Friday, January 15, 2016

The Council Has Spoken! Our Watcher's Council Results

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The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week's Watcher's Council match up.

“When you ask people, “What’s America’s longest war?” they usually answer “Vietnam” or amend that to “Afghanistan,” but it’s neither. America’s longest war is the war on drugs.” - Don Winslow, The Cartel

"Poor Mexico.So far from G-d, so close to the United States." - Former Mexican Presidente Porfirio Diaz


"El que impuesto está a perder, hasta lástima es que gane" (If someone has decided to lose, it would be a pity if he wins)- - Mexican proverb


Fausta Rodríguez Wertz's profile photo

This week's winning essay comes from Fausta's blog, Mexico: El Chapo’s notes from underground, VIDEO. By now Sean Penn's infamous sojurn in Mexico to interview cartel boss ElChapo is common knowledge, but Fausta takes us behind the headlines with an fascinating in depth look at how it happened, and the aftermath that saw El Chapo recaptured...at least for now. Here's a slice:

Penn first met in person with El Chapo’s son under Chavista Cartel de los Soles protection in Venezuela’s Margarita Island.

El Chapo snuck out of the house during the Mexican Marines’ raid through a tunnel, bring us today’s Capt. Louis Renault moment:

‘El Chapo’ Nearly Foiled Capture With Another Tunnel. Mexican Marines took nearly 90 minutes to find the drug lord’s tunnel

"Video published Monday by Mexican broadcaster Televisa revealed details of the secret tunnel used by Mr. Guzmán to slip away from marines as they stormed a house he was using in the coastal city of Los Mochis. He was arrested hours later trying to leave the city in a stolen car.

The tunnel was hidden behind a closet mirror, featured a secret switch hidden in the ceiling, and had electricity and wooden planks covering the walls, the images showed. Marines took nearly 90 minutes to find the tunnel and open the access, giving him a big head start.

Mr. Guzmán, the world’s most notorious drug lord and leader of the Sinaloa cartel, has a long history with tunnels. He is widely credited with pioneering the use of tunnels to ferry drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border, and used tunnels in recent years to elude capture as Mexico’s most-wanted criminal. He then famously used a mile-long tunnel to escape from prison last July."

Were he living, Dosto may have something to say on Chapo’s underground tendencies.

By now, shouldn’t Chapo (Shorty) be named El Topo (Mole)?

But I digress.

Here’s Televisa‘s coverage (in Spanish). Here’s the video from the Marines’ unit commander’s go-pro camera.

Anonymous Mexico released an embeddable version,



While the house was raided.


Much more at the link.

In our non-Council category, the winner was Sultan Knish–The Tribal War With Islam submitted by The Independent Sentinel.


Here are this week’s full results:

Council Winners

Non-Council Winners


See you next week!

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum. and every  Tuesday morning, when we reveal the weeks' nominees for Weasel of the Week!

And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council, and the results are posted on Friday morning.

 It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere, and you won’t want to miss it...or any of the other fantabulous Watcher's Council content.

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