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Save our poor Lazamataz!
Posted on 04/24/2011 6:03:29 PM PDT by SwinneySwitch
CULIACAN, Mexico — From age 6, each of the Gonzalez brothers learned to make bricks, trudging like nine little chicks behind their father every day before dawn to work in his dusty hilltop brickyard.
Three years ago, three of them in their 30s and 40s quit the backbreaking work, saying they had a better opportunity abroad.
Now, having escaped the Mexican drug war that leaves dead bodies on the streets of their city of Culiacan almost daily, the brothers face the gallows in Malaysia, standing trial on Wednesday for allegedly working in a factory where police found $15 million in methamphetamine. If convicted, they face Malaysia’s mandatory sentence of death by hanging for drug trafficking.
The case raises questions about a connection between their home state, Sinaloa, the cradle of Mexico’s drug trade, and a country more than 15,000 kilometers (some 10,000 miles) away that is a regional production hub for meth. While authorities say there is no direct evidence to tie the Sinaloa cartel, Mexico’s most powerful, to meth production in Asia, they wouldn’t be surprised by such a link.
“If you look at trends, then you see that these organizations are fanning out,” said a U.S. law enforcement official in Mexico who couldn’t be named for security reasons. “They are popping up everywhere.”
Only a month after leaving Mexico, the brothers — Jose Regino, 33, Luis Alfonso, 43 and Simon Gonzalez, 36 — called home during a family birthday party. Their relatives thought they were calling with congratulations. Instead the brothers told them they were under arrest.
The family hung up stunned, and searched for Malaysia on their globe.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Yeah but, 100 years ago there wasn’t speed and meth, which really makes one do real crazy shite.
I am not against leagalizing something a lightweight as pot. Smoke a little and your just cool with things, smoke a lot and you’re just numbed out, not wild ass crazy like meth or crack.
Amphetamine and methamphetamine have been around for more than 100 years. Cocaine (crack) as well. And the opiates.
Where’d you get that info?
Making the elite rich, growing government, growing the prison industry and contracts in exchange for political favors, making certain branches of government wash in off book income, sprouting fear everywhere in the Citizenry, getting the people used to control and obedience, growing violence and death, trapping people in misery and addiction and eroding the Constitution?
Yeah. Why change something when it's working as intended.
When it's not broke, don't fix it.
Crack is 100 years old?
No.
I hear you.
I was going to Best Buy the other day, but realized that some beer bootleggers were hold up on Route 10. I had to go around the whole county to avoid them and their violence.
And don't let me get started on the Lettuce Cartel. They want to sell a plant that grows naturally, and have held my son in his apartment as a hostage for weeks. All because he wants to make a salad.
Will the violence NEVER end?????????
Crack is cocaine.
Cheer on the cartels, because unlike the other side, they won't bother you or take anything from you if you mind your own business?
Oh wait. Sorry. That's not what you meant. I'll just go over here and sit down quietly.
You're right.
The government would lose its monopoly on health care for one thing.
That would be terrible.
Part of the problem. Part of why America is dying. And they don't know any better as the pull the voting lever that seals our Nation's fate. Being taught they are doing the right thing.
I've been talking about them for weeks now.
Some are the 'religious' who believe that they are doing 'good works' by controlling what a man eats, drinks, thinks, smokes, (or earlier where and when he shops or work, what color person he can hang out with, and what sexual positions are legal.)
Electing Palin will change NOTHING. Until people like this get a clue and the police state stops. They will wake up 2, 3 elections later and wonder why nothing is better, why the debt is still there, why there are cameras on every street corner.
Soon thoughtcrime will be a reality.
Sometimes the left is right. Just once in a century. But...
I really don't see much hope for us, as long as we're stuck with two sides of the same coin. Big Government for "Good" Reason #1, or Big Government for "Good" Reason #2.
Liberty or we all perish. And no one will speak to it.
Here's one source: http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/meth/meth_timeline.php
Wikipedia has methamphetamine being synthized in 1893 by a different Japanese chemist.
Maybe I could use some speed.
synthized = synthesized
"The brothers’ Malaysian attorney, Kitson Foong, said they were arrested outside the factory and were not involved in what was going on inside."
"Foong said police have mishandled his client’s case from the start. He charged they lost two-thirds of the drugs seized at the factory and that at one point they filed a report claiming the drugs had been stolen. He alleged that four police officers were arrested after being caught on camera stealing some of the drugs themselves."
We have those areas NOW in every major city.
I've made bricks. It's ahrdly "backbreaking" work, particularly if you are strong and robust, as they ought to have been, having done it since age 6. I think they got a break to make the BIG easy bucks from the cartel, and went for it. Clearly they failed to do an adequate cost-benefit analsysis. Malaysia is NOT the U.S. border, where smugglers are released if they have less than 50 lbs of pot.
Great research find!
Although the chemical compounds were discovered over 100 years ago and “blackbrush” existed long before, the assertion there was any “speed” abuse or addiction prior to 100 years ago is factually missing. Cocain was in use over 100 years ago, but not widely as “cocain” powder or freebase, rather as as minor ingredient in things like soft drinks and of course coca leaves and coca tea in the Andes. Crack cocain is very new, maybe within the last 30 years.
Well, cocaine was available over the counter at pharmacies as part of toothache cures and such. This is similar to how pure alcohol is rarely ingested today. “Freebase” only exists because of the War on Drugs.
Yeah, back then we at least had the decency to pass constitutional amendments to impose and repeal nationwide prohibition.
To suggest that complete repeal of the controlled substances act is not without repercussions is not going to cut it.
So do you think the CSA is justified by the Commerce Clause? Or, do you think states should have that authority under the Tenth Amendment?
I’m not presuming to have any answer.
It is obvious that the present plan is not working and in the alternative libertarian plan doesn’t sound very appealing either.
I say that because while I agree that one should have the liberty to make a mess of one’s life...the problem is the collateral damage of the lives others.
I don’t know how to reconcile the collateral damage to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Without some clear lines about self sovereignty and the rights of others, there really isn’t a good solution.
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