Mexico Cartels Use Video Games to Recruit Children

Posted on October 18, 2021October 18, 2021 by Denise Simon

Beyond the constant threat of Tik Tok, Facebook and Instagram there are at least 2 video games, World of Warcraft and Second Life. Parents, are you managing this or paying attention…globally?

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm | RPG Site . Second Life Review | Game Rankings & Reviews

Beyond parents…what about State Attorneys General or the Department of Justice? crickets….

In full:

Mexican criminal groups have hit on a new way to recruit vulnerable young people into their ranks: reaching out to them while they play video games.

On October 11, authorities in the southern state of Oaxaca announced they had rescued three children, between the ages of 11 and 14, who had reportedly been convinced to run away from home by a human trafficking ring after being contacted through a video game named Free Fire.

The three were found at a home in the town of Santa Lucia de Camino, where they were being held and were set to be sent to Monterrey in the northern state of Nuevo León. They had left their homes a couple of days earlier after receiving messages from a trafficker, posing as a 13-year-old boy in the game.

Earlier in October, a young girl was also rescued after having been lured by a human trafficking group in the western state of Jalisco.

This was far from the most sophisticated such scheme to be discovered in Mexico this year. In September, Mexican investigative journalist Óscar Balderas revealed how one of the country’s foremost criminal actors is trying to recruit children through the most popular video games in the world.

On September 18, a teenage boy playing Grand Theft Auto V online at 3 a.m. received a message from a gamer purporting to be a young man, wearing a bulletproof vest and a military-style helmet in his profile picture. The boy was invited to an in-game event named “RECLUTAMIENTO ABIERTO CDN-ZETAZ VIEJA ESCUELA-35 BATALLON.” The Northeast Cartel (Cartel del Noreste – CDN) and the Old School Zetas (Zetas Vieja Escuela) are both splinter groups of the Zetas, which have been involved in some of Mexico’s worst violence in recent years.

SEE ALSO: Colombia’s Ongoing Child Recruitment Crisis

This fits a pattern reported by numerous young gamers in Mexico in recent months. According to Balderas, messages are sent in the early hours of the morning, when parents are unlikely to be supervising their children’s online activity, openly inviting young gamers to join criminal groups and selling this as a glamorous lifestyle. Some messages alleged that they were being sent by the Sinaloa Cartel or the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG).

In an interview with InSight Crime, Balderas stated that after contacting young people online, the representatives of criminal groups invite them to in-person meetings where they are abducted and forced to join.

And it seems this tactic is more widespread. Since this story broke in September, around ten families have come forward to tell the journalist about similar experiences with online recruitment.

Criminal groups in Mexico routinely abuse numerous children and teenagers and force them to serve in a range of roles, including as hitmen, drug runners or to work in drug manufacturing facilities.

InSight Crime Analysis

Reaching out to impressionable teenagers through video games is fitting for the times.

“It could seem like a pretty inefficient way of getting one or two more sicarios (hitmen) but it’s a silent way of recruiting. If they go ahead and kidnap kids or teenagers in person, this will draw attention. But this is a way of inviting teenagers of their own free will, of getting their loyalty,” Balderas explained to InSight Crime.

It’s also a very low-risk way of proceeding. It appears the recruiters create profiles located in Mexican cities and then send out invitations to all players currently online in a certain radius. The vast majority will probably ignore such messages as spam but a few curious players will accept and get in touch.

Those contacted in this way state that the recruiters appeal to their sense of adventure, promising them excitement, action, money and possessions.

SEE ALSO: Going Door to Door: Mexico City’s Response To Child Recruitment

Islamic terror groups have used this technique for years, with leaks from former National Security Agency (NSA) operative in 2013 revealing how extremists had turned to video games such as World of Warcraft and Second Life.

And the COVID-19 pandemic has only made this strategy more attractive. With schools closed, children have been forced to study online but access to learning platforms and monitoring of their activities by parents and teachers has ranged widely.

Also in September, a Wall Street Journal investigation unveiled how Facebook leadership knew the CJNG was recruiting “aspiring cartel hitmen” via the social network. Despite warnings from a specialized team, pages advertising the CJNG on Facebook and Instagram remained up for up to five months. When they were taken down, new ones soon popped up.

