Mexican Gov't Shuts Down Zetas' Secret Cell Network 300
Miniaturized stealth submarines purpose-built for smuggling are an impressive example of how much technological ingenuity is poured into evading the edicts of contemporary drug prohibition. Even more impressive to me, though, is news of the communications network that was just shut down by Mexican authorities, which covered much of northern Mexico. The system is attributed to the Zetas drug cartel, and consisted of equipment in four Mexican border states. "The military confiscated more than 1,400 radios, 2,600 cell phones and computer equipment during the operation, as well as power supplies including solar panels, according the Defense Department," says the article. Too bad — a solar-powered, visually unobtrusive, encrypted cell network sounds like something I'd like to sign up for. NPR also has a story.
There wouldn't be any of this (Score:5, Insightful)
Next up. (Score:0, Insightful)
More dead folks.
You don't just confiscate things from these people without bad things happening to you.
You gotta get the drug cartels first. THEN their equipment.
Queue up all the stupid ass pothead comments on how we should just legalize it. Without any realization of just how much money in the USA is stacked aginst that ever happening. Heck the only people who want it legal are the potheads. Everyone else from law enforcement to mfg companies to politicians to drug dealers themselves all want it kept illegal. Just not going to happen in the usa so long as money is king. And money IS king. don't fool yourselves. its embarassing.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
(see Mancur Olson: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mancur_Olson
"In his final book, Power and Prosperity, Olson distinguished between the economic effects of different types of government, in particular, tyranny, anarchy and democracy. Olson argued that a "roving bandit" (under anarchy) has an incentive only to steal and destroy, whilst a "stationary bandit" (a tyrant) has an incentive to encourage a degree of economic success, since he will expect to be in power long enough to take a share of it. The stationary bandit thereby takes on the primordial function of government - protection of his citizens and property against roving bandits.")
Re:Next up. (Score:5, Insightful)
More dead folks.
You don't just confiscate things from these people without bad things happening to you.
You gotta get the drug cartels first. THEN their equipment.
You do if you are the Military.
For many years, the Mexican Navy was the only trustworthy service in the country. Lately some of the generals in the Mexican Army have been getting sick of what is happening to their country.
Maybe. Maybe not. (Score:5, Insightful)
So making cocaine legal (and regulated) would result in the worse violence that we see with it being illegal?
That's a bit difficult to believe.
Particularly since it was legal to purchase over-the-counter until 1914.
If that were correct then Prohibition would be preferable to the massive distribution of alcohol we have today.
I don't think so. I think it costs MORE lives. Again, as demonstrated with alcohol and Prohibition.
Look around the world. There are other nations that have different laws. And they are not exhibiting the behaviours that you claim they would.
Re:Marijuana should be legalized (Score:5, Insightful)
So, tell me circletimessquare, how do you feel about a large amount of K-12 students being put on drugs like Ritalin or Adderall to control their 'attention span'? I'll remind you, that both of these drugs are amphetamines, and in the same class as Meth(logically, not necessarily by government standards).
I hate to inform you of this, but you do live in that totalitarian government that gives mind control drugs to its population. They just guise it as helping you through the 'wonders of modern medicine'.
Re:There wouldn't be any of this (Score:1, Insightful)
Religion requires all pleasure be obtained by suffering to amuse Imaginary Friends, so pleasure and sex must be rationed to redirect energy elsewhere.
Many Americans are superstitionists, and be they Taliban or Christian Taliban, they object to sin. Since life has no purpose except to get to Paradise, it doesn't matter how much damage the War On Some Drugs inflicts. The purpose of life is war on sin.
Re:There wouldn't be any of this (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm. Seems to me the smugglers exist because there's a demand for their goods on the US side of the border. If those goods were legal here, the violence wouldn't be as much of an issue, and the smuggling business would become a more normal business. If there was no demand for narcotics on the US side, you'd be right about it not being our fault that smugglers exist. But there is, and they do, and so we are partially to blame.
Legalizing marijuana would be a pretty big blow to the drug cartels. The human trafficking comparison is just a logical fallacy, as narcotics and human trafficking are (as you note) different things.
Re:There wouldn't be any of this (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, yes?
