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Austin Buben

DEA Briefs & Background, Drugs and Drug Abuse, Drug Descriptions, Drug Trafficking in t... - 0 views

    • Austin Buben
       
      Austin Buben found this first
  • The illegal drug market in the United States is one of the most profitable in the world. As such, it attracts the most ruthless, sophisticated, and aggressive drug traffickers.
  • according to the U.S. Customs Service, 60 million people enter the United States on more than 675,000 commercial and private flights. Another 6 million come by sea and 370 million by land. In addition, 116 million vehicles cross the land borders with Canada and Mexico. More than 90,000 merchant and passenger ships dock at U.S. ports. These ships carry more than 9 million shipping containers and 400 million tons of cargo. Another 157,000 smaller vessels visit our many coastal towns. Amid this voluminous trade, drug traffickers conceal cocaine, heroin, marijuana, MDMA, and methamphetamine shipments for distribution in U.S. neighborhoods.
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  • Criminal groups operating from South America smuggle cocaine and heroin into the United States via a variety of routes, including land routes through Mexico, maritime routes along Mexico's east and west coasts, sea routes through the Caribbean, and international air corridors
  • The U.S./Mexico border is the primary point of entry for cocaine shipments being smuggled into the United States. According to a recent interagency intelligence assessment, approximately 65 percent of the cocaine smuggled into the United States crosses the Southwest border.
  • These organizations use a sophisticated infrastructure to move cocaine by land, sea, and air into the United States.
  • Each cell performs a specific function within the organization, e.g., transportation, local distribution, or money movement. Key managers in Colombia continue to oversee the overall operation.
  • Over the past decade, the Colombia-based drug groups have allowed Mexico-based trafficking organizations to play an increasing role in the U.S. cocaine trade.
  • Throughout most of the 1980s, the criminals in Colombia used the drug smugglers in Mexico to transport cocaine shipments across the Southwest border into the United States. After successfully smuggling the drugs across the border, the Mexican transporters transferred the drugs back to the Colombian groups operating in the United States.
  • Colombian drug trafficking organizations increasingly rely upon the eastern Pacific Ocean as a trafficking route to move cocaine to the United States. Law enforcement and intelligence community sources estimate 65 percent of the cocaine shipped to the United States moves through the Central America-Mexico corridor, primarily by vessels operating in the eastern Pacific. Colombian traffickers utilize fishing vessels to transport bulk shipments of cocaine from Colombia to the west coast of Mexico and, to a lesser extent, the Yucatan Peninsula. The cocaine is off-loaded to go-fast vessels for the final shipment to the Mexican coast. The loads are subsequently broken down into smaller quantities to be moved across the Southwest border.
  • However, cocaine continues to be transported through the Caribbean; Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti are the predominant transshipment points for Colombian cocaine transiting the Caribbean. Because of lawlessness and deteriorating economic conditions, Haiti is a growing transshipment point for Colombian cocaine destined for eastern U.S. markets. Haitian drug traffickers, utilizing maritime shipments to transport cocaine to South Florida, are becoming a major threat. Law enforcement reporting indicates that Jamaica is an increasingly significant transshipment point for cocaine destined for the United States since it is located midway between South America and the United States. Cocaine is primarily smuggled into Jamaica by maritime methods, and the cocaine transshipped through Jamaica often is destined for the Canadian, European, and U.S. markets. Cocaine destined for the United States is usually smuggled from Jamaica to the Bahamas aboard go-fast boats. The cocaine is subsequently smuggled to the Florida coast using go-fast boats, pleasure craft, and fishing vessels.
    • Austin Buben
       
      A lot of various different facts potentially useful in my presentation.
  • Cocaine is readily available in nearly all major cities in the United States. Organized crime groups operating in Colombia control the worldwide supply of cocaine.
Caroline Yevak

Sinaloa Cartel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

  • The Sinaloa Cartel (Pacific Cartel, Guzmán-Loera Cartel) (Spanish: Cártel de Sinaloa) is the most powerful drug cartel in Mexico[2] and considered by the United States Intelligence Community as "the most powerful drug trafficking organization in the world."
  • Guzmán-Loera
  • Organization and the Pacific Cartel
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  • The 'Federation' was partially splintered when the Beltrán-Leyva brothers broke apart from the Sinaloa Cartel
  • The Sinaloa Cartel is associated with the label "Golden Triangle" as the regions of Sinaloa, Durango, and Chihuahua in which they operate the most form a 'triangle' when their capital cities are looked at on a map. The region is a major producer of Mexican poppy and marijuana.
    • Caroline Yevak
       
