D.E.A. launders drug money

this is being spun as a conscious tactic in bringing down the cartels...? oh, man... just exactly how stupid do they think we are...? there's no way this passes the smell test...

Undercover American narcotics agents have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washington’s expanding role in Mexico’s fight against drug cartels, according to current and former federal law enforcement officials.

The agents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders, those officials said, to identify how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and, most important, who their leaders are.

They said agents had deposited the drug proceeds in accounts designated by traffickers, or in shell accounts set up by agents.

The officials said that while the D.E.A. conducted such operations in other countries, it began doing so in Mexico only in the past few years. The high-risk activities raise delicate questions about the agency’s effectiveness in bringing down drug kingpins, underscore diplomatic concerns about Mexican sovereignty, and blur the line between surveillance and facilitating crime. As it launders drug money, the agency often allows cartels to continue their operations over months or even years before making seizures or arrests.

here's the money quote - "the D.E.A. conducted such operations in other countries"... mexico just happens to be the most recent and the one that's come to light... what about colombia...? afghanistan...? other central american countries...?

and here are my questions...

• so, what "other countries"...?
• how much money are we talking about and over what period of time...?
• where does that money really go...?
• what kind of relationship does/did the d.e.a. have with wachovia bank that was caught laundering billions of dollars in drug money...?
• what are the banks that were involved, what was the nature of the relationships and how were they established...?
• what, if anything, resulted from this tactic...? arrests...? cartels dismantled...? drug flows reduced...?

it's utterly fascinating to me that wachovia is not even mentioned in this nyt article... i'm not a reporter... i'm probably not even an adequate sidelines observer, but the first thing that leaped to mind as i was reading this was wachovia...

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Acapulco photoblogging from Wednesday and Friday

i'm taking a little break in a place i haven't been for a long, long time... here's two pics from the place i'm staying in old acapulco on the cliffs right over the ocean...

from my bedroom window...



sunset from my balcony...



and, in case you're wondering about the current state of tourism in mexico given all the recent goings-on, here's an article i ran across from a few days ago...

Come On in, the Water’s Fine

Never mind the beheadings, the kidnappings, the mass graves. Mexico wants its tourists back.

the hotel referenced in the first paragraph of the article, los flamingos, is approximately 5 blocks up the street from the house i'm staying at...

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Mexico's war is how the future will look - global government by multinational banks

a truly grim but nonetheless brutally accurate vision of capitalism run amok...

from the guardian...

Mexico's carnage is that of the age of effective global government by multinational banks – banks that, according to Antonio Maria Costa, the former head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, have been for years kept afloat by laundering drug and criminal profits. Cartel bosses and street gangbangers cannot go around in trucks full of cash. They have to bank it – and politicians could throttle this river of money, as they have with actions against terrorist funding. But they choose not to, for obvious reasons: the good burgers of capitalism and their political quislings depend on this money, while bleating about the evils of drugs cooked in the ghetto and snorted up the noses of the rich.

Mexico's war is how the future will look, because it belongs not in the 19th century with wars of empire, or the 20th with wars of ideology, race and religion – but utterly in a present to which the global economy is committed, and to a zeitgeist of frenzied materialism we adamantly refuse to temper: it is the inevitable war of capitalism gone mad. Twelve years ago Cardona and the writer Charles Bowden curated a book called Juarez: The Laboratory of Our Future. They could not have known how prescient their title was. In a recent book, Murder City, Bowden puts it another way: "Juarez is not a breakdown of the social order. Juarez is the new order."

i hadn't framed what was going on in mexico in these terms but, i must admit, they make a tremendous amount of sense, albeit horrifying...

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