shouldn't more attention be paid to organized crime?

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shouldn't more attention be paid to organized crime?

Postby justdrew » Sun Aug 15, 2010 3:11 pm

I mean, isn't Organized Crime the primary problem? The American coup started November 22, 1963 and continuing through today is primarily an expression of Organized Crime. It may even have just been an internal power-struggle. The governmental bodies are simply used, but the network of controllers ultimately all owe allegiance to some (unnamed?) organized crime group that runs the US now and has for decades probably back to the 1900s at least. There have been some internal power struggles perhaps, but no serious competition within the US. No doubt many "bad actors" don't even know what they're a part of.

Look at the history of Los Zetas...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Zetas

It was founded and is still populated and run by people who once served in the administration of the PRI. They were then the state actors. Now they're called criminals. Once servants of the same political entity that perpetrated with CIA assistance, The Tlatelolco Massacre. So Los Zetas is a part of the 'coup people' that have been running the US for decades as well. Separate operations probably, but long standing allies.

and these basically fascist forces are growing more bold, consider the Ubisort...
On 26th of April 2010 activists on their way to San Juan Copala, subject to a paramilitary blockade since January were allegedly ambushed by Ubisort militia affiliated with the PRI. Two were killed.

The paramilitaries allowed police to remove two bodies from the area, identified as Alberta “Bety” Cariño, the director of CACTUS, and Jyri Jaakkola, an observer from Finland. The Oaxacan State Police in the area refuse to rescue the wounded "because they don't have orders to do so from the State." link


It's also said that Los Zetas is working with 'Ndrangheta in Itally (the folks who brought us the illegal dumping of radioactive toxic waste among many other crimes).

The good news about this would be that these organizations present a relatively target-able enemy for a change, though still not an easy target, at least destroying fascist Organized Crime syndicates cuts off limbs from the octopus and isolates the control group in America.

So first let's tie these groups to al qaeda using mass media campaigns and force elements of the beast to fight itself? While developing civil society's ability to eliminate the Organized Crime networks around the world. This may finally present an opportunity to develop a true independent anti-fascist cadre someday. RedWater International perhaps ;)

Currently Los Zetas seem to be being used to create a Strategy of Tension style play with the US.

In February 2009, Texas Governor Rick Perry announced a program called "Operation Border Star Contingency Plan" to safeguard the border if Zetas carry out their threats to attack U.S. safety officers. This project includes the use of tanks, airplanes and the National Guard "as a preventive measure upon the possible collapse of the Mexican State" to protect the border from the attack of the Zetas and receive an eventual exodus of Mexicans fleeing from the violence.


I would say the current Mexican state is under destabilization attack. Events there can be used to trigger mass fear response in the US...
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Re: shouldn't more attention be paid to organized crime?

Postby semper occultus » Sun Aug 15, 2010 4:12 pm

Yes.

..although there is a considerable academic output on "TNOC" Transnational Organised Crime & its links to terrorism

Organised Crime and Terrorism

with the exception of a few seers like Peter Dale Scott it seems politically naive concerning the true nature of our society (.... its only a political danger in failed states or sweaty hell-holes in South America & Asia... ) or else a witting mouthpiece in the pocket of the same elements like Cordesman's CSIS outfit I should imagine.
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Re: shouldn't more attention be paid to organized crime?

Postby justdrew » Sun Aug 15, 2010 5:23 pm

I've just recently came to this conclusion really, when I started learning about the history of drug trafficking going back more than a century. Perhaps Daniel Hopsicker's focus is more appropriate than I previously thought.
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Re: shouldn't more attention be paid to organized crime?

Postby justdrew » Thu Feb 28, 2013 3:14 am

curious...

U.S. prosecutors quit and side with cocaine traffickers to fight ‘wrong’ drug policy
By Rory Carroll, The Guardian | Wednesday, February 27, 2013 14:22 EST

US prosecutors and other senior officials who spearheaded the war against drug cartels have quit their jobs to defend Colombian cocaine traffickers, saying their clients are not bad people and that United States drug policy is wrong.

Senior former assistant US attorneys and Drug Enforcement Administration agents are turning years of experience in investigating, indicting and extraditing narcos to the advantage of the alleged traffickers they now represent.

“I’m not embarrassed about the fact that I changed sides,” said Robert Feitel, a Washington-based attorney who used to pursue traffickers and money launderers at the Department of Justice. “And I’m not shy about saying that no one knows better how a prosecutor thinks. That’s what people get when they come to me. There are lots of hidden things to know about these cases.”

