Huge South American Drug Ring Busted - With Ties To Hezbollah

Friday, May 01, 2009

Huge South American Drug Ring Busted - With Ties To Hezbollah

I've been writing for quite some time on narco-terrorism and how it helps finance jihad. And, if you take it one step further, there's not much of a problem smuggling jihadis into America as a side product to the trade via our porous Southern border.

Here's a great example of one such tie in that's now out in the open:

In cooperation with various other countries, Dutch authorities have rounded up a big cocaine gang that had links with Hezbollah. Seventeen suspects were arrested on Curacao, the biggest island of the Netherlands Antilles, the Public Prosecutor's Office (OM) has revealed.

International cooperation between police and judicial services of the Netherlands and the Netherlands Antilles, Belgium, Colombia, Venezuela and the US led to the arrest of the 17 suspects by the Curacao police. They are believed to be part of a drugs and money-laundering organisation with international branches, thought to be responsible for the import and export of at least 2,000 kilos of cocaine per year, according to the OM. "The organisation maintained international contacts with other criminal networks, which in the Middle East support Hezbollah financially".

In this investigation, launched at the beginning of 2008, containers with cocaine were intercepted earlier in Rotterdam (300 kilos), the Spanish city of Valencia (20 kilos) and the Belgian city of Antwerp (140 kilos). Three Colombian suspects have for some time been in pre-trial custody for their involvement in the Rotterdam shipment, discovered in October 2008.

The 17 suspects now arrested are from Venezuela, Colombia, Lebanon and Cuba as well as Curacao. The organisation shipped containers with cocaine from Curacao to the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Jordan. From Venezuela, drugs containers went to West Africa and subsequently to the Netherlands, Lebanon and Spain. Couriers smuggled cocaine from Curacao and Aruba to the Netherlands as air passengers.

The suspects invested the drugs profits in property in Colombia, Venezuela, Lebanon, the Dominican Republic and in companies on Curacao. Large sums of money from the drugs trade have become available in Lebanon via underground bankers. From Lebanon, orders are also placed for weapons, which had to be delivered by the drugs organisation from South America.

Keep in mind that Hezbollah's stronghold in Lebanon's Bek'aa Valley is a major drug producing area.Hezbollah are not merely couriers and financial partners but suppliers. And while the article doesn't say so, there's no doubt in my mind that part of the deal involves obtaining scare foreign exchange for Hezbollah's boss, Iran.

As terrorism expert and best selling author Steve Emerson has documented, Hezbollah has cells of operatives already in America. Now you know one way they finance and sustain their infrastructure.

These are the people Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton want to normalize as 'just another political party'. Unbelievable.

Hat tip, the one and only Fausta..and an honorable mention to The Baron and Dymphna

My New Venue...The Examiner

The good folks at the LA Examiner have hired me to write a few short pieces per week...and my latest is up, my piece on the Chrysler Bailout. Part of what I get paid is on a per click basis, so I'd appreciate your hitting the link a few times..and you'll also get to see a picture of yours truly as an added bonus(!)

As Prez Zero would say, "Merci beaucoup!"

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Souter To Retire, As Obama Gets First Supreme Court Pick

We are about to receive a first hand lesson in why elections matter.

Supreme Court Justice Davis Souter announced his retirement will take place at the end of the current Court term.

Souter normally votes with the Leftist, anti-originalist wing of the Court which includes Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Steven Breyer and John Paul Stevens. Ginsberg and Breyer were both Clinton appointees, while Souterwas appointed by Bush Senior.

Souter reportedly checked with Ginsberg, who has cancer and Stevens, who's 89 to make sure they weren't planning to retire at the same time before making his announcement.

So...who is Obama likely to pick?

While Souter was hardly someone I who's legal opinions I agreed with, he had the advantage of at least having knowledge of the law and practical experience in the courtroom.While we undoubtedly will get someone even farther Left than Souter, there's no guarantee of the knowledge and practical experience part of the equation.

