COLLECTIVE MADNESS
“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."
Interesting info on the meth trade from Foreign Policy online.
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Methamphetamine to the United States
Traditional source: “Mom-and-pop” operations in the U.S. Midwest, California, and other rural areas
New front: Mexico, with component parts shipped primarily from China, India, and Germany. Mexican organized crime is producing stronger meth in “superlabs,” then sending it along via the traditional routes for cocaine and marijuana trafficking: from Tijuana into San Diego and up the West Coast of the United States, or from western Mexico through major Texas cities and other southern U.S. urban hubs. Today, U.S. officials estimate that 80 percent of the meth in the United States originates in Mexico.
Reason for the shift: The U.S. Congress passed the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act in 2006, which tightened restrictions on the component parts (ephedrine and pseudoephedrine) that producers were using to concoct meth in their basements and garages. Pharmacies and discount stores clamped down, moving Sudafed and NyQuil behind the counter and pushing production of the dangerous drug south of the border.
The effect: As production has moved south, so too has addiction. According to the 2006 U.N. “World Drug Report,” treatment for drug use in Mexico is “growing more strongly for methamphetamine than for any other substance.” And though Americans have the boom in Mexican meth to thank for lower street prices and fewer meth lab explosions, the shift is boosting drug-related crime in Mexico, where warring cartels dropped 2,100 murder victims in 2006—more than double the 2001 figure.
The crackdown: The March seizure of more than $200 million in meth money from a Mexico City mansion hints at just how far the U.S.-Mexico trade in this drug may extend. The INCSR praised the “strong [anti-drug] actions” of the new administration of Mexican President Felipe Calderón. His dispatching of 24,000 police and soldiers to drug-soaked areas was a strong first step, but Mexico’s cartels have often outlasted even the most well-intentioned of officials.
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Gotta love that globalization. The World is Flat and High as a Motherfucker.
DR,
ReplyDeleteAsshole, listen ..lets do it this way. We'll go to court. I'll prove that I was in the Marine Corps and the CIA in return for your entire magazine empire, your house and your car.
If I can't prove it you can have everything I own.
But if you think I'm putting it out on the internet you're nuts.
Also I gave you guys the name of the base publication that has my picture in it getting sworn into the Corps..all you have to do is get that and that solves that problem for you but apparently you're too lazy.
But I'm here to tell you that if you take me up on this and we sign binding agreements you will lose everything you have...guaranteed. Not to mentioin looking like the asshole you are...BTW are you still holding Junior's hand, guilding him through life as you did when "you" sent him to Iraq? And all the time I thought orders came from Headquarters Marine Corps..Anyway tuck him in and read him a nice bedtime story ..artillery ..way, way back from the trouble.
CIA is moving on the cool action. Good for them. Someone's got to pay for all them 400 sq ft marble gilded toilets.
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