Cartels Are Using Firetruck-Sized Drillers To Make Drug Pipelines 323
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.'"
Wow (Score:2)
And I thought the city was bad...
Hudreds of Thousands US jobs depend on cartels (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Duh. Why do you think we can wage war against whoever has oil at the drop of a hat but can't find the slightest hint of an excuse to bomb countries with drugs back to the stone age?
Re:Hudreds of Thousands US jobs depend on cartels (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Hudreds of Thousands US jobs depend on cartels (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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
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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!
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Because drug use has such detrimental effects on society. Witness the issues with meth [king5.com], squatters taking over people's homes [local10.com], general neglect of both property and person [pottsmerc.com]. Perhaps the judge in this case [phillyburbs.com] summed it up best:
âoeYou liked drugs. For that, your children suffered. They suffered terribly.â
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:US jobs depend on cartels (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window#The_parable [wikipedia.org]
Worse than jobs, it's authority (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Worse than jobs, it's authority (Score:5, Interesting)
I was talking to my cop friend a month or so ago and he said the same thing: "No one wants pot to be legal more than us cops. We have better things to do. We really cant voice our opinions about it because as cops, we have a duty to enforce the laws. It's taboo for us as protesting the laws we are supposed to enforce. It's looked at as unprofessional by our superiors." Those aren't his exact words but it sums up what he said. Basically they have better things to do than arrest or fine a kid for a bag of weed. They simply destroy the bag and tell them to take a hike. The intoxicated trouble makers are mostly drunks who get into fights or car accidents. Its a bit ironic that the legal substance (alcohol) is responsible for more deaths and violence than the illegal substances.
geeks don't deal well with logical inconsistencies (Score:2)
We need ED-209.
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People must be free (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:People must be free (Score:5, Insightful)
Free market finds a way. Where gov't erects legal barriers, free market becomes black market.
You are right, but if the 'free market' were an argument for making something legal, then we should make assassinations and corporations that dump poison into rivers legal, because they are going to anyway.
Re:People must be free (Score:4, Insightful)
You are right, but if the 'free market' were an argument for making something legal, then we should make assassinations and corporations that dump poison into rivers legal, because they are going to anyway.
Well, the free market is an argument for legalization, but only with qualifications. Essentially, if the free market for a given good or service is or would be big enough then this alone is a very strong argument for legalizing it. The reasoning behind this is that first of all, if a lot of citizens want to trade in it then it is a democratic problem if they are prevented from doing so; secondly, that with such a big market even if you outlaw it the trade is still going to happen at large scale so what are you really achieving; and thirdly, that a lot of money that would otherwise move around the economy in a proper manner is now going to get funneled into a black economy where it will see less circulation (thus having a stagnating effect on the economy overall), will not be properly taxable, and will tend to leak into other more serious criminal enterprises. Also as we have seen with drugs, criminalizing what many see as a necessary good has led to the blatant militarization of police forces and erosion of civil rights for everyone. This is a very high price to pay for feelgood politics.
Of course this would only be one of the arguments in any given debate but it would be a weighty one.
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a lot of money that would otherwise move around the economy in a proper manner is now going to get funneled into a black economy where it will see less circulation (thus having a stagnating effect on the economy overall), will not be properly taxable, and will tend to leak into other more serious criminal enterprises.
You forgot one: "go across the border into another country, deflating the entire economy".
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I think you just gave the solution: Assassinate those that dump poison into the river. Hell, public utilities producing potable water from said river may put up a preventive bounty against any polluters, as they drive up their costs.
No, I do not really want to try that. But putting a price on everybodies life (the same for everybody, obviously) may solve a host of problems. Say, for 1 Million paid to some arbitration body, anybody can buy an assassination permission. In order to prevent massive disruption,
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> You are right, but if the 'free market' were an argument for making something legal, then we should make assassinations and corporations that dump poison into rivers legal, because they are going to anyway.
These are not examples of free market because participants in the transaction do not choose the transaction. The assassination victim does not to choose to be assassinated, and people who enjoy the rivers did not choose for them to be poisoned. These are called negative externalities, and a free mark
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Drugs, however, don't usually affect other people directly (most side effect are due to them being illegal which begs the question of why are they illegal?).