Obama's short list so far leans towards Lefty academics and towards checking off ethnic boxes for females and 'people of color'. Let's look at them:

Elena Kagan: lessee...the ex-Dean of Harvard Law school is a careeracademic and the current Solicitor General. She's never served as a judge or even argued a case in front of an appellate court, so she has zero practical experience.

However, she's female, which checks one of Obama's boxes. And she doeshave the right political views. She called President Clinton's “don’t ask; don’t tell” policy “a profound wrong — a moral injustice of the first order,” which should give you a clue on how she'd vote on gay marriage. And she seems to have never heard of the Solomon Amendment, claiming that it somehow violates the First Amendment for the US to withhold funds from colleges that ban the military from recruiting on campus. That piece of legal reasoning was unanimously rejected by the entire Supreme Court.

Even better from Obama's point of view, she favors greatly enhanced presidential control over the Federal government, which is right up BOH'salley considering his unprecedented consolidation of power in the White House.

Sonia Sotomayor: - My money's on this one. Not only is she a hard Left ideologue but she's a twofer, female and Hispanic. Unlike Kagan, she has 16 years of court experience and currently sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York City.

She's appears to be more than willing to let her personal opinions shade her decisions on the bench. As she reportedly said in a 2002 speech at Berkeley, she thinks its very appropriate for a judge to consider their “experiences as women and people of color” in trying cases, which she believes should “affect our decisions.”

Amnestia por todo, amigos? Si se puede!

She also reputed to be something of a judicial bully.

Ricci v. DeStefano is a major reverse discrimination case now being heard by the Supreme Court. It concerns a suit by some New Haven Connecticut white firefighters who passed a mandatory promotional exam. Because there were no black firefighters who scored high enough to be promoted, the exam was tossed out, the white firefighters were denied their promotions and a number of black firefighters were promoted instead.

Judge Sotomayor attempted to summarily dismiss the case and toss it out of court, something that didn't sit well with the other members of theappellate panel that heard the case. As a matter of fact, she was formally reprimanded on the record by fellow Justice Jose Cabranes for her conduct during the trial, something that almost never happens publicly.

She sounds perfect for Obama.


Diane Wood: She's now a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit based in Chicago, and a senior lecturer at the U of Chicago Law school, the President and Bill Ayer's old stomping grounds. She and Obama are reportedly old pals who go back a long way.

Again, she's pretty far out there on the Left. Her particular pet hates appear to be Christians and anyone who doesn't favor unrestricted abortion on demand, so her nomination would please NARAL and Planned Parenthood. In one case, NOW v. Scheidler, she actually tried to apply the RICO statutes designed for mob prosecutions to stop pro-life groups from activists from engaging in lawful first amendment sanctioned protests. The Supreme Court reversed her, with even Lefty Justices Ginsburg andBreyer voting against her.

Judge Wood wanted to allow a publicly funded university to revoke the charter of the Christian Legal Society on campus because they refused to allow homosexuals to be members. She was overruled by the other judges on the panel.

Deval Patrick - A dark horse ( no pun intended) but a possibility. He's the very Left and not particularly popular current governor of Massachusetts, a black man and one with a solid background in legal grievance mongering.

He was the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division under Janet Reno in the Clinton White House, and before that he had a long career as an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense fund. Aside from his other qualifications, Prez Obama has received a certain amount of pressure from blacks who voted for him to have someone on the Court who's views are more in line with the Leftist lockstep, someone more 'representative of the African American community'.

Clarence Thomas, you see, is not authentically black. Of course.

Obama has a 59-40 majority in the Senate and can likely get any of these people on the Court he wants to. That doesn't mean that Senators who see these people as being out of the mainstream or the American peopleshould sit back and take it quietly.

MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD. Remember what happened with Harriet Meirs.












-It is also unclear that a Justice Kagan would be an adequately independent check on executive excesses. She has argued in favor of
-Dean Kagan has argued that nominees to the Supreme Court should undergo a searching inquiry into the nominee’s substantive views of the law, and should comment particular issues. If nominated, it will be interesting to see whether Dean Kagan remains faithful to this prescription in answering the Committee’s questions.