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.

Comments

There wouldn't be any of this

[CmdrPony]

If US would just let its citizen get high.

Re:There wouldn't be any of this

[Bob The Cowboy]

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

[iroll]

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

[causality]

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.

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 ... 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.

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

Re:There wouldn't be any of this

[causality]

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

[causality]

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.

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 ... 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?

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:Wow

[gedankenhoren]

"They are equipped like a damn government."

(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.")

Maybe. Maybe not.

[khasim]

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.

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.

The "war on drugs" is ugly. Addiction to substances which render you unable to function in life is uglier.

If that were correct then Prohibition would be preferable to the massive distribution of alcohol we have today.

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.

I don't think so. I think it costs MORE lives. Again, as demonstrated with alcohol and Prohibition.

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.

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

[socialleech]

Your argument is invalid. You fail to take into account the large amount of legal 'drugs' (prescriptions) that are widely available, and endorsed by the US government(not to mention many others).

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:Next up.

[MaskedSlacker]

That history repeats itself. Baptists and Bootleggers opposed the repeal of Prohibition too.