7/18/11

operating in the geopolitical black holes

Southern Pulse (southernpulse.com) tells us about all the ungoverned spaces in the Americas, spaces where transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) operate, also known as "geopolitical black holes" and "stateless zones."

straight from Mr. Ed's mouth to your ears

http://southernpulse.com/_webapp_3930524/Ungoverned_Spaces_in_the_Americas,_Part_I

Southern Pulse should know. You can take this information to the bank, a bank like Wachovia for instance which has laundered billions of dollars of drug money for the Mexican cartels, and paid a whopping big fine of $160 million, or less than 2% of it's $12.3 billion profit in 2009. Because Southern Pulse has "a network of investigators" operating across the Americas and an advisory board hooked directly into the CFR and RAND. These field agents don't sit behind a computer and read the interwebs, they're out there Operating Across the Americas. Capice? And they can identify all the geopolitical black holes and tell their clients how the TCOs operate in said geopolitical black holes. Capice?
"Southern Pulse is a boutique professional services firm deeply rooted in the field, with a network of investigators that operates across the Americas. We are focused on becoming a premier information source for individuals and companies most interested in field-sourced information - not prepackaged intelligence gathered by a cluster of analysts sitting behind computer monitors."

"This is an organization firmly rooted in the field. There is no central office where people read media stories on the Internet. At its core, Southern Pulse is a network of investigators across the Americas, as well as China, Russia, Turkey, and Iran, all collecting and sharing information on security, politics, energy, and business in Latin America for Southern Pulse clients, members, subscribers, and visitors."
Sounds very organized and professional.


Clients include -- (cherry-picked partial list from their website):

US State Department
US Department of Justice
US Southern Command
US Army
US Coast Guard
US Navy
Drug Enforcement Administration
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms
Immigration and Customs Enforcement
US Customs and Border Protection
US Treasury Department
NASA
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
UN Foundation
Council for Strategic and International Studies
Council on Foreign Relations
CNN
Wall Street Journal
The Washington Times
The New York Times
The Washington Post
The RAND Corporation
BAE Systems
Xe
Triple Canopy
Total
British Petroleum

So we will take their word for it. According to Southern Pulse, governmental black holes in Latin America where TCOs operate include the following areas:

  • Tamaulipas in northeast Mexico, a state sharing an extensive border with Texas called the frontera chica (girl border)
  • the Sierra Madre range between Sinaloa and Durango states in Mexico
  • and the southeastern corner of Chiapas in Mexico, and extending into Guatemala
  • Guatemala's Peten, Alta Verapaz, Baja Verapaz, Izabal, and Huehuetenango provinces 

original image from softill.com


"According to reports, this area is disputed by the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas, who have made a path of terror by kidnapping, fighting and theft of vehicles that are reported here." May 2010


MEXICO CITY, Sep 2, 2010 (IPS) - Tamaulipas state has become the black hole of organised crime in Mexico. But there are few accounts of the rapid social breakdown that the northeastern border state has experienced since the start of the year, because the local press is silenced....Los Zetas is a crime syndicate made up of former elite Mexican army commandos who reportedly received training in the U.S. at the School of the Americas but deserted to become the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel in the late 1990s. They then turned against their former employers or partners.
original image from tula.org


Moving south...


  • a robust corridor through Santa Ana and Calatenango in El Salvador
  • Gracia a Dios and Olancho in Honduras
  • northern and southern autonomous regions of Nicaragua


original image from Wikipedia




original image from famsi.org




original image from hoveraid.co.uk





But wait there are even more black holes from which the TCOs operate.....

  • infamous Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia
  • most of Colombia
  • huge swaths of South America
And that is just the southern half of one hemisphere. We imagine those TCOs have black holes all over the globe, and thanks to their incredible organization they have always been able to stay several steps ahead of law enforcement as they DESTROY COMMUNITIES EVERYWHERE. And no one ever seems to be able to stop them.

How can that be?



original image from nationmaster.com


Houston, we have a problem. 

Recapping to this point: we BELIEVE Southern Pulse when they tell us that that TCOs utilize all these black holes in Latin America for drug trafficking, because Southern Pulse has operatives on the ground and a very prestigious client list that would have a need to know exactly where all the best places are for drug trafficking operations.

Again, how can it be that with all this intelligence, no one can ever stop the TCOs?


Allegedly, it is because the TCOs are *even MORE* organized, and have *even BETTER* intelligence. Even better than what that client list can afford.

