Partners in Crime: The U.S. Secret State and Mexico's 'War on Drugs'

[Octafish]

One brave correspondent's take on the situation:

Partners in Crime: The U.S. Secret State and Mexico's "War on Drugs"

Tom Berghardt
Antifascist Calling
Sunday, September 19, 2010

For decades, investigative journalists, researchers and analysts have noted the symbiotic relationships forged amongst international drug syndicates, neofascists and U.S. intelligence agencies, documenting the long and bloody history of U.S. complicity in the global drugs trade.

While the United States has pumped billions of dollars into failed drug eradication schemes in target countries through ill-conceived programs such as Plan Colombia and the Mérida Initiative, in the bizarro world of the "War on Drugs," corporate interests and geopolitics always trump law enforcement efforts to fight organized crime, particularly when the criminals are partners in crimes perpetrated by the secret state.

Since 2006, when Mexican President Felipe Calderón turned the Army loose, allegedly to "dismantle" the drug cartels slowly transforming Mexico into a killing field some 28,000 people, primarily along Mexico's northern border with the U.S., have lost their lives. Countless others have been wounded, forced to flee or simply "disappeared."

SNIP...

Scenes from the Atrocity Exhibition

• December 13, 2009: The Observer reported that "drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis." Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he saw evidence that "the proceeds of organised crime were 'the only liquid investment capital' available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result." The Observer informed us that this "will raise questions about crime's influence on the economic system at times of crisis." Costa told the British newspaper that "in many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system's main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor." Although the UN's drug czar declined to identify the countries or banks that benefited from narcotics investments, he said that "inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities... There were signs that some banks were rescued that way."

SNIP...

• March 16, 2010: Wachovia Bank, a subsidiary of banking giant Wells Fargo & Co., signed a Deferred Prosecution Agreement with the federal government. Wells admitted in court that its unit failed to monitor and report some $378.4 billion in suspected money laundering transactions by narcotics traffickers between 2004-2008, "a sum equal to one-third of Mexico's current gross domestic product," Bloomberg Markets magazine revealed. Cash laundered by drug mafias were used to purchase a fleet of planes that subsequently shipped some 22 tons of cocaine into the United States. Wells paid the government $160 million to resolve the case. American Express Bank and Western Union also agreed recently to huge settlements with the government for similar offenses.

CONTINUED...

http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/2010/09/partners-in-crime-us-secret-state-and.html

Like war, there's Big Money in drugs and money laundering.

[hunter]

1. The drug cartels and the drug warriors need one another.

Without one there is no other.

[bobthedrummer]

2. K&R from a citizen of the State that gave US Wally Hilliard & his "aviation assets" n/t

[nashville_brook]

3. big k and r.

[bobthedrummer]

4. kick

[Lilith Velkor]

5. kicky wicky

[JackRiddler]

6. Up, up with you!

[CanSocDem]

7. I knew when people...

...started SELLING grass that there would be trouble.

At the time nobody thought it would be the 'economics' of the drugs that kept the world from crashing.


.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Hannah Bell]

9. knr

[musette_sf]

10. k & r