      * Remember Class notes
    • Caroline Yevak
       
      Beltran-Leyva cartel was once a major part of the Sinaloa Cartel. Split off and is still a major cartel on it's own.
  • into the United States and distributing nearly 200 tons of cocaine and large amounts of heroin between 1990 and 2008.
Austin Buben

Timeline: America's War on Drugs : NPR - 0 views

  • October 1986: Reagan signs the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which appropriates $1.7 billion to fight the drug war. The bill also creates mandatory minimum penalties for drug offenses, which are increasingly criticized for promoting significant racial disparities in the prison population because of the differences in sentencing for crack and powder cocaine. Possession of crack, which is cheaper, results in a harsher sentence; the majority of crack users are lower income.
  • Mid-1980s: Because of the South Florida Drug Task Force's work, cocaine trafficking slowly changes transport routes. The Mexican border becomes the major point of entry for cocaine headed into the United States. Crack, a cheap, addictive and potent form of cocaine, is first developed in the early '80s; it becomes popular in the New York region, devastating inner-city neighborhoods.
  • Nixon creates the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to coordinate the efforts of all other agencies.
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  • In the United States, Vice-President George H.W. Bush combines agents from multiple agencies and military branches to form the South Florida Drug Task Force, Miami being the main entry point at the time.
  • January 2006: Authorities announce the discovery of the longest cross-border tunnel in U.S. history, the work of what they call a well-organized and well-financed drug-smuggling group. The half-mile long tunnel links a warehouse in Tijuana, where about two tons of marijuana were seized, to a warehouse in the United States, where 200 pounds of the drug were found.
  • November 1993: President Clinton signs the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which increases the amount of trade and traffic across the U.S.-Mexican border. This makes it more difficult for U.S. Customs to find narcotics moving across the border.
    • Austin Buben
       
      This is a giant summary and the history of the DEA and War on Drugs.
    • Austin Buben
       
      Austin Found This First
Caroline Yevak

Mexico - ProQuest Research Library - ProQuest - 0 views

  • IV. Mexico's Drug War Mexico continued its war on drug trafficking that Mexican President Felipe Calderón launched against drug cartels in 2006.
  • President Calderón announced that his administration would reform civilian law enforcement and the courts, and that "the Mexican army would continue to lead the fight until local and state police forces are free of corruption."20
  • Local and state politicians have increasingly become targets of violence by the drug cartels, which have also attacked rival gangs. Some murders are particularly vicious, intended to gain media attention and frighten both rival drug gangs and law enforcement officers. "Prosecutors, police chiefs, and thousands of others have been killed," and entire families sometimes come under attack.
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  • These are but a handful of die murders reported in Mexico's drug wars. The level of violence attributable to die war on drugs and die organized criminal activity that precipitated it cannot, however, be measured simply by counting corpses. Kidnappings, carjackings, extortion, and other forms of crime and aggression infect the quality of daily life.
    • Caroline Yevak
       
      Similar to what the journalist wrote in the article about Columbia.
  • Mexico's drug cartels started recruiting more teenagers and young people to replace those killed or arrested.40 These young people serve as "expendable foot soldiers" for the cartels in battles over drug trafficking routes to the United States and local drug using markets in Mexico.
    • Caroline Yevak
       
      Child Soldiers
  • Oil revenue accounts for more than one -third of die Mexican government's annual income.1 In 2009, after oil revenues declined during the recession, Mexican lawmakers looked for alternative revenue sources.2 As part of the 2010 budget, Mexican legislators increased several taxes in 2009:
    • Caroline Yevak
       
      *Class discussion about how drop in oil value caused gov debt & made the poor poorer etc.
  • In the past two years, at least eighty U.S. border officers have been convicted of corruption and it is estimated that there are almost as many investigations each year involving border officers who have accepted bribes so diat illegal drugs could be trafficked into the United States.
alessandro Lannes

Drugs, Violence, and State-Sponsored Protection Rackets in Mexico and Colombia/Drogas, ... - 2 views

    • alessandro Lannes
       
      Alessandro Lannes
  • Some authors have argued that high violence was the result of Escobar's excessive political ambition (Camacho and López 2001), which made traffickers unnecessarily visible
  • Colombian traffickers faced in penetrating and making stable connections with the political establishment, the event does not by itself explain the highly violent methods of Escobar's organization, which preceded his brief transit through Congress and persisted well after it. The relative centralization and coherence of Escobar's organization were also crucial factors that help explain its employment of highly organized and brutally violent methods.
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  • Pablo Escobar was arrested for the first time for drug trafficking. By 1978 Carlos Lehder had consolidated a network of cocaine trafficking both with us and Colombian citizens, and by the early 1980s two organizations, based in the cities of Medellin and Cali, controlled most cocaine exports (Camacho and López 2001). Since the early 1980s the Medellin traffickers began to employ increasingly violent methods. This violence was the result of three interrelated factors: (1) the inability of Medellin traffickers to successfully penetrate the political establishment, (2) the government's decision to confront traffickers by approving an extradition treaty with the United States, and (3) the relative centralization and internal coherence of Medellin traffickers under the leadership of Pablo Escobar.
  • Escobar was elected to represent Medellin in the Lower Chamber of Congress. Escobar's election generated a strong negative reaction among a wide range of political elites, who opposed the public presence of a trafficker in Congress and successfully pushed for Escobar's loss of political immunity and expulsion from Congress in 1983 (Camacho and López 2001). These events motivated Escobar to react violently against political "oligarchs", who in turn publicly declared war on traffickers by approving an extradition treaty with the us that included narcotics offences. As a reaction to this policy, traffickers led by Escobar created the group "Los Extraditables," responsible for initiating the period of "narco-terrorism" by engaging in strategic violence against the state, targeting high level politicians and carrying out terrorist attacks against the civilian population in an effort to push the government to refrain from making extradition effective
  • sign of Escobar's war against the state was the assassination of the Minister of Justice Rodrigo Lara Bonilla in 1984, and, as of 1990, the violence of Medellin traffickers had claimed the lives of some 500 police officers in Medellin, hundreds of civilians in terrorist attacks in Bogota and Medellin, and prominent politicians, including presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galá
    • alessandro Lannes
       
      Pablo Escobar was desperate to get into Congress, when he was kicked out he took drastic measures to get revenge on the people responsible
Onurcan Tatman

Plan Colombia: Washington's Latest Drug War Failure | Ted Galen Carpenter | Cato Instit... - 1 views

  • Even as President Andres Pastrana and other leaders boasted of the plan's achievements, reports were leaking out that a new study, funded by the United Nations, indicated that there were more than 340,000 acres under cultivation.
  • hat Plan Colombia has done is increase the animosity of farmers toward the Pastrana government and, indirectly, toward the
  • When Pastrana recently traveled to one drug-producing region to sell the "soft side" of Plan Colombia (economic development), he received a harsh reception. At stop after stop he was greeted by angry demonstrators. And their message ought to trouble U.S. leaders as well as Pastrana. Many of the demonstrators waved signs showing a Colombian flag being subsumed by the Stars and Stripes, with the caption "Plan Colombia's Achievements." Other protestors greeted the president with chants of "Pastrana subservient to the gringos."
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  • The Pastrana government already confronts a three-decade-old insurgency being waged by two left-wing guerrilla armies
  • Plan Colombia is ineffectual in achieving its stated objectives, and it produces a number of highly undesirable side effects. The brutal reality is that, as long as drugs are illegal, there will be a huge black-market premium-a lucrative potential profit that will attract producers. Plan Colombia cannot repeal the economic laws of supply and demand. In attempting to do so, the United States is creating even more trouble for an already troubled neighbor.
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    This article shows the failure of president Andres Pastrana and his efforts to end the drug war. It also talks about the misconseption of the whole idea that Plan Colombia actually worked.
William Fromm

Expert Witness Details Secrets of a Drug Cartel - New York Times - 1 views

  • Testifying for the prosecution in a Federal drug conspiracy and money laundering trial, Mr. Mermelstein said that from 1981 to 1985 he was one of the cartel's main representatives in the United States. He said that for four years he supervised the distribution of 56 tons of cocaine brought into the country and that he was responsible for transferring about $300 million from drug sales back to Colombia.
  • More Like ThisJackson Heights Streets Familiar to Drug CartelsCOLOMBIANS SEIZE DRUG RING SUSPECT AND 134 AIRCRAFTBanking's Technology Helps Drug Dealers Export Cash . . .Find More StoriesFederal LawDrug CartelMedellin CartelExpert Witness
    • Katy Field
       
      Sticky note on Bill's Stuff
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    • William Fromm
       
      Finally gives a testimony about the drug cartels, and it turns out to be the most extensive and most informative about the drug cartels.
  • testimony came at the trial of Carlos Eduardo Restrepo, who is accused of laundering more than $10 million for the Medellin cartel through a currency-exchange company in Greenwich that was an undercover ''sting'' operation set up by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Money laundering, under a 1986 Federal law, is the concealment and illegal transfer of money obtained through unlawful acts.The United States Attorney in Connecticut, Stanley A. Twardy Jr., said in an interview that Mr. Restrepo is the first person to be tried under the Federal law. Mr. Restrepo, who is 38 and who has described himself as a businessman, has pleaded not guilty.
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    This New York Times article shows how an eyewitness might have been treated under the colombian government, and how it later on seeked safety in the U.S. Federal Witness Protection Program.
Austin Buben