It hasn’t helped. A search on Instagram, the day before this article was published, immediately turned up multiple accounts showing young children carrying weapons, wearing military-style gear or singing the praises of criminal groups in Mexico.

Deputy CIA Director Says Here Comes al Qaeda Again

Posted on September 15, 2021September 15, 2021 by Denise Simon

Leaving Afghanistan and abandoning Bagram Air Base immediately created a terror state. Did anyone contemplate that?

Meanwhile, the Taliban has named Mohammad Hassan Akhund, a longtime ally of Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar, to serve as the country’s acting prime minister. Akhund, who was the Taliban’s foreign minister before the U.S. invasion in 2001, told the United Nations in 1999 that “we will never give up Osama [bin Laden] at any price.”Hibatullah Akhundzada, considered the “emir” of Afghanistan by the Taliban, is a strong al Qaeda ally and proud father of a suicide bomber known as the “commander of the faithful.” Current al Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri reportedly swore allegiance to him as the “emir of the believers” in 2016.

Al Qaeda could reconstitute in Afghanistan and regain the capability to threaten the U.S. in “one to two” years, intelligence chiefs said Tuesday, revising downward estimates that were previously issued by the Pentagon.

source

“The current assessment, probably conservatively, is one to two years for al Qaeda to build some capability to at least threaten the homeland,” said Lieutenant General Scott Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), at an annual summit hosted by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, with panels moderated by CBS News.

“That said, DIA is not going to take…their eye off the ball of terrorism,” Berrier said.

CIA deputy director David Cohen said at the same event that the agency was keeping “a very keen watch” on the terror network’s activities in Afghanistan, adding there is evidence its militants are returning to the country.

“[W]e are already beginning to see some of the indications of some potential movement of al Qaeda to Afghanistan,” Cohen said, “but it’s early days, and we will obviously keep a very close eye on that.”

The Taliban, who seized control of Afghanistan in a stunningly rapid takeover last month, are known to have maintained close ties with al Qaeda and are suspected by analysts of harboring senior operatives.

Both U.S. officials said Tuesday that intelligence agencies were working on ways to continue intelligence collection without a troop presence or embassy in the country, acknowledging current capabilities had been meaningfully reduced by the U.S. withdrawal. Lawmakers, counterterrorism experts and former intelligence officials have expressed concern over how reliable so-called over-the-horizon capabilities can be without networks of informants to guide them.

“We’re thinking about ways how to gain access back into Afghanistan with all kinds of sources,” Berrier said. “We are prioritizing that effort.”

Cohen said the agency would seek to maintain a network of intelligence assets within Afghanistan, but that operating from a distance and absent a physical presence was not a “new” challenge for the intelligence community.

“As we work from over the horizon principally…we will also look for ways to work from within the horizon, to the extent that is possible,” Cohen said. “But we will approach this in the way that we have approached the counterterrorism mission in many places around the world for a number of years, and I think, as a community, we continue to get better and better at doing that.”

Speaking at the summit on Monday, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said Afghanistan did not currently top the list of international terror threats, saying the “greatest threat” came from militant groups operating in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq and Syria.

President Ghani was Right that Pakistan Fully Defends the Taliban

Posted on September 7, 2021September 7, 2021 by Denise Simon

In part about the leaked phone call between President Biden and President Ashraf Ghani:

The White House refused to draw further attention to reports President Joe Biden and ousted Afghan President Ashraf Ghani were unprepared for Afghanistan’s quick collapse and that Biden had encouraged his counterpart in Kabul, Afghanistan, to fix his “perception” problem by selling a military strategy with local political heavyweights.

Biden also challenged Ghani to “project a different picture” than that of a failing war effort against the Taliban, “whether it is true or not.”During the call, Ghani suggested Biden to put sanctions on Pakistan, since it has been providing logistic support for the cause. However, Pakistan denies all the allegations against the country and said these all were excuses by Ashraf Ghani to justify his failures.

