Anonymous Takes On a Mexican Drug Cartel 548
New submitter NarcoTraficante writes "After one of their members was kidnapped in Veracruz, Mexico by the Zetas drug cartel, Mexican Anonymous members have issued an ultimatum to the Zetas in a recently posted YouTube video. The video demands the release of the kidnapped member and threatens to publish information of cartel members and affiliates in Veracruz if the victim is not released by November 5. The Houston Chronicle article warns that there will be bloodshed if Anonymous publishes information on the Zeta's operations, either perpetrated by rival cartels or reprisal attacks by the Zetas themselves."
Drug Cartels (Score:3, Insightful)
Nevermind Mexico. As you were. We'll come knocking when you actually threaten our financial interest. Until then, keep up the good show. We won't bother.
Re:Drug Cartels (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Have the drug cartels met their match? (Score:5, Insightful)
After all of the money spent fighting them, it would be ironic if a bunch of hackers brought the cartels down.
If Anonymous releases info, they will be lucky if they are the only ones that are killed. These cartels don't just go after you. They go after you, your family, and your friends. They are extremely ruthless, and extremely smart. The prisoner they have, if he's not already dead, is getting worked over pretty good right now, and they will get him to talk. Then they'll kill him. Anonymous is in over their heads. It's one thing to deface some websites, or DDOS some banking websites. It's different to go after a group that is well armed and not restrained by morality and laws.
Re:Police (Score:5, Insightful)
because the police make a %^&*( ton of money off the drug trade. they don't want to stop it either. a lot of the police districts in the south near the Mexican border when they seize drugs going north they get money from the feds. when they seize cash going south to the cartel's they get to keep it and add it to their budget.
if they solve the problem they will lose money, and they don't want that.
Re:One way to try to get in the US Gov's good book (Score:5, Insightful)
"Anonymous" isn't a single group, it's whatever the fuck people want it to be. "Anonymous" has been responsible for hacking kiddie porn sites, yet at the same time trolling sites for people with epilepsy by putting flashing images on them. Those two "anonymous" groups are clearly not the same. Anyone can do whatever and say it's anonymous, there are even groups that don't frequent /b/, it's just a free for all and an excuse to do whatever.
Re:Drug Cartels (Score:5, Insightful)
Mexico is a sovereign nation. Did you stop to think how condescending it sounds to say we "let" Mexico do anything? We've already flooded northern Mexico with people from various US government agencies. What's your plan? Shall we send in the army, too? Who will we fight?
The US government sold the cartels thousands of guns, which have been used to kill hundreds of people including police officers and politicians. I'm sure the Mexicans would be just as happy not to have much more "help" from the US.
Re:Have the drug cartels met their match? (Score:5, Insightful)
You missed the point - anonymous isn't trying to end the drug cartels - they want the release of a certain person or they'll expose all the cartels "partners" - the crooked cops, politicians, newswriters, etc., who are enablers.
Then the other cartels go after that cartels partners-in-crime - either by co-opting them, or eliminating them if they don't play ball. The problem with co-opting them is they're not all that useful once it's known they're crooked.
Another side effect is that's one cartel less to worry about.
So anonymous takes out kiddie porn rings, exposes crooked politicians and cops and drug dealers ... someone want to remind me of how they're supposed to be the bad guys here when they're doing the jobs that the cops and politicians won't touch?
Re:Drug Cartels (Score:3, Insightful)
"Keep the drug flow up, keep the police state up.":
During the Taliban rule, Afghanistan saw a bumper opium crop of 4,500 metric tons in 1999. However, in July 2000, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, collaborating with the United Nations to eradicate heroin production in Afghanistan, declared that growing poppies was un-Islamic, resulting in one of the world's most successful anti-drug campaigns. As a result of this ban, opium poppy cultivation was reduced by 91% from the previous year's estimate of 82,172 hectares. The ban was so effective that Helmand Province, which had accounted for more than half of this area, recorded no poppy cultivation during the 2001 season.