The Woodrow Wilson Institute and the Washington Times are both on Southern Pulse's client list, and this is what they write:

See: trip wires for the full post

More intelligence needed, according to Eric Olson of the Woodrow Wilson Center's Mexico Institute (think tank).


Olson said the best way for federal police to confront this new threat would be to improve their intelligence capabilities – an area he called a serious weakness. "It requires operational intelligence. It requires 'We know this is going to happen or likely is going to happen in this neighborhood,'" he said. "That kind of refined intelligence is extremely difficult anywhere. But it doesn't seem to be available in a place like Ciudad Juarez."
The cartels, on the other hand, "have an amazing intelligence capability," he said. "They are far ahead of law enforcement. All that keeps law enforcement from getting ahead of the curve." Mexican cartels – armed with billions of dollars and networks of informers among corrupt police forces – have long demonstrated their ability to target the highest-ranking security officials and government officials.

So the drug cartels are Very Organized and have amazing intelligence due to their 1) billions of dollars and 2) networks of informants among the police forces. And the drug cartels are "far ahead of law enforcement" because their networks deliver such good information. It's so good that law enforcement can never catch up. Ever.

But the networks include corrupt law enforcement people.

Therefore, these corrupt people must be high up and/or exceedingly well-placed, or else how could the drug cartels always stay So Organized and ahead of the non-corrupt law enforcement people?

And Southern Pulse has a network of investigators operating across the field and bringing top intelligence to the US military, think tanks, private contractors, universities, and news outlets; but it cannot compete with the drug cartels' amazing intelligence capability? Really? That's so strange.

Also strange because the US military has a very extensive network of bases all along the Mexican border. And we know that the US military does not go slumming when it comes to technology and intelligence.

So again, why can no one compete with the TCO's amazing intelligence capabilities?

Texas Military Bases
http://www.lacp.org/


"With its diverse network of military installations located across the state, including large areas of associated airspace, Arizona provides the U.S. Department of Defense with high-quality, cost-effective and weather-friendly training facilities. Accordingly, the military has become one the biggest producers of Arizona jobs."
http://www.gpec.org/

US Navy base in San Diego


Furthermore, according to one expert back in 2009, US Special Forces and DEA agents were operating in Mexico without any oversight whatsoever from the Mexican government. So theoretically they should have been able to get to the bottom of a few things?

High level Mexican military and government sources revealed that U.S. Special Forces and DEA agents are operating in Mexico. They have been allowed into Mexico to seek clandestine terrorist groups believe operating in Mexico. The government of Felipe Calderón authorized some American Special Forces and US anti-narcotics agents to operate in some states without oversight by Mexican authorities. The permission provides that DEA agents will not be required to issue a report to Mexico on their work in the country. Mexican sources said they have no knowledge of which terrorist groups or drug cartels or drug bosses the group will try to meet with because that information “is reserved and the government of the president of the US, Barack Obama, considers it of national security.”
The operation concerns the use of a unilateral strategy in Mexico that the U.S. Military and DEA used in Colombia a decade ago and which has, from the year 2000 to the present, involved the voluntary surrender of at least 50 important drug bosses, financial operators and leaders of militant killer units of criminal organizations that still operate in that country. The criminals who will agreed to cooperate with the Americans and provide information about terrorist groups operating in Mexico and who are using terrorist training bases to train drug cartels gang members on militant radical Islamic gorilla fighting tactics and are required to submit to a plan of collaboration that requires the drug bosses to share information about the activities and whereabouts of the terrorist and their colleagues.

They also are to reveal the location of the principal location of the terrorist and the routes of transport of narcotics, humans and terrorist to the US. The information provided is in exchange for the obligation of authorities to reduce the penalty charges once the subjects are incarcerated in the US.

Regarding the operation in Mexico, one official emphasized, “This is a unilateral effort of the US government; the Mexican government is totally out of it.”

So since sometime back in 2009, the US has been allegedly roping in DOZENS of high level drug bosses, and giving them leniency in exchange for solid information on location and routes (all these black holes), and all this without the oversight of the Mexican government; and STILL the TCOs have BETTER INTELLIGENCE?
 
REALLY?????

