Anti-Social Club Episode of Borderline Psychosis- 53 Killed After Gunmen Torch Monterrey Casino; NM Police Chief Admits Cartel Ties; Iraqi Connection?

UPDATE 8/31: Acting ATF director Kenneth Melson was reassigned to a lesser post in the Justice Department on Tuesday in the wake of further fallout from the Fast & Furious investigation. US Attorney for Minnesota B. Todd Jones was named as acting director after Melson's departure- a permanent head for the ATF would need to be confirmed by the US Senate.



Also on Tuesday, the US Attorney for Arizona resigned effective immediately. US Attorney Dennis Burke stepped down two weeks after testifying before a House Oversight Committee regarding Fast & Furious, which Burke was in charge of as the state's US Attorney.





NUEVO LEON: At least 53 people were killed when eight gunmen burst into a casino in the northern industrial center of Monterrey, doused the place with gasoline and ignited a fire that trapped dozens of patrons and gamblers.

With shouts and profanities, the attackers told the customers and employees to get out. But many terrified customers and employees fled further inside the building, where they died trapped amid the flames and thick smoke that soon billowed out of the building.



Video footage showed workers continuing to remove bodies well into the night.



Monterrey Mayor Fernando Larrazabal said many of the bodies were found inside the casino's bathrooms, where employees and customers had locked themselves to escape the gunmen.



In an act of desperation, authorities commandeered backhoes from a nearby construction site to break into the casino's walls to try to reach the people trapped inside.

The attack took place on August 25th. The following day, Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared three days of mourning and the Mexican government offered a reward of 30 million pesos ($2.4 million) for information leading to any of the assailants in the Casino Royale attack.



On Monday night, Federal Police in Monterrey announced that they had arrested five suspects and were still seeking the whereabouts of two more. Authorities believe a likely motive in the casino attack is nonpayment of extortion money and the five detained suspects are said to be members of the Zetas. Surveillance footage of the suspects filling up five gallon canisters of gasoline at a gas station not too far from the Casino Royale was shown at the conference announcing the arrests Monday.



The attack shocked and angered many Mexicans because instead of career criminals, the victims were mostly middle aged women who frequently visited the casino to play bingo.



MEXICO CITY: 21 of Mexico's 31 senior federal prosecutors abruptly quit earlier this month. Mexican press outlets report this as being the single biggest mass resignation of federal officials in recent history.

The office announced late last month that in Morales' first 100 days on the job, 462 prosecutors and other officials had been dismissed and 111 more were facing criminal charges involving a range of infractions, including fraud, theft, abuse of power and falsification of documents. An additional 386 employees were in the process of being dismissed.



Rosa Elena Torres Davila, a senior official in the attorney general's office, made Monday's announcement and said the resignations were tendered on Friday. They included the top federal prosecutors in some of Mexico's most violent states where drug traffickers have intimidated local authorities and killed thousands of people in cases that have largely gone unprosecuted. They also included the top federal prosecutor in the capital, Mexico City, which is a federal district with a status similar to that of a state.

Attorney General Marisela Morales declined to cite specific reasons behind the mass departures



CALIFORNIA: Local, state and federal law enforcement officers raided an Iraqi-Chaldean social club in San Diego County and arrested 60 men in a multi-agency investigation dubbed 'Operation Shadowbox'. The social club had been a source of complaints from both neighboring businesses claiming drug dealing and prostitution were rampant and wives of some patrons said that their life savings was being gambled away at the club.



More ominously, members of the club were alleged to have purchased drugs and explosives from the Sinaloa cartel. Marijuana was sold out of the club while methamphetamine smuggled in from Mexico would be forwarded to a sister organization in Detroit.

Since January, the DEA and El Cajon police have purchased narcotics, firearms, improvised explosive devices and pharmaceuticals from people at the club, Sprecco said. In April, an undercover operative was shown a hand grenade and was told more were available from a Mexican military source. Suspects in the investigation reportedly arranged narcotics shipments from El Cajon to Detroit.



During the course of the investigation, operatives discovered a suspected association with the Sinaloa Cartel, a Mexico-based drug trafficking organization, and the Chaldean Organized Crime Syndicate, which began in Detroit in the early 80s and has been linked numerous crimes, including murder, arson and kidnapping, Sprecco said.



The investigation resulted in the seizure of drugs including more than 13 pounds of methamphetamine, more than four pounds of ecstasy and pharmaceuticals and about 3,500 pounds of marijuana, Sprecco said. Authorities confiscated more than $630,000 and three luxury cars.



Officers seized 34 firearms, including semi-automatic rifles and four explosive devices, which were processed with the help of the San Diego County Sheriff's Department's Bomb Squad and the FBI, Sprecco said.

The city of El Cajon has the second-highest Chaldean population in the United States after Detroit- the San Diego suburb is home to about 47,000 Iraqi Chaldeans, many of them having immigrated there before the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in their native Iraq.



NEW MEXICO: The former police chief of the small New Mexico border town of Columbus has pleaded guilty to trafficking firearms and tactical gear across the border into Mexico on behalf of enforcers for 'La Linea'- a gang of enforcers for the Juarez cartel.

As a participant in the conspiracy, Vega conducted counter-surveillance, used a village-owned Ford F150 truck to transport firearms from the country, pulled over a car of ATF agents at La Linea's request, and tried to get ATF agents to return firearms to Gutierrez after they were seized, Spitzer told the court.



And on Feb. 10, Vega purchased thousands of dollars in body armor, boots, helmets and clothing, including a bulletproof vest for a La Linea leader, whose name was not mentioned in court.



Vega had previously pleaded not guilty to taking part in the conspiracy, in which he and his co-defendants allegedly purchased about 200 firearms - including AK-47-type pistols, weapons resembling AK-47 rifles, but with shorter barrels and without rear stocks, and American Tactical 9 mm caliber pistols - from Chaparral Guns in Chaparral and smuggled them to members of the Juárez-based La Linea cartel between January 2010 and March 2011.



In raids, law enforcement seized 40 of the AK-47 type pistols, more than 1,500 rounds of ammunition and 30 high-capacity magazines before they crossed the border, and found another 12 firearms in Mexico that were traced back to the defendants. Three others were found on three dead individuals in an SUV in Juárez, and others were found at a narcotics bust there, according to federal prosecutors

Former police chief Angelo Vega faces up to 35 years in prison and a $750,000 fine. The village's former mayor- Eddie Espinoza- and village trustee- Blas Gutierrez- have already pleaded guilty for their role in the weapons smuggling case.



Since the arrests, the small 4-man police department has been disbanded and the area is patrolled now by the Luna County Sheriff's Department.

Happy Australia Day from Not Another New England Sports Blog!

I just wanted to take this opportunity to wish my Australian visitors a happy Australia Day as well as to remind my non-Australian visitors that today is, in fact, Australia Day!

I've had the good fortune of visiting Australia myself awhile back and meeting some of their soldiers while I was still in the US Army. I mean, on top of everything else, how could you not love a country who's concept of meter maids is attractive women in sparkling gold bikinis putting money into parking meters?

For the record, the Australian Army has fought alongside their American counterparts since WWI, and as I'm writing this, Aussie diggers continue to serve in Afghanistan, Iraq and even closer to home where they have been doing search and rescue operations during the flooding in Queensland.

So throw another shrimp on the barbie and raise your pint of XXXX or Black Swan (as some of us know, Foster's is for the tourists) with your sheila and best mates...[did I leave out any Aussie-centric cliches?- NANESB!].

This American, at least, considers himself fortunate to count Australia one of his nation's closest allies.

'Combat Barbie' Redux- 2009 Miss England Returns to Active Duty With Royal Army

*sigh* All good things must come to an end. Some of you who were around towards the beginning of Not Another New England Sports Blog!might remember the name Katrina Hodge- Lance Corporal Katrina Hodge of the Royal Army, to be specific.

A decorated Iraq war vet, she competed in the 2009 Miss England pageant and was awarded 1st runner up when the then-reigning Miss England was stripped of her crown for getting into an altercation with another contestant at a nightclub [No word on whether or not it was a prolonged Dynasty-esque face-slapping, dress-ripping, hair-pulling, falling-into-a-pond catfight- NANESB!]. So in a rather ironic twist, the military woman is awarded the Miss England crown for not fighting.

And now that a new Miss England was crowned last year, Corporal Hodge is back with the Royal Army and awaiting deployment to Afghanistan.

the move from soldier to beauty queen was a lot easier that the move in the other direction.

‘I’m not going to lie, it was hard to come back,' said Hodge.

‘It’s definitely a change of lifestyle from having your hair and make-up done every day to being in your combats and having your hair scraped back.'
But after 12 months of fancy hotels, false eyelashes and beauty assistants at her beck and call, Combat Barbie is back in combat training

Aside from her Miss England duties, Corporal Hodge had a pretty eventful 2010 in that she married some lucky bastard a fellow British soldier at a private ceremony in Sri Lanka last June.

Sanctuary? Beseiged Iraqi Christians May Find New Home in Kurdistan

Overlooked by many in the news leading up to the 2010 mid-term elections was the terrorist massacre of at least 50 worshippers and clergy in Baghdad's Our Lady of Salvation Syriac Catholic Church on November 1st. Terrorists thought to be with al-Qaeda in Iraq initially targeted the Baghdad stock exchange before moving to the church across the street. Iraqi security forces quickly cordoned off the area surrounding Our Lady of Salvation and attempted to negotiate, but the attackers threw grenades and detonated explosive vests when the Iraqi forces stormed the church, killing 49 parishioners and 9 policemen.

In the days following the church attack, more Iraqi christian were targeted by car bombs and mortar attacks, killing at least five more. Some of the survivors of the terrorist attacks were given asylum by France and flown to Paris for medical treatment.

Many of Iraq's remaining Christians are concerned for their own safety after the latest attacks and want to leave Iraq. However, leaders in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq have invited Iraqi Christians to relocate to Kurdistan from elsewhere within Iraq. Kurdistan's autonomy during the final decade of Saddam Hussein's regime and after Operation Iraqi Freedom has meant that for the most part the economic and security situation is far more stable than elsewhere in Iraq.

Iraq's president Jalal Talibani (a Kurd himself) has even raised the possibility of establishing Christian-majority provinces within Iraq in an interview with France 24 television.

Hmm....wait a second. The sanctimonious self-appointed righteous indignation brigades that were out in force preaching tolerance when that douchebag Florida pastor promised to burn a bunch of Korans on September 11 have been pretty quiet since the Our Lady of Salvation massacre.

This would mean Iraqi and Kurdish Muslims have shown more concern over the plight of Iraq's Christians than the professional whiners and victims in their perpetual seethe-apalooza trying to hold up even token opposition to the 9/11 mosque in Manhattan as bigotry and Islamophobia.

Even if the Our Lady of Salvation massacre never took place, there's still the matter of Egyptian Muslims torching the homes of Coptic Christians over rumors a Coptic man was in a relationship with a Muslim woman. Or the Pakistani Christian mother of two who was reportedly sentenced to death for 'blasphemy' after she rebuffed efforts by Muslim co-workers to convert her.

Just some food for though the next time the head of an Islamic organization says that pointing out what's taking place in the Islamic world is akin to '1930s Germany'.

[Hat Tip: Eat it or Wear It; Weasel Zippers]

From the Sandbox to the State House- 4 Years in the Life of SSG John Kriesel

There are a bunch of election results for me to try and get caught up on, but after glancing at this New York Times article about gains the Republican party made in state legislatures across the country, I was reminded of something Philly blogger Wyatt Earp fist brought this to my attention nearly 10 months ago.

With that in mind, I thought I'd check the election results in Minnesota to see how John Kriesel had done. As it turns out, he's now the Representative-elect for Minnesota State House Seat 57A.

St. Paul, Minn. -- It was just 10 hours after John Kriesel had learned he won Minnesota House Seat 57A; he stood in front of a barrage of cameras and reporters in room 125 of the State Capitol.

"Well, compromise is what keeps me from having to sleep on the couch every night," the newly elected Republican from Cottage Grove said when asked about the state's budget. And that was the beginning of his political career.

"Whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, he makes us a better body," House Minority leader Kurt Zellers of Maple Grove remarked.

"I'm banged up, I'm sore, and I'm tired. It's been a long campaign," he said a few hours later, finally sitting in his living room. "Just where my life is now compared to where it was 4 years ago, you know, I can't hardly believe it," Kriesel said.

4 years ago, Staff Sgt. Kriesel was on routine patrol in Fallujah, Iraq. "We drove over a 200-pound improvised explosive device and it killed my two best friends and I lost both of my legs in the blast," he recalled.

John Kriesel woke up in a hospital bed in Washington D.C. 8 days later. It was then he realized his two friends did not survive the blast. He vowed to live his life in their honor; he was determined to walk again and return to Minnesota. He never forgot the conversations he had with his friends while serving in Fallujah; they often talked about politics.

"I think they would be proud, we talked a lot over there about stuff like this," he said.

Kriesel campaigned hard in Cottage Grove, South St. Paul, and the surrounding communities. He just about wore out the Segway he used to get door to door. The day after the election, he was waiting on a doctor to fit him for a new socket for his leg; he wore that out too, while on the campaign trail.

Bruised, battered, and still running on adrenaline, John Kriesel left his Cottage Grove home at 7 p.m. Wednesday night, for a book signing in St. Paul. He was working on 3 hours sleep and ready to sign 2nd addition copies of his book, that hit stores in July.

A former soldier and soon to be lawmaker; still making strides to honor the men he served with. "I won't take this lightly, it means a great deal to me," Kriesel said about his new position at the State Capitol.

[Hat tip- Support Your Local Gunfighter; KARE]