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_production_in_Afghanistan#Rise_of_the_Taliban_.281994.E2.80.932001.29 [wikipedia.org]
Of course in October 2001 the US and allied forces invaded Afghanistan.
Despite the [2009] decrease, Afghanistan is still the world's leading producer of opium. (...) In 2009, Afghanistan cultivated 123,000 hectares of opium compared to 157,000 hectares in 2008 (...) In 2009, 6,900 tons of opium were produced compared to 7,700 tons in 2008.
-- http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/09/02/us-afghanistan-drugs-factbox-sb-idUSTRE58144M20090902 [reuters.com]
Re:Have the drug cartels met their match? (Score:4, Insightful)
someone want to remind me of how they're supposed to be the bad guys here when they're doing the jobs that the cops and politicians won't touch?
It's a philosophical question of vigilantism. Is it morally right to take the law into your own hands when you perceive that the police, judges, and juries aren't doing their job? We can probably come up with scenarios that all but the purist will sit back and snicker about (e.g., CP) -- and we can come up with scenarios that fewer people support (remember Bernhard Goetz [wikipedia.org]?). We might even come up with scenarios that almost no-one supports (e.g., road rage -- yes, road-rage is a form of vigilantism where a person goes berserk over a perceived crime and seeks their version of justice).
When these unelected, unaccountable, <ahem> anonymous people do something you agree with is one thing; when they do something you disagree with, now what?
Note: I'm not passing judgement. I'm just answering your question.
Re:Drug Cartels (Score:4, Insightful)
The second drugs are legalized across the board in the US, you can bet your bottom dollar that the value of all those illegal runs will drop to zero. But the political circus would never do that, nor anything else productive other than stay in gridlock lockstep to protect the old guard and keep things the way they are.
You're not Listening (Score:5, Insightful)
Asking why we're pursuing the imperial option stupidly and inconsistently doesn't mean he's justifying the imperial option itself.
Re:Identifying what exactly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Have the drug cartels met their match? (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering modus operandi of Los Zetas, I would fully expect the person in question to be released - as a set of disjoint parts, and probably with a video detailing the process.
Remember, when they call them "ultra-violent", it's not an overstatement. It's a cartel that thrives on violence and terror it begets to control their areas.
Re:Drug Cartels (Score:2, Insightful)
Mexico is borderline failed state by now. Sovereignty is a nice concept and all, but national security has always trumped and will always trump sovereignty of another state, for obvious reasons. And, unlike Iraq or Afghanistan or Libya, the situation in Mexico is a very real, direct and serious national security threat for U.S.
Re:Identifying what exactly? (Score:4, Insightful)
A slashdotter with a japanese name, quoting aspects of american law, and stating that his family is mexican? Let's face it, you're 16, white, and from toledo...
He has a ID of 1098, so he was around since the founding of Slashdot.
Considering Slashdot was founded in 1997, which is 14 years ago, for him to be 16 now, he would've joined the site when he was 2 years old.
He may be white and from Toledo, but I'm guessing he's at least 30+ in age.
Re:Dead bloggers hanging from a bridge in Mexico: (Score:4, Insightful)
AFAIK, the bodies were never identified. No one is quite sure if they actually were bloggers or if they were merely used to create fear among bloggers. If they were bloggers, there's no way to know what kind of precautions they took, if any. Given the large numbers of bloggers still criticizing the cartels, it doesn't appear that the cartels truly have the ability to identify and kill anyone who posts things they don't like. For people outside of Mexico, which I assume is most of Anonymous, the risk seems to be minimal to nonexistent.
Re:Drug Cartels (Score:5, Insightful)
You have an interesting definition of "let the Cartels get away with it". A more accurate definition might be "actively aid and abet these activities via material support and large quantities of funding".
A truly ridiculous aspect of the drug traffic issue is that the United States hasn't managed to control the infiltration of people across the border; the illegal immigrant problem has apparently reached epic proportions! Can the US actually expect to be able to control the movements of much smaller packages that drugs and money can be smuggled back and forth in?
