Chinese companies continue to supply cartels

[get_involved]

Chinese companies continue to supply cartels - National drug cartel | Examiner.com

 

[Mad Scientist]

If we had actual control of our borders then that wouldn't be a problem would it?

 

[Cowman]

Instead of these being routine shipments to drug companies in the United States for production of completely legal drugs, they're instead illegal shipments to mexico which funds the incredibly violent cartels. All thanks to our drug policies which supports the imprisonment of vast quantities of our civilian population, and the guarantee that drug cartels will prosper.

 

[waltky]

They buyin' up mobile home parks here to put their gang-bangers in too...

Mexican Drug Cartels Build Their Own National Radio System
December 26, 2011 — When convoys of soldiers or federal police move through the scrubland of northern Mexico, the Zetas drug cartel knows they are coming.

The alert goes out from a taxi driver or a street vendor, equipped with a high-end handheld radio and paid to work as a lookout known as a "halcon," or hawk. The radio signal travels deep into the arid countryside, hours by foot from the nearest road. There, the 8-foot-tall (2-meter-tall) dark-green branches of the rockrose bush conceal a radio tower painted to match. A cable buried in the dirt draws power from a solar panel. A signal-boosting repeater relays the message along a network of powerful antennas and other repeaters that stretch hundreds of miles (kilometers) across Mexico, a shadow communications system allowing the cartel to coordinate drug deliveries, kidnapping, extortion and other crimes with the immediacy and precision of a modern military or law-enforcement agency.

The Mexican army and marines have begun attacking the system, seizing hundreds of pieces of communications equipment in at least three operations since September that offer a firsthand look at a surprisingly far-ranging and sophisticated infrastructure. Current and former U.S. law-enforcement officials say the equipment, ranging from professional-grade towers to handheld radios, was part of a single network that until recently extended from the U.S. border down eastern Mexico's Gulf coast and into Guatemala. The network allowed Zetas operatives to conduct encrypted conversations without depending on the official cellphone network, which is relatively easy for authorities to tap into, and in many cases does not reach deep into the Mexican countryside. "They're doing what any sensible military unit would do," said Robert Killebrew, a retired U.S. Army colonel who has studied the Mexican drug cartels for the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank. "They're branching out into as many forms of communications as possible."

The Mexican army said on Dec. 4 that it had seized a total of at least 167 antennas, 155 repeaters, 166 power sources, 71 pieces of computer equipment and 1,446 radios. The equipment has been taken down in several cities in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz and the northern states of Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, San Luis Potosi and Tamaulipas. The network was built around 2006 by the Gulf cartel, a narcotics-trafficking gang that employed a group of enforcers known as the Zetas, who had defected from Mexican army special forces. The Zetas split from the Gulf cartel in 2010 and have since become one of the nation's most dominant drug cartels, with profitable sidelines in kidnapping, extortion and human trafficking.

The network's mastermind was Jose Luis Del Toro Estrada, a communications expert known as Tecnico who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute cocaine in federal court in Houston, Texas, two years ago. Using millions of dollars worth of legally available equipment, Del Toro established the system in most of Mexico's 31 states and parts of northern Guatemala under the orders of the top leaders in the Gulf cartel and the Zetas. The Gulf cartel boss in each drug-smuggling territory, or plaza, was responsible for buying towers and repeaters as well as equipping his underlings with radios, according to Del Toro's plea agreement. Del Toro employed communications specialists to maintain and run the system and research new technology, according to the agreement.

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[waltky]

Guess where they get the money to finance the corruption from...

Mexico Cartels Paid Millions for Political Favors
February 11, 2012 - U.S. drug agents say they have evidence that Mexican drug cartel leaders paid $4.5 million for political favors to a Mexican border state governor and other figures in Mexico's former ruling party.

According to court documents filed by the agents in the U.S. District Court in San Antonio, Texas, confidential informants told U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration investigators that leaders of the major Mexican drug cartels made payments to members of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. One of the PRI members, Tomas Yarrington, served as governor of Tamaulipas state from 1999 to 2004.

The affidavits of the money-laundering case in Texas identify Antonio Pena as the conduit between Mexican politicians and the drug kingpins. PRI has said the probe is politically motivated ahead of the July 1 presidential vote. Its candidate has a big lead in opinion polls.

The accusations have given President Felipe Calderon's ruling conservative National Action party, or PAN, fresh ammunition against the PRI, which ruled Mexico for seven decades until it was ousted in 2000.

Mexican drug gangs are responsible for thousands of kidnappings, slayings and acts of extortion. President Calderon has deployed thousands of troops across Mexico to fight the country's drug cartels. The spiraling violence has left at least 50,000 people dead.

Sourfce

See also:

Latin American leaders assail U.S. drug ‘market,’ American users
'Very little responsibility taken by the drug-consuming countries'

Latin American leaders have joined together to condemn the U.S. government for soaring drug violence in their countries, blaming the United States for the transnational cartels that have grown rich and powerful smuggling dope north and guns south. Alongside official declarations, Latin American governments have expressed growing disgust for U.S. drug consumers — both the addict and the weekend recreational user heedless of the misery and destruction stemming from their pleasures. “Our region is seriously threatened by organized crime, but there is very little responsibility taken by the drug-consuming countries,” Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom said at a December meeting of Latin leaders in Caracas. Colom said the hemisphere was paying the price for drug consumption in the United States with “our blood, our fear and our human sacrifice.”

