What’s Your Veinte, Amigo?
New revelations about Mexican drug cartels' operations raise some questions.
By
Ed Friedman (RSS)
December 27, 2011
Mexico is plagued by drug-related violence. This is not news. Because of that violence, some anti-liberty politicians have advocated restricting the rights of Americans to keep and bear arms because of the possibility that drug cartels might arm themselves with guns purchased in the United States. Some politicians may even have ordered BATFE to facilitate those sales.
Odd, then, that no politician has yet called for the banning of cellular phones, portable radios, antennae, repeaters and solar panels, all of which were used by the Zetas cartel to create a secure communications network used for command and control of its criminal enterprise.
Did you know you can walk into a celluar phone dealer and buy an unlimited number of high-powered mobile phones without so much as a background check? Many of these phones can handle multiple calls at once, and some are even designed for use by young children. You can even buy prepaid phones that are completely untraceable!
Did you know terrorists have cellular phones? Why has no politician called for a ban on these obviously dangerous devices?
Tags: BATFE, crime, drugs, Fast and Furious, Gun Rights, Mexico, politics
There actually was a call by the Senate to ban prepaid cellphones…Google it. Schumer and Cornyn.
Didn’t fly, but it was only proposed last year. They might try again…
But that would only take care of a small part of the assault phone menace. What about buying 10, 50, 100 at a time? Or transporting them across state lines? Or phones that let you Skype on them? Such power should not be in the hands of any individual! