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Mexican Gov't Shuts Down Zetas' Secret Cell Network
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.
If US would just let its citizen get high.
Stealth submarines, solar powered call communications networks, encrypted communications. They are equipped like a damn government.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with 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.
trained, and funded by the U.S.A. Really.
So, your tax dollars at work for evil. Again.
http://www.soaw.org/component/content/article/1/1994
But I will assert that, unlike nicotine (highly addictive, but not inebriating: you can still carry on a job/ relationship), or alcohol, or other either mildy inebriating or mildly addictive drugs, the combination of high addictiveness and high inebriation means that some drugs destroy a person's ability to maintain their relationships/ job. Therefore, for cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin, the costs of prohibition may seem high, but the costs of higher levels of destroyed lives due to addiction to substances which render you unable to function are higher yet.
The "war on drugs" is ugly. Addiction to substances which render you unable to function in life is uglier. Some determined people will always be able to get these substances, but by making it difficulty and costly, you save lives by preventing exposure for some in the first place. Once addicted, healthcare based treatment rather than corporal punishment is of course superior, but there are certain people who will remain unsalvageable from the hell of addiction to personal freedom destroying substances. Therefore, it is superior to never let them fall down that rabbit hole in the first place.
Notice I said "personal freedom destroying substances." It always amuses me to hear certain people say they are championing free will when they propose people be able to take certain substances which are more potent destroyers of free will than the most authoritarian government you can imagine. That people should be denied the full range of their free will by a useless biochemical monkey on their back, just because they were young and stupid once, and lived in a society which allowed them easy access to free will destroying substances, is a form of willful ignorant hypocrisy on the subject of maximizing personal liberty.
The "war on drugs" is therefore a misnamed concept. It is simply a maintenance function of a civilization that values free will. No modern society can or will allow unchecked addiction to highly inebriating substances that rot at society and destroy human dignity, and, as I said before, personal free will.
If you don't understand how drug addiction is more an enemy of the concept of personal freedom than any totalitarian government you can imagine (unless of course, that authoritarian government forced people to take highly addictive substances as a form of control) then you simply don't even understand the subject matter you are commenting on. To have a pointless biochemical interrupt switch injected into your mind ("get high... get high... get high...") for the rest of your life (your willpower is now absolute, and weakens in times of depression and life setbacks), is, in the world history of mankind, the story of the most destruction of free will ever. More free will destroying, by orders of magnitude, by every government that ever existed added together. Understand that about drugs, or understand nothing.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
At least a couple of guys in this zeta thing is far from being a thug.
I mean.. entire fucking cell networks... submarines and shit. You gotta give some credit to them for that.
Yes, hanging severed heads from traffic signs ain't cool, but they have a pretty nice amount of technology.
They should tell this guys there's great climate for planting coca on mars and we'll be there next month.
"... A solar-powered, visually unobtrusive, encrypted cell network sounds like something I'd like to sign up for..."
If someone built such a network stateside, it would take two months tops for someone to start screaming that it was there in order to distribute child pornography. You'd be totally villified over the next few months, so that by the time your trial came up, "they" might just as well take you out and shoot you.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
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.
They acomplish their strong communications network thanks to money, corruption and kidnapping of engineers.
Given the levels of organization, sophistication, business savvy, and ruthlessness needed to run a modern day, world wide drug organization, why haven't they gone legit and taken over Mexico's politics? Seriously, at some point it just be easier to influence the Mexican government into passing laws that legalize drugs and turn Mexico into a legitimate drug clearing house for the world.
I leave it up to an economist/historian to point to relevant examples in History where the only way to increase the profit of an illegal market was to legalize the market.
Would you support prohibition if it caused more problems than legalization?
You're misunderstanding the difference between evidence based policy and rationale based policy.
You can make a rationale for almost anything. Most issues are not 100% black-and-white, so simply emphasizing the negatives can be used as a rationale when you want to push your own agenda.
The evidence indicates that when prescription-grade cocaine is used, the negative effects are minimal. Most of the corporeal damage comes from the substances used to dilute (ie - cut) the drug, and the true expense of maintaining a habit comes to pennies a day. The rough equivalent of drinking a 2-liter soda per day.