We can't control demand or the demanders. But demanders are pathetic; at worst, demanders run out of money and become petty criminals. We have built a huge infrastructure to jail people for spending money. Money that goes to... ...the other side, the Mexican government is dealing with the suppliers. There are huge profits in supply--the flip side of our problem. Supply is so profitable that the cartels rival the government in their ability to wage war.
So, yes. A foreign country's problem with militant cartels IS based on a US decision, because that the US has made breaking the law so fabulously profitable that the cartels are fighting a hot war with the Mexican government using money from the US.
Re:There wouldn't be any of this (Score:5, Insightful)
then we tell adult people they can't do certain things with their own bodies and/or their own consciousness behind closed doors in their own homes.
As has been demonstrated by countless, moronic drunk drivers, what is meant to be kept behind the closed doors of one's home doesn't always stay there.
Note: I'm not saying I'm against legalizing weed. Just making an observation that there's always going to be some jackass who hops up and then goes out and fucks up (or ends) someone else's life.
Re:Next up. (Score:5, Insightful)
That history repeats itself. Baptists and Bootleggers opposed the repeal of Prohibition too.
Re:Time to go Legit? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Next up. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't forget that the zetas were... (Score:2, Insightful)
First, "hyperventilate" that word doesn't mean what you think it does (although I suspect you may have been, while you wrote your reply; unfortunately, that mental image also includes copious amounts of spittle). If not a native speaker you did pretty well, otherwise.
Second, zetas were _founded_ by US trained killers. These were folks trained _in the U.S._ by Americans and Israelis. So, yes, the US _is responsible_ for zetas existence. Any argument to the contrary must address this fact. The thousands of Mexican soldiers you reference are irrelevant-- you are not suggesting that the entire Mexican military trains in the U.S., are you? Also, none of the thousands of Mexican soldiers who were not trained in the U.S. founded a rival to the zetas.
Your second statement about US soldiers robbing banks is just a straw man. But, I will indulge you:
A band of US soldiers in Afganistan were recently outed for killing civilians as sport, and cutting off and saving body parts as trophies. Yes, here too the US military has responsibility. Maybe they recruit blood-thirsty psychopaths, and then just provide the means for these atrocities to occur, or perhaps it is the training which is intended to condition the soldier to view the "enemy" as "other" non-human, to make it easier to kill them. Either way, yes the US military has blame here too.
More indulgence:
Yes, the US society has responsibility for crimes of poverty. Those silly rich kids who shoplift for the thrill excepted, most folks who find themselves stealing to feed themselves / their families are not very well educated. And, the single most reliable predictor of education outcome is economic status of the family. So, our society that perpetuates wealth disparities has responsibility for the inevitable result.
Nice ad homonym.
You have a lot of words and emotion in your response, but nothing that contradicts my points. In fact, there was nothing in your reply but a string of logical fallacies. It was probably you who modded my first post as troll, but I think it is you who are trolling.
Re:There wouldn't be any of this (Score:5, Insightful)
As has been demonstrated by countless, moronic drunk drivers, what is meant to be kept behind the closed doors of one's home doesn't always stay there.
That's no justification for continued prohibition.
... if prohibition was working and actually prevented anyone from obtaining drugs then we could discuss its merits. But it doesn't even accomplish any of its stated goals. It's a completely invalid idea. To talk about it as though it were worth considering is either dishonest or foolish, take your pick.
Some people (who are quite sober) commit murder. Clearly, we should lock everyone up in solitary confinement shortly after birth, immediately after being weaned. For their own good. No, we can't give them a cellmate because they might shank them. Of course that's ridiculous but we've got a War On Murder to fight!
What is it about people altering their consciousness so many are really so afraid of? I mean
They cannot even keep drugs out of maximum-security prisons. Are the implications of this really so hard to understand, or is this more like a religious belief that is impervious to evidence? Prohibition: it hasn't worked, it isn't working, and it can't work. Not even in the most ideal conditions for it (prisons). Normally when something has been falsified (by both history and logic) even half as thoroughly as Prohibition has been, intelligent people drop the invalid idea, you never hear it from them again, and they move on to other ideas that might work.
What kind of insanity causes people to continue advocating such obviously failed ideas? Do they think they can divide by zero if they just keep trying hard enough?