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It amuses me that you mention the conduct of the drug users. This is typically one of the most drastically skewed responses to the affects of illegal drugs versus the affects of alcohol. If we're concern
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Free market finds a way. Where gov't erects legal barriers, free market becomes black market.
You are right, but if the 'free market' were an argument for making something legal, then we should make assassinations and corporations that dump poison into rivers legal, because they are going to anyway.
A terrible argument. Marijuana is basically harmless, yet it is outlawed. The drug makes you relaxed and the user watches movies or listens to music, usually in their own home or a friend's home. I have never heard of other crimes such as breaking and entering, theft, violence (unrelated to black markets), or robbery as a result of a user's pot habit. At worst, it could be argued that it makes a person lazy. There are plenty of lazy people in the world though, and we don't light fires under them for th
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You should let his doctors know as they're treating his hyperthyroidism at the moment - probably a waste of time if he's already dead.
Also, who's going to replace him in "Expendables 3"? (Or did they film all his stuff already).
Aren't there any lessons learned from prohibition? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Aren't there any lessons learned from prohibiti (Score:4, Insightful)
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!
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It's just heaps more difficult to produce high quality booze or cigs.
It is? Why don't you come up to Canada and ask the natives how they're doing at it. Not only that two of the biggest things that they're involved with and in, is the legal manufacture of high-quality cig's, and the illegal distribution of them to the US.
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Depends how you define 'high quality.' Moonshine is a long-established tradition.
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Depending on the strain you're growing you can have "Best in the world" quality pot in a few months just by planting a seed outside and leaving it alone. Brewing moonshine is a hell of a lot of work. It takes less time to produce maybe, but you get less of it, it takes a large initial investment in equipment and if you do it wrong the product can kill you. If you do pot wrong, you just get a lower yield.
That's what I find the most funny about legalization efforts. They think there's going to be this huge ta
Re:Aren't there any lessons learned from prohibiti (Score:5, Insightful)
Same reason people buy vegetables from the store and hamburgers from McDonalds. Convenience.
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TL;DR: Selling or giving away your backyard pot will be m
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Six sentences need a TL;DR? Has it got that bad around here?
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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
You'd be surprised at how many people can't grow a decent tomato.
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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.
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Yeah, yeah, with the ad slogan, "buy 3 and get the seeing-eye dog for free"...
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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?
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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.
With the profit behind DEA (Score:2)
no way in hell with those running it ever give up the billions they get and the powet the get.
Re:Aren't there any lessons learned from prohibiti (Score:5, Insightful)
> 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.
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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.
Decriminalize (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Decriminalization isn't good enough; they need to be legalized.
Re:Decriminalize (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a sign of movement in the right direction, but unfortunately Washington's law, as it currently stands, doesn't really target this problem. The only thing that was legalized in WA is possession of up to an ounce of marijuana. Possession of larger quantities, not to mention growing or sale of any quantity, is still illegal. With consumer-level possession legal but production, distribution, and sale illegal, that doesn't really do much to harm the drug smugglers' business. To undercut the Mexican smugglers, we have to make it legal to grow and sell domestically, so there is no reason to import it from Mexico.
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Our government (Seattle & Olympia) is working on that.
I live on Beacon Hill (south Seattle) and at the foot of the hill there are at least a couple of "medical" dispensaries every mile. Probably "co-ops" where they grow their own. So they don't seem to be importing from the smugglers.
I wish we had been a bit smarter when we did this but even with the mistakes it is a HUGE step forward.
But I think the biggest problem was trying to anticipate what the Federal government would do. And what they still might
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Even if some states were willing to go that far, that just means the FBI would take over prosecuting people.
If they can take some time away from protecting 'national security,' that is. I'm sure they can reallocate a few agents from investigating murders and such to focus on real crime.
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If production, distribution, and sales are illegal - why is the state in the process of issuing licenses to do those very things? The answer of course is, you haven't a clue wh
War on Drugs (Score:2)
Its basically the whole 'prohibition era' all over again with some new tech.
So keep fighting it guys! We all know what the end result will be!
Second pipeline? (Score:5, Funny)
You wouldn't want to interrupt the flow of drugs for something as inconsequential as cash.
~~
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Yes. HSBC. [rollingstone.com]
Mexico, Columbia, which other countries? (Score:3)
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 mad
Colorado resident here (Score:2, Funny)
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!
Not new news (Score:2)
Reuters coverage in 2011. [reuters.com] Congressional testimony from 2011 [senate.gov] describes a 13,000 foot tunnel.
Trenchless technology marches on. Microtunneling is getting easier. This gear is normally used to avoid digging up streets.
I want one of those ! (Score:2)
Or.... (Score:2)
Post-War on Drugs peace dividends (Score:2)
I'm wondering whether, once the War On Drugs is over (and legalisation/harm-minimisation is likely to do to the cartels what the end of prohibition did to bootleg distillers in the US), one of the results will be places like Colombia and Mexico having highly competent engineering industries directly traceable to the need to build drug-smuggling submarines and tunnel boring machines. Perhaps in a few decades' time, a city somewhere in North America will start building a subway and, instead of Germany or Japa
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Perhaps in a few decades' time, a city somewhere in North America will start building a subway and, instead of Germany or Japan, will go to Mexico for the boring machines?
Well, no. Mexico isn't building the machines. They might well hire a Mexican operator to drive the machine, however, since he'll have the practical experience.
It's a good thing Mexico isn't building the machines, either. Compare Mexican-built VW Golf to German-built.
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Package delivery (Score:2)
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Old news see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube [wikipedia.org] esp. the reference to packages. This is even before "The Simpsons" did it.
Solution (Score:2)
Legalize drugs, and the corporate world will take over growing and transporting them.
Regulate and tax them like they already do Alcohol and Tobacco
Real simple and will save a ton of wasted money on drug laws and bring in a metric Shit-TON on money in taxes.
Shouldn't it be firehose-sized? (Score:2)
Re:Plotline of Weeds (Score:5, Informative)
So I don't think the cartels are the copycats here...
Re:Plotline of Weeds (Score:5, Funny)
But thankfully they probably won't try to enforce the copyright.
Or not a plot (Score:2)
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The Druggernet is not a big truck! It is a series of tubes made by big trucks!
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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.
Re:Plotline of Weeds (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Who are the Palestinians sending drugs to? The camels in the U.A.E?
Re:Plotline of Weeds (Score:5, Informative)
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."
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Hey man, Ive got a tapir, gonna hook you up Vato.
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But did they use HDD?
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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 [wikipedia.org]
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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. [huffingtonpost.com]
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.
Re: Plotline of Weeds (Score:2, Funny)
When industrial-size long range conduit boring machines are outlawed, only outlaws will have industrial-size long range conduit boring machines...
Re:Any drones yet? (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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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,
Re:Any drones yet? (Score:4, Insightful)
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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 [rollingstone.com] for a pretty shocking example.
Re:Any drones yet? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Any drones yet? (Score:5, Funny)
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.
something similar happened already (Score:5, Interesting)
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Getting bag of weed delivered with your pizza sounds like a pretty good idea.
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I have friends who were in Operation Just Cause, [wikipedia.org] 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!
Re:Any drones yet? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems so obvious to me.
Re:Any drones yet? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Bad idea: Alcohol prohibition didn't work, and it both can kill you and is addictive.
Re:Any drones yet? (Score:4, Informative)
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 [youtube.com]
Re:Any drones yet? (Score:4, Insightful)
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... Surely the good guys deserve some press here as well, Slashdot?
The good guys? You mean the people who created the situation that encourages this behaviour in the first place? The good guys are the legislators in the states who have, at last, started down the road to end prohibition and cut the fiscal ties to the drug cartels and smugglers. Kudos to you all, for the war on drugs in an unwinnable war, and if they don't know it they are truly delusional! Historians tell us we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of our ancestors, and just as alcohol prohibition funded the M
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Legalise It And Tax It!
...and then subsidize it!
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http://farm.ewg.org/progdetail.php?fips=00000&progcode=tobacco
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Have you ever met an average rig worker? Mostly HS graduates and/or drop outs. We are not talking highly skilled labor. The Petroleum Engineers et. al. pretty much designed the skill out of the job.