Watchtower magazine appears in Drug article

[boodles]

I was looking at CNN and on the front page there was the title "The Drug War's Unlikely Front" with this picture:

I thought, "That looks like a Watchtower, but nah, couldn't be!" So I enlarged the picture, and sure enough it is! Too bad it's being used here, although no one seems to recognize it in the comments after the article. CNN article: In small-town USA, business as usual for Mexican cartels

[campanula]

Is this The WT of 2008 January,1?

Hopefully this gangster read that.

But our brothers who preached to him were at risk.

[Blueyedchanel]

Wow I saw this last night and I kept staring at it going, "that looks like a magazine". I almost posted it on here to see who could read Spanish and tell me if it really was. It was right on the cover, top story of CNN. The second I saw it I knew it was a Watchtower, but didn't recognize the picture. Sadly it's talking about the drug cartels that seem to be infiltrating Texas/US and it feels like its getting closer and closer to where I live. Scary.

[BlueRose]

That is cool. It says something....the fact that the guy didn't throw it away but kept it with his precious gun!

[My4CatsAndMe]

I find that picture oddly amusing! The juxtaposition of a gun and a Watchtower... two things that just don't really seem to go together.

The picture needs a caption. How about: "Watchtower: because even gangbangers need spiritual food now and then."

[My4CatsAndMe]

Actually, it makes sense that the magazine was there. I saw in the article that the picture shows evidence seized during a raid of a member of the Familia Michoacana Cartel. Familia Michoacana was founded by Nazario Moreno Gonzales, who is now dead, but who was one of the most feared drug lords in Mexico. Gonzales was raised Catholic, but then he became one of Jehovah's Witnesses. At some point, he obviously stopped serving Jehovah and started dealing drugs, and he ended up becoming a ruthless, very dangerous cartel leader. According to an article I found on MSNBC, "He was raised a Catholic but converted to Jehovah's Witnesses. He requires each of his gangsters to carry his own Bible, which is compulsory reading. He invokes principles of divine justice when setting out to defeat his enemies and is a fan of the "Godfather" trilogy and the film "Braveheart." And on Wikipedia, it says that he "required his men to carry a "spiritual manual" that he wrote himself and contains pseudo-Christian aphorisms for self improvement."

So apparently, Gonzales required members of Familia Michoacana to read different kinds of spiritiual material... and, judging by this picture, perhaps he required that some of them read Watchtowers.

More about Gonzales, who died in a major gun battle with Mexican Feds in 2010:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazario_Moreno_Gonz%C3%A1lez

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41854533/ns/world_news-americas/t/cartel-bosses-behind-mexicos-violent-drug-wars/#.T9YizJjpVNI

[Blueyedchanel]

I find that picture oddly amusing! The juxtaposition of a gun and a Watchtower... two things that just don't really seem to go together.

The picture needs a caption. How about: "Watchtower: because even gangbangers need spiritual food now and then."

Dawn that made me