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Cartels Are Using Firetruck-Sized Drillers To Make Drug Pipelines
Daniel_Stuckey writes "In the beginning, they used catapults, dune buggies, 'jalapeños,' $1 million submarines, and sophisticated drug tunnels to move drugs northward. Now, Mexican drug cartels are taking to high-end industrial drills to carve out literal drug pipelines into the U.S. It's the next big leap in the evolution of the narcos' ingenious smuggle tech. The future of borderland drug running, it turns out, is boring. Jason Kersten reports on the phenomenon in a great GQ feature that focuses on the Sinaloa Cartel, the international crime syndicate believed to be behind the first known narco pipeline in 2008: '...Mexican authorities, responding to reports of a cave-in and flooding near the [All-American] canal, discovered a tunnel unlike anything they'd ever seen. Only ten inches wide, it was essentially a pipe. The Mexican cops traced it back to a house about 600 feet from the border, where they found a tractor-like vehicle with a long barrel on its side—a horizontal directional drill, or HDD.'"
Just think about all US government agencies and their budgets on "war on drugs" They only exists as long drug cartel exist. Huge shipments of firearms from US side, drugs to US, hundreds of thousand jobs.
They love each other.
Free market finds a way. Where gov't erects legal barriers, free market becomes black market. Gov't has no business in drugs ( and almost anything except national security actually). Declaring drugs illegal is destroying individual freedoms and distorting markets and creating criminals. The real problem is gov't, not criminals that gov't creates.
You can't handle the truth.
It's a losing battle trying to fight the forces of economics. The Prohibition was basically a gift for the criminals and gangs to make easy money. We're seeing the same thing here. Why is weed illegal anyway? It's arguably just as harmful as alcohol and tobacco. I'm certain that Colorado an Washington won't crumble into anarchy as a result of legalization.
The sooner we decriminalize drugs, the sooner this sort of idiotic "war on drugs" can end. It's one that the US law enforcement can never win, which is the perfect sort of war for a government agency, isn't it? I'm not saying there aren't well-meaning people in those agencies, or among those that advocate such policies, but it's those same well-meaning policies that also gave us the mob during the Prohibition era. Same dance, different partners.
BTW, we recently decriminalized weed here in Washington State, and now people are setting up shops to sell the stuff. I'm betting the world won't come to an end.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Season 4 of Weeds aired in 2008. FTFA, the first drug tunnel was discovered by police in 1990.
So I don't think the cartels are the copycats here...
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
The Palestinians have been doing this for decades. Sad that your experience is so small that you think that everyone copies from TV.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
But thankfully they probably won't try to enforce the copyright.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well hell they have their own submarines and now large tunneling machines. Seems like drones are the next logical step.
If they get to the point where they have their own space program I say we just surrender in the war on drugs and let them run things.
It's just heaps more difficult to produce high quality booze or cigs. If people can get plastered on drugs they can grow at home at the same quality that you could sell them... that's just so un-American!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So, was there a second pipeline for all the cash to flow back into Mexico?
You wouldn't want to interrupt the flow of drugs for something as inconsequential as cash.
~~
Yes, which is why the reverse is equally true: the cartels will only exist as long as the war on drugs exists.
You've got to wonder why the folks on the right who care so deeply about individual freedom of choice and despise government intrusion in personal affairs are such big fans of the war on drugs.
If it were about protecting the people from harm (which drugs can undoubtedly do to its users) or about reducing crime, the exact opposite approach would make much more sense.
I believe there might be a hint in the fact that sentencing in cases involving cheap drugs is so much harsher than cases involving expensive drugs.
Combined with the infamous two-tier justice system, and the various ways in which ex-convicts are reduced to subhuman status well after they formally did their time, it is effectively a war on the poor, and their vote.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
All real world tunnels discovered so far have only been a few inches wide and use a pulley system to move drugs.
Incorrect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smuggling_tunnel#U.S.-Mexican_smuggling_tunnels
All real world tunnels discovered so far have only been a few inches wide and use a pulley system to move drugs.
No, larger tunnels have been found.
In November 2011, authorities found a 600-yard tunnel that resulted in seizures of 32 tons of marijuana on both sides of the border, with 26 tons found on the U.S. side, accounting for one of the largest pot busts in U.S. history. The tunnel was equipped with electric rail cars, lighting and ventilation. Wooden planks lined the floor.
and
On Thanksgiving Day 2010, authorities found a roughly 700-yard passage equipped with rail tracks that extended from the kitchen of a Tijuana home to two San Diego warehouses, netting about 22 tons of marijuana on both sides of the border.
Human trafficking wouldn't be a problem if they wanted to but I suspect that the economy in it is too low to be worth the risk and effort.