Like I said, I think this is a religious or other faith-based belief because it has absolutely no contact with reality.
This really sums up what Prohibition is all about:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
-- C.S. Lewis
Nice thought, however not close to reality. (Score:3, Insightful)
Bad move (Score:4, Insightful)
Rather than shutting it down, why not tap into it?
Tomorrow, when the Zeta pick up their mobiles and get a 'No Carrier' message, they'll start working on the next network. Better to have them yak away while the Mexican and US gov't listen in. Yeah, they still use codes. But being able to do the traffic analysis is a whole lot better than having no clue of who is speaking, where, and when.
Heck, maybe we can even get CarrierIQ to push an update to their phones.
Re:There wouldn't be any of this (Score:4, Insightful)
" I'm not saying I'm against legalizing weed. Just making an observation that there's always going to be some jackass who hops up and then goes out and fucks up (or ends) someone else's life."
This happens, anyway. Someone who is completely irresponsible will be irresponsible regardless of the punishment. Legalizing marijuana simply serves to not throw people away who simply want to enjoy it responsibly; just like how most drinkers don't go out and crash their cars into crowded school buses (the president included in this list).
Re:There wouldn't be any of this (Score:3, Insightful)
It isn't because of the shift in consciousness. If anything, being stoned makes a person easier to have arrested because they are dumb and docile.
It is the fact that there is a shitload of money to be gained by private industries from a pothead. A list of whom benefits as soon as a handcuffed stoner hits the booking booth:
The local cop, because the more people run in, the more points gained. Bust up a carful of druggies, and that is a promotion right there.
The local private jail, and the private companies getting paid for bed space.
The bail bondsman who can ask for 20% of an inflated bail as payment.
The DA who looks tough on crime when he figures out a way to send someone up for 2-10 years for a dime bag.
The defense attorney who can dictate what terms he wants. Public defenders tend to be pretty much an assurance of a guilty verdict.
The judge who is seeking re-election will get more money in his coffers when he rubber stamps a guilty verdict and the maximum sentence.
The local prison system, all privately owned and managed. Part of this cash goes to lobbyists to have more felonies, longer sentences, and find ways to lock people up, as it pays their bills.
So, there are a lot of people getting fat from stuffing stoners in the clink for life sentences. Until this is remedied, we will see pot be illegal for generations to come.
Re:There wouldn't be any of this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Time to go Legit? (Score:4, Insightful)
The LAST thing a drug cartel wants to see is an end to prohibition. Legalising their products would simply open them up to legitimate competitors and bring the prices (and thus the profit margins) way down.
In fact the cartels have quite a bit of influence with various officials at all levels in Mexico, but the last thing they would use this influence for would be legalisation. Instead they are used to direct law enforcement against their competitors and away from themselves, to reÃnforce their monopoly position and keep raking in the profits.
Re:There wouldn't be any of this (Score:4, Insightful)
part of the reason marijuana use causes less issues with driving may be that people are more likely to use it at home and thus have no need to drive.
No, it's because stoners are all paranoid, so they drive at exactly the speed limit, obeying all traffic laws, driving defensively so as not to draw attention to themselves.
A drunk, by contrast, will Stumble out of the party saying shit like, "We need another 24-pack, I'm good to drive," being belligerent and pushing away anybody who tries to stop them driving drunk. Then the drunk comes back the next day on foot, without his vehicle, with a bruised and scraped-up face and shunt bandages on both of his wrists.
If there's one thing that people in power hate doing, it's admitting their wrong. The recent marijuana dispensary crackdowns in California(a state that legalized Marijuana for medical use) by the feds proves that they are like the assholes who lost the debate and have resorted to angrily yelling over everybody rather than listening.
Re:There wouldn't be any of this (Score:5, Insightful)
It's because a lot of people don't like drugs.
That's the part I have observed often enough to understand but I cannot relate to it.
I certainly have my likes and dislikes. They are opinions, tastes, and preferences. I am entitled to them as anyone else is. But I never thought that my feelings about something override the facts of the matter. That's a kind of childish make-believe world I am thankful not to live in. The fact I don't like something doesn't make it less true.
I call that adulthood. By my standards, lots of chronological adults are just overgrown children. The problem is that they vote (at the polls and with their feet and wallets) and think their opinions are equivalent to facts and logic.
