January, decrying Chuy as secretly working with the state attorney general’s office and accusing him of exposing Felina’s identity before her death.) Felina’s apparent murder occurred not only against this background of distrust but also at a time when the #ReynosaFollow community was tearing itself apart. In early 2014, according to a prominent user who goes by the Twitter name Don Alejo, a rift had developed over the direction of the group. One faction believed that the hashtag should restrict itself to informing citizens about dangerous activities. The other took a tone that aligned it closely with the state. “They wanted to denounce the criminals,” Don Alejo says, “and they got very aggressive.” Don Alejo and Chuy were in the first camp. Felina was very much in the second. Don Alejo, who says he knew Felina personally, remembers her as “very active, very happy, very full of life.” But on Twitter her persona was ferocious. “She would say, ‘Que maten a esos perros’ (‘May they kill those dogs’).” Chuy saw Felina’s activism as crossing a perilous line. “She’d say, ‘This person does this and lives here.’ Her activities were a red flag.” It is not clear exactly what happened to Felina. The dominant theory, first reported in the Mexican magazine Zócalo and advanced by Vice News, is that Dr. María del Rosario Fuentes Rubio, a 36-year-old general practitioner, was kidnapped after a child died in her care. Someone had wanted revenge—or at least answers—and had taken her as she left her hospital on the morning of October 15. While she was detained, Fuentes’s kidnappers—presumably affiliated with organized crime—sifted through the contents of her phone and discovered her Twitter activity. Then, says Don Alejo, “it was like killing two birds with one stone.” Others have their doubts. Chuy’s collaborator on the Valor Por Tamaulipas articles, UT-Brownsville professor Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, says she had come to believe that Felina had paramilitary ties because of the specificity of her attacks on organized crime members and her close association with Valor Por Tamaulipas, to whose website she had contributed.   The lack of any confirmed account of Fuentes’s death has even made Correa-Cabrera wonder whether she was really murdered. No body has been found, no details of the investigation have been released, and no criminal organization has claimed responsibility. “I would not say that [Fuentes] is not dead or that the assassination and kidnapping were not committed—that would be very irresponsible on my part,” she says. “But I have big doubts. This person who was always behind a computer—all we know about her is from other anonymous social media users. This fills me with questions, not with answers.” Outside Chuy’s house, a festival is taking place to celebrate the Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe. As fireworks pop around us, I ask Chuy what he makes of Correa-Cabrera’s suspicions. He says he too had noted some irregularities. For the first several years that Felina was on Twitter, Chuy regarded her activity as nothing out of the ordinary. But in late spring 2014, he observed a change. She began to post photographs of crime scenes that looked like they had been taken by someone inside the law enforcement perimeter, which led him to believe that she was now collaborating with military forces. “It was notable that she began a very active campaign of denunciations at the same time as the new security strategy for Tamaulipas was launched,” he says. But he doesn’t doubt that she was murdered. “Here in Reynosa, if you come up on a narco blockade, the first thing they do is check your phone—your photos, your contacts, your messages—so they probably found her that way,” he says. Whatever the case, the grisly tweets of Felina’s apparent death have had the desired effect. Even Chuy says he has decreased his activity; he is now even more keenly aware of how each tweet offers a clue to anyone who wants to find him. Still, he tells me, this terrible event has had a silver lining. Some of the feuding members of #ReynosaFollow have been brought back together. “I tell two people when I’m going to meet someone at X place, and we use an app that lets someone monitor where we are,” he says. “We keep an eye on each other.” After leaving his house, Chuy, Chapa, and I wend our way through the narrow streets and come upon rows of dancing children. They are twirling to a pulsing drumbeat while their families look on, taking pictures and drinking beer. Reynosa is still violent, but people are getting on with their lives. #ReynosaFollow, however imperfect, has helped them maintain normalcy. Once Chapa and I hop into a cab to head back to the bridge that connects downtown Reynosa with Texas, our driver peppers us with questions about what we were doing in Mexico. During a lull in the conversation, he turns on his stereo, and the vehicle is soon vibrating with a strutting bass line. I look up and see the word “Sicario” (“Hitman”) flashing across the car’s digital display. The song is a narco hip-hop track, a triumphalist anthem boasting of the exploits of the Gulf cartel and their fearsome assassins. “Are you afraid?” I had asked Chuy back at his house. “What would happen if the wrong people knew where you lived?” He paused. “They always ask me if I’m afraid because of what I do, and I say I’m scared as a citizen. I’ve been robbed. Sometimes people die from stray bullets in a shootout. I think everyone is at risk in this city.” The first 2 alleged bloggers killed in Tamaulipas (photo from Chivis BB story) DD:The Texas Monthly reporter, Eric Benson, reported in a related article that even though it is difficult, the social media sources are not the only source of news out of Taumalipas.  