The brilliant mind of Ted Cruz

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Tuesday urged fellow senators to take swift action in passing his bill to make Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán and other drug lords pay for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

[...]

“It’s time to pass my EL CHAPO Act. I urge my Senate colleagues to take swift action on this crucial legislation,” he added. Cruz's Ensuring Lawful Collection of Hidden Assets to Provide Order (EL CHAPO) Act would take any money forfeited to the U.S. by Guzmán and other drug lords as a result of criminal prosecutions and direct those funds toward "border security assets" and the completion of a border wall.

  The Hill

Have they confiscated $20 billion from the cartels?

The U.S. government is reportedly seeking $14 billion from Guzmán as part of its prosecution of the drug kingpin.

I'd be interested in knowing how they plan on doing that. But, doesn't Ted know that drug money goes to CIA black ops? And doesn't he know that the CIA couldn't run the programs they run all acros the globe without it? I'm sure most of his colleagues in Congress do.

I always have to laugh when I think of what's probably the hardest part of coming up with legislation for these guys: figuring out a title that fits the acronym they want.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

El Chapo trial puts the lie to Trump's drug entry claims

If he had written "just blocks from," it wouldn't have taken me as long to decipher that last line.  I kept reading "exit only" and wondering what the heck the blocks were and why the CBP office would have them knowing those were drug tunnels.  Maybe it's just too early.  Or the blood wolf moon.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Timing

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Just the Way the Game Is Played

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—Just days after picking Betsy DeVos to run the Department of Education, President-elect Donald Trump has tapped another wealthy outsider by naming Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán to head the Drug Enforcement Administration.

[...]

Dayum, Andy Borowitz. El Chapo, as Trump's D.E.A. would be almost as bad as Generalissimo Hillary Clinton, Obama's Secretary of State, who never saw a war she didn't like and recently inspired Vladimir Putin to show off Russia's new Satan 2 nuclear missile. Almost as bad as subprime home mortgage architect Penny Pritzker, Obama's Secretary of Commerce. Almost as bad as Interventionists extraordinaire Susan Rice, Obama's top National Security Council advisor, and Samantha Power, Obama's Ambassador to the UN. Almost as bad as bank bailout overseer Timothy Geithner, Obama's Secretary of the Treasury. Almost as bad as Keystone XL pipeline and fracking champion Ken Salazer, Obama's Secretary of the Interior. Almost as bad as Eric Holder, the Wall Street defense lawyer who ignored spectacular fraud, tax evasion, market manipulation, money laundering, and bribery committed by a long list of bankers, Obama's Attorney General.

Thanks to The New Yorker for this incisive stroke of the satirist's pen.

  Black Agenda Report

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Sean Penn's Amazing Capture

The Intercept has an article detailing all of the "mistakes" Sean Penn makes in his Rolling Stone article about meeting with El Chapo, so that actual journalists can see what not to do if they want to protect their source's anonymity and location.  Or, as I like to call it: How you know that Sean Penn was working with the DEA/CIA/FBI the whole time.

Also, Marcy Wheeler at Emptywheel.net brings up a point to lend credence to that claim: namely, Penn agrees to what he claims is El Chapo's request not to print the names of "a host of corrupt major corporations" ... "several through which his money has been laundered, and who take their own cynical slice of the narco pie."

If Penn is sincere in his stated desire to end the war on drugs, ending the profits for American banks tied to illicit trafficking would need to be one of the first steps.

But he doesn’t name those companies that are laundering Chapo’s money, which will continue to be laundering Sinaloa cartel money even as Guzmán gets removed from the network.

[...]

But it’s funny how the press, too, seems uninterested in learning the names of the banks that continue to prop up both our own country’s power structure as well as facilitate traffickers like Guzmán.

  Emptywheel

Damn Good Question

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Actor Sean Penn Captures Mexican Drug Lord

That should be the headline.

U.S. actor Sean Penn writes in his article in Rolling Stone magazine that Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was interested in having a movie filmed about his life.

U.S. actor Sean Penn writes in his article in Rolling Stone magazine that Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was interested in having a movie filmed about his life.

Penn purportedly met with Guzman in late 2015, before the drug lord's capture by security forces, at an undisclosed hideout in Mexico.

A Mexican law enforcement official says recaptured drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's secret interview with actor Sean Penn helped authorities locate his whereabouts.

Guzman was arrested early Friday after a shootout in his home state of Sinaloa that killed five and injured one marine.

  Ap

Or, 'Actor Sean Penn gets five killed.'

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Third Time's a Charm?

