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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.
The Zetas already kill bloggers in Mexico who post about them.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
The cash cow for the Zetas is cocaine. Marijuana is a minor product.
I'm sure plenty of people said the same thing during alcohol prohibition, but somehow that was overturned?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
There are plenty of non-potheads who want to lift prohibition, for very sound reasons, not the least of which is halting the flow of money to the coffers of ruthless criminal organizations.
It would also create jobs, increase tax revenue, and increase safety to drug users (regulated businesses produce higher quality non-laced drugs).
Oh, this would also reduce the overcrowding of our prisons, thus reducing taxpayer expenditures thereupon, while freeing up law enforcement to focus on protecting us from more harmful crimes.
There is also that silly notion that freedom is a core American value. There must still be a few patriots who remember this.
It is a win all around, and many people are intelligent enough to see this.
But, as you rightly point out, it is an uphill battle because many powerful organizations have a vested interest in keeping many drugs illegal.
Why to hyperventilate.....
The Zetas, feature 31 ex-soldiers once part of an elite division of the Mexican army
31 guys out of how many thousands in the Mexican Army (who routinely train with the US), decide to get into crime
after leaving the army and finding no work.
How many ex-US Soldiers decide on a life of crime after exiting the Military? Are you going to jump up
and claim the US Government is training people to be Bank robbers?
Even the dumbest criminals usually make it thru the 6th grade.
Howbout US Schools training Murderers and car thiefs?
I can see why you post as an AC.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
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.
The most powerful among them probably being he cartels themselves...
Hmm....What does that tell you?
"... 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.
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.
You do if you are the Military.
For many years, the Mexican Navy was the only trustworthy service in the country. Lately some of the generals in the Mexican Army have been getting sick of what is happening to their country.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Very true. I do not smoke pot and I think the prohibition against it is both stupid and very harmful to people on this planet. There are a LOT of people in prison for non-violent, drug related crimes. If you have not encountered this organization LEAP, you should.
Not many. They all got sent overseas to get their asses shot off.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
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.
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'.
Alcohol prohibition was never about money. It was about the moral uptight getting their way.
Perhaps, but it did serve a purpose.
Ken Burns recent documentary on Prohibition, and the reasons for the movement that eventually got the amendment passed.
The amount of Alcohol consumed in the US was utterly staggering prior to prohibition.
By 1830, the average American over 15 years old consumed nearly seven gallons of pure alcohol a year – three times as much as we drink today
Public drunkenness was rampant. We can't comprehend the amount of alcohol that flowed in that era, because people simply don't believe you can drink that much and get anything done, which, of course, was precisely the problem.
There was very little medical science and even less education available at that time to control this epidemic, and moral indignation was just about the only tool available. After the civil war, things got much worse, and the anti slavery movement turned its sights on alcohol.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
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.
That history repeats itself. Baptists and Bootleggers opposed the repeal of Prohibition too.
Seven gallons works out to about 2-3 1oz drinks a day.
I don't drink myself, but I know people who put away several times that.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
"You gotta get the drug cartels first. THEN their equipment."
Power abhors a vacuum, and deleting one source simply means more profit for other logistics providers.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Pure alcohol isn't what your friends drink. More likely, beer, which would be about 4-6 of those per day. Then, consider the fact that this was the national average rather than the high end of the spectrum, and you can see where the problem was...
First, "hyperventilate" that word doesn't mean what you think it does (although I suspect you may have been, while you wrote your reply; unfortunately, that mental image also includes copious amounts of spittle). If not a native speaker you did pretty well, otherwise.
Second, zetas were _founded_ by US trained killers. These were folks trained _in the U.S._ by Americans and Israelis. So, yes, the US _is responsible_ for zetas existence. Any argument to the contrary must address this fact. The thousands of Mexican soldiers you reference are irrelevant-- you are not suggesting that the entire Mexican military trains in the U.S., are you? Also, none of the thousands of Mexican soldiers who were not trained in the U.S. founded a rival to the zetas.