There is a small cadre of Rio Grande Valley–based journalists who have played an important role in reporting on the drug war, writing about events and issues that their Mexican colleagues often simply cannot for fear of retribution.  Breaking the Silence  Five Rio Grande Valley–based reporters talk about covering the drug war in Mexico over the past decade.  “Tamaulipas has always been a silent state,” Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a government professor at UT-Brownsville specializing in the Mexican drug war, told me last December. For decades, the state—which borders much of South Texas—was tightly controlled by both the Gulf Cartel and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Mexico’s dominant political organization—and neither entity had much interest in fostering a culture of transparency. When Tamaulipas exploded into violence in 2010, the culture of silence only got worse,with local newspapers afraid to print even news of traffic accidents for fear that a crash might involve someone affiliated with a cartel. This left a near-total information void, but it was quickly filled. One of the most prominent new outlets was a community of Mexican citizens who turned themselves into de-facto correspondents, tweeting news of shootouts, blockades, and “situations of risk” under the hashtag #ReynosaFollow. But there was also a small cadre of Rio Grande Valley–based journalists who have played an important role in reporting on the drug war, writing about events and issues that their Mexican colleagues often simply cannot for fear of retribution. Over three days last month, I spoke with a number of them about how they approached their dangerous, difficult, and often life-or-death beat. THE WAR Drug-related violence has long been a fixture of Tamaulipas, but the situation worsened in the mid-aughts and erupted in a terrible wave of shootouts, assassinations, and kidnappings in early 2010 as the Gulf Cartel went to war with its former enforcement wing, Los Zetas.   Ildefonso Ortiz, 34, a reporter for Breitbart Texas. A soft-spoken six-foot-four former professional Muay Thai fighter, Ortiz retired from his combat career and began reporting on border violence after he “got married and wanted to do something safer:” In 2008, when I started working at the Brownsville Herald my beat was crime. I didn’t do the whole border stuff. The Herald is in the downtown part of Brownsville, and when I’d be in the office, sometimes I’d start to hear machinegun fire and grenades from across the river. I’d say, “That’s not normal.” But when I’d call over to Matamoros City Hall, they’d say, ‘Everything’s fine here. Come visit!” I’d call the police station and hear the same thing. Back then, you’d just grab a photographer or grab a camera and go over. Enrique Lerma, 41, a correspondent for Univision, in Brownsville. Born in Matamoros, Lerma has spent nearly his entire life in the lower Valley and has worked the border beat since 2002: We used to go across at least once a week. If there was a shooting, we were there with our units and our equipment and everything. But everything started going different with the arrest of Osiel Cárdenas [the former leader of the Gulf Cartel, who was extradited to the U.S. in 2007], and especially since the fight between the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel. Different leaders were moving around trying to take over certain positions, and everything got risky for us. For the last five years, we’ve had to rely on sources in Mexico that we trust who can share with us photos or videos or information. But we can count with our fingers how many people we trust, especially in our business—reporters that are still doing their job. Ortiz: Nobody in Mexico was reporting on the firefights. There were all these shootouts going on and everybody was flat-out lying. You’d pick up the paper in Mexico and it would be: “The mayor announces that we’re moving ahead in tourism and we’re paving new streets.” Jared Taylor, 30, the Metro editor for the McAllen Monitor. An Iowan, Taylor has worked as a journalist in the Valley since 2007: In my experience that didn’t really become the case until 2009, 2010 when stuff got really bad. Until then, you’d see the Mexican reporters covering stuff and when we would go over, you’d feel safe because we had strength in numbers with all the Mexican reporters who were at a crime scene. But when the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas split and things got really nasty, I’d go to a crime scene, and I’d be the only reporter there. That’s not a safe place to be. Ortiz: The media in Mexico is badly underpaid, so they’ll take money from other places. And in Tamaulipas—at least in Matamoros and Reynosa—you have what’s called a “link.” He’s basically the link between the crime reporters and the Gulf Cartel. So everybody that covers the crime beat in Matamoros and Reynosa they all talk to each other about what they can and cannot cover. The link will tell them what angle to take on things and what not to cover. There was a shootout in 2010 where a reporter was killed. I was able to confirm that that reporter was the link. Of course, he was highly praised for dying as a reporter, when in reality he was working with the cartel. I know their current link by name, but I’d rather stay away from that person. I don’t want face time with them. I don’t want to get any offers. Reyna Luna, 50ish (“a woman never tells”), a correspondent for Estrella TV. A native of Monterrey, she reported from Mexico for various outlets until she moved to the Valley in 1989. When we met, she was on her way to report in Matamoros while wearing purple pumps: A lot of my colleagues in Mexico have gotten into trouble by selling information. If you have business with that guy, and that guy is my enemy, then you’re my enemy too. But for every journalist here at the border, it’s difficult to be doing this. It doesn’t matter if you’re here in the United States or in Mexico. They can threaten you here or threaten you there. Lerma: Reyna, she goes across and rides along with the military. She likes that. I tell her, you’re too old for that, and she says, “Oh, no, I’m wearing this vest.” Luna: I have been covering Tamaulipas for the last 25 years, and the criminals have tried to kill me I don’t know how many times. I’ve been kidnapped. I’ve had protection from the military outside my apartment. I’ve learned to use a weapon. You have to be very careful. At the end of the day, I value my life more than any story. Before I didn’t think that. I was a tonta—stupid! When you’re young, you have your ideals and you think you’re going to save the world. Now, I have fear, but I think someone needs to do this. And I do it with care. If the information is not confirmed, don’t write it. Don’t use one source of information or two sources of information, use three or more. I’m not releasing names. This has been my way to do things, and up to this moment here I am. GETTING INFORMATION  Knowledgeable sources are important to all good journalists, but this holds especially true in Reynosa and Matamoros, where official statistics and reports are often incomplete or nonexistent. The lack of transparency has led the reporters to rely on their longtime personal connections—Ortiz, Lerma, and Luna were all born in Mexico—to find sources they can trust. Ortiz: Looking at it from a historical point of view, smuggling has been a part of life in this area for eighty years—and maybe more. At one point or another, a lot of the older families in this area have been involved in liquor, tobacco, grain, weapons—it’s just part of this area. So pretty much anyone who is local is bound to know somebody. Oh, my neighbor is a used car salesman, and he knows this guy who used to launder money through another used car lot, and that guy might know this other guy who is in homebuilding. That’s pretty much how my sources have developed. And growing up here, like I did, some of your friends from school will end up being the good guys, some will end up being the bad guys. Lerma: I was born in Matamoros, but raised in Brownsville. So I’m from both sides. My parents have good friends who used to be in public positions in Mexico, and I know them. So I have a little structure of sources, close sources. It’s not just people that are on the streets. Ortiz: Before 2008, I was living in Ciudad Victoria, [the capital of Tamaulipas], and I was fighting Muay Thai professionally and I was teaching Brazilian jiu-jitsu and MMA. Doing that, I got to meet a lot of law enforcement guys—cops and cops who switched sides eventually. So I was able to kind of develop a little network there just because I was teaching them combatives. I didn’t plan on being a reporter. It just happened. My degree is in business. Lerma: I have people in the Emergency Department, EMS, PGR [the Mexican Attorney General’s Office], and the morgue. I remember there was an incident at a jail, and the official line at the beginning was that there was a fight but it was already under control and nothing had happened. At around two in the morning, I heard that bodies were starting to arrive at the morgue. “Where are they coming from?” “Oh, the fight that they had during the day at the jail.” “What jail?” And then we started matching everything up, and we were able to go against that official report. Luna: In Tamaulipas, I know a lot of people—a lot of people. I have friends on the official side. I have journalist friends who are covering it in a good way, but maybe they cannot say everything but they have information. But it’s bien difícil. I have sources that I’ve known for a thousand years, and that’s why I trust them. And sometimes they talk to me in code. Sometimes I don’t even know what they’re saying. Sometimes, this