The fence-jumpers include Bonnie Klapper, who was feted for taking down the Norte del Valle cartel, Leo Arreguin, who headed the DEA’s office in Bogota, and reportedly former members of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, Ice. They work in separate legal practices with their own clients, not as a group.

In interviews with the Guardian, Feitel and Klapper spoke of recognising the humanity of their clients and called for alternatives to a four-decade-old “war on drugs” which costs billions of dollars and incarcerates thousands.

Feitel called for cocaine and cannabis to be legalised and complained that extradited drug suspects were treated worse than Guantanamo Bay detainees. “I don’t think I could ever be a prosecutor again. The human drama that I see on this side is sometimes more than I can bear.”

Attorney Robert Feitel who worked with the Narcotic and Dangerous Drugs Section

The sight of high-profile former US officials visiting clients in Colombian and US jails has astonished observers in Colombia– which has long followed Washington’s lead on drugs – but passed largely unnoticed in the US.

Last December Arreguin, who was director of the DEA in Colombia from 1998 – 2003, tried to visit the alleged drug lord Diego Pérez, alias Diego Rastrojo, at his jail in Giron, Santander, but was turned away because he lacked permission, local media reported. Rastrojo, a former member of the Farc, is accused of commanding 800 hitmen and smuggling tonnes of cocaine. Contacted at his home in Virginia, Arreguin declined to be interviewed: “I have nothing to say.”

Feitel, who worked closely with the Department of Justice’s Narcotic and Dangerous Drugs Section until retiring from public service in 2009, said he grew frustrated with official bungling in drug-related cases. “I realised I no longer wanted to be part of this process. It was time to go. After 22 years, enough.”

He became a defence lawyer, started learning Spanish and uses his expertise to represent around two dozen Colombian clients from a DC-based office. “It’s hard to defend a Colombian on drugs trafficking if you don’t understand the predicate of how drugs trafficking currently works in Colombia.”

With Colombia’s justice system geared towards extradition suspects face intense pressure to trade information for a deal with US authorities before fellow arrestees do the same. “You can try to head off your problem by trying to hire a US lawyer and get ahead of the curve so to speak.”

Traffickers’ lawyers usually trade reduced sentences for information, but Feitel said he liked to fight cases if justified on merit. “Otherwise I’m just like everyone else. But I’m not because I was a prosecutor for so long.” He occasionally teams up with his wife, a defence attorney, and another colleague at a different firm. “We are fighters for our clients, we don’t just say to the government, OK, you can have it your way. I’m not in it for the theory, I’m in it to win. ”

Often government cases, when analysed, proved weak, he said. “My job is to try to maximise the ability of my clients to cooperate, if that’s what they want. And if they want to fight, then my job is to fight every single step once they come to the United States.”

He fought “tooth and nail” for Ramiro Anturi, a Colombian prosecutor accused of leaking information to traffickers. Anturi received an unexpectedly light sentence – 55 months despite the DEA trumpeting the case as evidence it would “not tolerate any acts that put our agents’ lives in jeopardy”.

Feitel said he was shaken by the “trauma” of suspects who were extradited to the US speaking no English, with no visits from relatives denied visas. “They have no one to hug them. There is a lot of human anguish that I had not previously seen. I’ve had clients whose parents have died while they’ve been in jail. It’s a pretty terrible fate to be extradited. While it might be defensible to do it to the leaders I don’t think it’s defensible to do it to the rank and file traffickers in Colombia. I find it really troubling.”

He said the US system punished traffickers not according to their importance but the quantity of drugs, meaning a truck driver nabbed with a big consignment could face a longer stretch than a capo caught with a lesser amount. The practise of squeezing information and sending traffickers back to Colombia after their sentence, Feitel said, left them vulnerable to revenge. “Sooner or later someone is going to get killed and that will deter others from talking.”

He said most of his clients had no history of violence but that even those implicated in kidnapping and murder were entitled to a defence. “I don’t represent people I don’t like. So I like all my clients.” The former prosecutor said he had some regrets about his previous career. “I try to grow with what I do. I think I would change certain things that I did.”

Former colleagues respected him for his honesty even though now they were on opposite sides, he said. “When we disagree, we do it like professionals. Agents are pretty savvy; they know when there are weaknesses in their case.”

Bonnie Klapper, former federal prosecutor and author

As an assistant US attorney Bonnie Klapper, working from New York, earned a high profile in helping to dismantle the Norte del Valle cartel, a role publicised in the books The Takedown, by Jeffrey Robinson, and El Cartel de los Sapos, by Andres Lopez Lopez, a best-seller in Colombia which was turned into a telenovela and a film.