Your second statement about US soldiers robbing banks is just a straw man. But, I will indulge you:
A band of US soldiers in Afganistan were recently outed for killing civilians as sport, and cutting off and saving body parts as trophies. Yes, here too the US military has responsibility. Maybe they recruit blood-thirsty psychopaths, and then just provide the means for these atrocities to occur, or perhaps it is the training which is intended to condition the soldier to view the "enemy" as "other" non-human, to make it easier to kill them. Either way, yes the US military has blame here too.
More indulgence:
Yes, the US society has responsibility for crimes of poverty. Those silly rich kids who shoplift for the thrill excepted, most folks who find themselves stealing to feed themselves / their families are not very well educated. And, the single most reliable predictor of education outcome is economic status of the family. So, our society that perpetuates wealth disparities has responsibility for the inevitable result.
Nice ad homonym.
You have a lot of words and emotion in your response, but nothing that contradicts my points. In fact, there was nothing in your reply but a string of logical fallacies. It was probably you who modded my first post as troll, but I think it is you who are trolling.
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."
You don't know what you are talking about. When Portugal decriminalized drug possession, drug usage dropped, both from hard drugs and soft drugs. This "the sky is falling" scenario only exists in those who are plagued with this "think of the children" mentality which they use to try to bootstrap any justification and basis for their irrational fears.
Maybe it's because society ends up paying for your care after you've drunk your self into oblivion.
And don't pretend it would be fine with you if government left you there to freeze to death where you fell. You'd be the first in line to bitch about the rotting corpses.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
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.
I can see right where the problem was: sanitation. Through most of the past couple thousand years, almost everything you drank had to have some alcohol in it, or it would kill you. Strangely, we started to drink a lot less alcohol once the tap water became safe.
Oh, and any decent beer has just under an ounce of alcohol in it, so we are talking 3 beers here. A bit high by today's standards, but then we have other forms of entertainment and pain relief now (and safe drinking water).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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
The companies want it to be legal because they can produce it and make money, law enforcement would probably be happy not to have to deal with drug offenses, and politicians will do whatever the public wants. If some congressman's constituents want legal pot then he's going to campaign for legalization of pot or he'll be thrown out of office. (Of course, most young people don't vote and old people don't want change so they oppose legalization).
The government is an extension of the politicians. The politicians don't have any inherent reason to oppose legalization*. If drugs were legal then they could tax them at huge margins and make lots of money, so they actually have quite a bit to gain from legalizing them.
* There is that argument about how pot makes you question authority. I'm pretty sure that's complete bullshit.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Same here. I don't do pot or any other illegal drugs, but I have no problem with legalization and think it would solve more problems than it would create. There are potential issues, sure, but the problems we have from drugs being illegal strike me as far worse.
I guess that depends whether you're drinking bottles, cans or oversized mugs to be honest. I was thinking cans (12oz), which are definitely going to have less than an ounce @ the typical 5% of the average beer.
5% is damn weak beer, my friend, though I guess most light beers are weaker still. And where I come from, beer comes in 40s, which is amazingly close to the old-school average by some odd coincidence. Of course, now I sometimes drink with Russians, for whom 3oz of alcohol is "the first glass of the night" - I don't try to keep up.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.
Utah cast the final ratifying vote for the 21st Amendment.
Interestingly, some research shows that cocaine may be an excellent med for ADHD. Where it buzzes most people out, it settles the mind of ADDers and helps focus bringing them back into the 'real world', possibly better than any of the 'speed' drugs (Ritalin, Adderall, etc.) However research is limited.