is like paranoia, you know? Lerma: I used to have lots of exclusive stories through my sources. But my station, they don’t like too much the exclusive stories any more. They’re worried about being the one targeted. So this is something that I have done: I share information with our colleagues on this side, Ildefonso or The Monitor, so it can be a group of people posting the story at the same time. If I just run it as an exclusive story, my station says, “Why are you the only one having it. Do you trust your sources?” When I share it, they’re like, “Oh, you’re talking about the story the newspaper is running?” “Yeah, the same one.” It’s a different way to work. They want to see it in a different media outlet so they can be on the safe side. Ortiz: There’s no real way to know how bad things really are. If you look at murder statistics from Matamoros, they’ll say, “Oh, there’s eighty dead for the year.” And I’ll say, Really? We did a story and the AP did a story about the cartels picking up their bodies after the shootouts. There’s not going to be a registro or any sort of paperwork for that. Taylor: Beyond that, Tamaulipas has always had a culture of no transparency. When Ciudad Juárez was getting all the headlines [for having the highest murder rate in the world], part of what helped feed into that was the local and the state police there actually did keep pretty good statistics on body counts. That just doesn’t exist in Tamaulipas. Absent those statistics or any semblance of statistics, when you send a reporter in, you just have a bunch of color, but you can’t quantify it. That’s where you see a lot of roadblocks and a lot less coming out of Tamaulipas as far as stories. CROSSING THE BORDER As the violence spiked in Tamaulipas in 2010, many news outlets in the Valley forbid their reporters from crossing into Mexico. In order to continue reporting, some journalists snuck across, went on their days off, or relied more heavily on their Mexico-based sources to be their eyes and ears. Sergio Chapa, 39, a reporter for KGBT, the CBS affiliate in Harlingen. Chapa grew up in Austin but reported from the Valley for seven years before recently taking a job at the San Antonio Business Journal. He remains an active member of the #ReynosaFollow community: At our station, we can’t cross the border. We’re not insured—neither our equipment nor us as individuals. We can only go on our off time. Taylor: We haven’t actively covered the scene over there for years. At our paper, there’s not an outright ban on going to Mexico, but if you’re going to send a reporter over for any reason, it has to be sent all the way up to the CEO of the company. Ortiz: Yeah, when I was with The Monitor, I used to sneak out every once in a while on my own time to visit friends, family—and talk to people. Lerma: I go to Mexico on my personal time. I’m not afraid of anything. But our station says you can’t go and cover any stories because of the insurance, the policy—whatever. They don’t want to be responsible if anything happens. If you want to go across on your personal time it’s up to you, but you’re not representing the station. Ortiz: It used to be that if you ran into some trouble over there, you could be like, “Hey, I’m a reporter from the U.S., I’m going to make my way back home. Bye.” But now these guys last a few months or less in their positions. You have guys in their twenties taking orders from a guy in his thirties, and who knows what they’re going to do? Older, more experienced cartel guys don’t want that attention. The younger guys—they might not be there by the end of the month, so they won’t care. Lerma: I was telling Ildefonso, we don’t have to cross anymore. All these cartel members have been in U.S. court. All their family members are there. All their guards are here. Ortiz: In 2010, the Feds caught “El Apache” [cartel leader Oscar Castillo Flores] over here in Brownsville and charged him with illegal reentry. At his trial, I was the guy with the notepad in the courtroom, and he was there giving me the stink eyes. It was kind of unnerving to have a guy known for beheadings staring you down. He only got two years, and after those two years, I ran into him at a kids’ restaurant at the salad bar. I looked up, and I was like, ‘Shit!’ and he just smiled at me. A couple weeks later they killed him in Mexico. Luna: Someone sent me preachers to give me una bendición—to pray for me and give me a blessing. The preachers came here to Edinburgh to say, “I know that you’re going to do something very dangerous, and you’re going to die maybe, so we have to give you our bendición.” The strange thing is that I was in a place where I was not going as journalist. [The cartels] know who you are. They know where you live. THE END? Many in Tamaulipas say that the worst of the drug war is over. But in an area where official statistics are widely distrusted, many reporters remain skeptical of claims about a decrease in violence as they continue to see its grisly reality up-close. Chapa: There was a time when that kind of stuff was really prominent and in really high demand online. People just wanted to know about it. I remember in 2010, 2011, we’re talking about throwing grenades at police stations, rocket launchers—all kinds of crazy stuff. And you’re like, ‘Damn, this is happening right south of us, and here we are eating at Chili’s and going to Whataburger.’ But there’s not the volume of gun battles that there was back in say 2012 or 2011 or 2010. And now, with these stories, the writing’s been on the wall so long it’s kind of faded, you know? They don’t get the same interest. You can tell the drug war is kind of winding down. [Ildefonso] might tell you different. Ortiz: Look, the difference is that now people over there have gotten used to the violence. So they’re starting to move on with their normal lives. But from the investigative part, if you start poking around over there, you’re going to find ugly things. And that’s where [Chapa] and my views differ. Yeah, it’s great to go have tacos over there. But if you’re going to be over there asking questions and snapping photos, it’s not going to be pretty, and it’s not going to be safe. Lerma: My station is changing a lot. Sometimes they say, “Change topics, Enrique. I don’t want to hear about the cartels until maybe next week.” And I’ll say, “But this is a good story.” And it’s “no, no, no, you already ran a couple stories.” But every day there is a shooting. Every day somebody is being found shot execution-style. Every day. So nothing is changing. What’s changing on my side is that I don’t do a daily story about it anymore. Ortiz:  I just happened to be out in Reynosa visiting some friends at a barbecue on a Sunday night in 2013 when all hell broke loose. It was the mother of all firefights. You had two factions of the Gulf Cartel fighting it out. It was a massacre. I saw bodies everywhere. If you were by Boulevard Hidalgo, you could see forty trucks going down one side and another thirty trucks coming down the other side and clashing in the middle—four or five gunmen in each truck spraying the hell out of the streets. Grenades here, grenades there. Something that you know you see it and you still can’t believe it. As I was writing that story, I was tearing up. It was the altruism of the people that got to me. In the Walmart, they were holding people back, and saying don’t go out. In the mall and the movie theater, just a random guy was blocking the doors—Get down, don’t go outside now. That’s what the police should be doing, but it was just normal citizens. Sometimes you lose your faith in humanity covering this, but that restored a bit of it. DD;  The biggest thing Mr. Benson left out of his reporting how the news is aquired from the border is the readers of Borderland Beat that send us stories and tips about what is happening which we publish here on Borderland Beat.

"La Tuta" audio; I regret commanding Los Viagra Posted: 03 Feb 2015 11:38 AM PST Translated for Borderland Beat from a Michoacan 3.0 by Otis B Fly-Wheel Morelia Michoacán Servando Gomez alias "La Tuta" In his latest audio recording, Servando Gomez alias "La Tuta", says that he regrets commanding Los Viagra, in an audio recording posted to the Facebook page " For a free Coalcoman". In the material that runs for 6 minutes and 53 seconds, the last leader of the cartel named The Knights Templar, assures that Los Viagra have no loyalty and are dedicated to activities like robbing and kidnapping, "The are delinquents and worse than me". He said that, " The Santana brothers known as Los Viagra, do not support Hipolito Mora founder of the autodefensas, they don't even support their mother", he said.                                        Santana Sierra sisters also are involved especially Bety far left Criminal History Of Los Viagra Nicolas and Carlos Sierra Santana, known as Los Viagra because of the way they slick their hair with gel, have been accused of being an armed wing of La Familia Michoacan, and later of The Knights Templar. With the rise of the self defense forces, leaders like Jorge Vasquez Valencia, have accused Los Viagra of wearing the cloak of autodefensas, while seeking alliances with CJNG. After the formation of the Fuerza Rurales, los Sierra Santanas formed a special group within the Rurales called G-250, a cell of the Corporation formed specifically to search for La Tuta and other CT leaders in the Tierra Caliente, an operation that has shown no results. At this meeting Tuta was still unaware of Viagras jumping to CJNG, but was becoming suspicious For his part, Servando Gomez ordered ex-templars to work in peace, and not work for delinquent organizations that " have no organization", La Tuta insisted that he is a narco-trafficker and does not kidnap, or rob, or extort people. He encouraged his ex subordinates to pick a side, and "work in peace". Finally he said that this will be his last audio tape, not for fear, or that they will catch or kill me, but because I have to take stock, and decide what to do next. The audio is in Spanish and is 6 minutes long. I have posted it up here for Spanish speakers. English speakers will have to wait for a full translation of the audio into English. Original article in Spanish at Michoacán 3.0

Americans should be deeply concerned about the chilling effect a Government controlled Internet could have on speech!

