Meanwhile Banksters Ride Shotgun for Mexico's Violent Drug Trade.
The severity revolution in criminal justice, that began when former President Nixon launched the war on drugs, that escalated during the Reagan years, producing some of the "most prohibitive drug control laws ever" has very little to do with "law and order" and everything to do with profit. If you don't believe me, read the following:
We the people have spent well over $1 trillion (much more if you consider the government spending for all of the people directly and indirectly effected), yet the availability of drugs is similar to what it was when Nixon started this "war on drugs", and Reagan took it to a new level.
The conservatives, in their "tough on crime" law and order agenda, scapegoated Marijuana, making it their "symbol of the weakness and permissiveness of a liberal society." They cultivated a culture of fear over growing crime and the evils of marijuana amongst other drugs which gave rise to hundreds of new state, federal, and local laws, which, aside from creating a prison industrial complex, vastly expanded the government's power to seize and forfeit property. Because, during the 1980s, civil assets forfeiture was extended to drug trafficking and possession, and a host of other crimes, through the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, and the Drug Abuse Act of 1986, and many other such laws. In other words, the "war on drugs" enabled the Supreme Court to gradually erode our civil liberties. In fact, Newt Gingrich even introduced "legislation demanding either a life sentence or the death penalty for anyone caught bringing more than two ounces of marijuana into the United States."*
Meanwhile, as our prisons are bursting at the seams with non-violent offenders, back at the ranch, America's biggest banks are riding shotgun for Mexican drug smugglers by giving "international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations".
No bank has been more closely connected with Mexican money laundering than Wachovia. 6,700 subpoenas later, Wachovia finally:
...admitted it didn’t do enough to spot illicit funds in handling $378.4 billion for Mexican-currency-exchange houses from 2004 to 2007. That’s the largest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering law, in U.S. history -- a sum equal to one-third of Mexico’s current gross domestic product.However, despite the fact that Wachovia was caught red-handed in the largest anti-money laundering law in U.S. history, Wachovia (acquired by Wells Fargo in 2008) entered into a settlement with federal prosecutors. In other words, they got away with mass murder...literally. This should come as no surprise as no U.S. bank has ever been indicted for violating the Bank Secrecy Act — or any other federal law for that matter.
So, as our "justice" system boldly roars at, imprisons, and sometimes slaughters non-violent citizens, it conveniently turns a blind eye to those wealthy powerful elites who facilitate the heinous drug cartel killings and beheadings and burnings that, so far, claimed at least 28,000 lives, making Juárez valley, a Texas border town, one of the deadliest places on the planet. Yet marijuana/drugs remain illegal.
Marijuana, alone, is a $113 billion dollar business in the U.S. That's $113 billion unaccounted for...or is it? Why would so much revenue, that is protected by brutal crime, specifically the torturing, murdering and dismembering of countless numbers of innocent people, be allowed to remain in the hands of such violent criminals if conservatives are so concerned about law and order and fiscal responsibility and saving our economy from disaster?
Could it be that governments and their drug prohibition policies are not intended to eliminate illegal drug use/commerce? Could it be that government officials, politicians, banksters and the corporate elite profit off the drug wars just as much, if not more than the evil cartels?
The more enforcement there is, the higher the street prices, whereas the less enforcement, the lower the prices. The "war on drugs" has nothing to do with eliminating drug use and everything to do with profit, "because most of the profits do NOT come from the sale of drugs but from the laundering of the billions of dollars by banks and other financial institutions to turn the dirty money into legal capital".**
Links:
Banks Financing Mexico Gangs Admitted in Wells Fargo Deal
* Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure by Dan Baum
** Telling the Whole Truth about the Drug War. Read more...