Also (not particularly relevant), cocaine (and, IIRC, procaine and relatives) are the only anesthetics that are not central nervous system depressants.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
This reminds me of an SF story, based on a real fact - direct electrical stimulation of the 'pleasure center' is possibly the most addictive mechanism that exists. Mice will literally stop eating and push the button for another 'stim' until they starve to death. So in the story there was an underground wirehead culture. It was illegal to have the wires put in, and most folks who did it didn't live that long. But a few managed to ration themselves and maintain a stable life. The protagonist was one such, and he was a private detective or something. I forget the rest of the story. But for letting people have a cheap high, there may not be anything better - once the wires are in place, you can be stoned for life on a 9V battery. Well not really stoned, not really happy, but definitely enjoying the pleasure. And it keeps you off the street - no need to go out for anything except groceries once in a while - or not. Like the mice, "who cares?" And then Darwin's rule applies.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Ahh, replying to self - but worth while. Link to the relevant excerpt on Wireheading from from Larry Niven's "Ringworld Engineers" - I didn't realize it was from that series, one of my favorites.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
I've never touched pot. I've never touched cigarettes. Hell, I've never even consumed alcohol. I am also firmly for the legalization of pot and other drugs based on the very simple principle that my body belongs to me and the government has no fucking right to tell me or anyone else what they can do with their own body.
There were very few Baptists or bootleggers in Utah at the time.
So the US trained these guys when they were already a bunch of crooks, thugs, pushers, and murderers?
Oh, wait, they did that while they were still soldiers. The move to the drug trade came AFTER. That's a distinction you're missing here. You might as well say we should never train any soldiers because they could do bad things someday with that training.
Let's see.
190 proof shots?
With cans of beer as a chaser?
Nope. Not pure alcohol.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Cue is a signal. Queue is a line.
Also (not particularly relevant), cocaine (and, IIRC, procaine and relatives) are the only anesthetics that are not central nervous system depressants.
I believe some arylcyclohexylamines also share this property.
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/
I think the side effects are the problem. As I understand it, cocaine is not as "clean" of a drug as amphetamine; it fucks with different neurotransmitter pathways than just the ones you need to treat ADHD.
To the GP, Ritalin is not amphetamine. It is a piperidine, in the same class as nicotine. Amphetamine is in the phenethylamine class. Methamphetamine is just amphetamine base with a methyl group added to it, which changes the way it moves through the brain.
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.
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
In European countries the average drinking age comes to about 16 with many minors having drank alcohol under parental supervision well before that.
In 1830 the average 15 year old had also contracted syphillis and had a pretty laborious job either farming, ranching or building rails. If the average 15 year old survived to be 15 years old he was going to die within the next 20-25 years.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
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!
5% is average beer. There's both weaker and stronger beers. You seem to pick from the stronger varieties, but Miller, Coors and Bud are all = 5%, and combined make up more than 75% of the US beer market.
Well, it's not that surprising since they've shown the opposite as well. That is Ritalin is able to treat cocaine withdrawal since it stimulates the same receptors.
As far as I can tell Ritalin (Metyldefinate) is basically a weaker form of cocaine.
You are aware of what dosage means right? There's also the fact that Methylphenidate and Amphetamine are an order of magnitude softer then Cocaine/Meth.
AC is full of shit and readers are happy to lap up this anti-American vomit. Only after the Zetas started making enough serious money did they start hiring professional military trained mercenaries. Many whom are ex-military themselves.
Life is not for the lazy.
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.
Classic overcorrection did not serve a purpose, it was a classic fuckup. If they had instituted a drinking age and reasonable public intoxication laws to begin with instead of prohibition, it would have been a lot better for We The People.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
We regularly train a nation's soldiers and then shit on that nation, giving those now-highly-trained soldiers a reason to hate us. American foreign policy is based on the idea that we can just take a crap anywhere, anywhen, on anyone we want.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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
Unless you expect the public health service to take care of your body after you damage it with drugs.
to plan for Mars expedition. I bet that will be the most efficient plan.
PPJ.
Your numbers are just wrong. Bad big-brand American piss beer is in th 5-5.5% range. Most (by shelf space) of whats in the stores is 6-7%. Light beers are less, but that's sort of obvious.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
And that has what do to with the Zetas? Last time I checked, the US wasn't bombing the hell out of Mexico. These guys are in it for the money and power, not to get back at the US.
Last time I checked, the US wasn't bombing the hell out of Mexico.
The US has been manipulating Mexico's economy since time immemorial and is still doing so. The war on drugs can be partially explained as our Mexican foreign policy.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"