Who Really Profits From Drug Cartel Wars?

"Follow the money", "Deep Throat" tells Woodward in the film, "All the President's Men", or as former British newspaper journalist, Simon Jenkins, once said, "Follow the dirt and it leads to money. Follow the money and it leads to power. This maxim has rarely let me down."

Well, follow the money on the "War on Drugs" and it will expose a frightening truth: the drug cartels depend on a network of guardian angels and backers who come from where else: the ruling elites.

Catherine Austin Fitts, former Assistant Secretary of Housing (HUD) under the Bush Administration, and CEO of Solari, told Mel Fabregas from the Veritas show in a great interview in 2009 that one 14-year old kid in the projects can generate up to $10 million for the capital markets. How? Here's the example she used:

Let's say this 14-year old from the projects nets $100,000 in drug sales. That money must be laundered somewhere, right? Yes. In this case, it's laundered through a fast food franchise that’s traded on the stock market at $15/share. That transforms the $100,000 to $1.5 million in stock market value. Moreover, if that money is leveraged with debt and derivatives that amount can increase up to as much as $10 million. In other words, one 14-year old kid from the projects can generate up to $10 million in the capital markets for the privileged class.

In addition, that kid, if he avoids being shot and killed in the next couple of years has the potential to make even more money for the capital markets. How?  More than likely, he will face incarceration, where he's not only out of the way, (after he gets too smart for his own good); he will generate even more money for the prison industrial complex. Why? There is a $25,000 gain for each person in prison.

So, recycling these kids in and out of prison serves three purposes: Number one, the profits speak for themselves; number two, it keeps this segment of the population “dumb” and desperate, and number three, it deprives small business of the upcoming work-force, or the human capital, necessary to thrive; therefore making it easier for corporate take-over.

Fitts also explained, and, even more importantly, proved we the people's complicity, which eventually became “Narco dollars for beginners” how organized crime influences business and government.

She addressed a group of members of the Spiritual Frontiers Foundation International, who were having a conference of how to help our society evolve spiritually, and she began by telling them that someone from the   Department of Justice told a reporter she knows that the US banking and financial system launders $500 billion to a trillion dollars a year in illegal money, which includes narcotics trafficking, financial fraud and tax evasion

She then asked the audience, "What would happen if America stopped being the global leader and stopped laundering $500 billion to a trillion dollars a year in illegal money?

They responded that the stock market would go down because that money would go to other markets around the world, and that we would have trouble financing the government deficit, and our taxes would go up and/or our government checks would stop.

Fitts replied, "Okay, imagine a big red button up here on the lectern. If you push this button, you can stop all hard narcotics trafficking in your neighborhood, your city, town, county, state and  your country tomorrow. Who'll push the button?"

Out of 100 people dedicated to evolving our society spiritually, only one would push the button.

She asked the other 99 why they wouldn’t push the button.

They responded: "We don't want our mutual funds to go down. We don't want our government checks to stop, nor do we want our taxes to go up."

Fitts has asked that question to audiences all over the US, and the only time 80% of the audience responded that they would push the red button occurred in TN, in 2008. Why is 80% majority so important? The historical rule of thumb states that in order to shift policy, an 80% consensus is required.

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More Mexican cartel updates: 2/21/11:

Innocent victims of bloody drug cartel turf wars is normal every day news in Mexico. Spanning 72 hours, starting last Thursday, 53 people were killed in Ciudad Juarez

In the first 40 days of 2011, Juarez is averaging eight homicides per day, Sandoval said. Also, in February, at least 24 women have been killed in 20 days.

In addition, last Friday, 13 people were killed in Acapulco, four of whom, authorities believe, were alive and tortured before they were dropped from a bridge. The worst torture was of a man who was decapitated; scalped with his face skinned. This spate of attacks on taxis in the Mexican resort city of Acapulco occurred hours before the Mexican Open tennis tournament was scheduled to start. Acapulco has been the scene of , and taxi drivers have often been targeted for extortion or recruited by the gangs to act as lookouts or transport drugs.

On February 14, Gunmen killed 18 people in Tamaulipas, a state in northeastern Mexico,

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Mexican cartel updates: December 2010
 
Only death would stop her from protesting the impunity with which criminals operate in Mexico

Two years ago, Marisela Escobedo's daugher was killed in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Her daughter's boyfriend confessed to the crime, but a court exonerated him earlier this year. When a second trial convicted the boyfriend, Sergio Barraza, of murder and sentenced him to 50 years in prison, he had already fled and gone into hiding.

Escobedo had actively protested the decision ever since, rather ominously stating that only death would stop her from protesting the impunity with which criminals operate in Mexico, and especially Chihuahua -- the home state of deadly Ciudad Juarez.

Now, Marisela Escobedo's protests have been silenced.

She was shot and killed by an assassin on Thursday, and the episode was caught on tape.

Mexico's drug war: Number of dead passes 30,000

...12,456 people had been registered killed in drug-related violence so far this year, compared to 9,600 in 2009, bringing the total to 30,196 since President Calderon took office in December 2006.

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(Left) People clean a blood stained patio at a home in the northern city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Saturday Oct. 23, 2010. At least 13 young people were shot dead and 15 wounded in an attack on this house late Friday during a 15-year-old boy's birthday party. (AP Photo/Raymundo Ruiz)

The latest, in Mexico’s increasingly bloody drug war, are a series of massacres.  

Gunmen stormed a 15-year old's birthday party, last Saturday, October 23,  killing 13 people, the youngest, only 9-years old, wounding 20 more, in the second "drug cartel" massacre at a party this month, in Ciudad Juarez 2-days later, in Tijuana, 13 people were lined up and executed inside a drug rehabilitation clinic by gunmen who stormed the building. The next day, 15 people at a Mexican car wash.

Ciudad Juarez is crippled by escalating warring drug cartels, as they battle security forces and each other over smuggling routes into the United States.

The money trail has already lead to Citibank, Wachovia, Bank of America, etc. The banks play a critical role to the continuing success of the cartels as they allow the drug trade to flourish by providing essential financing.

Alternatively, the banks could serve as part of the solution - when hell freezes over, maybe, for only they have the power to  deal a crippling blow to the cartels.

The egregious hypocrisy prevalent in the current relationships between the cartels, the global political and economic powers who profit immensely from this huge industry, facilitated by the "War on Drugs" is almost too much to comprehend, but comprehend we must if we want the slaughter to stop.

The drug trade is amongst the most, if not thee most, lucrative of all industries in the world, and has continued to escalate through decades of  failing to account for this massive revenue.

Links:

Survivor: Drug gang massacred 72 migrants in northern Mexico