Former interim governor of Mexico's third largest state pleads guilty for role in transnational money-laundering scheme

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – A former interim governor of Mexico’s third largest state, Coahuila, pleaded guilty Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas for his role in a transnational money-laundering scheme.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Corpus Christi, Texas, conducted the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force investigation along with several other federal agencies including the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, IRS - Criminal Investigation and U.S. Marshals Service.

Jorge Juan Torres-Lopez, 66, who served as the interim governor of Coahuila, Mexico, in 2011, admitted to conducting financial transactions in the United States to conceal bribes that he received in exchange for assigning road-building contracts in Coahuila.

Torres-Lopez worked for the Mexican government from 1994 to 2011. In addition to his role as interim governor, he also served as Coahuila’s secretary of finance and general director of promotion and development, as well as the municipal president of Saltillo – the capital of Coahuila.

As part of his plea, Torres-Lopez agreed to forfeit real property in the U.S. associated with the payments.

Torres-Lopez was taken into custody in Mexico Feb. 5, 2019, and extradited to the U.S. Oct. 29, 2019. He will remain in federal custody pending his sentencing scheduled for Sept. 10. At that time, Torres-Lopez faces up to 20 years in federal prison and a possible $500,000 fine, twice the value of the monetary instrument or funds involved in the transaction, or both.

Coahuila’s secretary of finance under Torres-Lopez, Hector Javier Villarreal-Hernandez, 49, has also been convicted of money laundering offenses related to this case and is awaiting sentencing. Around December 2005, Villarreal-Hernandez was appointed as Coahuila’s undersecretary of program and budget. At the time, Torres-Lopez was his supervisor. In July 2008, Villarreal-Hernandez was appointed as secretary of finance for Coahuila, where he remained until his resignation in August 2011.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jon Muschenheim and Lance A. Watt are prosecuting this case. The Prosecutor General of the Republic of Mexico and the Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs (Criminal Division) provided significant assistance.

https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/former-interim-governor-mexicos-third-largest-state-pleads-guilty-role-transnational

Crippling new sanctions punish Syrian civilians for US defeat in proxy war

As Syria tries to recover from a nearly decade-long war, the US has imposed crippling new sanctions under the Caesar Act that target reconstruction.

“For Syrians, sanctions on reconstruction and on oil and gas are likely to be felt most acutely,” the Washington Post reports. “The Caesar Act will probably limit the government’s ability to procure oil, further hurting the already low quality of life.” The new sanctions follow earlier coercive measures that had already hurt Syrian civilians, compounding the destruction of a lengthy proxy war fueled and funded by the US and its allies.

Guest: Elijah Magnier, veteran war correspondent who has covered the Middle East for more than three decades.

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/06/18/crippling-new-sanctions-punish-syrian-civilians-for-us-defeat-in-proxy-war/

Indian Congress leader ARRESTED for spreading ‘FAKE NEWS’ about China border clash in leaked call

An Indian Congress leader from Ladakh was arrested after “berating” the country’s army and making up “fake news” about deadly military clashes between India and China in the disputed border region.

Local media reported that Congress Councilor Zakir Hussain was arrested for “sedition” and “spreading of false information” on Friday. His comments came after the bloody confrontation which claimed the lives of 20 Indian soldiers earlier in the week.

In leaked audio, Hussain can be heard telling someone that China “has occupied 135km into India,” and that the Indian military was powerless to stop it. He claimed “at least 200-250 soldiers have died” – a far higher number than reported.

He added that “nobody died from the Chinese side,” though Indian media had reported that as many as 43 Chinese People’s Liberation Army soldiers were killed. Beijing admitted there were some casualties, but did not say how many injuries or deaths it had suffered.

Concerned by the dramatic interpretation of events, Hussain’s interlocutor asked him what to do. “If you have some savings, everything will be alright,” Hussain answered, adding that China “must take away half of Leh” and that Ladakh could be split between the two countries.

Once made public, the recordings quickly went viral, even sparking local protests. Hussain then appeared to go missing-in-action and his “numbers were switched off,” Times Now reported.

Police eventually tracked him down, however, and in addition to being arrested, Hussain was expelled from his party.

The clashes in Ladakh have dramatically increased tensions between India and China. On Wednesday, Indian demonstrators publicly set fire to a Chinese flag and burned an effigy of China’s leader, Xi Jinping. On Friday, an Indian government minister also called for a boycott of “all Chinese goods.”

Beijing and New Delhi haved blamed each other for the lethal border skirmishes, but both have stressed that tensions will be settled by a move towards peaceful dialogue.

https://www.rt.com/news/492401-india-congress-arrested-ladakh/

It’s absurd to feel guilty about 200yo crimes while ignoring the West’s recent destruction of Iraq and Libya

By focusing on the historical crimes of Western imperialism, we are in danger of forgetting that some terrible wrongs were done more recently in US-led ‘regime-change’ operations for which no one has yet apologized.

We live in strange times. Ordinary people are being encouraged, some would say gaslighted, to feel guilty over bad things done by Western powers hundreds of years ago, over which not even their great grandparents had any control. Yet at the same time they are expected to ignore or forget about equally awful things which happened in living memory.

The dominant hegemonic narrative has it that exploitative ‘imperialism’ – and the attitudes of racial superiority that went with it – ended with the demise of the old European empires. But that is absurd. Arguably an even worse form of it has emerged in recent decades, one which has caused an enormous amount of death and destruction around the world.

Yet while the ‘old’ imperialism and anyone associated with it is completely beyond the pale, the new turbo-charged, ‘politically correct’ imperialism, which often masquerades under a ‘progressive’ or ‘humanitarian’ banner, gets off very lightly. Consider what has happened these past 30 years.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/492380-west-crimes-iraq-libya/

Elites who appease the baying mob’s apology addiction have stripped apology of all meaning

No sooner did Jacob Frey, the Mayor of Minneapolis, apologize to the black community for the killing of George Floyd than everyone felt they had to say sorry for the sins of their fathers, erasing the meaning of sincere apology.

I’ve stopped counting the number of apologies issued by public figures, business institutions and celebrities in recent weeks. It’s sometimes difficult to avoid the conclusion that a public apology has become a public-relations exercise. Why else would the Greene King pub chain and Lloyd’s of London apologize for the links to the slave trade – a historical event that occurred centuries ago?

Moral cowardice and the easy way out

Moral cowardice is another of the driving forces fueling the proliferation of public apologies. Apology has become weaponized to the point that very few politicians possess the strength of character to stand by their words. I remember when, last November, the Mayor of Middlesbrough, Andy Preston, apologized ‘unreservedly’ to the mental-health charity Mind for calling a Facebook commenter a ‘nutter’. There’s something truly scary about a world in which people wish to censor others for using a word the vast majority of human beings find unobjectionable. But what is even more chilling is that the mayor felt obliged to grovel and apologize.

The elites’ addiction to apology has been evident since the 1990s. During that decade, the then US president, Bill Clinton, publicly apologized to his nation’s black community for slavery. Meanwhile, the former British prime minister Tony Blair turned public apology into a veritable art form. He took it upon himself to apologize for Britain’s role in the slave trade. He also issued an apology in 1997 for his nation’s responsibility for the Irish potato famine of the 19th century. It is evident that Western political elites are far better at apologizing for the ‘bad old days’ than inspiring the public about their nation’s past – or even present.

Knee-jerk knee-bending

Since the outbreak of the present wave of Black Lives Matter protests, the issuing of a public apology has become almost a routine response to the mere hint that you should take the knee and grovel.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/492357-elites-appease-apology-meaning/

Having issues with my vpn

seems it's being fucked with hard!