Who *are* you? ~ Inigo Montoya

Well, it's like we've been sussing for a while now. It's like when this game keeps getting ratcheted up and nothing ever gets better but it only gets worse, and there's always a damn excuse and it doesn't matter how much you give over to the man because he's never going to do a fucking thing to help you and please God would you just notice already, because these TCOs are in your government, and they are in your banks, and they are in your police stations and your military and your think tanks and your politics and your corporate board rooms and your hospitals and laboratories, and they are in your FBI and your CIA and on your teevee, and they certainly are in all these places in other countries too, and that's why they are so full of shit when they say they need More Money and More Intelligence and More Power. It's them. They are the TRANSNATIONAL CRIMINAL ORGANIZATIONS that they keep telling you they are fighting against. Are we saying that every single person in all these organizations is corrupt? No. But obviously, based on the facts on the ground, they have more than enough people on the payroll because correct us if we're wrong, but what SERIOUS PROBLEM that they've been "working on" has actually gotten better on this planet?

FOR EXAMPLE:


The operation, called “Fast and Furious,” was run out of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) office in Phoenix, Arizona. ATF sanctioned the purchase of weapons in U.S. gun shops and tracked the smuggling route to the Mexican border. Reportedly, more than 2,500 firearms were sold to straw buyers who then handed off the weapons to gunrunners under the nose of ATF.
But once across the border, the agency seemed to lose track of the weapons. Hundreds of AK-47s and Barrett .50 caliber rifles — favorites of warring drug cartels —made it easily into the hands of some of Mexico’s most ruthless crime organizations. 

See: where is the house of cake?

Aside from those 2,500 firearms, the US State Department runs a program called Direct Commercial Sales which regulates private US companies overseas sales of weapons, training, and so forth -- this is entirely separate from government to government sales -- the Pentagon is not involved. Look at the size of these sales -- PRIVATE US Companies weapons and training to Latin America:



Hey it's REGRETTABLE about all that organized crime but some people are making a killing.


Today we learn more about Fast and Furious.


Congressional investigators probing the controversial "Fast and Furious" anti-gun-trafficking operation on the border with Mexico believe at least six Mexican drug cartel figures involved in gun smuggling also were paid FBI informants, officials said Saturday....The FBI and DEA did not tell the ATF about the alleged informants. The ATF and congressional investigators learned later that those agencies apparently were paying cartel members whom the ATF wanted to arrest....The official declined to identify the six, but said the individual cited in the letter to the FBI operated along the Texas border with Mexico. "This guy could die if it got out who he is," the official said. "He'd be killed."

Perhaps along the frontera chica, one of the KNOWN GEOPOLITICAL BLACK HOLES with no government control except for the FBI using your tax dineros to keep cartel people ON THE PAYROLL and not telling your other agency the ATF working to arrest these very same people who are ON THE FBI'S PAYROLL....selling guns provided on purpose by the US STATE DEPARTMENT?

TCOs. Know thy enemy.

^^^^^^^

Further reading:

See: paramilitaries, a scourge on humanity to learn about the Bahia Portete massacre in Colombia, and Colombia's ties to Israel

See: off the hook to learn about Yair Klein, a former IDF colonel who trained paramilitaries in South America and has connections to Charles Taylor

See: and who taught them everything they know to learn about state-sponsored violence in Guatemala and Jose Efraín Rios-Montt, a graduate of the US School of the Americas, same place the Zetas allegedly trained before they went "rogue" just like David Coleman Headley and Raymond Davis went "rogue"

See: exploring the Chaco to learn how government trained and sponsored thugs and drug traffickers get away with murder which is then blamed on indigenous farmers and peasants trying to organize to protect their rights from rapacious land grabbing multinational interests

Good day.

11 comments:

INCOMING!!!!!!! said...

Love that swastika AP, did you do that intentionally?

This whole thing strikes me as familiar. The region from Riga to Brest-Litovsk circa 1920-25. Porous borders, private armies and behind it all the operators in clear sight.

I've warned, and I know you have too, that Paul is a Hapsburg agent of the reconquista and would love nothing more than to snatch Tejas back for the Roth. His obsession with gold and Fort Knox also lends grist to the mill.

Nice work, thoroughly informative.

A13 said...

Hiya Pez, excellent post..
TCO = total control organisations.
Transnational criminal organisations = ALL GOVERNMENTS.
I like the way those creeps from "southern pulse" ahem...
have a "network"..ie spiders web OF "investigators across the Americas, as well as China, Russia, Turkey, and Iran, all collecting and sharing information on security, politics, energy, and business in Latin America for Southern Pulse clients, members, subscribers, and visitors"

I mean really guys...
highly sensitive and semi hostile countries? what a fucking joke.
I'd say all governments have a little peice of this going on internally..they all are transnational criminal organisation NETWORKS...and i would say that our country is a party to this as well (Oz)
Thanks again for a veery informative post and all this info to digest.
Cheers and many regards A13

A. Peasant said...

hey incoming! good to see you. no the swastika is actually really the shape of the building since the 1960s, but evidently through google images people realized the building was a swastika and then the Navy had to pony up $600k for landscaping.

