From The Center Square

By Bethany Blankley

Mexican authorities seized the largest amount of fentanyl in history in the state of Sinaloa, 1,100 kilograms. With two milligrams considered a lethal dose, and 22,696.2 lethal doses in a pound, they seized more than 453 million lethal doses, enough to kill roughly the entire population of the U.S. and Mexico.

After President-elect Donald Trump vowed to impose tariffs on Mexico and spoke to Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, demanding that Mexico stop facilitating illegal entry into the U.S., Mexican authorities have made major drug and cartel busts.

Sheinbaum claimed they’d been working on the operation for a while, but some members of the Mexico media give the credit to Trump and have accused Sheinbaum of taking cartel bribes.

In several posts on X, Sheinbaum’s Secretary of Security and Civilian Protection, Omar García Harfuch, issued statements saying Mexican authorities seized the largest amount of fentanyl in history in the state of Sinaloa, 1,100 kilograms. With two milligrams considered a lethal dose, and 22,696.2 lethal doses in a pound, they seized more than 453 million lethal doses, enough to kill roughly the entire population of the U.S. and Mexico.

They also seized firearms and made arrests in Sinaloa, the namesake of the deadly transnational criminal organization, whose operations are based there, the Sinaloa Cartel.

“These actions will continue until the violence in the state of Sinaloa decreases,” Harfuch said.

On Thursday, he announced more arrests, saying, “Following up on the investigation into the seizure of more than a ton of fentanyl pills and with operational actions to reduce crime rates in Sinaloa, personnel from the Security Cabinet arrested Adrián ‘N’ ‘El Gallero,’ a member of a criminal group that operates in Sinaloa and is related to the drugs seized two days ago. Investigations in the state continue.”

As part of the operation, five foreign nationals were arrested on sexual exploitation charges, allegedly part of “a group dedicated to drug dealing and human trafficking” operating in Mexico and “linked to two femicides that occurred in June in Tlalpan and to regrettable acts of violence against women,” he said.

Mexican agencies conducted the busts in different parts of the capital and in other countries, he said. They include the Secretariat of Citizen Security of Mexico City, Mexico City Attorney General, Mexico City Mayor, Mexican Secretary of Defense, Mexican Navy, Mexican Attorney General, Mexican National Guard and Harfuch’s office.

After Harfuch announced the fentanyl bust, Sheinbaum held a press conference saying the investigation had “been going on for a long time, and yesterday, it gave these results.”

On Friday, Harfuch announced additional arrests were made by Mexican security forces.

“In recent days, the leader of a group that generates violence operating in Culiacán was arrested,” he said. Five men were arrested, including Horacio “N” an operator and brother of Omar “N,” he said. They also seized three long weapons and drugs and “continue to implement actions to reduce the rates of violence in the region.”

Omar “N” was arrested last month, two weeks after Trump won the election. He was wanted for “several violent actions in our country, such as homicides, arms trafficking, human trafficking and fentanyl trafficking to Arizona, United States,” Harfuch said.

Mexican reporters and pundits have raised questions about the arrests and Mexican leaders, suggesting the reason the arrests were made was because Trump was elected and Mexican leaders are on cartel payrolls.

One pundit said it wasn’t the National Palace policies but “the Trump Tsunami” behind the arrests. Ever “since he won the US presidency … Omar García Harfuch has been very busy with HISTORIC arrests and seizures of Fentanyl, never seen in the López Obrador government.”

Last month, after the U.S. Treasury Department published photos of alleged cartel members wanted and sanctioned for trafficking fentanyl, cocaine and heroin, LatinUS reporter Carlos Loret de Mola asked if Sheinbaum’s administration was “protecting them or do the Secretary of Security, the Sedena and the Navy not have the information?”

Another reporter, Anabel Hernandez, claims Mexico’s former president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and Sheinbaum received money from the cartels. Obrador implemented a “hugs not bullets” policy with the cartels as violence escalated under his administration. Sheinbaum was elected during one of the bloodiest elections in Mexican history with 30 candidates believed to have been assassinated by the cartels, The Center Square reported.

Hernandez said at a recent conference that she “had access to a document called, ‘Operation Polanco’ and began a journey to understand if what the United States government was saying was real or not,” La Octava reported. What she found, she says, is “that not only did Andrés Manuel López Obrador receive money from the Sinaloa Cartel in the 2006 campaign but also in the 2012 campaign.”

Hernandez says she has evidence and Sheinbaum can’t go after the Sinaloa Cartel “because she is also part of this criminal system and received money in her presidential campaign from the same two factions” warring over Sinaloa territory, the Zambadas and Chapo Guzman. “There is specific evidence, there is the testimony of the Zambada King, Jesús Zambada García, the brother of Mayo Zambada,” she said.

Obrador and Sheinbaum have denied the claims.

LatinUS has published reports alleging Sheinbaum is “acting as a real estate cartel.” Sheinbaum accuses her political rivals of the same.

From LifeSiteNews

By Frank Wright

Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, published Thursday night, was an 80-minute conversation that provides remarkable insights on war and politics beyond the narratives we are told by the news.

Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was posted Thursday night.

If you are interested in whether there will be a world war, why, and indeed whether it has already started, the 80-minute conversation will provide remarkable insights beyond the narratives we are told by the news.

Carlson begins with the question of the moment: Is the U.S. at war with Russia?

Lavrov says no, but that the danger is obvious. NATO and the West, he says, “don’t believe that Russia has red lines, they announce the red lines, these red lines are being moved again and again and again. This is a very serious mistake.”

Statements such as this can be dismissed as “Russian propaganda.” Yet Lavrov is simply stating the case. The Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center – the home of “world-leading” U.S./NATO strategic thinking – has admitted that “nudging Russian red lines” has been the gambit of the West for many years.

Lavrov explains the situation conversationally, but with a frankness uncommon from Western diplomats.

He explains that Russia seeks to avoid war, though it remains prepared to fight one.

READ: Putin calls out Biden for ‘escalating’ war in Ukraine right before Trump takes office

“We are ready for any eventuality, but we strongly prefer a peaceful solution through negotiations” – to the Ukraine conflict.

It was “Russian propaganda” until recently to speak of this as a U.S./NATO “proxy war” waged by the West against Russia, until Boris Johnson admitted it was a proxy war in an interview last week.

With so many former “conspiracy theories” having come true in the West, such as the Hunter Biden laptop, the tainted and dangerous COVID mRNA injections, and the narrative of the Ukraine war itself, Lavrov’s genial and revealing chat with Carlson reveals a rich seam of information.

He covers the death of Alexei Navalny, the effective suspension of U.S. diplomacy with Russia, the now obvious role of Boris Johnson in destroying peace and prolonging war in Ukraine, along with Russian relations with China and its role in the current Syrian war.

His remarks provide food for thought for an audience ravenous for information. It is understandable that Lavrov’s view of these events would prove controversial, as the denial of the obvious is a basic principle of the liberal-global system which is currently fighting Russia in two theaters of war.

It is a credit to Carlson that he asks Lavrov, at around the one-hour mark, what his opinion is on the question of who is in charge in the United States.

“Who do you think has been making foreign policy decisions in the U.S.?” Carlson asks.

“I wouldn’t guess,” says Lavrov. “I haven’t seen Tony Blinken in four years”.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is the chief diplomat of the United States and is effectively Lavrov’s counterpart. That he has not spoken to Lavrov since 2020 is an extraordinary fact in itself, given the nuclear brinkmanship his administration has lately pursued, following a long campaign towards a failed proxy war against Russia.

Lavrov says in these four years all he has had from Blinken is a “few words” outside a G20 meeting, where Blinken astonishingly told the Russians, “Don’t escalate.”

Lavrov described the brief exchange: “I said, we don’t want to escalate. You want to inflict strategic defeat upon Russia?”

Apparently, Blinken rejoined, “No, no, no, no, it is not, it is not strategic defeat globally. It is only in Ukraine.”

Yet it is not only Blinken playing peek-a-boo. Lavrov’s description of the last meeting of the 20 most powerful nations is startling.

“Europeans are running away when they see me. During the last G20 meeting, it was ridiculous. Grown up people, mature people. They behave like kids. So childish and unbelievable,” he said.

Following this shocking depiction of the state of Western diplomacy, Lavrov moves to the serious business of regime change, saying it has long been U.S. strategy to “make trouble and see if they can fish in the muddy water” afterwards – in Iraq, for example. As for “the adventure in Libya,” he says, “after ruining the state [there] … they went on to leave Afghanistan in very bad shape.”

His summary recalls that of JD Vance, who denounced the last four decades of forever war as “a disaster” in his speech in May, when he asked, “What are the fruits of the last 40 years of American foreign policy? Of course, it’s the disaster in Iraq, it’s the disaster in Afghanistan, it’s Syria, it’s Lebanon, it’s on issue after issue after issue.”

Lavrov was far more polite about the matter, and said simply, “If you analyze the American foreign policy steps – ‘adventures’ … is the right word.”

There is simply no way to do justice to the example set by Russia’s leading diplomat. Of course, he skillfully represents Russian interests, but it is not to collude with him or his nation to note a master at work. 

His extraordinary composure and command of the situation contrasts starkly with the near total absence of any diplomacy at all by the U.S. with this most significant strategic rival – or future partner. It is a credit to Carlson that he brings this view to the West, which explains so much of the crises in Ukraine and Syria from a viewpoint that has been canceled in the formerly free world.

If you have 80 minutes to spare you will learn more about the state of the world watching Lavrov than in a year’s consumption of mainstream media. One obvious shock is how impoverished our political system is, that it produces no one of the caliber of our supposed enemies, no one who discusses with cordial directness the naked truth of a near-nuclear crisis.

His sobering analysis can be condensed into one statement, from which it is hoped the red line nudgers will not seek to test. Lavrov warns the game players of the U.S. and NATO:

“They must understand that we are ready to use any means not to allow them to succeed in what they call a strategic defeat of Russia.”

This strategic defeat, now impossible in Ukraine, is being pursued right now by Western proxies in Syria. With one war about to end, another has been started. Russian patience is exhausted, and they have committed fully to preventing the takeover of Syria by U.S. and Ukrainian backed “foreign terrorists.”

It is to be hoped that someone will be in charge in a few weeks’ time who will listen, rather than hiding and seeking escalation.