Anonymous Kills Websites, Cartels Kill Bloggers

An anonymous reader writes "While drug cartels in Mexico are disemboweling people they accuse of blogging about drug violence, Anonymous busies itself taking down Mexican government websites. With all the problems facing people in Mexico right now, including drug cartels extorting teachers for 50% of their pay and killing schoolchildren (thus shutting down the school system), Mexico's biggest oil field in terminal decline and drug cartels kidnapping busloads of people and forcing them into gladiator-style contests to the death, Anonymous' actions appear particularly petty."

Comments

The solution is obvious:

[Anonymous Coward]

We need to increase spending on the war on drugs, thus increasing scarcity and profit margins.

Re:The solution is obvious:

[Bert64]

Or ditch the "war on drugs" entirely... The illegal trade in drugs costs authorities billions, and fuels organised crime such as the drug cartels in mexico and other countries.

So instead, legalise drugs but put in place controls on them:

Quality controls, drugs available from reputable suppliers rather than dodgy dealers, so drugs don't end up contaminated with other even more harmful substances.
Taxes - tax drugs the same way that the currently legal tobacco and alcohol are taxed.
Monitoring - know who's taking drugs.

Government saves on law enforcement costs trying to police drugs...
Government further benefits from tax income from the sale of drugs.
Drug users benefit from cheaper supplies, which are also safer and have a legal avenue for complaint.
Drug companies can develop alternatives that provide the effects the users want, while reducing the negatives (e.g. see electronic cigarettes).
Drug users need not hide their activities, and can more easily seek help to give up.

It's an obvious solution, and the only ones who stand to lose are the criminal gangs who are currently making huge profits from illegal drugs.

Re:The solution is obvious:

[cjohnson319]

You write "further decline of society" as if you have no knowledge of history. At no point in human development has our collective ability to achieve been greater.

You're longing for an idealized past that never existed.

Re:The solution is obvious:

[Pieroxy]

Look at the quote at the very bottom of this page (at this moment):

"You can make it illegal, but you can't make it unpopular."

Re:The solution is obvious:

[DrBoumBoum]

do you have any idea how many lives have been ruined by alcohol in the mean time?

You mean things were better during the prohibition?

Re:The solution is obvious:

[cjohnson319]

"A good assassination team would remove 100% of the cartel operatives in Mexico fairly quickly."

As if the cartels don't have the money and the will to hire effective special ops types to ensure this doesn't happen. These people ship contraband in submarines, for the love of mike. They definitely can (and obviously do) hire professionals to do security.

"It's my experience that most people with which I've discussed this topic deny the effectiveness of this solution because they do not wish it to have viability."

Your Rainbow 6 fantasies notwithstanding, it's not that I don't wish it were simple. But it's not simple. You're dealing with a group of people who have more money that most of the official institutions charged with fighting them. Don't even get me started on will, either. The cartels don't have to worry about court or political considerations.

You're making up a better video game scenario than actual strategy.

Re:The solution is obvious:

[DragonWriter]

Yes and do you have any idea how many lives have been ruined by alcohol in the mean time?

Fewer, proportionally, than were ruined by alcohol and the alcohol trade and its effects during Prohibition.

The problem with prohibition was that nobody was following that law, for the most part not even the law enforcement being expected to enforce the law.

The problem with prohibition of alcohol was that there was sufficient demand for the product prohibited that its prohibition caused more harm by providing a high-value, easy-to-produce commodity that could not be legally supplied (and thus could only be supplied by criminals), thereby fueling massive organized crime syndicates.

It was not that "nobody was following the law"; plenty of people were following the law. There were plenty of businesses that didn't sell alcohol because it was illegal, and plenty of people that chose not to buy it because it was illegal. There were plenty who didn't, as well, just as with the present prohibition of selected drugs.

In this case, we're letting a minority group with little to no concern over the results of their actions undermine democracy because they feel they have the right to just ignore the law because it's inconvenient.

Uh, no, we're not. Arguing that we should choose, through the democratic process, an approach to controlling the ills associated with certain currently-prohibited drugs that would, based on past experience with another previously-prohibited drugs whose prohibition had undesirable effects very similar to those that are manifest with the currently-prohibited drugs at issue, produce better net results for society isn't letting anyone undermine democracy. (And, if it was, ending prohibition -- which had no such clear past referent -- would have been even moreso.)

