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All 5 posts   Subject: I think I found out why drugs are illegal.   Please login to post   Thread expires   Down

 
    BlaseDeviant
(Hive Bee)
11-13-04 20:53
No 541422
      I think I found out why drugs are illegal.     

1. Drug lords make a lot of money. Although some is blown, some goes into bank accounts and assets. Police bust them and seize the assets. Bam. Money. Since busting killers/rapists isn't profitable, and tax money just isn't enough, I guess. Small busts are either to get to the big money (and some 'small' guys have some money too), or...

2. Tough on crime, keeping your kids safe, etc. appearance. Although if they were regulated, blah we don't need to go there.

Am I close?

So differently divine...
 
 
 
 
    midway
(Hive Bee)
11-13-04 21:42
No 541426
      no. drugs are illegal because the social ...     

no. drugs are illegal because the social majority deems it necessary for them to be that way.

frighteningly stupid and shortsighted? yes

conspiritorial and twisted? no
 
 
 
 
    Drug_Phreak
(Hive Bee)
11-13-04 22:16
No 541433
      It keeps the legal system alive     

Yeah... drugs are illegal because they basically run the legal system. Roughly 80% of crime is drug related. Drugs will probably be illegal until the end of time for this very reason. The masses of brainwashed non-drug users are missing out. I would like for drug users to be the majority rather than the other way around. I think the world would be a better place to live if that was the case. There are too many squares in this world IMO.

Crank is part of this complete breakfast.
 
 
 
 
    scarmani
(Hive Bee)
11-14-04 09:12
No 541495
User Picture 
      Drugs are Illegal to Prop Up Dollar     

My take is that drugs are illegal because the flow of "dirty money" is necessary to support the US economic system and sustain the dollar regime.  There is an intimate connection between Wall Street, the CIA, and drug trafficking.

1) The list of top individuals in Wall Street reads like a list of former top officials in the CIA.

2) Almost everywhere the CIA / US Military has gotten heavily involved in the last few decades, there are either drugs or oil involved.

Examples: Vietnam (golden triangle heroin), Balkans (NATO backed the Al Qaeda affiliated KLA, which smuggled 70% of heroin for European market), Afghanistan (the repressive Taliban had virtually eliminated heroin production; Afghanistan was supplying 70% of global heroin before this, and is doing the same again now under the warlords); and of course Columbia.

3) Wall Street relies on narcodollars to a profound degree.

This is not a new story: much of the British empire's economy depended on the drug trade (tobacco, opium, alcohol, coffee, tea, etc.) and many wars were fought over drugs.

http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/wallst-drugtrade.htm

By most estimates, illegal drug trafficking industry ranks among the largest economic sectors in the world.



"By any standards, the criminal narcotics industry ranks among the wealthiest and most powerful multinational business conglomerates in the world, grossing an estimated $500 billion a year.  (Other estimates run as high as $1 trillion)  To put this into perspective, U.N. Secretary General Koffi Anan recently claimed that the illegal narcotics industry is greater than the global oil and gas industry and twice as large as the overall automobile industry."
http://www.csis.org/tnt/tasknarc.cfm



Given that much of the wealth generated through this industry is put into liquid, dollar denominated assets and financial instruments; and given that major transnational corporations and US banks are deeply dependent on business related to laundering these profits...  it is hard to concieve that the government would adopt rational drug policies.

Just consider: If drugs were decriminalized (or legalized), their street value would collapse to a miniscule fraction of current levels and one of the world's largest industries would utterly collapse.  The truly massive flow of liquid cash through the US economy and financial markets would dissapear, and probably cause a liquidity crisis.  (How do you think the US has managed to sustain such large and growing debts while keeping interest rates so low?)

Can you imagine that the US government would do anything that would effectively destroy the Oil and Gas industry?  Or the Automobile industry?  If not, then it is even more difficult to concieve that the US government would end the drug war, and thus the criminal narcotics industry.

The story of the late 20th and early 21st century is not a story of individual aspirations or democracy.  It is a story of the physics of capital.






Wall Street takes a meeting with Colombian rebels
by Andrew Reding


 
Why would the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange travel to a remote rebel stronghold in the wilds of southern Colombia to meet with a Marxist commander of the last major leftist insurgency in the hemisphere? And why would the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), welcome this capitalist icon with open arms?

The answer to this riddle has little to do with ideology, and a lot to do with efforts by a courageous but embattled president to deal with the prime obstacle to peace and economic modernization in Colombia—the country’s economic elite.

Last week’s meeting was arranged by President Andrés Pastrana, a free-market advocate who is seeking a negotiated end to the civil war that has devastated his country for the past three decades. Pastrana wants to integrate Colombia, the third most populous country in Latin America, into the global economy. Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Chile are already well along that path, while Colombia, hobbled by war and an unhealthy dependence on drug trafficking revenues, is stagnating, as reflected by a slumping stock market and this week’s 9% devaluation of the peso.

Pastrana is no mushy-headed liberal. He has refused to recognize a smaller, more moderate insurgency known as the National Liberation Army (ELN), precisely because it lacks military muscle. The FARC, on the other hand, has scored an impressive series of victories over government forces in the past year. Overcoming the FARC militarily is out of the question for the forseable future, and any effort to do so would spell further economic and political ruin.