As for your "less incentives for the drugs to come here in the first place" plan, I agree wholeheartedly. Legalizing marijuana would be a phenomenal step in social management, as well as reducing the financial support we give to entities we can nearly all agree should not be profiting from us. I don't think it will "drop the value of all those illegal [drug] runs to zero", since we have pharmaceuticals crossing both the Mexican and the Canadian borders on a daily basis - apparently, it's orders of magnitude cheaper to ignore the patent-based monopolies in the US and acquire (supposedly) the exact same chemicals quasi-legally over the border; at least, that's what the spam in my inbox seems to indicate. Not just for "V1@GR@", but a wide array of prescription medications, everything from pain pills to antibiotics.
Marijuana has been clinically proven to be less physically damaging than either tobacco or alcohol (both of which are legal, albeit age-restricted), even with long-term usage. It keeps the (consuming) population docile, and it's incredibly cheap. Taxing it sounds like a great idea, but even just decriminalizing it would hit the drug cartels harder than sending 100,000 troops down to shoot at them, and it would hurt them where it matters: in the wallet. Why import it from Mexico, when it's so much less expensive to get it (literally, even) from your own back yard?
Marijuana grows in just about any conditions, that's part of the reason for the nickname "weed". Outlawing it is akin to outlawing carbon dioxide; how do you stop it? It has taken decades of strenuous effort to get rid of most of the "naturally occurring" cannabis growing alongside our nation's highways, never mind in a planter on someone's back porch. Criminalizing marijuana has simply given the cartels a (in effect, government-granted) monopoly on its production and distribution.
Patty Hearst and the paper industry were responsible for outlawing marijuana in the first place, because it was an economic threat - it's cheaper to make paper from marijuana than from trees. An acre of cannabis produces more paper than an acre of trees, because you can harvest every month instead of every few years. An acre of cannabis also produces more oxygen per year than an acre of trees - and it grows faster than the trees, with much less maintenance required, making it a much more renewable resource with a smaller carbon footprint. Add in the fact that you can grow hemp in a field with other plants, whereas trees pretty much exclude anything except grass, and the hemp seems (from an objective view) to become much more economically viable and environmentally friendly than many other products.
Hemp fiber is extremely versatile, and can be used to make all kinds of things that are currently made from less renewable resources - paper, clothing, rope, and even plastics and bio-fuels have been made from hemp. For example, replacing cotton with hemp would increase production by several orders of magnitude - cotton requires an entire growing season to become usable, whereas hemp is mature and ready for harvest in a much shorter time, allowing multiple "growing seasons" in the same amount of time; in addition, the cotton is confined to boles, whereas nearly the entire hemp plant is useful for its fibers.
As for its use in "self-medicating", it is interesting to note that "industrial" hemp has so little THC in it that it's barely measurable - you could smoke an e
Re:Identifying what exactly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhh, actually, this has a LOT to do with the USA.
The United States' "War on Drugs" is the root cause of all that violence in Mexico. And, NAFTA helped to deprive the common man in Mexico of his livelihood, mostly small farmers, thereby driving more recruits into the cartels. Add to that, the fact that there are now about 20 million lawbreaking illegal aliens in the United States. Some indeterminate number of those illegals are also members of Zeta and other cartels.
Everything drug related has to do with the United States. Everything.
Agree (Score:4, Insightful)
Petty rivalry like this will only keep the machine rolling...it will not change anything.
The most effective way to defeat the Mexican drug cartels is very, very simple.
Take away their money.
No money, no power base, and that's that.
The most effective way to take away their money is equally simple:
Legalize their product. Put it under proper federal quality regulation and have legitimate taxpaying law-abiding businesses sell it.
In one action you simultaneously create millions of legitimate and sorely-needed jobs, and also instantly dis empower the strongest criminal segment of our society.
The war on drugs has empowered the worst of humans, and has utterly failed to restrict the supply of drugs available to our children in their schools. This approach to keeping our kids safe is thoughtless and does far, far more harm than good (which is no good at all). This is always the *inescapable* consequence of making highly-desired commodities illegal. More money wasted on law enforcement will only add fuel to the flames.