Klapper (pictured) retired from public service last February after 26 years and went into private practice with offices in New York and Miami. Two months later Colombian media reported her visiting La Picota jail in Bogota to see Andrés Arroyave, alias Máquina, a 25-year-old alleged drug lord accused of killing a lawyer and a DEA informant, among others, in revenge for his father’s murder. He has a reported $100m fortune.

In an email interview Kappler said she stopped being an assistant US attorney because of long commutes, threats to her life and meddling supervisors. “I don’t see that I have moved from one side of the fence to the other. As an AUSA, I never felt it was my job to obtain the harshest sentence; I always felt that my mission was to see that justice was done. I feel the same about my role now. The system only works when there are hard-working, honest people with integrity on both the government and the defense side.”

Former colleagues supported her switch, she said. “In fact, those with whom I worked previously are happy to see me on the other side, as they know they can trust me and I will capably represent my clients. The few negative comments I have heard have been either from agents (not AUSAs) who did not know me before.”

Unlike Feitel, Klapper said her new role had not really changed her perspective. “As a prosecutor, while I did prosecute a number of very bad, violent individuals, the vast majority … were good people who made bad choices.”

For the people she once pursued, and those she now defended, trafficking was a family business and route out of poverty, she said. “I have always felt that it was unfair of our government to place all of the onus on Colombians or Mexicans or Central Americans when the demand for the drugs comes from our own country.”

Klapper called for “more innovative solutions” to replace the drug war’s “endless cycle of arrests, prosecutions and convictions, where there is always someone waiting in the wings to take the place of the last individual convicted”.

Feitel was more emphatic in calling the drug war a failure, saying decades of effort, billions of dollars and countless lives had made no appreciable difference to the quantity of drugs on American streets. He urged federal authorities to legalise and regulate cannabis and cocaine. “And I say that even though it would be bad for my business.”
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Re: shouldn't more attention be paid to organized crime?

Postby crikkett » Thu Feb 28, 2013 8:12 am

Feitel said he was shaken by the “trauma” of suspects who were extradited to the US speaking no English, with no visits from relatives denied visas. “They have no one to hug them. There is a lot of human anguish that I had not previously seen. I’ve had clients whose parents have died while they’ve been in jail. It’s a pretty terrible fate to be extradited.”


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Re: shouldn't more attention be paid to organized crime?

Postby brainpanhandler » Thu Feb 28, 2013 4:07 pm

shouldn't more attention be paid to organized crime?


Yes. It's the same as asking, "shouldn't more attention be paid to organized crime the government?".
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Postby wintler2 » Thu Feb 28, 2013 5:05 pm

On how to oppose organised crime, shutting down tax havens seems a good idea. The same action would also tilt the economic table away from transnational corps and back towards smaller businesses, and substantially increase tax income for governments. None of the tax havens are in any sense independant or self sufficient, so trade sanctions alone could be enough to make them reform (eg. Jersey & Switzerland produce no oil).
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Re: shouldn't more attention be paid to organized crime?

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Thu Feb 28, 2013 7:46 pm

What else are we looking at, though?

Deep State = Organized Crime

In terms of our Zea pals, this is a good sobering read: http://zenpundit.com/?p=14961
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Re: shouldn't more attention be paid to organized crime?

Postby freemason9 » Thu Feb 28, 2013 9:43 pm

Well.

The government exists in some ways to assure that certain "illegal" activities remain illegal . . . and, therefore, immensely profitable.

Those mansions on the edges of golf courses--do you really think those were built entirely from legitimate incomes? There are billions and billions of dollars pulsing through our economy every year from illegal activities (drugs, gambling, sex, arms sales, you name it). Those dollars are distributed, you know, and there are many "investors." Have you ever wondered how some restaurants stay in business, despite having few customers, no advertising, high wages, and very high overhead? I would guess that in some communities--say, Omaha for example--you'll find a cash laundering factory on nearly every commercially-zoned block. It's "big business."

I don't know if this is good or bad, relative to the machinations of governments. Sometimes governments behave more horribly than criminal enterprises, but I don't suppose we'll actually ever know.
The real issue is that there is extremely low likelihood that the speculations of the untrained, on a topic almost pathologically riddled by dynamic considerations and feedback effects, will offer anything new.
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Re: shouldn't more attention be paid to organized crime?

Postby JackRiddler » Thu Feb 28, 2013 11:43 pm

Yes, of course.

This is why if you're in New York, I want to see YOU this Monday on the steps of the New York Public Library Main Branch* at High Noon.

See this: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=36068&p=493954#p493954

Be there!