There's little reason to believe that the other serious problems with drug abuse are going to go away just because the government bows to pressure and legalizes it.

There is certainly plenty of reason to believe that it will be much easier to address those problemsif, instead of public resources being directed to fight the manufacture, distribution, and sale of the currently-banned drugs, those resources are directed at dealing with the problems of drug abuse, and further additional resources are available because the destructive side-effects of the illegal drug trade which consume public resources are removed and the newly-legal drug trade becomes a legal, taxed part of the economy.

Much of the funding for public alcohol abuse treatment and prevention comes from alcohol users through special taxes collected on alcohol, while some law enforcement expenses caused by the prohibition of drugs is funded by drug users or sellers through civil forfeiture of property, its a very small share, and only addresses a small portion of the costs imposed by prohibition, and none of the costs associated with actually dealing with drug abuse itself.

I mean, that hasn't happened with alcohol, so I'm not sure why one would expect it to happen with drugs.

Sure, the problems of abuse haven't gone away with alcohol since the end of prohibition, but we've gotten much better at dealing with them since the government's efforts have been able to focus on the problems of abuse, rather than resources being sucked into the vast law enforcement problems created by prohibition itself.

The choices aren't between the problems "going away" and no effect whatsoever.

Re:The solution is obvious:

[cjohnson319]

They're not my morals, pal. Quit conflating the way the cartel does and would respond to military action and how I feel about that.

As others have said, we've tried militarized action again and again and again. You don't think there were SpecOps folks working with Columbia? You know, since the 80s? And you can still buy cocaine easily in America.

You're arguing for not just more of the same, but a shit-ton more of the same. You are completely ignoring the demand side of the equation. You will never understand much less be able to do anything about the situation on our border until you address and accept the reality of the human desire (and I would argue right) to get fucked up.

You can't shoot enough people to make the people you're shooting stop being humans and having human desires. But shoot enough of them, and you'll find yourself dehumanized much faster than you even thought possible.

Re:The solution is obvious:

[DriedClexler]

Just because there isn't alcohol to traffic doesn't mean the problem will be solved. Chicago and New York gangs will not vanish, but merely shift their business to some other form of social exploitation. There's a lot more than just money involved in this trade, and gang members aren't just going to go get normal jobs if the demand for alcohol diminishes. ...

Therefore, we should not repeal Prohibition.

Ha. is it.

[unity100]

has the moron who has submitted this, asked himself, how the hell drug cartels become able to do those things that you dont even see in civil wars ? do you think it could be possible without assistance from within government ? note that government in mexico is extremely corrupt.

and what relevance does anonymous's actions have to this ? this seems like moronic bashing just because you want to bash.

quality of accepted submissions have been declining lately.

Re:I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

Never heard of Desaparecidos, I take it? Your precious right-wing paramilitaries are a LARGE part of why Central America is having such problems with violence today.

Recall...

[Shoten]

I remember when the online community castigated Yahoo for cooperating with the Chinese, a couple of years ago. People talked about it like it was a choice between giving the Chinese the information they wanted, or not giving it to them; nobody considered that the Chinese could get the information by threatening the Chinese employees of Yahoo who had access to the information, or by alternate (and even less friendly) methods. What nobody seemed to realize is that when you're dealing with certain kinds of things (like criminal organizations and repressive governments), things don't stay in online. There are kinetic repurcussions to actions, and if the 'bad people' are more comfortable in the real world than the online one, they're going to show up on your doorstep, not in your inbox.

Re:I agree

[mapkinase]

Your republicans are no different from democrats, just slightly different demographics they are pandering to.

Re:Legalise drug trade

[networkconsultant]

You do realize this is all due to the new form of prohibition right? You can legalize everything all you want in Mexico but the market being Supplied is to the north. Until it's legal on both sides of the border, violence will be an issue.

Anonymous = in it for the lulz

[the_raptor]

Of course those actions appear petty. Petty is 99% of what Anonymous gets its kicks from. From abusing 12 year old girls (even if they kind of asked for it) to posting insulting comments about physically disabled people. The stuff like Project Chanology (the attacks on Scientology) was an aberration and really involved more non-Chan New Friends then it did Chan Old Friends, even though it started on the Chans. Anonymous originally got media attention for Habo Hotel/Second Life raids and harassing people on MySpace/Facebook.

Anonymous isn't your friend. Anonymous aren't moral crusaders. Anonymous are in it for the lulz.

Daily Mail alert!

