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People are uncomfortable with the term "cartel" for these large crime organizations because it doesn't "Other" these orgs sufficiently far away from evoking capitalism; even tho' they are the ultimate form of unregulated, "might makes right" capitalism in the modern world.

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That is a great point I hadn't thought of. I definitely think this is gangster capitalism. I also think some people are more comfortable seeing working class Mexicans as victims rather than people that can create powerful and ruthless organizations that cartel evokes. Best Shaggy.

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Maybe they should just be called NGOs.

Just contractors.

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Yeah, GNGOs (G for gangster) - kind of subcontractors from parts of the government but also in conflict with parts of it. Ben points out that as they grew in the 90s, it was kind of a priviaization process. Best David.

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Great article as usual

Thx

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Thanks much there. Always good to hear your voice here.

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Thanks Ioan. If your readers would like to follow-up on your excellent overview, they might consider reading chapter 7 of my book Drug Wars and Covert Netherworlds. I can send an excerpt of that chapter to anyone who sends me an email request at creechan@gmail.com. I also posted the first few pages of that chapter to https://open.substack.com/pub/jimcreechan/p/cartels-meaning-and-usage-in-the?r=dwn67&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

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Thanks much there Jim. I will check out those pages, and I'd love see a copy of the chapter as well in ioangrillo@hotmail.com.

Yeah, it's a fascinating, terrifying if sometimes nuanced and complicated issue.

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I might be wrong but from Sicilia and kiriakydes from caro to Chapitos or arellanos most cartel where made by coopted commanders of the 70's in CA And B C where the biggest market really started organized as inside the political loop of goverment connections in the CIA or D F S they where the biggest liaers and decievers of the people tdy most relatives of this so called cartel members and allies by politics live driving GT-4 Porches and laudering billions in CA real state they are mostly tdy us citizens and very succesfull buisnesmen recognized by the best universities even so I doubt this criminals are getting what they deserved they are much more powerfull than governments tdy

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Thanks for the insight Jorge. Yeah, Sicilia definitely had some weird connections and was caught with a former Bay of Pigs guy. The CIA-DFS-Mafia-Guadalajara dealings of the 70s and 80s were sordid and more still needs be uncovered. Best friend.

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Apr 8Liked by Ioan Grillo

Mr loan Grillo , Im really intrigued by the stories you write . But there's a lot of other cartels out there , that journalists and people rarely know much about or rarely speak of. Most people know of El Chapo Guzman , El Mayo , El mencho Los Chapitos , el Guano ect . But after this year's presidential elections in Mexico your going see a huge power move by a cartel from northern Sinaloa , these individuals from that said group are extremely rich & powerful , but more importantly they have the Mexican government in there pocket . But like I said no one really knows much about them .except that there very discreet , extremely violent & well connected with everyone & everywhere . This cartel is ran by El chapo Isidro , he started as a sicario under The Amado Carrillo-fuentes DTO then the Beltran-Leyva DTO , he learned from the best .No wonder he's a smart business man , leader & mediator . I Would like to have a conversation sometime .

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This sounds very interesting and I would be happy to talk. Send me a message at ioangrillo@hotmail.com and we can arrange something if you like. Best Leobardo.

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Feb 5Liked by Ioan Grillo

Ioan. Thank you. You mentioned a couple of times the complex nature of Mexican law enforcement's relationship with the criminal organizations. They work with the criminal element and yet fight them. Have you researched or written on this relationship in more detail elsewhere?

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I get into somewhat in this pieces here, but I could perhaps do a separate story on just this topic. Best there.

https://www.crashoutmedia.com/p/so-is-mexico-a-narco-state

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That would be excellent. Thank you for the link.

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Oct 29, 2023Liked by Ioan Grillo

Hi Ioan, great article! Do we know what happened to Alberto Sicilia Falcon after his release from prison? Is he still alive?

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Thnaks much and best there. Yes, Alberto Sicilia Falcon is a fascinating character but I think he died in Mexican prison in the 1980s. (I need to double check that.) All best Anthony

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Oct 30, 2023Liked by Ioan Grillo

I think he was released from prison around 1998 or 1999 and died in 2011 I think.

