Los Zetas

Los Zetas (pronounced: [los ˈsetas], Spanish for "The Zs") is a Mexican criminal syndicate, considered by the US government to be "the most technologically advanced, sophisticated, powerful, ruthlessly violent and dangerous cartel operating in Mexico." The origins of Los Zetas date back to the late 1990s when commandos of the Mexican Army deserted their ranks and began working as the enforcement arm of the Gulf Cartel. In February 2010, Los Zetas broke away from their former employer and formed their own criminal organization.

Unlike other traditional criminal organizations in Mexico, drug trafficking makes up only around 50% of the revenue of Los Zetas, while a large portion of their income comes from other activities directed against rival drug cartels and civilians. Their brutal tactics, which include beheadings to terrorize their rivals and intimidate them, torture, and indiscriminate slaughter, show that they often prefer brutality over bribery. Los Zetas are Mexico's largest drug cartel in terms of geographical presence, overtaking their rivals, the Sinaloa Cartel. Los Zetas also operate through protection rackets, assassinations, extortion, kidnappings and other activities. The organization is based in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, directly across the border from Laredo, Texas.

Sinaloa Cartel

The Sinaloa Cartel (Spanish: Cártel de Sinaloa or CDS) is an international drug trafficking, money laundering, and organized crime syndicate. Established during the mid-1980s, the Sinaloa Cartel is based primarily in the city of Culiacán, Sinaloa, with operations in the Mexican states of Baja California, Durango, Sonora, and Chihuahua. The cartel is also known as the Guzmán-Loera Organization and the Pacific Cartel, the latter due to the coast of Mexico from which it originated. The cartel has also been called the Federation and the Blood Alliance. The 'Federation' was partially splintered when the Beltrán-Leyva brothers broke apart from the Sinaloa Cartel.

The United States Intelligence Community considers the Sinaloa Cartel "the most powerful drug trafficking organization in the world" and in 2011, the Los Angeles Times called it "Mexico's most powerful organized crime group." The Sinaloa Cartel is associated with the label "Golden Triangle", which refers to the states of Sinaloa, Durango, and Chihuahua. The region is a major producer of Mexican opium and marijuana. According to the U.S. Attorney General, the Sinaloa Cartel is responsible for importing into the United States and distributing nearly 200 tons of cocaine and large amounts of heroin between 1990 and 2008. According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, within the U.S. the Sinaloa Cartel is primarily involved in the distribution of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana and MDMA.

Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons (or simply Commons) is an online repository of free-use images, sound, and other media files. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Files from Wikimedia Commons can be used across all Wikimedia projects in all languages, including Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikivoyage, Wikispecies, Wikisource, and Wikinews, or downloaded for offsite use. The repository contains over 30 million media files. In July 2013, the number of edits on Commons reached 100,000,000.

History

The project was proposed by Erik Möller in March 2004 and launched on September 7, 2004. A key motivation behind the setup of a central repository was the desire to reduce duplication of effort across the Wikimedia projects and languages, as the same file had to be uploaded to many different wikis separately before Commons was created.

Several sister projects (e.g. Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Spanish, Basque, Polish, Czech and Slovak Wikipedias) moved all their media content to Commons and stopped allowing local uploading. Some projects, such as the English Wikipedia, have more compliant copyright policy and allow to upload and keep files which are not acceptable at Commons, e.g. fair use images.

Cartel

In economics, a cartel is an agreement between competing firms to control prices or exclude entry of a new competitor in a market. It is a formal organization of sellers or buyers that agree to fix selling prices, purchase prices, or reduce production using a variety of tactics. Cartels usually arise in an oligopolistic industry, where the number of sellers is small or sales are highly concentrated and the products being traded are usually commodities. Cartel members may agree on such matters as setting minimum or target prices (price fixing), reducing total industry output, fixing market shares, allocating customers, allocating territories, bid rigging, establishment of common sales agencies, altering the conditions of sale, or combination of these. The aim of such collusion (also called the cartel agreement) is to increase individual members' profits by reducing competition. If the cartelists do not agree on market shares, they must have a plan to share the extra monopoly profits generated by the cartel.

La Familia

La Familia may refer to:

See also