And man am I stoned - LEGALLY stoned mofos! I am expecting a call from Obama telling me I am under arrest just because I eat to the beat!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip_smuggling_tunnels
"The Gaza Strip smuggling tunnels are passages that have been dug under the Philadelphi Corridor, a narrow strip of land, 14 km (8.699 miles) in length, situated along the border between Gaza Strip and Egypt. After the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty of 1979[1] the town of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, was split by this Corridor. One half of the town belongs to Egypt, and the other half was under Israeli military control until 2005. After Israel withdrew, the Philadelphi Corridor was placed under the control of the Palestine Authority until 2007. When the Hamas seized power in 2007, Egypt and Israel closed borders with Gaza. []
"The tunnels are used to import a wide range of goods, including livestock, zoo animals, food, legal and illegal drugs, clothes, car parts, building supplies and weapons. The tunnels were also used to smuggle in construction materials for the Gaza Mall and the Crazy Water Park.[9][10] Palestinians view the tunnels as a lifeline, enabling them access to a wide range of commercial goods during the blockade of the Gaza Strip."
I think that the laws around the "recreational" drugs were mostly racially inspired. Or at the very least they have been racially prosecuted.
I'm in Seattle. I like that we've started addressing this. I think we need to go further though. And I don't think that this will have any effect on us other than bringing in some more tax dollars.
If the average person can handle alcohol (beer and wine sold all over) then why wouldn't that person be able to handle cannabis?
Because the group referred to as 'the right' actually consists of several contradicting ideologies forced together by the nature of the US political system. While they do hold to the principle of small government and individual freedom, these are not their highest priority goals and so will be ignored when a seemingly more important idea is in contradiction. This happens quite often, as the political conservative and social conservative factions are fundamentally conflicted - they'd be at war with each other if they hadn't found a common enemy in the liberals.
Legalise It And Tax It!
...and then subsidize it!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window#The_parable
No sig today...
The War on Drugs is just bullshit talk. Nobody in power is really serious about stopping stuff, they're just interesting in keeping a profitable War going on.
The reason why the drug lords have the money for submarines, tunneling machines, armies and actual wars is because big banks launder billions for them AND the people involved in that mostly get away with it.
If people know they might end up in jail for laundering, you'd see more of them start getting formal approval from their bosses for dubious stuff, and their bosses will say "No", or pass stuff up to their own bosses and so on. There won't be any bullshit about no trails. A bank could believably claim it lost track of a few hundred dollars here and there, but not when billions are being transferred.
Stop the laundering of billions of dollars and the drug lord budgets will shrink.
Drones will surely happen. I predict that at that time they will obviously have won. (They have won a long time ago, the "war on drugs" is just authoritarians trying desperately to tell others how to live and what to think, regardless of how much more damage that does.)
The space program is a nice idea though.
While I am not a drug user (beyond the obvious mood-altering substances: Alcohol, Caffeine, Sugar, Fat, Chocolate), safe (as far as possible, but see the dangers of legal drugs), medical-quality and reasonably priced drugs in general availability are the only sane thing to do. Everything else costs far, far too much.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
During WWI both sides brought in miners to the front to dig tunnels under the front line for espionage and planting explosives under targets. The idea of digging tunnels for various (nefarious?) purposes under a border or slowly moving front line is probably as old as fences and walls to keep another party out of your area.
If they get to the point where they have their own space program I say we just surrender in the war on drugs and let them run things.
It's when they start taking over pizza delivery franchises that you have to really begin to worry.
Life is complete only for brief intervals in between toys or projects -- John Dalton
The war on drugs have totally torn several countries apart. They are now practically lawless, ruthless and scary places to live and even visit. All because of a fruitless fight to protect people from themselves. Sadly it will now be impossible (at least in the short to medium term) to bring these places back to stability, even if we finally gave up the war on drugs, because the drug cartels have amassed too much money and weaponry, all because of the immense profits possible because the product has been made illegal.
I wouldn't be surprised if the drug cartels have been bribing government officials to keep the hard line on drugs going.
Look up the Glasgow Ice Cream Wars - battles for control of the drugs via ice cream van trade
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
My neighbor is a cop and a pretty conservative guy.
I've been on ride-a-longs with him and one thing that surprised me was the amount of "paperwork" (which is really just database entry, not actual paper) associated with pretty much any call. We went to a house that was under renovation that had been broken into. Lockbox smashed and door opened. As it happens, the house was nearly done and they had just finished doing the hardwood floors -- the place was EMPTY, no tools, nothing at all to steal. The only thing that had happened was the breaking and entering. We were at the house and talked to the owner for maybe 10 minutes. We were at the precinct entering data for nearly an HOUR!
I asked him what he does when he finds pot on someone. He said mostly nothing if its a small amount -- dump it on the ground and grind it up with this boot -- "You saw how much paperwork there is. If wrote every guy up with pot, I'd catch hell from my supervisor because I wouldn't be taking enough other calls."