Keep kids off drugs by educating them about the dangers, not by ensuring that they must share a world full of extremely wealthy and powerful criminal drug lords who have no qualms about lacing food with drugs to get children addicted, or kidnapping and murdering them to get their own way.
Of course, the two biggest opponents of the clear-and-obvious-right-thing-to-do are:
1) conservative religious types who utterly lack the capacity for basic critical thinking
2) The drug lords themselves, who profit greatly from the fact that drugs are illegal
Honestly, I am not sure which is worse....the evil...or the stupid.
Re:Identifying what exactly? (Score:4, Insightful)
Be as facetious as you care to be. No other nation on earth declared a "War on Drugs", then spent untold billions persuading other nations to join that war. No other nation imports as many drugs as we do, while at the same time incarcerating everyone caught doing so. We have indeed created the situation in Mexico. The fact that so many Mexican officials are corrupt only makes the problem worse. The situation is our creation.
Got anything constructive to say? Would you like to refute any of my points? Or, would you prefer to make more pointless, inane comments?
Re:already attacked (Score:5, Insightful)
I really think you don't understand 'Anonymous' at all. There is no 'Anonymous', 'Anonymous' is anonymous to itself. You do not join 'Anonymous', you either carry out activities in the name of 'Anonymous' anonymously or you do not.
In any case, when you comes to oppression, you either resist and work to end it or you live in fear and die when others choose to make you a random example anyhow.
The drug war is an insane activity of a corrupted organisation, the US government, designed it seems to promote pharmaceutical profits, allow the CIA a ready source of income, a means by which to destabilise other countries by forcing them to participate in drug war (whilst surreptitiously supporting the drug dealers ie money laundering and of course keeping the drugs illegal), ensure inflated profits for privatised prisons, maintain a massive anti-drug operation to suppress challenges to the status quo, allow intelligence operations to enter foreign countries masquerading as drug enforcement agents or paradoxically as drug dealers and of course the number one to win votes with the 'we're tough on crime' bullshit (of course excluding muggings, house break ins, car thefts, purse snatching, home invasions, crimes that affect the majority because, they are to busy chasing and convicting drug users).
The best war to declare war on violent criminals involved in the drug trade is to legalise drugs, quite simply bankrupt them.
Re:already attacked (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes - I understand who and what Anonymous is. You seem to miss an important point about Anonymous. While the rank and file of Anonymous is indeed very much anonymous, there are some core leaders who are very much less anonymous than the hangers on. The script kiddie who checks the forums now and then, and occasionally participates in an attack, is indeed quite anonymous. Not so with some of the higher profile people. While HBGary made complete asses of themselves, it is NOT an insurmountable task for a dedicated group of IT professionals to identify and locate some of the most active members of Anonymous. In fact, I'd be very surprised if the CIA and/or FBI haven't already done so.
Now, back to my point. To date, Anonymous has mostly gone after corporations, governments, and individuals who are civilized. To attack any criminal organization with no government, church, or social oversight is dangerous. Take a look at what is happening in Mexico today. People are butchered. In fact, truckloads and busloads of people are butchered. Many mass graves have been discovered in Mexico, some holding hundreds of bodies, others only dozens. In other cases, pickup trucks loaded with bodies have been dumped on major thoroughfares. The cartels are as lawless, and as savage as any organization in the world.
The most insane Muslim radicals have nothing on the cartels.
If and when the cartels identify anyone who they think belongs to Anonymous, we will be reading about yet another dismembered body, whether that body be in Mexico or the United States.
Oh yeah - Zeta doesn't have any special burden of proof to meet. If some foot soldier is only partly sure that he has identified an Anonymous member, that's good enough. No burden of proof, at all. In fact, if they are half sure that Anonymous has a member who lives in a subdivision, but can't determine who it is, they may well round up every living soul in that subdivision, slaughter them all, and leave one of their famous messages. Written in the victim's blood, of course.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)