Yet negotiating with “communists” is anathema to much of Colombia’s upper class. The guerrillas and their sympathizers have been demonized and dehumanized, as they were earlier in many other Latin American countries. This has allowed the army, with support from businessmen and landlords, to form paramilitary death squads that slaughter suspected leftists, including women and children, as though they were vermin. According to the State Department and human rights groups, such groups are responsible for about two-thirds of the thousands of political murders in Colombia.

Showing great personal courage, Pastrana has tried to break this pattern of dehumanization and violence. Last November, he ceded an area the size of Switzerland—about 3.5% of the country—to the FARC on condition that they negotiate peace in good faith. Since then, he has fired two generals linked to the paramilitary groups, issued warrants for the arrest of paramilitary leaders, and arrested generals and colonels responsible for past massacres and assassinations.

These actions have gained him credibility with the rebels and with much of rural Colombia, but at the cost of support in modern urban Colombia. A recent poll conducted by the daily El Espectador in the capital, Bogotá, found 71% of respondents opposed ceding land to the FARC. In May, Pastrana’s defense minister resigned in protest.

That is where the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange enters the picture. Pastrana was scheduled to visit the exchange earlier this month, but had to cancel because of the political crisis back home. When NYSE president Richard Grasso asked if there was anything he could do to help, Pastrana said yes, he could come to Colombia to meet FARC commander Raúl Reyes. And he did.

Like the Pope’s visit to Cuba, the point here was to break old molds. If a symbol of international capitalism can meet with a Marxist guerrilla leader, why can’t Colombian business executives do likewise? If even a seasoned guerrilla can see the advantages of integrating Colombia into the new global economic order, why can’t Colombia’s titans of industry follow suit?

It is brilliant political theater—and it also plays to a U.S. audience. Many members of Congress are still see only “communists” and “drug traffickers” when they think of Colombia. That makes them all too ready to vote for military aid—aid that sets back the prospects for peace and economic development. What better way to change such attitudes than a reminder from the chairman of the NYSE that “communists” are not the prime impediment to capitalist progress in South America’s third most important economy?

http://www.worldpolicy.org/globalrights/samerica/1999-Colombia.html





CIA, Drugs, and Wall Street

Contributing Editor Catherine Austin Fitts, who was a Managing Director at Dillon Read before becoming Assistant Secretary of Housing under George Bush and who holds an MBA from Wharton makes things very simple. She points out that the four largest states for the importation of drugs are New York, Florida, Texas and California. She then points out that the top four money laundering states in the U.S. (good for between 100 and 260 billion per year) are New York, Florida, Texas and California. No surprise there. Then she rips the breath from your lungs by pointing out that 80 per cent of all Presidential campaign funds come from - New York, Florida, Texas and California.

Civics test: Who are the current governors of Texas and Florida?  (Note: this article was written in 1999)

From The Wilderness has been working on a story for an upcoming issue that will show conclusively, using testimony of law enforcement officers and U.S. Government records, that Dominican drug gangs, who dominate the trade in the northeast United States - especially New York and Pennsylvania - have been making regular campaign donations to the Clinton-Gore-Democratic camp since the early 90s. California drug sales are currently split between Democratically allied crime factions and entrenched hard core Republican strongholds from the Reagan era. People who shudder at the thought of the Chinese buying into presidential politics would choke if they knew how much drug money was involved.

Why? Again, the answer is simpler than you might think. While the Department of Justice estimates that $100 billion in drug funds are laundered in the U.S. each year, other research, including research material from the Andean Commission of Jurists cited by author Dan Russell in his soon to be published book Drug War place the figure at around $250 billion per year. Catherine Austin Fitts places the figure at $250 to $300 billion. Given the fact that the UN estimated that in the early 1990s world retail volume in the illegal drugs was $440 billion, $250 billion seems about right. Fitts, using her Wall Street experience as an investment banker is then quick to point out that the multiplier effect (x6) of  $250 billion laundered would result in $1.5 trillion dollars per year in U.S. cash transactions resulting from the drug trade. How many jobs does $1.5 trillion represent? Why do President's get re-elected?  As Bill Clinton's staff recognized in 1992, "It's the economy -Stupid!"

During the Contra years, when the CIA and Bill Clinton were swimming in cocaine, and Arkansas became the only state in the Union to ever issue bearer bonds (laundry certificates), employment in Arkansas rose to an all time high because there was so much money floating around. So what if they don't count all the dead bodies like two young boys Kevin Ives and Don Henry, shot, bludgeoned and dismembered on a railroad track after witnessing CIA drug drops. "It's the economy - Stupid!"

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/dontblink.html

boot from the shadow of a broken mirror
 
 
 
 
    PolytheneSam
(Master Searcher)
11-14-04 16:56
No 541523
User Picture 
      Drugs are illegal because so many stupid ...     

Drugs are illegal because so many stupid people use them.

http://www.geocities.com/dritte123/PSPF.html
 
 

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