From smugglers to warlords: twentieth century Colombian drug traffickers - ProQuest Res... - 1 views

    • Austin Buben
       
      Austin Buben Found this First
  • The main suppliers of Cuban traffickers during the 1960s were Colombians. They would buy the coca paste from peasant farmers in Peru and Bolivia, transform it into cocaine in laboratories in Medellin, and then sell it to Cubans for distribution in the United States.
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    From smugglers to warlords: twentieth century Colombian drug traffickers
Cole Blum

Young Assassins Of The Drug Trade - Research and Read Books, Journals, Articles at Ques... - 6 views

    • Neha Kukreja
       
      This is where I'd say it's the Government's fault... what are they doing to combat this "same poverty, the same unemployment, the same corrupt authority?"
    • Cole Blum
       
      I agree. The Government is making some changes toward helping combat the violence and poverty, but a lot of these things are only hurting the cause.
  • Adolescents from poor neighborhoods were recruited as sicarios
  • from
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  • Sub- sequently, as the state attempted to bring these gangs under control, these same young boys began assassi- nating policemen and judges.
  • control, these same young boys began assassi- nating policemen and judges. In 1983, a 16-year-old adolescent discharged a sub-
  • President Belisario Betancur immediately enacted a treaty of extradition with the United States -- where traffickers were more likely to be prosecuted -- and an armed bat- tle began in which the young sicarios occupied the front lines for the drug cartels.
    • Cole Blum
       
      This is the most important part about the rise of the sicarios, where a huge armed battle ensued between the poor, the government, and the drug cartels (paired with the sicarios).
    • Cole Blum
       
      This is an example of how the government tried to stop the violence in Colombia, but actually hurt it in a lot of ways. It also made a lot more people dislike them.
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    This article talks about the involvement of youth in the violence of Colombia and how it started.
Caroline Yevak

NO MAN'S LAND: The Mystery of Mexico's Drug Wars - ProQuest Research Library - ProQuest - 0 views

  • "It's looking more and more like Colombia looked twenty years ago," she said, "where the narco-traffickers control certain parts of the country."
  • Mexico doesn't even have a viable proclaimed guerrilla force aiming to topple the government. Instead, Mexico has labyrinthine drug gangs murderously fighting it out against each other-while they extort, intimidate, massacre, and conduct firefights with the government.
  • There is no law there," he warned. "They are the law."
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  • By "they," he meant an irregular army of drug traffickers, who had created a no-man's-land in a grim little slice of Mexico.
  • Mexico's low-intensity "narco-war" has cast a daunting shadow over many of its backcountry areas, some of them wedged disconcertingly against the 2,000-mile-long border with the United States. The border's southern side is dotted with mysterious conflict zones, emitting rumors of burned houses, fleeing residents, and shadowy pseudo-armies of drug traffickers clashing by night.
  • Beltrán Leyva Cartel, El Gilo, the Zetas, El Chapo and his Sinaloa Cartel, the New Federation . . . This one little postage stamp of desert soil sounds like a package tour of "Narco-Mexico."
    • Caroline Yevak
       
      Beltrán-Leyva Cartel is one of the biggest in Mexico
  • There, a rival of the Sinaloa Cartel, the Beltrán Leyva Cartel, reportedly runs two large militia camps in the mountains, each with about three hundred men. The Sinaloa Cartel's own force there, orbiting the same general area, is said to number four hundred, in fifty-man squads.
  • Over on the other side of the country, the greener side by the Gulf of Mexico, south of Texas, three of the cartel gunmen arrested in the August massacre were reportedly aged fourteen, seventeen, and eighteen.
  • Such is the typical age spread for an expedition like this: a not-so-clandestine grupo de limpieza, a "cleanup squad" sent by one drug cartel to quash another.
  • Interestingly, no Mexican police or army troops spotted the cleanup caravan that brought Ramón Mesa, though it frightened various small towns en route. The forty-five hundred Mexican Army troops deployed across the country in the drug war have struck some heavy blows against the cartels, and the troops are often more professional than some outsiders might imagine, but mysteries still abide.
alessandro Lannes

