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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."
Deaths from blogging accidents are about to go way up.
Legal trade causes far less trouble, clearly the best way forward is to legalise the trade and use the extra tax income to police and jail those who still engage in crime.
... bridges hanging from the cartel members?
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.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
RIAA Label Used In Massive Cocaine Trafficking Ring
http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-label-used-in-massive-cocaine-trafficking-ring-110916/
Earlier this year record label boss Jimmy Rosemond was arrested on the suspicion of leading a massive cocaine trafficking ring.
The founder of Czar Entertainment used shipments of music equipment to transfer cocaine across the United States.
These shipments went to several music studios, and according to a recent court filing uncovered by The Smoking Gun, Interscope Records is one of them.
This suggests that people at the RIAA label were in on the game.
Previously entertainment industry representatives have suggested that piracy can be linked to organized crime, and the above suggests that the same can be said for the music industry.
How many people in the music industry were part of the drug ring remains unknown at this point, but we would advise the RIAA to carefully investigate its members to avoid the practices from escalating.
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
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.
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CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
pull all the troops out of afghanistan and iraq and send them in to mexico to hunt down and kill these drug smuggler cartels before this sort thing becomes common in the USA
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Actually the complete opposite needs to happen. The way the government stopped the smuggling of alcohol and the related gang/mob violence during prohibition was to re-legalize alcohol. Make drugs a legal product and have the government tax the profits. It will immediately stop all this wasteful drug related violence and security expenditure.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
What would really help is if the US cleaned up it's drug addictions then there would be zero market. Or if the US didn't force their war on drugs onto other countries then the cartels wouldn't be fighting violence with violence so much.
BTW, IAM
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
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.
Summation 2
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.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Or we could stop militarizing law enforcement, and try a new, less violent approach to drug policy (like, say, legalization).
Palm trees and 8
Invade? Didn't you read TFS? Their oil production is declining!
Government saves on law enforcement costs trying to police drugs...
Not necessarily:
http://www.fear.org/chicago.html
http://www.dpeg.org/legal_issues/assetforfeiture.htm
Palm trees and 8
That's why Republicans oppose the decriminalization of drugs. They oppose new taxes.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
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."
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Do you realize society got along just fine with legal drugs for centuries - it wasn't until the late 1800's/early 1900's that prohibition became a big thing. Guess what came out of prohibition of alcohol - organized crime and bootleggers. What has come from the prohibition of drugs? A booming underground industry. Lets also not forget that one of our founding fathers and first presidents, George Washington, was an avid pot smoker, grower, and distributor - just read his letters to his gardener at mount Vernon in reference to "Indian Hemp" - aka Cannabis Sativa. Should we have shot him too?
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?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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?
"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.
Fewer, proportionally, than were ruined by alcohol and the alcohol trade and its effects during Prohibition.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
I8-D
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.
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.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
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.
~Syberz