iPhone
I hear you can get the iPhone on the rival Gulf Cartel network though.
The Mexican government has shut down a secret mobile network reckoned to be run by one of the country's drug cartels, possibly the ruthless Zetas. Military army troops confiscated 1,400 radios, 2,600 mobile phones, computer equipment, 167 antennas and 166 power supplies including solar panels as part of the operation. The kit …
The allegedly Zeta armoured Mack dump truck known as “El Monstruo,” found in Tamaulipas state in June 2010, had four cell-signal boosters/repeaters mounted on the mirror brackets - possibly one for each of the four main cellular providers in Mexico. If this was a Zeta network, then, it seems to be a fairly young one...
Missing in the above dark humor (something that comes about as a result of living in a society where gangs become a parallel government, today resulting of course in a new kind of civil war, where the government itself could fall) is the fact that the government did good on this raid.....we just need to see a lot more of these.....especially raids on the arm caches of the gangs.....and their banks. We need to see more of their Mexican assets seized and taken over by the government, their bank accounts in particular.
Attacking the cartels' bank accounts in Mexico is a non-starter: the money isn't in Mexico. The cartels laundered hundreds of billions of dollars through the American bank Wachovia, which received a total of $160 million in fines. Not much of a discouragement when they made billions in wire transfer fees.
I'm currently living in Bolivia where cocaine is very available and very cheap yet, contrary to popular belief, this hasn't resulted in a country populated with drug-addled zombies.
Mexico is tearing itself apart fighting the USA's war on drugs. Mexico (indeed the whole of Latin America) should legalise drugs and be done with it.
> the government did good on this raid.....we just need to see a lot more of these.....especially raids on the arm caches of the gangs.....and their banks. We need to see more of their Mexican assets seized and taken over by the government, their bank accounts in particular ..
That's something I don't understand, why the US gov expends much energy in chasing down the growing fields in Mexico and Columbia rather than chasing-up the money trail in the US homeland.
1) because some powers that be in reality looove the money stream (they only have to pretend they fight the "good fight")
2) blowing shit up in a country who's sovereignty is compromised is so much easier and cheaper than taking the ugly fight to their own streets
3) its a perfect war game training ground, and the US looove their war games
One continent demanding drugs - one continent supplying drugs. And a few cops in the middle trying to stop it.
Unless the cops are all clones of Jean Claude Van Damme and we somehow move to a alternative fantasy reality universe I don't see the drugs trade being stopped by a few bits of kit being nabbed.
Legalisation is the only way - that way trade disputes get settled in courts rather than by psychopaths.