The Business - Colombian Traffickers | Drug Wars | FRONTLINE | PBS - 0 views

    • alessandro Lannes
       
      Alessandro Lannes
  • avoiding
  • Pablo Escobar was incredibly violent and his quest for power within the Colombian government led to a stand-off between the cartel and the government. During the 1980's, the cartel revolted against the government's threats to extradite the traffickers to the United States. Pablo Escobar is thought to be responsible for the murder of hundreds of government officials, police, prosecutors, judges, journalists and innocent bystanders.
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  • And Pablo Escobar was hunted down and killed by the Colombian police after a long series of battles.
  • Younger lieutenants realized that the large organizations had been more vulnerable to attack by US and Colombian authorities. They formed smaller, more controllable groups and began compartmentalizing their responsibilities. One group simply smuggles the drugs from Colombia to Mexico. Another group controls the jungle labs. Yet another deals with transportation of coca base from the fields to the labs. There are well known links between the Colombian Marxists guerilla groups and the cocaine trade. Guerillas protect the fields and the labs in remote zones of Colombia in exchange for a large tax that the traffickers pay to the organization.
Eric Wineteer

NICARAGUA: ORTEGA GRANTS ASYLUM TO 2 WOMEN FROM FARC CAMP - ProQuest Research Library -... - 0 views

  • Four other Mexican students and former students of the Autonomous National University of Mexico were killed in the cross-border incursion ordered by Colombian President lvaro Uribe. The attack triggered a major diplomatic crisis, with Ecuador breaking off ties with Colombia, and Venezuela mobilizing troops to its border.
    • Eric Wineteer
       
      This is definitely an effect of the clash between FARC/Colombia/US on other countries.
  • In the past, [Daniel Ortega] has referred to the members of FARC as "brothers."
    • Eric Wineteer
       
      This shows that America and Colombia don't represent the world's opinions on FARC (no surprise there)
  • The right-wing opposition criticized Ortega for granting asylum to the three women, complaining that the move made Nicaragua "a sanctuary for terrorists."
    • Eric Wineteer
       
      Civil war in Colombia leading to political conflict in Nicaragua
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  • Pallais argued that "they were involved in drug trafficking and guerrilla activities and belonged to the FARC, and the FARC are considered terrorist forces by Colombia, the United States and the European Union.
    • Eric Wineteer
       
      This mention of the EU also demonstrates FARC's effect on countries outside of Colombia
Austin Buben

Judging History: The Historical Record of the International Criminal Tribunal for the F... - 0 views

  • The Judgment then turns to Bosnia and deals with the rise of ethnically-constituted parties in 1990 and the efforts of the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) to achieve a Greater Serbia by annexing parts of Bosnia and Croatia where there were Serb populations.97 There is a thorough discussion of how the Yugoslav National Army (JNA), which up to that point had been multi-ethnic, became 90 percent Serb. In 1991 it had become an army without a state to defend, and thus turned into an instrument of a militaristic Serb nationalism.98 War raged between the newly independent Croatia and Serb forces in late 1991, and this greatly increased tensions in Bosnia. The JNA withdrew from Croatia in early 1992 and brought 100,000 troops, airplanes, helicopters, and heavy weapons into Bosnia which further exacerbated anxiety and hostility among the population.99
  • "Arkan's Tigers.
  • "Arkan"
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  • The Judgment dedicates a great deal of space to the propaganda campaign in Bosnia. By the spring of 1992, all of the media in Bosnia was Serb controlled, and was pounding out the same unrelenting message that Serbs were about to be overwhelmed by Ustasha Croats and fundamentalist Muslims, and had no choice but to join with the JNA in an all-out war to save the Serbs from genocide. Broadcasts from Belgrade featured Serb politicians such as Zeljko
  • Raznatovic who declared that the Second World War was not over and "news" reports with fictitious stories about a Croat doctor sterilizing Serb women and castrating Serb boys.100The SDS in Bosnia capitalized on the fear created by such propaganda, and began proclaiming Serb Autonomous Regions as part of creating a Greater Serbia. Crisis staffs set up in these regions carried out local government and military functions. Combining elements of the JNA, paramilitary organizations, and police units, the SDS established physical control over these areas. Since the JNA had expelled non-Serbs and was short of manpower, it relied increasingly on paramilitaries such as
  • 101 Even though the JNA was withdrawn from Bosnia in May 1992, apparently in compliance with UN Security Council Resolution 752 calling for an end to outside interference,102 the Bosnian Serb army (VRS) inherited personnel and weapons from the JNA and could still count on air support from the JNA.103 Both of the last two points were essential for connecting the actions of Dusko Tadic, one small cog in the Bosnian Serb security apparatus, to the wider policies of ethnic cleansing.
    • Austin Buben
       
      Interesting how Arkan is Aelijko Raznatovic's middle name. Also, how the serbs took over the media in bosnia and spread their propaganda.
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