[Rik Sweeney]

and drug cartels kidnapping busloads of people and forcing them into gladiator-style contests to the death

Links to The Daily Mail, which is nearly as bad as a Goatse link.

Or...

[betterunixthanunix]

Or we could stop militarizing law enforcement, and try a new, less violent approach to drug policy (like, say, legalization).

Re:Legalise drug trade

[Andy Dodd]

I think that's his point...

This country doesn't seem to have learned from its mistakes with Prohibition, which created some of the most violent gangs and cartels in this country's history, at least the most violent until the New Prohibition (aka War on Drugs).

Re:Legalise drug trade

[Xest]

Agreed, it's not like legalised alcohol causes any problems that put burdens on the health system and increases deaths by drink driving accidents and so forth or anything.

Seriously, it's not as simple as you think. Sure legalisation gets rid of organised crime but it creates other issues in terms of higher levels of sometimes fatal substance abuse.

Note that I'm not saying legalisation isn't the best solution of a bad bunch - it might well be - but so many idiots think it's a silver bullet and it's absolutely not. Legalisation just brings with it a whole raft of different problems instead. All that tax income and then some is just going to go on drug driving incidents, greater numbers requiring rehabilitation and so forth.

It's also not going to eliminate the cartels overnight, there are still going to be an absolute fuckton of very nasty people with more nasty weapons out there with a lust for doing some even more nasty things. You run the risk of having a situation where these nasty fucks are still going round murdering whilst simultaneously also having to deal with a greater burden of addicts, drug driving fuckups and so forth to boot.

There need to be a lot more studies - impartial ones - before any such step like this is taken. Thus far the debate is largely dominated by a contest between stoner hippies who want to have their thrill legalised, and prudish bores who think anything more than paracetamol is going to make the whole world instantly collapse.

One should note that even the famous Amsterdam, often used by those in support of legalisation as an example of how well things can work has recently clamped down on it to a degree because of the amount of people coming in, getting high, and creating costly and annoying problems. It's certainly not this magical panacea some thing it is.

This Slashdot post is a clucker

[Anonymous Coward]

This Slashdot post is Tabloid quality journalism. What is this post except an invitation for readers to cluck in dismay like chickens.

This post consists of headlines from separate uncoordinated news sources describing physically and chronologically separate events. The entire post is a twisted criticism of yet further unrelated Internet punks with an opinion.

Part of the problem with the post is the underlying events in Mexico are serious but the subject matter and invitation of the post are a distraction from the substance of the post.

Re:You're so smart!

[Hatta]

People drinking booze isn't that big a deal. People on the harder drugs leads to all sorts of problems - crime included.

There is no harder drug than alcohol. It is so addictive that withdrawal can kill you. You can't say the same about meth, PCP, crack cocaine, or heroin. Further, no drug is more strongly associated with violent behavior. If society has found a way to co-exist with the most dangerous drug in existance, why can't we do the same for every other drug?

Re:Legalise drug trade

[Duradin]

"There's no proof for it, only common sense."

Ahh good ol' Common Sense, I miss that high school. Did you follow that up with a bachelor's degree from "It Stands To Reason" College and a doctorate from "Some Bloke at the Bar Said" University?

All apologies to Pratchett.

Not even all drugs, marijuana would be huge

[Kamiza Ikioi]

The major drug problem between the US and Mexico is Marijuana. Our culture is very "meh" on having it outlawed, so there is a higher market for it, unlike drugs like heroin and meth with scares the crap out of most people, including the pot smokers among us. So it's not as though all those weed sales will transfer to cocaine or heroin if marijuana is legalized. They'll simply go out of business, or become legitimate, like beer producers did. Beer producers didn't say, "Shit, we can't dodge taxes and shoot at the federal lawmen anymore... so screw beer, we're going to start selling heroin!"

No, they went legit, and the guns went away. The gangs and mafias changed to do other illegal things, but they lost a huge portion of income. The same would happen with marijuana.

By the way, all those liquor taxes are paying for local community services, like schools. This is taxable, just like liquor, cigarettes, or any other luxury item.

I wonder...

[Syberz]

Smoking is legal and can kill you.

Drinking is legal and can kill you.

Myriad other things are legal and can kill you.

So why not legalize all drugs, tax the sh*t out of 'em like cigarettes. The self-destructive will be able to do so, the curious ones will be able to try and the recreational users will be able to do so too. I'd be curious to see what would happen.