The evidence also indicates that people can keep a family and a job and a cocaine habit. Again, most of the social damage comes from the high expense and low quality of the illicit product.
On the other hand, making illegal something that much of the population wants gives authoritarians the perfect excuse to curtail our freedoms. The police enjoy the ability to root around in our cars, houses, and personal effects looking for drugs. The government gets to regulate how much cash we carry, where our money comes from, and how we travel because we "might" be smuggling drugs.
Don't buy into the "we need to do this because it might lead to that" mentality; don't submit to the fear.
Go where the evidence takes you.
Even if it is legal there will be people like the Zetas. They will simply sell it cheaper than other companies and pocket the almost 100% profit. A good example of this is moonshine. If legalising something would do away with all illegal trade in that item moonshine should not exist. Another example is black market cigarettes purchased by people to get around paying taxes on them. Do you not think the government would tax marijuana. And if you only legalised marijuana the Zetas would be around to still smuggle in other drugs. Where there is money to be made crooks will make a counterfeit or sell the same thing cheaper to make money for themselves.
Kosh: "Understanding is a 3 edged sword, your side, their side, the Truth."
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.
Have gnu, will travel.
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.
To say nothing of the infrared detecting devices, footstep detectors, UAVs, and more. Technological advancement is fueled by this cashflow. But, then, that is just another way of saying that this productive ingenuity is being consumed by a questionably productive sector of the economy. How much does it really benefit us to keep marijuana illegal?
Imagine if we applied all of that combined ingenuity to solving problems of satisfying wants and providing for the future, instead of investing it in prohibition and evasion.
Clearly there are benefits to prohibition. Average moms and dads don't have to worry as much about their kids smoking pot, because it is a little bit harder to get. They don't have to do as well, explaining to a teenager that moderation is worth it in the long run.
Those benefits must be measured against the costs. This must include all the costs; the government budgets, the human lives lost, and the money that the Zetas are spending on their militia and mules. Increasing enforcement has some mitigating effect on the availability of drugs, and increases the costs all around.
It also strikes me that the violence that is happening in Mexico is starting to resemble the violence in South and Central America. More specifically, it resembles the violence in South and Central America ever since Reagan's war on cocaine. Drugs fund terrorism, violent crime, and revolutionaries? Maybe so -- and prohibition drives up the profit margin on drugs. Funny how that works.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Turn off the government run social welfare programs and turn on legalized drugs. That way when Darwin's losers win their idea of the lottery I won't have to pay for it.
Does this mean they're hiring IT people to plan/build up a new network? Anyone have an e-mail to send my resume to?
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/03/us/officers-punished-for-supporting-eased-drug-laws.html?ref=us
It seems strange to smuggle drugs (very violent enterprise) to purchase illegal cigarettes (low violence enterprise) in order to smuggle the cigarettes (low violence enterprise).
Rather, I'll guess that the smugglers were smuggling cigarettes AND drugs. And rather than outright purchases, the exchanges happened more on the barter system. With smugglers X trading an excess of item A for item B which smugglers Y and smugglers Z had an excess of.
$8 million paid for 388,000 cartons of cigarettes means ... ... the numbers just don't add up.
$20.61 per carton.
Which, depending upon where you live, is probably better than half-price of what you'd get in a store.
But since the smugglers probably WILL NOT be getting full price for the cigarettes when they sell them
Unless they sell them in stores that they own. In which case this becomes more of an issue of tax evasion. They buy at the source and sell in a high tax area without paying the taxes so they make more profit on each pack sold.
I'd just like to add I dropped a hit of acid and smoked a couple of bowls an hour ago. Thank you, some parts of America.
From The Onion:
April 13, 2005
DEA Seizes Half-Built Suspension Bridge From Bogotá To Miami
http://www.theonion.com/articles/dea-seizes-halfbuilt-suspension-bridge-from-bogota,9607/
Neo-cons run around screaming that we can shutdown illegals and stop drugs. They state that we MUST build a fence. Yet, drugloads, coyotoes, etc continue their work via boats, submarines, tunnels, hell, via Canada. The point is, that a fence is about the stupidiest thing going. And after 50 years of a republican and neo-con drug war that has only served to create drug lords, terrorists, etc (and very likely enriched a NUMBER of anti-drug politicians) and they still claim that it is winnable.
