I, for one, am always surprised yet impressed by the things the cartels do. All the while not being shocked at all.
They would be such an interesting psychological / sociological study if it didn't mean potential torture and beheading of researchers. I mean this level of organized crime makes Al Capone look like a petty pick pocket.
Want to be really impressed and horrified? See if you can dig out the 90s Wired article on the Colombians using an AS/400 to do analysis of copies of telco records. Whenever they found the logs showing cartel members calling numbers registered to police officers, they'd kill the cartel member.
Hoards of money and guns can lead to very powerful unchecked capabilities. That funding has to be cutoff, they are a terrorist organization being funded by policy, concentrating wealth to criminals.
While I agree with you, the illegal drug trade got these guys started and off the ground, I think at this point they would have other avenues to keep themselves in business. I hear the human trafficking business is quite lucrative and booming these days down their way.
Legalizing drugs won't fix the problem. The real problem is corruption. The only reason the cartels got this big in the first place is because it got easier and easier to commit terrible crimes with no law enforcement officials stopping them. Hell, it seems like the police are now part of the cartels in many areas.
At this point, isn't it more accurate to call them a terrorist organization? They have their own military, communications network and a healthy (seemingly never ending) supply of soldiers to do their bidding and the citizens are sufficiently terrorized.
Forget fighting ghosts in far off lands; right next door is where the terrorists are.
"Terrorist" has a quite specific meaning; I think that there is a subtle difference with the fact that cartels don't use terror for ideological reasons, instead, very simply, as a business tool.
I think terroristic organization are characterized by asimmetry toward their enemy (that's where the terror strategies come from). Cartels are not asymmetric - I wouldn't surprised if their "GDP" would be higher than Mexico.
I would rather think of them either as a state inside another, failed, state, or a corporation who controls its state of residence through guns instead of money.
based on recent stories where they had to track down and arrest a mayor and his wife how are you going to tell friend from foe? With the recent legalization of marijuana in a few more states we might be getting to a tipping point where we reexamine the whole drug war and reduce the influence of these people by drying up their money supply
The goal of the cartels is not terror or using terror to achieve any political or ideological goals. The goal of the cartels is profit in most cases and local political power in some others. They are criminal enterprises for sure and warlords as well in many cases, but they are not terrorists. Whether profit-motivated un-accountable and violent criminal syndicates are more or less harmful than fundamentalist terrorists, well, that's a different question.
Sad story. Transmitters though are generally easy to find (not perhaps to decode if encrypted but RF energy is easily localized). As a radio amateur we used to do transmitter 'hunts' where we could locate and disable a transmitter hidden in some area.
Is it just me, or does anyone else think that dismantling these radio networks is backwards? By using these radios the cartels are giving the authorities free information about their movements and evidence that's useful in their conviction. Even if the traffic is encrypted there are ways around that. The logical thing to me is keep the radios going and listen to them.
Having evidence is not really a problem. In Mexico, you will see narcos in the streets with very outlandish behavior.
With a functioning judiciary system they would be arrested and jailed easily and immediately.
The problem is that drug cartels have control of the everything, including the police and the judiciary system. You should read about the meetings where they show to the policemen what they do to the ones who betray them; it's terrifying.
The free market solution is for Mexican engineers to band together and raise a private army with their earnings.
You think I'm kidding, but I am actually making a point about rule of law - I literally just named the free-market solution. Think about it the next time you dismiss the state.
Well, the state is the one who started the whole ordeal by making drugs illegal. So I would argue that in a real free-market no engineer would have been kidnapped in the first place.
[+] [-] luckyno13|11 years ago|reply
They would be such an interesting psychological / sociological study if it didn't mean potential torture and beheading of researchers. I mean this level of organized crime makes Al Capone look like a petty pick pocket.
[+] [-] rodgerd|11 years ago|reply
Big data before it was cool.
[+] [-] luckyno13|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drawkbox|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hoozters|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] luckyno13|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hsod|11 years ago|reply
It seems like more and more low quality comments are being upvoted so long as they pander to the majority political leanings around here.
Are we a discussion board or a platform to push an agenda?
[+] [-] SixSigma|11 years ago|reply
If the actual barbarism of these people was on the regular news ore, I think that would make an impact.
People managed to make a difference through boycotting many products because of industrial practices. [1]
Maybe it's time to organise a cocaine boycott.
[1] http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/boycotts/successfulboycotts.a...
[+] [-] gaius|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulhauggis|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eksith|11 years ago|reply
Forget fighting ghosts in far off lands; right next door is where the terrorists are.
[+] [-] pizza234|11 years ago|reply
I think terroristic organization are characterized by asimmetry toward their enemy (that's where the terror strategies come from). Cartels are not asymmetric - I wouldn't surprised if their "GDP" would be higher than Mexico.
I would rather think of them either as a state inside another, failed, state, or a corporation who controls its state of residence through guns instead of money.
[+] [-] Shivetya|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lazaroclapp|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] apta|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ZenoArrow|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pizza234|11 years ago|reply
Having evidence is not really a problem. In Mexico, you will see narcos in the streets with very outlandish behavior. With a functioning judiciary system they would be arrested and jailed easily and immediately.
The problem is that drug cartels have control of the everything, including the police and the judiciary system. You should read about the meetings where they show to the policemen what they do to the ones who betray them; it's terrifying.
[+] [-] ddrt|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] logicallee|11 years ago|reply
You think I'm kidding, but I am actually making a point about rule of law - I literally just named the free-market solution. Think about it the next time you dismiss the state.
[+] [-] josu|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshkpeterson|11 years ago|reply