With Panjshir continuing to be a thorn in the Taliban’s side, the Pakistani military is reportedly helping the extremist group fight the Resistance. Pakistani Air Force reportedly used drones to drop bombs on Panjshir while the country also sent special forces to assist the Taliban in capturing the defiant province. This coincided with Pakistani spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Lt Gen Faiz Hameed arriving in Kabul amid infighting in the Taliban ranks over the issue of government formation.

source

You have to ask how come the United States relies so heavily on Qatar when actually the pressure should be on Pakistan. Why protect Pakistan? Just because it has nuclear weapons? Hardly a threat at this point, but read on.

“Afghanistan is presently witnessing a virtually smooth shifting of power from the corrupt Ghani government to the Taliban,” tweeted Raoof Hasan, a special assistant to Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, mocking the assessments of Western experts on South Asia. He added that “the contraption that the US had pieced together for Afghanistan has crumbled like the proverbial house of cards.” Taliban delegation arrives in Pakistan to discuss Afghan ... Taliban arrives in Pakistan to discuss more cooperation and the way forwarad.

Khan himself made a curious remark at an event Monday in Islamabad. Commenting on the cultural dangers inherent in English-language education for Pakistani society — and the “mental slavery” it supposedly imposes — he seemed to point to the fundamentalist Taliban as an exemplar of a kind of empowering authenticity. Afghans, Khan said, “had broken the shackles of slavery.”

For now, Khan’s government has refrained from recognizing the new Taliban overlords as the legitimate government in Kabul. The prime minister, who has been a vocal opponent of the American “war on terror” in the region and blames it for stoking a parallel Pakistani Taliban insurgency, stressed the “importance of all sides working to secure an inclusive political solution,” according to local news reports Tuesday. He and his allies cast Pakistan as a victim of cycles of regional unrest and conflict, exacerbated by the interventions of foreign powers like the United States. “We under no circumstances are prepared to see protracted instability that in the past has caused spillover into Pakistan,” national security adviser Moeed Yusuf said in an interview this month. “Pakistan has suffered all of these 40 years.”

Such rhetoric would probably stick in the craw of the Afghan leaders of the defeated Western-backed government. For years, they bemoaned the support afforded to the Afghan Taliban by Pakistan, particularly by the country’s military establishment and its affiliated intelligence apparatus, known as the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. In January 2020, during a World Economic Forum roundtable with journalists, including Today’s WorldView, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani scoffed at Pakistani claims that the Afghan Taliban was no longer operating from safe havens in Pakistan. “One can also say that the Earth does not revolve around the sun,” he said.

The Taliban’s long-running insurgency and its rapid takeover of Afghanistan are inextricably linked to Pakistan. For the better part of half a century, Pakistan cultivated militant elements in Afghanistan as part of its own regional pursuit of “strategic depth.” The factions that coalesced into the Taliban maintained extensive logistical and tactical ties with Pakistani agencies, while many of their fighters came from a world of ethnic and tribal affiliations that spanned both sides of the rugged border. These same networks probably enabled al-Qaeda terrorist founder Osama bin Laden to find sanctuary in a leafy compound not far from Pakistan’s leading military academy until U.S. Navy Seals killed him in a raid a decade ago.

For its allies in the Pakistani establishment, the Taliban’s appeal was both political and tactical, even as Pakistan served as a major U.S. ally during and after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. “Some sympathized with the Islamists’ extreme ideology, while others deemed it an indispensable asset to counter India,” noted the Financial Times. “Taliban leaders have lived and done business in Pakistan, and wounded fighters have been treated in its hospitals. The Haqqani Network, an affiliate of the Taliban, has a ‘close relationship’ with the ISI, according to a recent report from the US Institute of Peace.” More here.

More Terrifying Details on the Bagram Prison Release

Posted on August 27, 2021August 27, 2021 by Denise Simon

Fox News’ Pentagon reporter Jennifer Griffin asked the Department of Defense press director Admiral Kirby how many prisoners were at the prisons at Bagram. Kirby’s answer was merely thousands, and nothing more specific. To be candid, the military knows precisely how many were there and their full militant criminal backgrounds. This all was until Bagram was turned over to the Afghan forces and subsequently to the Taliban which released all prisoners. In January 2002, the U.S. government began detention operations in Afghanistan at Bagram Air Field in Parwan province. For many years, detainees were held at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility, a converted Soviet aircraft machine plant.

