NY Times Magazine: Cocaine Incorporated

[Bolo Boffin]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/magazine/how-a-mexican-drug-cartel-makes-its-billions.html?pagewanted=5&_r=1&ref=general&src=me&pagewanted=all

The drug war in Mexico has claimed more than 50,000 lives since 2006. But what tends to get lost amid coverage of this epic bloodletting is just how effective the drug business has become. A close study of the Sinaloa cartel, based on thousands of pages of trial records and dozens of interviews with convicted drug traffickers and current and former officials in Mexico and the United States, reveals an operation that is global (it is active in more than a dozen countries) yet also very nimble and, above all, staggeringly complex. Sinaloa didn’t merely survive the recession — it has thrived in recent years. And after prevailing in some recent mass-casualty clashes, it now controls more territory along the border than ever.

“Chapo always talks about the drug business, wherever he is,” one erstwhile confidant told a jury several years ago, describing a driven, even obsessive entrepreneur with a proclivity for micromanagement. From the remote mountain redoubt where he is believed to be hiding, surrounded at all times by a battery of gunmen, Chapo oversees a logistical network that is as sophisticated, in some ways, as that of Amazon or U.P.S. — doubly sophisticated, when you think about it, because traffickers must move both their product and their profits in secret, and constantly maneuver to avoid death or arrest. As a mirror image of a legal commodities business, the Sinaloa cartel brings to mind that old line about Ginger Rogers doing all the same moves as Fred Astaire, only backward and in heels. In its longevity, profitability and scope, it might be the most successful criminal enterprise in history.

[GeorgeGist]

1. Nice propaganda ...

to cover up the incompetence and complicity of governments.

[Bolo Boffin]

2. Does it cover up the incompetence and complicity of governments?

I guess I missed that part when I was reading about how the Mexican and American governments are incompetent and complicit.

Really, you should try reading it. It's an excellent article.

[malcolmkyle]

3. Talk to your children!

Kids can ask some tough questions but those concerning prohibition are actually fairly easy to answer. Be straightforward. Explain concisely how the unconscionable acts of parasitic prohibitionists (at all levels of our bi-partisan police-state) have raised gang warfare to a level not seen since the days of alcohol bootleggin­g; ­how these despicable monsters have creating a prison-for­-profit synergy with evil drug lords and terrorists; how they were able to remove many of our cherished and important civil liberties, putting many previously unknown and contaminate­d drugs on our streets; how they've overcrowd­ing the courts and prisons, making it increasing­ly impossible to curtail the people who are really hurting and terrorizing­ others; and how they've helped to evolve local street gangs into transnatio­nal enterprise­s, with intricate power structures that reach into every corner of society, and with significant social and military resources at their disposal.

Then read them the following quote from Adolf Hitler's “Mein Kampf”

“The State must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.”

Finally, preparing for the worst can be difficult but helpful, and as parents, it is our duty to prevent it from happening. But our children need to know that It's always possible to prevent a dire situation turning into an irreversibly very bleak one; explain to them what our wise forefathers did in 1933!