"The Navy plans to spend $600,000 for “camouflage” landscaping and rooftop adjustments so that 1960s-era barracks at the Naval Base Coronado near San Diego will no longer look like a Nazi swastika from the air.

The resemblance went unnoticed by the public for decades until it was spotted in aerial views on Google Earth.

But Navy officials said they became aware of it shortly after the 1967 groundbreaking, and had decided not to do anything."

hahaha, such cards. they became aware of it AFTER IT WAS BUILT! sure thing. no one ever looks at architectural plans before erecting a building.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/us/27swastika.html

i agree on ron paul.

A. Peasant said...

hola A13, well you know if it looks like a spook and it walks like a spook and it quacks like a spook, it's probably a spook. that's what we always say....

Odin's Raven said...

The late Romans supposedly had a problem with corrupt governors and military officers assisting barbarian raiders and sharing their loot. This is the American version.

james said...

AP, great post! It couldn't be clearer. Thank you.
Pleased to see Inago Montoya got a mention. It like Dave said recently quoting Butch Cassidy, "Who are those guys?"

"Know thy enemy", indeed

Odin's Raven - this is a little different to the Roman scenario you describe.This would be like the Romans assisting the barbarians in destroying the barbarians own country and then marching in to 'save' the barbarian population from the mayhem the Romans have themselves sponsored.

You describe the Romans losing territory from the actions/corruption of their middle ranks.

The Americans, on the other hand, are extending their territory through the actions/corruption of their ultimate leaders

james said...

I should have added that the essential point that AP is making is that these TCO's are not criminal and rebel organisations in the ordinary sense. And in the sense that they are being portrayed as in the media. They are not in opposition to the rulers of America and, in this case, the rulers in Mexico.

They are, in fact, working for them.

That is the critical difference. And it is critical to understand this if ever this murder and mayhem is to be stopped.

AP has done a great job in demonstrating how this is, in fact, government run and orchestrated.

A. Peasant said...

hi odin and james,

i think it is nuanced in that there really is just ONE team at the top, the people who run the TCOs. many of those people are embedded in the apparatus of society. some *appear* to be on the other side, but it's ORGANIZED and hierarchical, so there is really only one side because power flows upward.

however not everyone on the team knows it's one team of course. some people have to believe it's two teams, as many people as possible in fact. and the audience (that would be us) is also supposed to believe in two teams.

note the structure of "russian" mafia:

FAS: Russian Organized Crime
"Each boss, called a "pakhan," controls four criminal cells through an intermediary called a "brigadier." The boss employs two spies that watch over the action of the brigadier to ensure loyalty and that he does not get too powerful. At the bottom of the structure are criminal cells specializing in various types of criminal activity or functions such as drugs, prostitution, political contacts, and "enforcers." A similar structure places an elite leadership on top which is buffered by support and security personnel from the street operators who are commifting the crimes.

http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/rusorg3.htm

from this post:

http://twelfthbough.blogspot.com/2010/12/dream-is-nightmare-and-its-time-to-wake.html

A. Peasant said...

oops some of that quote got cut off, the most important part, so here it is again:

"Each boss, called a "pakhan," controls four criminal cells through an intermediary called a "brigadier." The boss employs two spies that watch over the action of the brigadier to ensure loyalty and that he does not get too powerful. At the bottom of the structure are criminal cells specializing in various types of criminal activity or functions such as drugs, prostitution, political contacts, and "enforcers." A similar structure places an elite leadership on top which is buffered by support and security personnel from the street operators who are commifting the crimes. Street operators are not privy to the identity of their leadership. Strategy and planning is done only at the top echelon in order to minimize the risk of detection."

street operators are not privy to the identity of their leadership. they don't know who they work for.

Edo said...

I love reading your blog AP.
Excellent article.
Edo

A. Peasant said...

thanks Edo. that is good to hear after a long and truly not a spectacularly fun day at work... meh.

cheers to you my friend!

legal mumbo jumbo

Disclaimer: The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.

Fair Use: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.