The DEA dude looks a lot like Cheech of Cheech and Chong fame to.
I tried watching part of that and it was too much Michael Moore to stomach.
The "DEA Agent" with the camouflage wall hanging complete with an M16 reminded me of the MALL Ninja. Maybe he was real but he came across to me as a real A$$.
best
Tom
The DEA dude looks a lot like Cheech of Cheech and Chong fame to.
Watched It All
SlapOriginally Posted by slapout9
I watched it from beginning to end last night. That let me distinguish between the conspiracy theories and the actual thinking. I will say that when they got to thinking and analyzing what it means, the documentary actually made sense. You know what I think about all of this: a collosal waste of money, manpower, and time. The analysis linking it to the prison industry was quite relevant. I would say the points made concerning alchohol, tobacco, and pharmaceutical industries lobbying against marijuana were also telling. I also accept the parallels between the emergence of large scale moonshine under Prohibition and crystal meth today. The US now has more folks in prison than any other country. The PRC is 2nd. the greatest point in the documentary was about the "addiction" of Washington DC power brokers to the money involved in all of this.
Best
Tom
Tom, l am getting soft in my old age. As you said it was kinda like Micheal Moore however once you get past that it does make some points. I have always said that there are 2 DEA's the one inside and the one outside of the USA which has such potential to be used as a convert agency that it needs some serious oversight. Also the part about legalizing the medical use of the products should have been done years ago. A pain killer is a pain killer whether you smoke it or take it as a pill. The people that make the millions off other people's personal misery are the people that should be in jail. Arresting people for using itaccomplishes nothing.
As has been brought up before buying the entire crop of poppies would have a lot of benefits, but the biggest opponent would be drug companies because such a large legal supply would put pressure on the price of legal pain medications which are unbelievable expensive. Never new how bad it was until I started being around hospitals. Helathcare is rationed largely on price despite what people may think.
The Article that Should Have Been Written
The thing that originally annoyed me about the Rolling Stone piece was the lazy use of political commentary and stubby metaphors in place of actual analysis. Then I came across this piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Actually, we are. One of the points of the piece was the Head Fed in Atlanta clucking about how his "success" at drug interdiction is driving up crime. And whom, exactly, benefits from the fed's "success"? This is an analysis worth undertaking and the point that was completely missed by the Rolling Stone piece.If law enforcement someday succeeds in breaking up established drug territories — the real sign of success from a metropolitan perspective — it could mean a similar spike in murders, as drug organizations vie for a larger market share.
"If the market here gets unstable down to the street, then the streets will get bloody," said Killorin, director of Atlanta High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force (HIDTA). "I don't think we're there yet."
I have believed for a long time now that the main transportation proces is by land, so I think the article makes a lot of sense from that stand point. Was a little shocked to see Forest Park mentioned, my father used to live about 4 miles from there. Like I said used to
Das Boot
Someone heard you, Slap!
Coast Guard hunts drug-running semi-subs
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sophisticated submarine-like boats are the latest tool drug runners are using to bring cocaine north from Colombia, U.S. officials say.
Semi-submersible boats used to smuggle drugs are gaining in quality, the Coast Guard says.
1 of 2 Although the vessels were once viewed as a quirky sideshow in the drug war, they are becoming faster, more seaworthy, and capable of carrying bigger loads of drugs than earlier models, according to those charged with catching them.
"They tend to be one of a kind," U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen said. "They cost up to a million dollars to produce. Sometimes they are put together in pieces and then reassembled in other locations. They're very difficult to locate."
The boats are built in the Colombian jungle. They sail largely beneath the surface of the water but cannot submerge completely like a true submarine.
But they are the latest escalation of a tactical race between smugglers and the U.S. Coast Guard.
In the past three months the Coast Guard has learned of more semi-submersible vessels smuggling drugs than it did in the previous six years, when there were 23 cases, officials said.
Yep and you will see more of it. As border patrol intensifies they will move to unguarded coastlines that is why you have to secure the Border and the Coast and the Airspace at the same time or they will just adapt.
Info on the FARC
Guys, any recommendations on FARC reading...would like to get a little smarter on it.
thanks in advance!
I've always found the reports by the International Crisis Group to be very useful.
"We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene
Farc
Linda Robinson of US News has written a number of articles about the FARC in cluding one where she had an interview with Raul Reyes (deceased).
Dr. Tom Marks has also done some stuff on the FARC insurgency with outstanding access to the govt side.
Hope this helps.
JohnT
Drug cartels operate training camps near Texas border just inside Mexico, By ALFREDO CORCHADO. The Dallas Morning News, March 30, 2008.
Mexican drug cartels have conducted military-style training camps in at least six such locations in northern Tamaulipas and Nuevo León states, some within a few miles of the Texas border, according to U.S. and Mexican authorities and the printed testimony of five protected witnesses who were trained in the camps.
The camps near the Texas border and at other locations in Mexico are used to train cartel recruits – ranging from Mexican army deserters to American teenagers – who then carry out killings and other cartel assignments on both sides of the border, authorities say.
Paying Through the Nose: Why cocaine traffickers praise the Euro, by Ryan Grim. Mother Jones, March 19, 2008.
The 500 Euro banknote must also make the Euro pretty attractive.And it says it has spied one: The cost of pure coke rose 44 percent in the United States between January and September 2007. The dea credits its own efforts, of course, along with increased Mexican and Colombian cooperation, for the downturn in supply it says caused the price hike.
But the agency omits an important factor: the plummeting value of the dollar, especially as compared to the soaring euro. Even as the dea has made it more bothersome to bring coke into the United States, the sliding dollar has made importing it less profitable. Both the UN and dea note that a kilo of coke brings in two times as much in Europe as it does in America.
As with any commodity, producers look to maximize earnings by selling in markets with the strongest currencies. But unlike oil, for instance, the value of which is measured in dollars, the cocaine market is more fluid. "The euro has become the preferred currency for drug traffickers," declared then-dea administrator Karen Tandy at an anti-drug conference last May. "We're seeing a glut of euro notes throughout South America," she said, adding that "9 of 10 travelers who carried the $1.7 billion euros that came into the United States during 2005 did not come from Europe...They came from Latin America."
If true, how not to conduct COIN
The following link will take you to a WashPost story about how Colombian troops are killing civilians and dressing them up as insurgents. The purported reason is that insurgent kills can get you benefits...if true, this is a bad way to conduct COIN...obviously.
Colombian Troops Kill Farmers, Pass Off Bodies as Rebels'
By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 30, 2008; A12
....under intense pressure from Colombian military commanders to register combat kills, the army has in recent years also increasingly been killing poor farmers and passing them off as rebels slain in combat, government officials and human rights groups say. The tactic has touched off a fierce debate in the Defense Ministry between tradition-bound generals who favor an aggressive campaign that centers on body counts and reformers who say the army needs to develop other yardsticks to measure battlefield success.
The killings, carried out by combat units under the orders of regional commanders, have always been a problem in the shadowy, 44-year-old conflict here -- one that pits the army against a peasant-based rebel movement.
But with the recent demobilization of thousands of paramilitary fighters, many of whom operated death squads to wipe out rebels, army killings of civilians have grown markedly since 2004, according to rights groups, U.N. investigators and the government's internal affairs agency. The spike has come during a military buildup that has seen the armed forces nearly double to 270,000 members in the last six years, becoming the second-largest military in Latin America......
Last edited by Jedburgh; 04-01-2008 at 12:21 PM. Reason: Edited content.
You're correct, if it is true, it's certainly stupid.
Suggestion, rather than cut and paste the entire article, what we normally do is post the link and just a paragraph or two as an excerpt, saves bandwidth. You can edit to do that.
It also avoids nasty copyright issues....
"On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War
Obviously...
the Columbians haven't heard of My Lai.
Poor form that!
"What is best in life?" "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women."
Cost of Graft in Mexico
From the April 19, 2008 edition of the LA Times
MEXICO CITY -- Mexicans are spending more on bribes than they were just a few years ago.
They paid the equivalent of about $2.6 billion in bribes last year, according to the nonprofit group Transparency Mexico. That's 42% more than two years earlier and an average of more than $24 for each of the country's 105 million people. Much of the money went to have garbage collected, parking tickets fixed or to get parking spots from the legions of informal attendants who block spaces, then charge for them.
Sapere Aude
Hmm...The peso has strengthened against the dollar in the past 2 years. What effect would that have on the cost of graft? The Freakonomics guys should look into it.
Meanwhile the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas appear to be on a membership drive:
Official says cartel hit men posted 'help wanted' sign on border, Associated Press - April 14, 2008.
I imagine they will be posting in Craigslist's Help Wanted section next.A giant banner hung across a thoroughfare appeared over the weekend in Nuevo Laredo and read: "Operative group 'The Zetas' wants you, soldier or ex-soldier. We offer a good salary, food and benefits for your family. Don't suffer anymore mistreatment and don't go hungry."
McMafia: Crime without frontiers, By Misha Glenny
Gangsters, profiteers, poisoners and pimps are ripping through global society. A grim new study concludes that peace brings crime to nations, Reviewed by Cal McCrystal. The Independent, 6 April 2008.
Their power and occasional resemblance to (or even consanguinity with) some western capitalists have left old international institutions "bewildered", Glenny says of Eastern European crime syndicates. "These men (and occasionally women) understood instinctively that rising living standards in the West, increased trade and migration flows, and the greatly reduced ability of many governments to police their countries combined to form a gold mine." A new Silk Route – "a multi-lane criminal highway" – now links the "thick belt of instability" in the Balkans with Central Asia, China and Pakistan, permitting the swift and easy transfer of people, narcotics, cash for laundering, and other contraband to Western Europe and the United States.
...
"Virtually overnight," Glenny argues, a UN Security Council vote for sanctions against Belgrade in 1992 "created a pan-Balkan mafia of immense power, reach, creativity and venality." Greece, which believed the embargo to be unjust, helped the gangs break it.emphasis mineAnd so, grimly, to Dubai, Mumbai, the "gaudy opulence" of Nigeria's kleptocracy, South Africa's billion-dollar car thefts, Canada's marijuana trade, the paramilitary gangsters of Colombia, the bent nouveaux riches of China, the notorious yakuza of Japan – all seemingly, in our small, increasingly tightly bound world, tentacles of a single monster.
This is a well-sustained narrative dealing seamlessly, if dismayingly, with the tricks, motives and rewards of the new global underworld and the (for the most part) impotence of governments in tackling it successfully. Indeed, Glenny tells us how President Bill Clinton ordered the Italian authorities to back away from prosecuting Montenegro's young president, Milo Djukanovic, for organising a $20 million-a-year cigarette smuggling racket, because Washington needed him in its battle against Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic.
No wonder, then, that the world's "shadow economy" now accounts for between 15 and 20 per cent of global turnover, or that most countries have their own silnice hanby, the "Road of Shame" linking Dresden and Prague on which prostitutes and pimps openly ply their trade for tourists, truckers and toerag-toffs.
Posting Permissions
Bookmarks