A mass reply to emails, IM's, etc:
It is a really well done story. I think it's hitting home to Coloradans in our area because of the past couple years of increasing problems here in our own front yards. A place where we never thought we would ever see such activity. Colorado, as we all know, is a dream place to live and has so much to offer in natural beauty, major commerce and the kind of lifestyle you wish to raise family in. I've always wondered why people seem so surprised that people with ill-intent are also drawn to Colorado. Are Aspenites, Basaltines and BoneDale natives, really so naive that they have talked themselves into an alternate reality where bangers, traffickers and dopers don't go on Sunday sightseeing drives to see the fall colors and stop for a burger at a world famous diner like Boogies? Of course they do. Is it really so far-fetched to think that they won't conduct their own brand of business while doing so and if they see the way paved to?
This kind of reporting from the LA Times is not a rarity, folks. The rush of links you all have sent me since posting it and earlier with some other posts have been encouraging. It tells me that you are thinking on your own and checking out information that impacts you and your nucleus within the world. Thanks for sending in some I had not yet seen. Here are two of them. I especially recommend surfing through all links on the NY Times piece.
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/mexico/drug_trafficking/index.html
http://www.chron.com/news/nation-world/article/Mexican-crook-Gangsters-arrange-fights-to-death-1692716.php
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This is a must read.
A fascinating look at the inside operations of one of the most powerful and deadly Mexican Drug Cartels there is.
I'm not sure how anyone, can read something like this piece and still have any thoughts whatsoever that legalizing drugs has validity or as an officer of law look the other way to illegal drug use.
Thank you to all of our Customs and Border Protection officers including K-9. All of our DEA, ICE, FBI, every drug task force, every agent, officer and deputy that keeps to the best of their ability and power, these cartels on the outsides of our borders.
Richard A. Serrano:
"WASHINGTON — Police and federal agents pulled the car over in a suburb north of Denver. An FBI agent showed his badge. The driver appeared not startled at all. "My friend," he said, "I have been waiting for you."
And with that, Jesus Audel Miramontes-Varela stepped out of his white 2002 BMW X5 and into the arms of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Over the next several days at his ranch in Colorado and an FBI safe house in Albuquerque, the Mexican cartel chieftain — who had reputedly fed one of his victims to lions in Mexico — was transformed into one of the FBI's top informants on the Southwest border.
Around a dining room table in August 2010, an FBI camera whirring above, the 34-year-old Miramontes-Varela confessed his leadership in the Juarez cartel, according to 75 pages of confidential FBI interview reports obtained by The Times/Tribune Washington Bureau.
He told about marijuana and cocaine routes to California, New York and the Great Lakes. He described the shooting deaths of 30 people at a horse track in Mexico, and a hidden mass grave with 20 bodies, including two U.S. residents....." (Read more? You should. Click title)
(Photo credit: Maggie Ybarra, El Paso Times / November 30, 2010)
"Unapologetically pursuing and tracking patterns within the news others make since 2010."