So, what about more details? Well, that prison system was known as Gitmo Part 2 and what pressured to be closed for years. After some open source investigations, there are some interesting details as follows:

In 2014, the BBC was finally granted access to a Bagram prison. The Afghan Review Board (ARB), is/was the committee responsible for the prisoner issue, had announced that it would be releasing some of the inmates.

The ARB said these men could not be prosecuted because of a lack of evidence.

The Nato-led international peacekeeping force (Isaf) quickly came out and slammed the decision, saying the detainees were dangerous terrorists and had “blood on their hands”.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai told me Bagram is a “Taliban-making factory” where innocent people are indiscriminately mixing with extremists and being indoctrinated.

Now that some of these prisoners have been released – some of them to the most troubled regions where the Taliban hold sway – the question is, will American fears be realised?
Before the prison break, Bagram Air Base, including its prison, which holds 5,000 inmates, surrendered to Taliban control, the Associated Press reported.
Bagram district chief Darwaish Raufi said the former U.S. base that held both Taliban and Islamic State group fighters was taken over on Sunday. Other Taliban gains include Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul after the government collapsed.
The other large prison was located in Kabul and those prisoners have been released as well. Thousands of inmates, including former Islamic State and al-Qaeda fighters, were released from a prison on the outskirts of Kabul — Pul-e-Charkhi — as well as another facility at Bagram airbase as the Taliban called for a “peaceful transition” of power. source
Many liberal groups packaged as human rights organizations have long mobilized to close not only Guantanamo but all the prisons in Afghanistan. Now, they seem to have fallen silent given the present conditions in Afghanistan. However, the most disgusting organization advocating for closures of terror prisons which I found somewhat unexpectedly was old man George Soros and his Open Society. Yup….that guy.

Could this be the very reason that the prisons were handed over to the Taliban….George Soros? Could it be that Open Society operatives are driving part of the Biden White House decisions on Afghanistan?

Open Society in 2012 issued a white paper titled ‘Remaking Bagram‘. Could it be that Soros et.al waited for Biden to reintroduce that objective and is now successful?

In part for the opening summary of the white paper is:

The United States has been using internment in Afghanistan for many years, where detainees are “preventatively detained” for “imperative security reasons,” rather than accused of a crime and tried in a court. In order to facilitate the transfer of the detainees interned by the U.S. military, the Afghan government created its own internment regime, closely resembling the U.S. system. Though the Afghan government has chosen to transfer many of the detainees to a criminal court, more than 50 are now being held by the
Afghan government without charge or trial through this new internment power. Senior Afghan officials have told the Open Society Foundations that they believe the new system is unconstitutional.

Though numerous Afghan officials have told Open Society Foundations researchers that they believe Afghan internment will come to an end in September 2012, when they assume the detention transition will be complete, U.S. statements and actions suggest otherwise. U.S. forces have continued to capture individuals in military operations and detain them on the “U.S. side” or part of the DFIP since the transition process began in March 2012.

Read the full document here.

As the top government leader Ashraf Ghani bailed out with millions and millions of dollars from his job and duties in Afghanistan, Hamid Karzi has chosen to stay. One little detail is Karzai has been collaborating with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar who is the co-founder of the Taliban for quite sometime. It was Karzai that demanded Baradar’s release from prison because once upon a time Baradar saved Karzai’s life. Baradar was released under the Taliban’s demand that started the peace talks between the United States (NATO) and the Taliban. It was Baradar that took a meeting(s) with CIA director William Burns and it is Baradar that continues to collaborate operations in Afghanistan which is why the CENTCOM leader, General McKenzie. Baradar is a busy man as weeks before, he met with Chinese leaders.

