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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.'"
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.
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.
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."
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.
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
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.
> 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