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I think you could be right there Tom. This story has him being released in 1999 - and some messages say he died of a stroke in 2011. I didn't realize he lived so long!

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Oct 26, 2023Liked by Ioan Grillo

You always have an excellency of content. Not sure if you’re on FB, my friend and I run a Border page called Broken Border-The Truth about Living on the Tx. Border

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Thanks there Trinda, I will def check that out.

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Oct 26, 2023Liked by Ioan Grillo

Very informative and excellent read!

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Thanks much for reading Trinda and good to have your voice here. All best there.

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The constant word games over the term cartel the past years has become so minute and convoluted especially in academic circles that it makes one wonder why they are trying to obscure the obvious problems and solutions and ignore the biggest contributor to lasting criminal organizations, state or private, the contributor that every criminal enterprise, cartel, narco state, etc., needs and that is the banking cartel of federal and world banks which every drug dealing cartel and corrupt narco state could not do without.

From the Bank of International Settlements, established to assist the German economy after World War 1 including Nazi Germany, to the banks the BIS directs, they are all truly the financiers of criminal enterprise. The financial manipulations especially money laundering have been devised by these financial criminals and provided cartels with wealth unimaginable without this financial assistance. Dig deep and you will find the fingerprints of the Bank of England, Chase, Swiss banks, Chinese banks and a huge number of regional banks in major drug dealing countries. Governments and intelligence agencies need these financial institutions to hide and invest their illegal gains from weapons sales and drug dealing to establish financial funds away from public examination. Just examine the weapons Hamas had in stockpiles, US and NATO weapons sent to Ukraine. Banks had direct investment in the international development of pharmaceutical companies for the continued international exploitation of the opium poppy resulting in the pharmaceutical companies being the most prolific drug dealer and creating more deaths with pharmaceutical opioids whose recipes and formulas seems to reach every street drug dealing organization in the world.

In Mexico, the Los Zetas would be a good example of a cartel who realized the benefits from learning and using the most sophisticated financial tools including computers to expand their profit dealings. Their hands were on the most extensive computer and financial crimes in Las Vegas, Nevada and Southern California. The Los Zetas were more then a group of extremely violent ex-military soldiers but also new warriors in so-called white collar crime.

Never be consumed by the origin of a word. Always look at the actions and especially track the money of these criminal organizations and you will always arrive at the real cartel that actually can control prices and quantity of whatever poison that can kill very large numbers of people everywhere in the world.

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The NSA can capture every bit of data in the world, the CIA can overthrow a government in a week, but the U.S. government doesn't stop this. The only explanation is that the U.S. government created the criminal cartels, and it's easy to see why.

The secret space program cost about $1 trillion annually, according to James Rink. Of course, Donald Trump has put a halt to all of it, which is why he and AMLO get along so well, and why AMLO suddenly has billions to spend on Tren Maya and the associated economic projects.

https://dianabarahona.substack.com/p/history-of-the-secret-space-program

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More on the CIA to come. I think a lot of what has happened is by ineptness rather than design by, although with a lot of lies and corruption thrown in...

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Jan 2Liked by Ioan Grillo

Much written about the IC seems to be based on lore, Soviet Agitprop, and a case of many Americans and the world seeing an easy to identify bogeyman to poor domestic politics in a given developing country.

I encourage Ioan and other legitimate researchers, journalists, and academics to take deeper looks into the IC. Almost all of them are honest, smart, and patriotic Americans asked to carry out very difficult policies to avoid actual full blown war. Also, the vast majority of IC action is collection and analysis. To give the Agency and others so much credit for all machinations in the developing world is incredulous. A dozen GS-11-14s making $100k less a year stationed abroad are not able nor have accomplished nearly as much as folks have attributed to them. Also to me the “agency causes all the problems” narrative takes away from actual native and local agency to pave their own paths both right and wrong.

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Thanks for that insight Tomes and great to hear your voice here in the convo. All best.

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Oct 29, 2023Liked by Ioan Grillo

The way that the ineptness is reported and written about the CIA, I think is a smokescreen to cover up the real damage that the CIA has done. For example, everyone reports on the attempted assassinations of Fidel Castro with exploding cigars that did not work but ignores the real assassinations of government leaders and opposition leaders in countries worldwide. Phoenix program in Vietnam was basically an assassination program resulting in over 80,000 lives. CIA trained and assisted with CIA personnel death squads in Colombia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador resulting in more then 300,000 lives and of course the assassinations of President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

It is very interesting to read the accounts of the so-called ineptness of the CIA and then try to track the background of the author and then the proof for the ineptness of the CIA which usually backtracks to the CIA itself. I am strongly thinking that the real CIA was never an intelligence gathering agency but more like a highly equipped, with the latest tools and weaponry, government and corporate sanctioned Sicario agency.

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Thanks there Tom and good point. There are clever games in hiding their true nature - and there are certainly a lot of bodies there. Best.

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The CIA was created by Reinhard Gehlen, Allen Dulles, Bill Donovan, Otto Skorzeny and Prescott Bush. All of these men were Nazis. Why would you assume anything but evil coming from an organization created by Nazis?

https://inscribedonthebelievingmind.blog/2022/08/30/omega-project/

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LOL.

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So this is your attempt at communication, three strokes on the keyboard just to show your arrogant and dismissive attitude. Substack is a platform designed to embrace critical thinking and a constructive debate about important subjects. Your smart ass attempt of superiority belongs on twitter/X or Facebook/meta.

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And you think calling all those gentlemen Nazis and the CIA a Nazi organization is critical thinking and constructive debate? Her previous remark was just as preposterous. Mockery was well-deserved. Go gatekeep somewhere else, or at the very least move along.

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Thanks for your insight as always Tom. Great points. I totally agree that de-constructing cartel to the point of saying there is no powerful organized crime in Mexico is distracting from reality and that was a big reason I wrote the story. I think it is a good to understand the history of the concept to understand what the hell these forces are. That is fascinating about the financial crime and most definitely something that needs to be pursued. All best there friend.

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The murder of Mormon women and children looks like a Luciferian sacrifice. The Mormon Church itself is Luciferian, and a former co-worker of mine, Steve Ross, was ritually sacrificed by Mormons at the age of around 43.

https://inscribedonthebelievingmind.blog/2022/10/30/kristy-knight-the-mormon-church-and-project-monarch/

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I'm going to read this more carefully, but what caught my eye about the Cartel del Golfo were the symbols and slogans they displayed, which are the same death-cult type as the secret societies of the Luciferian Brotherhood. The cartels were clearly created by the CIA -- the Luciferians' assassins -- as were the Central American death squads and MS-13 (I knew someone who could have been a founding member of MS-13, and he was an MK-Ultra mind-controlled CIA asset)

"Valor" "Strength and immortality" "Transformation" -- transhumanism

"Respect" "Loyalty" "Discipline" -- fascist ethos

and the image of a phoenix (the highest seat on the Satanic Council), a scorpion, and an eagle clutching a snake

https://twitter.com/OfficialBalam/status/1451969637206351872

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Hi Diana, that is very interesting. I hadn't noticed that symbolism but I do know there were narcos in Tamaulipas where the Gulf Cartel into some Satanic stuff. I'll have to look further into that. Best there.

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Jessie Czebotar is the ultimate insider on the Luciferian Brotherhood, as she was chosen from birth to succeed the crone, who is the leader of the five queen mothers of darkness. She explains all of their symbols on Aquarius Rising Africa on YouTube. https://inscribedonthebelievingmind.blog/2022/09/06/jessie-czebotar/

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Okay, I'll check that out. Although I must admit, even though I cover gangsters I find Satanic stuff can be a bit scary!

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Wait until you read my post tomorrow on human trafficking! NASA calls the vaccinated homoborgenesis because they were planning on selling people off-world as cyborg slaves. The Cabal's space fleet, Solar Warden, has already been doing this for decades.

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