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Data Mining, Cocaine and Secrecy
hightimes writes: "Business 2.0 uncovers one of the world's most sophisticated IT network in where else, Colombia. According to the story, Colombian drug cartels have spent billions of dollars to build a huge infrastructure that's helping them smuggle more dope than ever before." Even though this is about a raid that took place most of a decade ago, it's an interesting example of the power (and potential abuse) of large-scale data mining.
I'm mostly sick of how it keeps sending peaceful, totally non-violent people to criminal school, er... prison, where they either waste their lives away, or end up being "reformed" into real criminals.
lame, lame, lame...
ben
We could wipe out these cartels overnight by legalizing and regulated the trade of cocaine and other recreational drugs - just like we do for alcohol.
There are many who would argue with you on that. Personally, I think legalizing some of these drugs would seriously hurt them (although I'd stop short of saying "wipe them out"). However, there's also another way of winning the war on drugs.
We could make this so-called war on drugs a real war. We go in to Columbia with some military force and start taking out the cartels. I'm not trolling -- I'm serious. I'm sure our satellites must be able to detect some large drug facilities. We'll just go in there and bomb them.
I can hear people screaming that we don't have the right to do that. We don't have "jurisdiction" to take out the cartels -- we're supposed to wait for the Columbian government to clean up that mess. But how would that be different than what we just did in Afganistan? There was an organization in that country that caused serious damage to the United States. We ordered the ruling government (the Taliban) to turn over the terrorists or we'd go in there and do it ourselves. They didn't so we did. So how would it be different for us to demand the Columbian government takes care of the drug cartels. And if they don't, we'd do it ourselves.
Either we should legalize these drugs or we should fight a full-scale war. This half-assed bullshit that we're doing now is just not going anywhere. Are we fighting a war on drugs or not?
GMD
watch this
Well you did say flame away....
.gov agency would use any opportunity they can find to try and screw more money for their own little empire? Have you ever worked for the gov? Have you ever worked for any large organisation at all?
.au anyway). The .au gov makes billions of tabacco tax but zero off (currently illegal) drug taxes. Instead of making money on taxes they're spending money on a futile and self destructive war. Again, it's just plain stupid.
Point by point:
1. So you don't think that a
2. You see people who's lives are devestated by "drugs". And yet I see people who's lives are devestated by drug laws. How is putting someone in prison for hurting themselves supposed to be good for them? Or for their families? Oh but of course drugs are bad for you aren't they? And yet is the morphine they use at the hospital "bad" for you? No? Why not? Could it be that hospital grade drugs are just a little bit cleaner than the crap sold on the street in a totally unregulated market? What happened to alcohol when it was illegal - people sold crappy moonshine that made people blind. Yet today I can buy a bottle with confidence that it won't send me blind and I can see from the label exactly how strong it is. Why? Because it's legal and manufacturers have public liabilty. Get it straight in your head, drugs aren't exactly nutritionally rich but most of the damage you see is caused by impurities in the drugs caused because drugs are a black market item.
3. Would I like a meth lab in the house next door? Not really. Would you like the Johnny Walker brewery in the house next door to you? Not really? Funny that. In a legalised regulated environment their wouldn't be back yard labs where explosions are common. Backyard labs are a product of the war on drugs, not the cause. Bigots like you keep using the unfortunate results of the war on drugs to wage even more war. Talk about simplistic, talk about cyclical. Talk about plain stupid.
4. What an insight, cigaretts are expensive and people still buy them. Their expensive (at least here is Australia) because they have the crap taxed out of them. Without tax they'd be about $1.50 a packet (in
5. Addicts can't hold jobs? I held a fucking job every fucking day for the 5 years I used heroin and so did most of my friends. Why don't you try talking about something you have a clue about.
6. So now drug users are "damaged"? What kind of bigot are you. Have you forgotten that alcohol and tabacco are also drugs, just ones that are legal.
7. You're riled up? Have you any idea the kind of suffering narrow minded bigots like you cause?
Why try to stop people using drugs? You might as well try to hold back the tide. Yet still we try and still agencies like the DEA would like you to think it's feasible, if only they had more money because the bad guys have lots of money and that must be why we can't seem to beat them.
Ah shit, you know what? Just let it all burn. I give up.
I am well aware of the ecstasy information. Alot of the studies on humans have had methodological problems and there is some debate on how accurate the SERT binding studies they use to estimate neurotoxicity in animals are.
However, the evidence is quite strong that at some dosage regimene the animals are experiencing some sort of neural degeneration (intrestingly enough no toxicity is seen if the MDMA is injected directly into the brain but this is a long topic and we don't need to go into it). In fact in very high doses MDMA produces non-serotonin specific neurotoxicity like the amphetamines but this is probably well outside the normal dose range.
The question that is debatable is whether these degenerative effects are significant in normal users of the drug. I personally and observing my friends use sparingly have seen no ill effects. HOWEVER, if you talk to people who have used excesively (yes there are people who pop 5 pills every weekend or a pill every day for years) they have serious concentration, memory and emotional problems.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
You read an article like this, and you can only imagine why people would want to legalize drugs and legitimize criminal scum like this. Let's see... the cartels have a monopoly on the North American drug trade. All drugs are legalized. Do you magically think the cartels will all fold up and go out of business? No, they'll try to maintain that monopoly, and you'll have a little mini-Colombia in the USA. I wonder how many American pharmecutical factories would be torched...
I hate to break it to all the apologists who always sympathize with the underdog (even when they're so blatantly wrong as like in this case), but _drug dealers are killers_. They kill with drugs, they kill by shooting people in the head. You do not "put them out of business" by legalizing drugs. You put them out of business by arresting them and putting them in front of a judge, or perhaps far more satisfyingly, shooting each and every one of the bastards in the heads.
To hell with "out of Colombia". To hell with "what will the rest of the world think?". It's amazing that Nader-lovers and other socialists can spew the crap they do, really. According to them, the US _deserved_ 9/11. That sort of talk is _morally repugnant_. Next thing you know, Israeli babies who get slaughtered in suicide bombing attacks deserved it, too! Oh, wait, they already do say that! I could care less that the "poor people of Colombia who've been horribly hurt by globalization, and now need to turn to drugs for money". That's totally inane. YOUR SUFFERING DOES NOT GIVE YOU THE RIGHT TO HURT OTHER _INNOCENT_ PEOPLE. Really! If the rest of the world thinks that saving your citizens' lives through force is wrong, then I really could care less what they think. Better to be alone and doing the right thing than being wrong with everyone else. Moral relativism will kill us all someday.
My countrymen are _dying_ because our country is too damn timid to go in and fix a problem, as the last resort, with the barrel of a gun. Drug dealers are taking over a country with the fruit of their deadly labors, and _terrorizing_ it. Diplomacy doesn't work unless you've got a solution when it fails. Diplomacy has failed - the friendly drug dealers aren't listening to us or the Colombian government. We need to start giving them another sort of talk - the type with lead teeth.
For all those who'd like to convince me otherwise, I've had this sort of discussion a hundred times before, and I've listened, too. I just _don't agree_. Yes, people can disagree and be educated and not fanatical. Don't even bother wasting your misguided fingers on me by typing out some response I've already heard before. Go pamphlet a campus with pro-Nader flyers or something that'll be far more entertaining than reading your responses.
Before you all crucify me for my views, realize that I am not totally against the legalization of marijuana. I just do not believe that legalizing crack cocaine and kow-towing to drug dealer scum will help anyone in this world, and would prefer to deal with them in a more terminal way, or arrest them.
My apologies for being forceful. I understand what the other side of the issue is... I just seriously do not agree.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.