Dear Conservative, “We now have a court order. We’ll eradicate Twitter. I don’t care what the international community says. Everyone will witness the power of the Turkish Republic,” Prime Minister of Turkey, Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey isn't alone. During the "Green Revolution" in 2009, Iran implemented a widespread crackdown on the Internet. China has censored information for years. And Russia made Facebook take down content that was critical of Putin last year.  These are just a few examples of what can happen when Government takes total control of the Internet. That's why I'm writing today. I need your help to keep the Internet open and free. On November 10th, 2014, President Obama called on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to re-classify the Internet as a public utility. He proposed dusting off a law that’s nearly 80 years old (and about unrelated technology) and using it to give the Federal Government power to police the Internet.  I know many people do not love the big Internet providers (count me as one of them) and just want to make sure that consumers are not stuck with slow access speeds and bad service. That’s a good goal.  But the solution is not to get Government in this space with expanded powers to police the Internet. Internet freedom is just too precious to hand Washington new regulatory powers over the Internet without oversight.  You see, if President Obama gets his wish, instead of the “light touch” approach that has allowed the Internet to flourish for years, Government bureaucrats would be put in charge of a new heavy-handed regulatory scheme.  Worst of all, Americans do not fully understand the implications of how far this could go because it’s all happening so fast. Instead of Congress having a public debate out in the open where the American people can listen and Congress is held accountable, the Executive Branch is rushing to pre-empt Congress and jam this new regulation through while the American people are not really paying attention. (If this reminds you of Nancy Pelosi’s “We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it” statement about ObamaCare a couple years ago, it should.)  Americans should be deeply concerned about the chilling effect a Government controlled Internet could have on speech. Recent actions taken by foreign governments should make every American nervous when thinking about a Government controlled Internet.  That’s because the Internet is not just a more efficient way of engaging in commerce; it’s the greatest threat to tyrannical Governments in the world today. Autocrats like Putin do not want a free and open Internet. They want a “small I” Internet that runs more like their own personal intranet that they can control. America must remain a global leader for a free and open Internet and continue to tell countries like Iran, Russia, and China “No” on regulating the Internet access of their people, and their right to free speech.  Both Republicans and Democrats agree that maintaining a free and open Internet is the goal. But more Government intervention will not help us reach that outcome. It will restrict the dynamism that has fueled the greatest revolution since Henry Ford invented the Model T, and choke political speech.  I believe this truly is a slippery slope scenario where years in the future, another Administration could use power over the Internet to censor speech and intimidate political opponents.  I know there will be those who try to dismiss this concern out of hand…But after the way our Government has operated over the last six years, does anyone really think we should just give Washington control over something as precious as the Internet?  Do we really want the same type of people who brought us the IRS scandal--where they targeted political opponents of the Administration--making decisions about political speech online?  Should the same type of people who were responsible for the utter failure of the Veterans Administration be in a decision-making position on the future of the Internet? Can the same group of “tech experts” responsible for the roll out of Healthcare.gov really be entrusted with maintaining transparency and access online?  It’s up to us to preserve the Internet for our kids and grand kids as the one of the greatest forces for freedom the world has ever known. A Government-controlled Internet is not the right choice.  The FCC votes on February 26th. They need to hear from you today. Please, join me today in calling on the Obama Administration and the FCC to keep the Internet open and free.  For Internet Freedom,  Sen. Ben Sasse Republican--Nebraska  P.S. We don’t have much time left to tell the FCC “NO” on taking over the Internet. You need to make your voice heard today if you want to keep the Internet open and free.

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