Mental Health check-in
Regulate your nervous system
Bafta awards
What are you saving?? https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8xN4UUy/
Cuba is starving https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8xSNJRs/ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZThsTwT2X/
Mexican Cartel & The US Government https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZThsw1DER/
Last month, a federal US court found a former Mexican security chief guilty of colluding with the Sinaloa Cartel. The trial showed how both the US government and its Mexican clients have been guilty of the criminal activity they’re supposedly trying to stop.
Tuesday, February 21, a federal jury in Brooklyn, New York, found Mexico’s former secretary of public security, Genaro García Luna, guilty of conspiring with the Sinaloa Cartel. Known as the “supercop” due to the outsize power he wielded during the administration of conservative president Felipe Calderón, García Luna was convicted on all counts: conspiracy to distribute cocaine internationally, conspiracy to distribute and possess cocaine, and conspiracy to import cocaine, together with participating in a continuing criminal enterprise and making false statements on his application to become a naturalized US citizen.
behind the picture-perfect façade of a dogged American prosecutorial team bringing a corrupted former Mexican official to justice lies a web of complicity and collusion that shines a harsh light on the entire narrative of the “war on drugs.”
To start, the verdict represents a brutal humiliation for two former presidents: Vicente Fox (2000–6), who named García Luna to be the director of the Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI), Mexico’s now-defunct version of the FBI, and Calderón (2006–2012), who elevated him to cabinet status as his secretary for public security, investing him with plenipotentiary powers over the nation’s policing.
In stark contrast to the former presidents’ attempts to depict their time in office as a heroic crusade against organized crime, witness accounts painted a portrait of a security apparatus in lockstep with it. According to Jesús “El Rey” Zambada, brother of the Sinaloa Cartel’s former leader Ismael, members of the Sinaloa Cartel would wear AFI uniforms “to make arrests and engage in fighting” while García Luna, as the head of the agency, was on the take for $1.5 million a month.
Initial reports painted a picture of a prosecution bulging with over a million documents, thousands of recordings, and a witness list of some seventy or so; with all of this, the trial, which began with opening arguments on January 23, was expected to stretch into March. Instead, it was over by mid-February, with a fraction of the documents, less than a third of the witnesses, and none of the recordings having come out.
Part of this can be chalked up to the standard procedure of mobilizing only the witnesses and evidence deemed helpful to an unfolding case. But another crucial part has to do with the limited set of accusations made by the government, allowing Judge Brian Cogan to rule out any evidence of the highly incriminating business dealings García Luna set up in Miami after leaving his governmental role in 2012 — dealings that are the subject of a $700-million civil lawsuit filed by AMLO’s Justice Department against him.
Other omissions were still more glaring. No mention was made, for example, of the Obama era’s botched gun-tracing program “Fast and Furious,” which delivered US arms into the hands of Mexican cartels. (In January, the Mexican Attorney General’s Office issued an arrest warrant of its own for García Luna for his alleged participation in the operation.)
