[HN Gopher] Suspected head of $21B crime syndicate may be world'...
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Suspected head of $21B crime syndicate may be world's most
innovative drug lord
Author : Geekette
Score : 90 points
Date : 2021-11-02 20:41 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (torontolife.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (torontolife.com)
| kasey_junk wrote:
| I can't wait for this season if "The Wire".
| boldslogan wrote:
| It is a shame he just doesnt come clean and write a book. Could
| auction a nice movie deal out of it at least.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| Isn't the worlds most successful drug lord ever the CIA. They
| sold cocaine and the journalist Gary Webb who uncovered it was
| attacked by the CIA mouthpieces of corporate journalists and
| corporate media and "suicideded" himself. He shot himself in the
| head twice to succeed in the "suicide".
|
| Afghanistan after first overturning the Taliban had the biggest
| increase ever in drug production ever when the CIA was running
| the country.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Alliance_(book)
|
| https://theintercept.com/2014/09/25/managing-nightmare-cia-m...
| tclancy wrote:
| Not disagreeing about the CIA here but there was a recent
| r/askhistorians about Webb's death and it appears multiple
| gunshot suicides aren't that uncommon. Plus his wife doesn't
| think it was anything but. Asserting things like this undercuts
| the point.
| pseudotrash wrote:
| From your first Wikipedia link ... that show is pretty good:
|
| > _Snowfall is an American crime drama television series set in
| Los Angeles in 1983. The series revolves around the first crack
| epidemic and its impact on the culture of the city. The series
| follows the stories of several characters whose lives are fated
| to intersect including CIA operative Teddy McDonald who helps
| to secure guns for the Contras. The character reporter Irene
| Abe is said by fans of the show to be a stand in character for
| the real life Gary Webb._
|
| Although I am not to sure if the suicide wasn't really a
| suicide. On the other hand a group that is known to have done
| worse than this it doesn't sound implausible.
| paul_f wrote:
| Queen Victoria was the largest drug lord in history by many
| accounts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War
| arcticbull wrote:
| How do you measure and calculate their success to compare
| against for instance Tse Chi Lop? Are there market size or
| valuation estimates?
|
| Obviously they have sold drugs before, so a quantification
| exercise would be interesting.
| neither_color wrote:
| Nope that would be the British East India company, they make
| the CIA look like street dealers. The EIC literally went to war
| against a dynastic empire in order to sell opium, and won.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads on generic tangents and definitely
| not generic flamewar tangents, regardless of what the CIA has
| done or you feel the CIA has done. This kind of thing leads to
| predictably low-quality threads.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| knownjorbist wrote:
| Isn't the Afghanistan drug production thing post-9/11 widely
| discredited at this point?
| kodah wrote:
| I'm tracking on your first paragraph. Your second is a little
| confusing to me.
|
| I went on opium interdiction missions in Southern Afghanistan.
| The Taliban runs its own opium ring down there to fund it's
| activities. I'm not even sure it'd be fair to say the CIA was
| "running the country". They trained Afghan special forces, whom
| I only ever saw once and that was near Kajaki Dam. The people
| who were digging up weapons caches, setting up field hospitals,
| etc that we fought in the area while doing opium interdiction
| didn't look _anything_ like Afghan special forces, much less
| act like them.
| fedreserved wrote:
| https://youtu.be/0vOtB46ncyU
|
| Breaking Points did a great piece showing how the Cia still
| controlled the afghan drug trade
| jiveturkey wrote:
| yep, came here to say similar
| withjive wrote:
| CIA & Pablo. Exactly.
| yaseer wrote:
| When I see a number like $21 billion, I can't help but think of
| all the economic and social good from drugs being regulated, like
| Cannabis, Tobacco and Prostitution.
|
| That's a lot of taxation money lost, a lot of policing wasted,
| and a lot of lives lost needlessly.
| cgh wrote:
| Very difficult to legalize and tax meth, which is what this guy
| mostly sold. It's hugely addictive and harmful, and you can
| make it in a home lab.
|
| I was shocked to read in the article that one in seven
| Australians have tried it. Is that true? That's a real crisis
| if so.
| gremloni wrote:
| I agree but possession must never be a crime.
| trhway wrote:
| The meth is ADHD medicine. Nobody is going to make it at home
| if it is made easy available. If society develops a
| reasonable culture of it's consumption we probably would see
| a boost of productivity and creativity instead of the growth
| of the wasteful prison industrial complex.
| cgh wrote:
| My guess is supply would be constrained because of how
| addictive it is. You'd still end up with street-level
| dealers selling it. I could be wrong but it's hard to see
| how cheap, legal, easily-available meth can lead to
| anything but an addiction crisis.
| vermilingua wrote:
| 7%, not one in 7, still an unthinkable number of people.
| version_five wrote:
| I think drugs should be legal (or decriminalized) but
| probably with at least two categories, which no doubt causes
| it's own set of problems:
|
| 1. Recreational, like marijuana and alcohol and many
| hallucinogens, where regulating and taxing is the best
| solution, to deter organized crime and make sure people are
| getting the product they want to get
|
| 2. Harmful (and the definition is tough here) like meth and
| heroin, where the goal is something closer to medically
| supervised use, and breaking the habit where appropriate, but
| also making sure people are getting real drugs and not
| resorting to more dangerous alternatives or those of unknown
| origin.
|
| The point isn't that drugs are good, it's that people will do
| them anyway, so how do you remove the criminal element and
| keep people safer under the circumstances. I agree that they
| shouldn't sell meth at convenience stores, but someone
| addicted should be able to talk to a doctor and get it, and
| not have to buy some dangerous unknown thing off the street.
|
| I imagine if this happened, the next fight would be social
| control advocate groups pushing for currently legal drugs
| (alcohol) to me moved to my category 2. People's own puritan
| values and a hatred of the idea that someone else may be
| enjoying themselves in a way they don't endorse are a (the)
| main root cause of all the societal problems with drugs imo
| jahnu wrote:
| I hear you, but... we can't even properly tax major corps
| selling coffee yet :(
| lapetitejort wrote:
| Perfect is the enemy of the good. Let's just crack open those
| revenue streams a bit.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| We do tax them with VAT, which brings a LOT of money.
|
| We could, and should tax them more on earnings too, despite
| loop holes and tax heavens.
|
| But even if you could just get VAT on drugs and prostitution,
| that would be HUGE. Not to mention profits would go to legal
| businesses, which would stimulate the economy, instead of
| going into criminals pockets, which hurts society.
| vadfa wrote:
| Why is it that every time I see an amount of money like that I
| know they've pulled it out of their asses?
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2021-11-02 23:00 UTC)