But, I suspect that despite that street cops don't want to or can't arrest everyone, cops generally LIKE that pot is illegal because it gives them a LEVER. A tool to use against people to justify stopping them and searching them. Look at Stop and Frisk in NYC -- so many arrests there are from stopping someone, making them dump their pockets and then arresting them for public display of marijuana.
The DEA and the like organizationally don't like legalization because it undercuts their bureaucracy, but they really don't like the loss of authority.
It's much more complicated than just "the evil banks launder drug money". If you use the money from drug sales to buy lets say on the next food market, then open up a restaurant and sell the food there, you already have washed your money, because then your drug money gets orderly booked and taxed and is as clean as you want. Do this with several layers of legit companies and then even a very investigative reporter or police officer will have a hard time to prove money laundering.
But even in countries where the conservative right is not so much about small government, they are resolutely pro war-on-drugs.
Actually, it's quite easy to produce high quality booze or cigarettes. The uncle of my mother used to grow tabacco and ferment it. My father was distilling a quite good cherry schnaps just for fun once (made from our own cherries). It's something each somewhat dedicated amateur will master.
Hey man, Ive got a tapir, gonna hook you up Vato.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Rather than letting the drug cartels run things, why don't we just legalise the drugs and put the cartels out of business by having the goverment sell drugs and thus earn some tax revenue.
Seems so obvious to me.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
You've got to wonder why the folks on the right who care so deeply about individual freedom of choice and despise government intrusion in personal affairs are such big fans of the war on drugs.
Religion hates competition, if you can get peace from a plant you don't need church. So the preachers preach against it in spite of Genesis 1:12 and the various other positive cannabis references in the bible, like the recipe for anointing oil. The end!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"Most people aren't going to be able to smoke as much as a single plant can produce in a year... why would they ever buy it?"
Same reason people buy vegetables from the store and hamburgers from McDonalds. Convenience.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I used to think the same, but unless one can sell their backyard grown product to their neighbor (legally), then it's all just a rouse. Think about tobacco. I can grow it legally, at about the same difficulty level as pot. But I can't sell it to my neighbor. I don't even think I'm allowed to give it away. This has nothing to do with human rights or constitutional freedoms: it's because there's a lot of money to be made in taxing packs of cigarettes.
TL;DR: Selling or giving away your backyard pot will be made illegal through some perverse interpretation of "inter-state trade". Something about pollen (see: Monsanto) will be said. You heard it here first.
somewhere, on a Big Red Sign:
if(color==blue){speed--;}
It's worth noting that "the liberals" are more or less the same way. The game theory behind the U.S. political system more-or-less mandates a maximum of two viable parties, so each has an ideology that is moderately incoherent and is frequently defined in terms of opposition to whatever the other guys are doing.
Further, there's a neat psychological phenomenon (that I forget the name for) where people who identify with one party because of their views on one issue will gradually pick up that party's views on other issues even if there's no particular logical reason to do so.
Undermining defenses is WAY older than WWI. It is where the word "undermine" actually comes from. According to Wikipedia it was used by the Romans, Greeks, and ancient Chinese, and of course in the Middle Ages.
Efficiencies of scale, and specialization, mean that most people prefer to buy products from a competitive marketplace rather than produce their own.
For example: You can grow tomatoes in your backyard, but most people prefer to get them from the store, even in growing season. Despite the fact that home-grown tomatoes are fresher and better tasting!
The same would be true of marijuana.
> Why is weed illegal anyway? It's arguably just as harmful as alcohol and tobacco.
It is nowhere near as harmful as either. Does Tobacco show promise as a cancer-fighting, epilepsy-siezure-preventing drug, stress reducing, migraine treating, cluster headache killing, sinus and bronchial congestion reducing, muscle cramp reducing, eating disorder treating, antiemetic, appetite correcting, MS tremor reducing, parkinsons, glaucoma-treating, inflammation-reducing, pain reducing, mood lifting and NOT PHSYSICALLY ADDICTIVE (and can actually be used to treat addicts coming off harmful addictive drugs!!!) drug that is impossible to overdose on? (okay you can theoretically OD on it if you combust many pounds of it over the period of an hour or two - just like you can "OD" on water) Does Alcohol show any promise? Hmm, perhaps then you should not use the word "harmful" anywhere near any word specifying cannabis nor compare it to harmful drugs.
As far as the few potential effects may be concerned? The mental "high" can be avoided by either choosing a low-THC, high-CBD strain or by selecting a method of delivery which limits the release of THC. Tar? Not really tar but there are resins, and those can be avoided by vaporizing it, making extracts, infused oil for cooking, adding it to salad dressings, baking it into cookies, brownies, etc. and avoiding combustion, CO2 and CO exposure. Short-term memory loss? Sure the effect is real, but it is temporary and limited (only while high) for all but chronic users.