With transit countries facing some of the highest homicide rates in the world, so great is the frustration that the leaders are demanding that the United States and Europe consider steps toward legalization if they do not curb their appetite for drugs. At a regional summit this month in Mexico, attended by the leaders of 11 Latin American and Caribbean countries, officials declared that “the authorities in consumer countries should explore all possible alternatives to eliminate exorbitant profits of criminals, including regulatory or market options.” “Market options” is diplomatic code for decriminalization. The complaints are not exactly new but are remarkable for being nearly unanimous. The critique comes from sitting presidents left to right, from persistent U.S. antagonists such as President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and from close U.S. allies such as President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia, which has received almost $9 billion in aid to fight the cartels.

‘Rethinking’ the war on drugs

The criticism has been bolstered by opinion leaders in the region, including the former presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, who called for the legalization of marijuana and an overhaul of U.S. thinking on the 40-year drug war, which has cost a trillion dollars by some estimates but has done little to reduce supply and demand. Senior Obama administration officials say the resentment is understandable, given that the production and transit countries are shouldering more of the violence, but they say the rhetorical attacks against the United States are misdirected. “I refuse to accept that there has not been progress” in the fight against drug trafficking and consumption, said William R. Brownfield, assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said there has been a sustained reduction in demand for cocaine in the United States. According to the 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the number of Americans aged 12 and older who are current users of cocaine has dropped by 21 percent since 2007. The purity of seized cocaine is down; prices are up.

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[Ed Spacer]

Theyre going to be drilling OUR FUCKING OIL off the coast of florida.

 

[Oddball]

If we had actual control of our borders then that wouldn't be a problem would it?

No more of a problem than alcohol was during prohibition.

 

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd says shoot `em on sight...

Mexico cartels stronger than ever?
February 21, 2012 - Recent report says Mexico's cartels are more powerful than they were when Calderón came to office, but this overlooks the fracturing of larger gangs, writes guest blogger Patrick Corcoran.

A new report argues that, far from fracturing, Mexico's drug trafficking groups are stronger than at the beginning of Calderon's time in office. However, this overlooks the fragile and fast-changing nature of alliances between these gangs, and the shifting nature of the power they wield. A recent article published by Proceso (in Spanish) argues that Calderon’s crime policy has not only coincided with a dramatic increase in the number of murders linked to organized crime, but has also had the perverse effect of strengthening the very gangs it should be weakening. Written by the longtime drug war chronicler Ricardo Ravelo, it states that:

A bit more than five years after Calderon ordered the militarization of the country, the criminal networks of five cartels -- the Zetas, the Familia Michoacana, and the Sinaloa, Juarez, and Gulf Cartels -- now dominate more than half of the national territory. This expansion has occurred despite the blows these organizations have suffered through arrests or deaths of their leaders.

However, this argument overlooks the most important development in Mexico's underworld in the last few years, which is the fracturing of larger gangs into dozens of smaller groups. This shift, which has been documented on numerous occasions by InSight Crime and other analysts (in Spanish), triggered the emergence of dozens of new regional groups, from the Mano con Ojos to the Jalisco Cartel - New Generation (CJNG). The rise of these smaller bands has almost certainly meant a decline in the relative power of the larger, transnational groups that have long dominated Mexico.

Meanwhile two of the biggest gangs three years ago -- the Beltran Leyva Organization and the Juarez Cartel, both of whom are mentioned among the gangs that have grown more powerful -- are a shell of their former selves today, hit government pressure and wars with the Sinaloa Cartel. That’s not to say that criticism of Calderon’s policy is unwarranted; the changes outlined above have contributed enormously to the violence in Mexico. But there is little evidence for the claim that the largest groups are stronger now than they were five years ago.

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[waltky]

Kinda late don't ya think?

Mexico to build eight new prisons after Zetas escape
February 23, 2012 - But by focusing on the role overcrowding played in the Zetas riot and escape, is the Mexican government missing the bigger picture in terms of prison reform?

The Mexican government announced they will build eight new federal prisons this year as a response to the recent massacre and prison break by the Zetas in Nuevo Leon. This may be a necessary step in the short term, but more deep-seated issues remain:

1) The expansion does little to fundamentally rethink the prison problem. The prison population in Mexico is increasing dramatically and it doesn't seem likely to slow down any time soon. Building eight or even 20 new prisons may ease the burden for now, but those institutions will eventually be overcrowded too.

2) Building more prisons does nothing to deal with problems related to pretrial detention. If 70 percent of people in some Mexican state prisons are awaiting court dates, it seems that Mexico may need to focus on additional courts and judges more so than new prisons.

3) How will they safely and effectively staff the new prisons? The recent massacre showed that Zetas bribed several dozen prison guards at a single prison, and given this how does Mexico expect to staff more prisons and avoid that sort of corruption in the future? It doesn't do any good to build eight new prisons if the prison system as a whole is broken and serves as an organizational base for the criminal groups.

Source

 

[GuyPinestra]

Simple solution? L-E-G-A-L-I-Z-E.....

Take the profit away from the cartels and balance the damned budget on the taxes.

It's not rocket science, people. Prohibition should have shown you how this was going to turn out.

 

[uscitizen]

So the govt should intervene in and regulate private corporations doing business?

 

[GuyPinestra]

So the govt should intervene in and regulate private corporations doing business?

Who are you asking?

 

[uscitizen]

Whomever is against China selling pharmacuticals to Mexico.

 

[uscitizen]

Btw a very large part of the Pharma contents we consume here legally are from China.