The world's most-wanted drug lord was captured for a third time in a daring raid Friday by Mexican marines, six months after he tunneled out of a maximum security prison in a made-for-Hollywood escape that deeply embarrassed the government and strained ties with the United States.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto announced the capture of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, writing in his Twitter account: "mission accomplished: we have him."

[...]

Guzman was apprehended after a shootout with Mexican marines in Los Mochis, a seaside city in Guzman's home state of Sinaloa, said a federal official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to be quoted by name. He said Guzman was taken alive and was not wounded.

Five people were killed and one Mexican marine wounded in the clash at a house. It was unclear if Guzman was there or nearby when the raid was under way. Another law enforcement official said Guzman was captured at a motel on the outskirts of Los Mochis.

  MSN

So why is the US government taking credit?

In the United States, the Drug Enforcement Administration hailed the capture as proof of the close relationship between the two countries. "The arrest is a significant achievement in our shared fight against transnational organized crime, violence, and drug trafficking," a DEA statement said.

The U.S. Justice Department commended the working relationship as well.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

I would have thought with all his money, he'd have been wearing nicer clothes. Perhaps they thought this looked more humiliating...maybe the thing now is to keep an old nasty undershirt handy to put on high value captures for their photo ops.

Khalid Sheik Mohammed Captured

Seven?!

Seven people who worked in the maximum-security prison that held Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman have been charged in connection with his escape, Mexico's attorney general said Friday in a statement.

The prison workers will be jailed in the state of Guanajuato and the investigation continues, the statement said.

  CNN

It was thirteen years before they caught El Chapo after his first prison break.  Let the countdown begin for this one.

Score for Los Federales: Got Shorty

The head of the biggest, baddest, Mexican drug cartel, Joaquin  "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman has been captured. Not in a bloody battle – so the movie will have to take license – but quietly from a hotel in Mazatlan.

The head of Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel – who was widely considered the world's most powerful drug lord – was captured overnight by U.S. and Mexican authorities at a hotel in Mazatlan, Mexico, ending a bloody and decades-long career that terrorized large swaths of the country.

  alJazeera

Maybe ended HIS bloody career, but it won’t have ended bloody terrorization of the country by drug cartels. Something needs to be done about US drug policies for that to happen.

Guzman's capture ended a long and storied manhunt. He was rumored to live everywhere from Argentina to Guatemala since he slipped out in 2001 from prison in a laundry truck – a spectacular feat that fed his larger-than-life persona.

That’ll be good in the movie.  (They'll want to throw in this part about a gunfight a couple weeks ago in Guatemala in which it was rumored that El Chapo had been killed.)

Guzman's success and infamy surpassed those of Colombia's Pablo Escobar, who was gunned down by police in 1993 after waging a decade-long reign of terror in the South American country, killing hundreds of police, judges, journalists and politicians.

Now THAT will be a movie with no need for license.  Oh, wait.  There are already a number of those.

His arrest comes on the heels of the takedown of several top Sinaloa operatives in the past few months, and at least 10 mid-level cartel members in the past week.

The son of Sinaloa's co-leader and Guzman's partner, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, was arrested in November after entering Arizona, where he had an appointment with U.S. immigration authorities to arrange legal status for his wife.

What? No wonder the cartel came on bad times. How smart was that?

The following month, Zambada's main lieutenant was killed as Mexican helicopter gunships sprayed bullets at his mansion in the Gulf of California resort of Puerto Penasco in a four-hour gunbattle.

That’ll be good in the movie.

Days later, police in the Netherlands arrested Zambada's flamboyant top enforcer as he arrived in Amsterdam.

[...]

At one point, [Guzman’s] fortune grew to more than $1 billion, according to Forbes magazine, which listed him among the "World's Most Powerful People" and ranked him above the presidents of France and Venezuela.

In 2013, the financial magazine took Guzman off the list, saying it was likely security expenses had cut into his trove.

I thought Forbes was a respected publication. I don’t know how you determine a power ranking when you include people from every facet of the spectrum, but let’s say we can assume Forbes has this rated correctly. How do you get away with presuming something has eaten into someone’s treasury enough to knock him down your list? Perhaps I should actually read the Forbes article. Maybe alJazeera’s writer is not doing it justice. After all – are we talking about money or power? They do go hand in hand;  however, I don’t think they’re entirely interchangeable. But I digress.

I don’t keep up with cartel goings on, so I cannot tell you which cartel will now take over El Chapo’s business. But one of them will.  Unless he's got a tough and read underboss somewhere down the chain of command.  That will be good in the movie.