Now, they are running HR-2885, which will require e-verify on businesses. However, the penalties have been gutted. In addition, it has ZERO chance of getting by libs. The SIMPLE answer is to crack down further on penalties for businesses that hire illegals,and add to that, the dream act. By doing that, it will force the dems to address this.
But to take this further, we need to legalize drugs. Heavy regulations, and most importantly, ZERO IMPORTS OR EXPORTS. By allowing zero imports/exports you destroy drug lords/terrorists, thought to be fair, unless other nations follow, some of these groups will simply refocus (several are dedicated to America's or the west's destruction: Zeta's, AQ, etc).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
He thinks that because he is stupid.
Ok so this cartel is taking in a billion dollars or so from an illegal drug. After the drug is made legal what do you think will happen? Do you think they'll give up that income and take day jobs working in an office? They'll switch to another drug.
Do you know how China handled their little opium problem? Its going to take something similar with Mexico and the cartels.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
How many people do you know that smoke pot?
So, is the drug war against pot working?
Is the drug war worth the money spent and the lives lost?
Wait, what? All this money, police, killing, and drugs are still widely available?
The drug gangs and the police want it to be illegal, for were it legal, it would cut into their action.
End this foolish prohibition!
I wonder if maybe Anonymous Hackers had a hand in this?? They threatened to expose a few cartels operations, if they did expose this to the Mexican Government I take back what I said about them. However this is only going to open the door for smaller more extreme cartels. Example after they killed Pablo Escobar it did not put a dent in the problem it just gave several other drug operations (i have know Idea why I mention this to slashdot readers most of you already know this) the green to go ahead without Pablo's Army hunting them down, and or being forced to work with Pablo.. I understand the Anonymous Hackers wanting revenge, but this group may have done a lot more harm then good, IF THEY HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT..
Yep. But in order to get even that amount they have to front $8 million in cash. That's a significant amount of money.
And it's a significant risk of losing the $8 million if they're caught. And the larger the operation, the more likely it is that they will be caught. As was the case in that example.
So they're smart enough to get $8 million to "invest" in crime ... but dumb enough to "invest" $8 million in crime.
AFAIK the USA has lost all wars it started.
The story always repeats itself: the war is just, they insist it can be won, then must retreat.
The pattern is that of a sale being forced upon the american people, they are to buy something they didn't even know they wanted to begin with.
There is a precedent for this type of government: they are called Banana Republics.
The world is growing tired of american delusionism.
--
Welcome to the Divided States of America.
My guess is that a legalized market in the U.S. for marijuana alone exceeds the entire illegal drug market now.
The cartels face enormous operating costs in terms of bribes, delivery infrastructure, security and manufacturing. These costs would be trivial in legal market.
They already have the means and ability to produce a product -- why wouldn't you want to decrease the costs (not to mention the fairly high loss of life risk) for access to a market 5-10 times as large?
Plus, history suggests that the end of alcohol prohibition didn't make whisky production stop, so there's a fairly good reason to believe that there's still big money to made.
Since these comments immediately shifted from production to consumption, and the trend is to allow consumption, is there any way to reduce consumption's impact on society? Stoners, drunkards, the elderly, anyone with impaired reflexes and cognition, have them pass a mind-hand-eye reflex test before starting out and at random red lights or pauses in driving. I'm not talking about getting your nickel back if you press button quickly enough, but some embedded equivalent of this. Maybe the car should go into sleep mode like my computer does if I don't reset the tripometer at verbal command. Maybe my too-loud radio switches to German opera if I seem irresponsible. Maybe my air conditioning and fan go to high if I either swerve a lot or don't modulate my driving at all. Do it right and it could solve teen driving concerns, too, since driving a car in traffic will become less fun than playing with the car while it's parked in the driveway.
http://www.excelsior.com.mx/index.php?m=nota&id_nota=738774
http://www.msemanal.com/node/4514
to plan for Mars expedition. I bet that will be the most efficient plan.
PPJ.
wasn't there a plant giving you chess-advice in Broken Hill?
You're thinking of the short stories anthology with Gil "The Arm" Hamilton by Larry Niven.