There is no miracle drug, but Cannabis may very well be the next closest thing.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
When industrial-size long range conduit boring machines are outlawed, only outlaws will have industrial-size long range conduit boring machines...
The Druggernet is not a big truck! It is a series of tubes made by big trucks!
It's a tough choice between crime cartels and the government, but at least the government sometimes pretends to be benevolent.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
That's what we're doing in Washington and Colorado. And I should note that in the latest polls 58% of Americans favor that exact policy.
I am officially gone from
There was a great talk at the 30th Chaos Computer Congress about this, I was just watching on youtube. The talk is called "Four Wars" and it by a former MI5 whistleblower from the 90s. She makes some good observations, basically....her prediction is this will happen.
The reason being that the war on drugs is no longer useful for the state apparatus. The war on terror replaced it.
Look before the WOT and what do you see? Before the 90s, how often were people's homes raided and why? Where were all the swat teams and justifications for wiretaps? It was drugs, it was drugs for a long time. Drugs was used to both fund and justify so much.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G81tJI2Pls
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Six sentences need a TL;DR? Has it got that bad around here?
Yep, I'm in the UK and wish our government would wise up to this, but it looks like they've got too much vested interest in keeping as many things illegal as possible.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
It appears no one has answered this question, so I will. Why are people on the right so resolutely anti-drug?
If you spent your whole life working - regardless of the delivered value to society - the idea of paying an able-bodied person's way in life is antithetical. Those on the right perceive drugs as a certain way to turn an able-bodied person into someone who requires social welfare. No one on the right trusts the individual to make logical choices in the presence in the corrupting influence of a mind-altering drug. They correctly identify the number of people who would remain productive members of society while consuming drugs as very small.
Legalizing drugs would amount to at least removing society's disfavor from the consumption of same. The right expects that an ever-increasing crop of wastrels who do not work will be the result, increasing their tax burden and further damaging the perception that work is the correct pathway to life success. To the right, there is no upside to legalization.
Wresting alcohol and marijuana from this perception goes far to explain why blue laws are still prevalent in many areas and that the first commercial legalization of marijuana happened this year.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Getting bag of weed delivered with your pizza sounds like a pretty good idea.
No, tobacco doesn't. But on the other hand "show[s] promise as" is not the same as "actually does these things".
A drum often beaten by those on the pro-cannabis side, conveniently forgetting that physical addiction is not the only form of addiction.
So sayeth years of pro-cannibis propoganda (as with the items above) and some sometimes rather sloppy science.
Mind you, I'm in favor of legalization, but that doesn't mean I mindlessly repeat propaganda.
You can't seriously be suggesting that the criminal proceeds of the illegal drug trade be laundered by spending it on food markets and opening a restaurant. It doesn't scale to the billions, you see.
Which is why the AC above s right: yes, supposedly bona fide banks are up to their necks in this business, and yes they get off with a slap on the wrist when this is proven in courts.
See this article for a pretty shocking example.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
Thanks for taking the time, it is certainly a very considered and eloquent piece.
There are many countries where substance abusers are considered similar to alcoholics, which is to say as having a condition (a complex of psychological and physiological factors) which one can hope to alleviate by professional, targeted treatment -- instead of locking them up together with actual criminals (I mean the kind that leave victims).
I live in one such country, the Netherlands, and while it is of course only a single anecdotal observation, I don't believe we have a noticeably larger fraction of our population on welfare due to drug-use than the US, or any other tough-on-drugs nation I am aware of. We do however have a whole lot less people in jail, per capita.
I'm not sure how widely this fact is known, but the US rather stands out when it comes to incarceration. With 5% of the world population, it holds 25% of the world's prisoners.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
I have friends who were in Operation Just Cause, United States Invasion of Panama, and they would literaly get on the cell phone, pay with their credit cards and Dominoes would deliver pizza right to their foxholes!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
They correctly identify the number of people who would remain productive members of society while consuming drugs as very small.
Right, there are very few productive people that drink alcohol in the US. Very small group indeed.
Bad idea: Alcohol prohibition didn't work, and it both can kill you and is addictive.
I am officially gone from
Yeah, yeah, with the ad slogan, "buy 3 and get the seeing-eye dog for free"...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If the average person can handle alcohol (beer and wine sold all over) then why wouldn't that person be able to handle cannabis?
I suspect it's the lack of a quick and reliable roadside test for intoxication levels, such as the breathalyzer is for alcohol. If such a similar portable, quick, reliable, non-invasive method of detecting whether someone is high at this exact moment were to be developed, I think the last few objections to legalization would quickly crumble.
Alas, THC lingers in the bloodstream long after the intoxicating effects have faded, unlike alcohol.
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant