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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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As I read about the children escaping narco terrorists in Central America, I saw similarities to the Howard Boys, In some ways the Howard Boys were narco terrorists as they killed and used violence to protect their drug trade. By a long shot I am not the first to make this connection.
Gangs and Terrorism - Gangs - POLICE Magazine
www.policemag.com/blog/gangs/story/2012/05/gangs-and-terrorism.aspx
May 24, 2012 · Gangs and Terrorism ... It means that traditional street gangs born in our urban jungles are not ... and latin kings get trained by the united states ... |
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Sun Jul 27, 2014 3:01 pm |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Gangs and Terrorism
The the Counter Terror Expo in Washington D.C. offered perspectives from prominent experts in the field of counter-terrorism.
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May 24, 2012 | by Richard Valdemar - Also by this author
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The author attends the Counter Terror Expo in Washington D.C.
Although most of the time we are unaware of the struggle, there is a constant battle in our everyday lives that all criminal investigators endure. The dreary grind of the common everyday incident investigations, and the paperwork and procedures associated with it, is what I call "the fog of minutia."
Like the warrior's "fog of war," this fog causes us to become lost in the battle, reacting only to the immediate perception of a problem. We're often blinded to the more important and larger tactical tide of the battle—the big picture.
We often focus on one puzzle piece rather than the whole puzzle. If we would slow down and step back, we might see the whole of our enemy's tactics and battle plan. We could be more proactive and less reactive. This wider perception of problems enables criminal investigators to recognize trends, alliances, tactics, conspiracies and connections in the underworld. This is what is needed in the battle against gangs, cartels, and terrorists.
From May 16-17, I attended the Counter Terror Expo at the Washington Convention Center in Washington D.C. The convention was put on by Clarion Events with partners from the Mackenzie Institute, Five Stones, IACSP, Infragard, Homeland Security Today, the INSA, ICTOA, and others.
The event's speakers and presenters were prominent experts in the field of counter-terrorism. This august group of "go-to guys" included keynote speakers Michael Leiter, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC); and Thad Allen, a former U.S. Coast Guard commandant. Even veteran counter-terror experts from my era such as Brian Jenkins, senior advisor to the president of the Rand Corp., made appearances.
Displayed on the convention floor were some of the most advanced technical counter-terror tools and cyber programs. In earlier years, the Counter Terror Expo has been held at Olympia Exhibition Center in London. The 2013 Expo is scheduled there April 24-25.
I was asked participate in a three-person panel on patrolling the border. The panel was moderated by online editor Anthony Kimery of Homeland Security Today magazine. I was privileged to present the topic with two fellow panelists. The second panel member was Michael Johnson, an ICE special agent and national program manager for the agency's homeland security investigations as well as a member of the Border Enforcement Security Task Force.
The third panel member was Sylvia Longmire, a former senior intelligence analyst for the California state fusion center and the California Emergency Management Agency's Situational Awareness Unit. Longmire is also the author of "Cartel," an excellent book on the subject.
This is the first time that the expo has been held in this country, which made it an appropriate forum to discuss patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border and the war against drug and human trafficking organizations.
If you've attended any of my law enforcement training in the past few years, you've heard me refer to the "unholy trinity." I borrowed the term from an article in the August 2009 issue of Homeland Security Today to describe the alliance of American street gangs, drug and human trafficking cartels, and international terrorists.
This nexus is important to anybody working any part of this "unholy trinity." It means that traditional street gangs born in our urban jungles are not just a local problem. Increasingly this American-spawned phenomenon can also be linked to international or transnational gangs and drug trafficking organizations. They are potentially a vicarious surrogate army to be used by international terrorists. To continue to deny that this nexus exists is to ignore valuable clues to the prevention of larger more serious criminal activity and possibly the next 9/11, Mumbai, or Beslan.
Shortly after 9/11, as a member of the FBI Los Angeles Multi-Agency Metropolitan Violent Gang Task Force, I pointed out Los Angeles MS-13 leader Nelson Comandari's activities and travel suggested that he was more than just a local gang leader. He had international ties.
But the FBI agents only laughed at any suggested narco or terrorist conspiracy involving Los Angeles street gangs and pointed out that young Latino gang members are from a Catholic culture, and that they have little in common with radical Middle Eastern Muslim terrorists.
I asked the FBI Agent, "You ever hear of the IRA?" The Irish Republican Army (arguably from a Catholic culture) in the 1970s and '80s trained together with the PLO and Middle Eastern Muslim terrorists in Libya and the Bekka Valley. Did he not know that the international terrorists Ernesto "Che" Guevara and Carlos the Jackal were natives of South American countries?
In 2003, Nelson Comandari was arrested at the border returning from El Salvador and extradited to New York where he was prosecuted for a unrelated multiple-kilo cocaine conspiracy. It turned out that Comandari was of Lebanese and Palestinian decent and politically connected to the Salvadorian Revolutionary Party—Farabondo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), as were many other MS-13 members. A statue of PLO leader Yasser Arafat stands in his honor in San Salvador dedicated to him for his assistance in the Salvadorian Revolution (from 1980-92).
I used to keep a picture of FBI Agent Coleen Rowley as my computer screen saver at the Los Angeles office of the FBI task force. None of the FBI agents seemed to recognize who she was. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Rowley wrote a paper for FBI Director Robert Mueller documenting how FBI headquarters personnel in Washington, D.C., had mishandled and failed to take action on information provided by the field office in Minneapolis, Minn., regarding its investigation of suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui. These failures may have left the U.S. vulnerable to the 9/11 attacks.
I am sometimes asked, "What can I do, as an ordinary officer, to help prevent another 9-11, in this war against terror?"
Break yourself out of your "fog of minutia." Expand your perception so you see a larger picture. Note possible links to bigger crimes and criminal groups and follow up when you can. Educate and train yourself in these skills, so you become the advanced warning system, the threat detector. And teach others to do the same.
The big boys who were represented in this Counter Terror Conference obviously have recognized and acknowledged the real threat posed by this unholy trinity. We in law enforcement can no longer remain in denial or allow politically correct blinders to hinder our efforts to secure our homeland.
Brian @ 5/30/2012 11:58 AM
I think you will find it pleasing to know that the majority of real and organized urban based gangs that have franchised such as bloods, crips, and latin kings get trained by the united states military. They have been actively sending off middle men members to the military that have no arrest record. They get trained. they do their stint. then they come home with some money from Uncle Sam and they train their troops with the training they have received from the government here.
We have been receiving images of chicago based gang graffiti in places like afghanistan and iraq for quite some time now. |
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Sun Jul 27, 2014 3:06 pm |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Gangs Abandon Honor for an Unholy Alliance
An unholy trinity between jihadists, narco-cartels, and street gangs has caught the attention of the CIA.
May 05, 2010 | by Richard Valdemar - Also by this author
No Vale Nada La Vida, La Vida no Vale Nada
(There is no value in life, life is worth nothing).
Comienza Siempre Llorando, Y Así Llorando Se Acaba
(It begins always in crying, and like that in crying it ends).
Por Eso Es Que En Este Mundo, La Vida no Vale Nada
(That is why in this world, life is worth nothing).
— Camino De Guanajuato (The Road to Guanajuato)
Que bonitos son los hombres que se matan pecho a pecho
(How beautiful are the men who kill each other chest to chest).
Con su pistola en la mano defendiendo su derecho
(Each with their pistol in hand defending his own rights).
— El Corrido del Teniente y de Gonzales (The Ballad of the Lieutenant and Gonzalez)
I'm very proud of my grandfathers who fought for the revolution in Mexico under Pancho Villa, "el Jefe del Norte." When I was a young teenager, I would accompany my beloved grandmother to the movie theater that featured Spanish-language movies. We watched popular Mexican movie stars such as Pedro Infante, Luis Aguilar and Cantinflas in movies about the Mexican Charros, the Ranchito, and the Mexican Revolution.
The movies often included Mexican folk ballads (corridos) about the difficult and often violent life of the people of Mexico after the Revolution. These were highly emotional songs filled with pride and the honor of real hombres both peon and Caballero. The songs of the Mariachis and a few drinks take me back to this period and the great honor I felt for my people—people of great moral character.
There was even honor among former thieves, as General Villa himself was once a bandit. During this time, men faced each other on the battlefield or in tiny cantinas armed with pistols or machetes and knowing the next contest might be their last. Any man who harmed women or children was a coward worthy of hanging.
In 1967, while riding with a Quan Canh Vietnamese military policeman through the narrow streets of Nha Trang, Vietnam, the Q.C. questioned my ethnic background, saying I looked more like a Vietnamese than an American. On the dirt street, I drew a crude map of the U.S., and then drew Mexico's outline beneath it. He shook his head to show he still did not understand.
A few minutes later, he suddenly tapped me hard and smiled. He motioned with his hand a large "X" across his chest saying, "You same same." He then used his hands to mimic the brim of a huge hat. He then said, "You same same…Cu cur Ru cu cu…paloma!" as he belted out the words from a famous Mexican folk song ("Cucurrucucu Paloma").
He then directed me to the little movie theater in town where my old Mexican movie heroes were still receiving top billing. It was strange to see them with Vietnamese subtitles, but the Vietnamese people loved Mexican movies and Mexican corridos too. They admired these Mexican charro knights on horseback.
This proud noble warrior culture was fostered also from our Native American heritage. Almost everyone from the American Southwest has some Native American blood in his genealogy. The Mexican people are largely mestizo (a mix of Spanish and Indian). Native American and Indigenous Mexican tribes held great esteem for warriors who fought not just with skill, but also with honor and courage. A warrior was judged by the greatness of the warriors he met in combat. Some warriors struck their enemy with a "coup stick" in battle and counted coup rather than killing rival warriors.
Like the Sicilian Mafia and other ethnic gangs before them, Hispanic gangs developed and transferred this warrior mentality into their criminal gang culture. They developed unwritten codes of conduct and rules of engagement. The greatest glory was given to gang members who fought equal or bigger rivals in a "fair" fight.
"Rat packing" an opponent showed no bravery or honor at all. "Mano-a-mano" (Spanish for "hand to hand") was the accepted true test of a warrior. But in the 1940's Zoot Suit era combat devolved into bottles, bumper jacks, tire irons, and switchblade knives. Popular Cholo culture credits the White Fence gang with the escalation to the first drive-by shooting in the 1950s.
However, the church was still neutral and sacred, no gang member would attack another while he was with his mother or other family members, and non-gang members from the gang barrios were usually fairly safe. This code of conduct was most strongly enforced in juvenile halls, jails, and prisons. Child molesters, rapists, and abusers of the elderly were in mortal danger from the gang inmates as sure of swift retribution given any trader or snitch.
The Mexican Mafia prison gang was influenced by several warrior codes of conduct. "Jap" Mike Kudo, a Japanese-American who was a member of a Hispanic gang and an early member of the Mexican Mafia, introduced the gang to the Samurai Bushido code and the book of the Five Rings.
Sun-Tzu's "The Art of War" was required reading. Almost all Hispanic prisoners study the history of the ancient warrior tribes of Mexico and often even learn their Nahuatl language.
In 1992, the Mexican Mafia altered the traditional Hispanic gang code of conduct and put out the edict to all Sureño gang members that there could be no more "drive-by shootings" to prevent the killing of innocent victims.
As I have written about before, a gang member's children, parents, and other family members were not to be retaliated against for the violations of the code committed by the gang member. Even the brutal Aryan Brotherhood held to this standard and was split when some members ordered the murder of member Steve Barn's elderly father. Even the "Dogs of War" protected the innocent.
There are "gangs" today that pride themselves in wanton savagery with a "no quarter asked, no quarter given" philosophy. They attempt to justify pitiless barbarian acts and torture in the name of twisted fanatical cult religions or occult worship. They slaughter and rape innocent men, women, and children and dismember their bodies to prove their virility. They're uncivilized monsters, soulless fiends and cowards.
I'm talking about the fanatical Muslim terrorists and the demented Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTO) or cartels. Today, these two groups are attempting to form an unholy trinity by recruiting and uniting with American street gangs. In Anthony Kimery's "Unholy Trinity" in the August 2009 issue of Homeland Security Today, the author documents some of the incidents in Latin America showing this connection between Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah and the DTOs.
Kimery writes, "The evolving alliance between jihadists, narco-cartels, and street gangs personify the three greatest cross-border threats faced by the United States: terrorism, narcotics, and crime. Just because their alliance may not entirely make sense from an American perspective, does not mean that it is beyond the realm of possibility—or probability. All indications are that the threads are coming together."
In a conversation I recently had with former Mexican Mafia member Ramon "Mundo" Mendoza about this unholy trinity, he remarked, "Any gang alliances with Muslim fanatics and Mexican cartel thugs should be abhorrent to any self-respecting gang member. What barrio warrior joins with Satan worshipers (like worshipers of Santa Muerte) and baby killers, and thinks that makes him a man?" Mundo added, "In my day these are the kind of cowards that the Mexican Mafia would have killed in prison."
The lure of filthy lucre is too great. Gang members betray the ancient warrior's code of conduct for new tires and fancy rims, or a dime bag of dope. Honor is replaced by "bling."
And instead of earning his street "creds," a Cholo will tattoo fake ones on his face. His loyalty to his own barrio is replaced by loyalty to far-off Sinaloa, Mexico. Instead of imitating the great Aztec warrior chief Montezuma, he now will imitate the cowardly terrorist Osama bin Laden.
My Latino brothers, these Muslim fanatic hordes are the same ones your Spanish ancestor "El Cid" drove back into Africa. And do you really think that these Mexican drug thugs are what you could call noble warriors and macho men? Or are they just pitiless punks with guns?
Tags: Mexican Mafia, Gang Intelligence, Islamic Terrorists, Mexican Drug Cartels |
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Sun Jul 27, 2014 3:10 pm |
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