( * Speaking of organized crime, the building of our beloved library is currently labeled at the front as the "Steven A. Schwarzman" building. The Blackstone guy. The billionaire who said raising taxes on billionaires would be like Hitler invading Poland.)
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Re: shouldn't more attention be paid to organized crime?

Postby brainpanhandler » Wed Dec 07, 2016 1:19 pm

Why does it seem so little attention is paid to "Organized Crime"? What the hell is "organized crime" anymore? Are the lines so blurry now it's hardly worth trying to delineate?



Curious if anyone has any thoughts on this re/source:

https://www.occrp.org/index.php


Also:

http://blog.skepticallibertarian.com/20 ... rporatism/
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Re: shouldn't more attention be paid to organized crime?

Postby brekin » Wed Dec 07, 2016 2:12 pm

Well not paying attention is dangerous...

Image

but sometimes paying too much attention is dangerous to.

Image
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Re: shouldn't more attention be paid to organized crime?

Postby Laodicean » Wed Dec 07, 2016 2:19 pm

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Re:

Postby Luther Blissett » Wed Dec 07, 2016 4:47 pm

wintler2 » Thu Feb 28, 2013 4:05 pm wrote:On how to oppose organised crime, shutting down tax havens seems a good idea. The same action would also tilt the economic table away from transnational corps and back towards smaller businesses, and substantially increase tax income for governments. None of the tax havens are in any sense independant or self sufficient, so trade sanctions alone could be enough to make them reform (eg. Jersey & Switzerland produce no oil).


One of my pet interests, the liberation and redistribution of the now $32 trillion + hidden in tax havens. The implications are staggering. The figure is greater than the total GDP of the United States and Japan combined and constitutes the secret holdings of a relatively small number of power elite, obscuring both the true wealth and reality of the billionaire problem and of organized crime.

I have lived in the same place for 18 years and have witnessed firsthand the visible waning of old world, 20th century-style organized crime in my city. Most power was concentrated in one small, now partially gentrified neighborhood, and personal run-ins were actually possible and commonplace. A coworker who knocked a foot soldier's rearview mirror off with a company van had to leave work for some time to go work it off with them. It was easier to find underground gambling and afterhours liquor sales (and afterhours clubs too).

Then the boss was locked up a few years after I moved here on racketeering charges, but not for murder. Surprisingly, after this event, the culture changed drastically. Given my life experience and interests, I never would have thought that removing the head of the snake would result in such a huge shift.

I have complicated feelings on it. Old world organized crime is one of the many things that I feel were permanently and deeply altered by 9/11.
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Re: shouldn't more attention be paid to organized crime?

Postby brainpanhandler » Wed Dec 28, 2016 1:07 pm

THE CIA AS ORGANIZED CRIME
How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World

Author of three books on CIA operations, Douglas Valentine’s research into CIA activities began when CIA Director William Colby gave him free access to interview CIA officials who had been involved in various aspects of the Phoenix program in South Vietnam. It was a permission Colby was to regret. The CIA would rescind it, making every effort to impede publication of The Phoenix Program, which documented the CIA’s elaborate system of population surveillance, control, entrapment, imprisonment, torture and assassination in Vietnam. While researching Phoenix, Valentine learned that the CIA allowed opium and heroin to flow from its secret bases in Laos, to generals and politicians on its payroll in South Vietnam. His investigations into this illegal activity focused on the CIA’s relationship with the federal drugs agencies mandated by Congress to stop illegal drugs from entering the United States. Based on interviews with senior officials, Valentine wrote two subsequent books, The Strength of the Wolf and The Strength of the Pack, showing how the CIA infiltrated federal drug law enforcement agencies and commandeered their executive management, intelligence and foreign operations staffs in order to ensure that the flow of drugs continues unimpeded to traffickers and foreign officials in its employ. Ultimately, portions of his research materials would be archived at the National Security Archive, Texas Tech University’s Vietnam Center, and John Jay College. This book includes excerpts from the above titles along with subsequent articles and transcripts of interviews on a range of current topics, with a view to shedding light on the systemic dimensions of the CIA’s ongoing illegal and extra-legal activities. These terrorism and drug law enforcement articles and interviews illustrate how the CIA’s activities impact social and political movements abroad and in the United States. A common theme is the CIA’s ability to deceive and propagandize the American public through its impenetrable government-sanctioned shield of official secrecy and plausible deniability. Though investigated by the Church Committee in 1975, CIA praxis then continues to inform CIA praxis now. Valentine tracks its steady infiltration into practices targeting the last population to be subjected to the exigencies of the American empire: the American people.

http://aarclibrary.org/publication-spot ... the-world/
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