China’s foreign minister has met a Taliban delegation, signalling warming ties as the United States-led foreign forces continue their withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Wang Yi on Wednesday told the nine visiting Taliban representatives, which included the group’s co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, that Beijing expected it to “play an important role in the process of peaceful reconciliation and reconstruction in Afghanistan”, according to a readout of the meeting from the foreign ministry. source

During a meeting with Taliban’s co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who heads the group’s political committee, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi described the Taliban as an important military and political force in Afghanistan, and said he expected the Taliban to play an important role in the country’s “peace, reconciliation and reconstruction process,” according to China’s Foreign Ministry. source

The doubling of enemies against the West including the United States is manifesting.

Biden Ends Combat Operations in Iraq, Except we Already Did

Posted on July 26, 2021July 26, 2021 by Denise Simon

In part from Reuters:

(Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden and Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi on Monday sealed an agreement formally ending the U.S. combat mission in Iraq by the end of 2021, more than 18 years after U.S. troops were sent to the country.

Coupled with Biden’s withdrawal of the last American forces in Afghanistan by the end of August, the Democratic president is completing U.S. combat missions in the two wars that then-President George W. Bush began under his watch.

Biden and Kadhimi met in the Oval Office for their first face-to-face talks as part of a strategic dialogue between the United States and Iraq.

“Our role in Iraq will be … to be available, to continue to train, to assist, to help and to deal with ISIS as it arises, but we’re not going to be, by the end of the year, in a combat mission,” Biden told reporters as he and Kadhimi met.

There are currently 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq focusing on countering the remnants of Islamic State. The U.S. role in Iraq will shift entirely to training and advising the Iraqi military to defend itself.

The shift is not expected to have a major impact since the United States has already moved toward focusing on training Iraqi forces.

President Joe Biden, right, speaks as Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, left, listens during their meeting in the Oval…

President Joe Biden, right, speaks as Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi listens during their meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, July 26, 2021. source

The real truth?

The Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi on Monday in his first meeting with the weakened leader, whose loyalties are precariously split between the US ally and pro-Iran factions at home.

At the heart of the meeting will be the presence of US troops in Iraq and more broadly, whether Baghdad has what it takes to stand up to residual Islamic State jihadist group cells within the country’s borders.

Just last week, the IS group claimed a deadly suicide bombing at a Baghdad market that killed 30 people, according to the official toll.

All the while, US forces in Iraq have been subject to repeat attacks by pro-Iran militias, who in turn have suffered military reprisals launched by Washington.

Some 2,500 US troops still remain in Iraq as part of an anti-IS coalition — a number on top of which there are likely additional special forces, whose numbers are not publicly known.

Kadhemi, whose country has been ravaged by a trifecta of violence, poverty and corruption, would like the United States to commit, at least formally, to a reassessment of its presence in his country.

With three months to go before legislative elections, the head of the Iraqi government is hoping to regain a bit of ground with his country’s powerful pro-Iran factions, which are overtly hostile to the US presence.

Technically, there are no actual combat troops on the ground in Iraq, where the US military has officially only deployed advisors or trainers.

Iraq is an important strategic link for the United States, which leads the international coalition fighting the IS group next-door in Syria.

Abandoning Iraq to Iranian influence is out of the question for the United States, with Washington and Tehran mired in renewed tensions — even if Biden has signaled his readiness to return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

In the context of this tug-of-war “it doesn’t seem likely that the number of US troops in Iraq will be reduced dramatically,” said Hamdi Malik of the Washington Institute think tank.

Ramzy Mardini, an Iraq specialist at the University of Chicago’s Pearson Institute, believes the Biden-Kadhemi meeting may cosmetically be “shaped” to help the Iraqi premier alleviate domestic pressures, “but the reality on the ground will reflect the status quo and an enduring US presence.”

What regional specialists fear most, however, is a continuation or even intensification of the attacks perpetrated by the pro-Iran factions.

Again on Friday, a drone attack was carried out on a military base in Iraqi Kurdistan that hosts American troops, but did not cause any casualties.

The Iraqi Resistance Coordination Committee, a group of militia factions, on Friday threatened to continue the attacks unless the United States withdraws all its forces and ends the “occupation.”