TradeTheBeal! Posted July 13, 2015 Share Posted July 13, 2015 The drug war is working just fine for the prison industry, too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elessar78 Posted July 13, 2015 Share Posted July 13, 2015 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/magazine/how-a-mexican-drug-cartel-makes-its-billions.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0 NY Times article on Chapo Guzman. Great read. "Known as El Chapo for his short, stocky frame, Guzmán is 55, which in narco-years is about 150. He is a quasi-mythical figure in Mexico, the subject of countless ballads, who has outlived enemies and accomplices alike, defying the implicit bargain of a life in the drug trade: that careers are glittering but brief and always terminate in prison or the grave. When Pablo Escobar was Chapo’s age, he had been dead for more than a decade. In fact, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, Chapo sells more drugs today than Escobar did at the height of his career. To some extent, this success is easily explained: as Hillary Clinton acknowledged several years ago, America’s “insatiable demand for illegal drugs” is what drives the clandestine industry. It’s no accident that the world’s biggest supplier of narcotics and the world’s biggest consumer of narcotics just happen to be neighbors. “Poor Mexico,” its former president Porfirio Díaz is said to have remarked. “So far from God and so close to the United States.” I guess I was naive about the volume and money involved. But one of the examples they cite in this article is that his distributors out of Chicago were moving 2 (metric) tons of coke a month. That's like a street value of $150M a month. Mind blowing amounts of money. The underlying aspect about this article that gets me is not the crime, but the DEMAND in the US for these drugs. As I get older, I know less and less people that regularly use drugs but I guess that's a fake out since there seems like so much product out there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bliz Posted July 13, 2015 Share Posted July 13, 2015 Doesn't El Chapo put a ton of money back into his community? I now he's a terrible drug dealer billionaire but maybe Mexico doesn't really want to keep him locked up... Gotta spend your money somewhere. Chapo and other drug lords have invested and laundered their proceeds by buying hundreds of legitimate businesses: restaurants, soccer stadiums, day-care centers, ostrich farms. Juan Millán, the former state governor of Sinaloa, once estimated that sixty-two per cent of the state’s economy is tied up with drug money. Sinaloa remains poor, however, and Badiraguato, the municipality containing Guzmán’s home village, is one of the most desperate areas in the state. There had always been some sympathy for the drug trade in Sinaloa, but nothing deepens sympathy like charity and bribes. Eduardo Medina Mora, Mexico’s Ambassador in Washington, described Guzmán’s largesse in the state: “You are financing everything. Baptisms. Infrastructure. If someone gets sick, you provide a little plane. So you have lots of local support, because you are Santa Claus. And everybody likes Santa Claus.” But only good girls and boys get presents from Santa Claus. You wouldn't like the coal. Last year, a former bodyguard for the current governor of Sinaloa, Mario López Valdez, released a series of YouTube videos in which he described accompanying López Valdez, who had just taken office, on a trip to meet with Guzmán. In one video, the bodyguard played a recorded conversation in which the Governor appeared to instruct his subordinates not to antagonize the Sinaloa cartel—and, instead, to crack down on its rivals. López Valdez insisted that the recording was doctored. Last August, the bodyguard was discovered beside a road in Sinaloa. He had been decapitated. The marines pursuing Guzmán had seen intense combat in recent years, battling the Zetas cartel in northeast Mexico. They were veterans of a 2009 firefight that had killed a former associate of Guzmán’s, Arturo Beltrán Leyva, during a raid in Cuernavaca. One of the marines in the unit, a young officer from Tabasco named Melquisedet Angulo Córdova, was killed in the shoot-out. He was buried with full military honors. Shortly after his funeral, gunmen charged into a home where his family had gathered to mourn, and murdered his mother, his brother, his sister, and his aunt. (from that same New Yorker article. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/05/the-hunt-for-el-chapo) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Special K Posted July 13, 2015 Share Posted July 13, 2015 Billionaire drug kingpin able to escape from a Mexican prison? Multiple times? I never would have guessed something like that could happen in that country!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrSilverMaC Posted July 14, 2015 Share Posted July 14, 2015 Billionaire drug kingpin able to escape from a Mexican prison? Multiple times? I never would have guessed something like that could happen in that country!!! To be fair, it'd happen here but a billionaire being convicted of a crime much less what señor Guzman is accused of is so unlikely as to be nigh impossible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeesburgSkinFan Posted July 14, 2015 Share Posted July 14, 2015 To be fair, it'd happen here but a billionaire being convicted of a crime much less what señor Guzman is accused of is so unlikely as to be nigh impossible. It would not happen here. There's absolutely zero chance that Bernie Madoff will escape from prison. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elessar78 Posted July 14, 2015 Share Posted July 14, 2015 I think it's logistics more than anything. A master criminal like that probably has been planning a prison stint for years now. He's enamored with escape tunnels. I wouldn't be surprised, like I said in a previous post, if every prison/jail in Mexico has a tunnel already built up to it. Below is an aerial of the Supermax prison in Colorado, likely a place he'd be sent to, it'd be a feat of engineering to cross that expanse of dessert without detection. But again, those outfits payout millions/billions up and down the chain in bribes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan T. Posted July 14, 2015 Share Posted July 14, 2015 They've released a photo of the person seen driving Chapo away from the cinderblock house outside the prison: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Major Harris Posted July 14, 2015 Share Posted July 14, 2015 Anyone see the twitter account that i think was said to be linked to a friend or relative of chapo? Posting pictures of chapo on a plane, and another one of him chilling with a beer? Also tweeted some smack talk to Donald Trump lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Special K Posted July 14, 2015 Share Posted July 14, 2015 Yeah, I think that was one of Chapo's sons getting into a Twitter feud with The Donald. Hilarious Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kosher Ham Posted July 14, 2015 Share Posted July 14, 2015 I saw that also this morning Maj. I did not see pictures though. That's just blatant. Twitter thing is absurd to me. I think he will disappear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan T. Posted July 14, 2015 Share Posted July 14, 2015 Anyone see the twitter account that i think was said to be linked to a friend or relative of chapo? Posting pictures of chapo on a plane, and another one of him chilling with a beer? Also tweeted some smack talk to Donald Trump lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Busch1724 Posted July 14, 2015 Share Posted July 14, 2015 To be fair, it'd happen here but a billionaire being convicted of a crime much less what señor Guzman is accused of is so unlikely as to be nigh impossible. Perfect example, the banking industry...not one was arrested during the bailout era. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RVAbrendan Posted July 14, 2015 Share Posted July 14, 2015 Fun fact: I used to work for a musical instrument company that may or may not have made a customized instrument for Mr. Guzman under the books. Fitting due to the nature of norteño music... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Evil Genius Posted January 8, 2016 Share Posted January 8, 2016 President of Mexico just announced he has been recaptured. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PleaseBlitz Posted January 8, 2016 Share Posted January 8, 2016 Also breaking: He escaped again. He built a tunnel out of the paddy wagon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheGreatBuzz Posted January 8, 2016 Share Posted January 8, 2016 paddy wagon. That's racist. 5. "Paddy wagons"In modern slang, "paddy wagon" means a police car. "Paddy" originated in the late 1700s as a shortened form of "Patrick," and then later a pejorative term for any Irishman. "Wagon" naturally refers to a vehicle. "Paddy wagon" either stemmed from the large number of Irish police officers or the perception that rowdy, drunken Irishmen constantly ended up in the back of police cars. Neither is particularly nice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PleaseBlitz Posted January 8, 2016 Share Posted January 8, 2016 That's racist. 5. "Paddy wagons"In modern slang, "paddy wagon" means a police car. "Paddy" originated in the late 1700s as a shortened form of "Patrick," and then later a pejorative term for any Irishman. "Wagon" naturally refers to a vehicle. "Paddy wagon" either stemmed from the large number of Irish police officers or the perception that rowdy, drunken Irishmen constantly ended up in the back of police cars. Neither is particularly nice. Until Notre Dame changes it's mascot, the Irish are acceptable targets. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The 12th Commandment Posted January 11, 2016 Author Share Posted January 11, 2016 Let me be the first lefty on the board to say that Sean Penn is an unmitigated douchebag. http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/11/opinions/reyes-sean-penn-el-chapo-interview/index.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Posted January 11, 2016 Share Posted January 11, 2016 Let me be the first lefty on the board to say that Sean Penn is an unmitigated douchebag. http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/11/opinions/reyes-sean-penn-el-chapo-interview/index.html 1) I suspect you're right. (Although I don't see this as evidence of that.) 2) The article keeps making a big deal about how Penn put himself in danger. While I agree that's true, doesn't he have the right to do that? 3) In fact, since it seems this was an interview, doe a magazine, doesn't it fall under "Freedom of the Press"? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Evil Genius Posted January 11, 2016 Share Posted January 11, 2016 Although it might have led to his (Chapo not Penn's) capture. Looks like Penn and another actress were under surveillence from the moment they touched down. http://www.wsj.com/articles/el-chapo-returns-to-prison-in-mexico-1452377159 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Posted January 11, 2016 Share Posted January 11, 2016 Also, while working out, I think it was Fox was saying that the US (and Mexico) have begun extradition.Apparently, last time, Mexico fought extradition, swearing that they'd turn him over to the US after he serves 3-400 years in Mexico. Looks like Mexico has decided that maybe it would be better for the US to keep him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The 12th Commandment Posted January 11, 2016 Author Share Posted January 11, 2016 1) I suspect you're right. (Although I don't see this as evidence of that.) 2) The article keeps making a big deal about how Penn put himself in danger. While I agree that's true, doesn't he have the right to do that? 3) In fact, since it seems this was an interview, doe a magazine, doesn't it fall under "Freedom of the Press"? The fact that an actor goes into a foreign country and meets with a guy that's this bad without letting the authorities know about it in advance, is proof enough for me. I linked to the article to give my comment some context. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Posted January 11, 2016 Share Posted January 11, 2016 I'm curious where you get this notion that he's somehow obligated to "notify the authorities in advance" before conducting an interview. If, say, Dan Rather receives an invitation to interview Ossama bin Laden, is he somehow obligated to notify government agencies, before he does it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Evil Genius Posted January 11, 2016 Share Posted January 11, 2016 I suspect while Penn could be charged with something (obstructing justice, aiding and abetting a known fugitive, or whatever is applicable - if anything), he won't be. The press (and Penn was operating at that for Rolling Stone) often seems to get a lot of leeway in cases like these, I think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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