Re:There wouldn't be any of this (Score:5, Insightful)
Every organised religion in the world would like a word with you on how human mind works and just how exceptional (or deluded about yourself) you are.
It's really simple. If you invade the sanctity of my life by forcibly trying to make something my problem (such as driving drunk and endangering me) then yes, I do have the right to stop you, most likely by calling the police.
... on what grounds would I hassle you over that? For what? What right would I have to tell you that you may not do something just because I wouldn't?
But if you are an adult person who acts like one, and can confine the consequences of your decisions to yourself, then I have no cause and no right to interfere. If I really don't like what you do with that freedom then my best option is to provide a counter-example by not doing that with my own life.
Let's say you use drugs but you do it at home, you don't drive impaired, you don't steal or commit other crimes to obtain the money to buy them, you stay home, you sober up, you go about your business the next day without imposing on anyone or endangering anyone
A real love for freedom is simply not compatible with a Puritannical busybody mentality that tries to enforce its morality on others without their consent. That kind of mentality would be more at home with some kind of autocracy or other absolute dictatorship. If I don't like the books you read and strongly disapprove of them, then I don't have to read them. If I think the religion you practice is total bullshit, that's okay because I don't have to practice it. If I think the music you listen to is garbage, I don't have to listen to it myself. If I think the substances you ingest are useless and pointless and have no merit, that's alright because I don't have to ingest them simply because you do.
Unless you are posing a threat to me, I have no right and no reason to bother you over what you choose to do with your life. I don't share the insecurity and the desire to control that the moral busybodies base their lives around. That isn't how I get my jollies. All I want is to live and let live while enjoying the same freedom I want others to have. This is really so exceptional? How far we have fallen.
Re:There wouldn't be any of this (Score:4, Insightful)
Making very addictive and VERY harmful drugs illegal is probably be a good way of preventing people from "trying it once" then getting hooked on it and ending up in an alleyway turning tricks for meth money.
I can't agree on it for marijuana, but meth, crack, and other such drugs are just a *bit* more dangerous and addictive than marijuana. Y'know. Just a tad.
Since when did we start using law as a sorry substitute for what should be things like awareness, prudence, common sense, good decision-making, and an ability to think for oneself? As I often say, you really don't want the kind of society movement in this direction will create.
Further, it's subtle but your reasoning (while sincere) contradicts itself. I don't think you're stupid or wrong-headed or anything like that. I think you mean well, you want the most good for others, but you're misguided concerning how that happens. That's my opinion.
Why do we try to keep folks who've never seen fire away from touching it. Because it hurts them.
We don't arrange that by making fire illegal. That's the hinge.
Grasp that and you understand how your notion amounts to protecting people from themselves, through the instrument of law backed by threat of state violence, in the holy name of declaring yourself better able than the individuals involved to know what is good for them. Can you name for me the goal or ultimate purpose of even a single particular life? In a final, ultimate way which dictates the decisions that should be made? Can you do that even for your own, let alone someone else's?
The only answer to this is freedom, the willingness to live and let live, to respect the rights of individuals to work this out on their own. It works as long as they don't impair the ability of others to do the same. Ensuring that is the proper role of a more enlightened state. The problem of what to decide for everyone is avoided when you take another path, that of letting the life that makes a decision experience the results. It tends to be self-correcting if you don't separate conscious decision-making from consequence.
What we do with fire is what we should do with drugs. We explain what it is, why it can be dangerous, why it can be welcome and useful, what the safety protocols are, what is risky and what is relatively safe, and how to use it if and when it is desired. We do this even though a single uncontrolled fire could destroy an entire forest, neighborhood, or even a city. What we don't do is send state agents armed with guns and other weaponry to imprison everyone who lights a campfire, uses a grill, or starts a car.
The article of faith is that Prohibition and the mentality behind it was ever valid, beneficial, or based on a solid understanding of reality. Plenty of ideas are well-intentioned yet utterly foolish and destructive. This is one of them.
Re:There wouldn't be any of this (Score:2, Insightful)
Having a rational discussion about recreational drugs with your average American is pretty much impossible. It's like trying to talk about religion. They're just not educationally equipped for it. It's like trying to discuss chess with a plant.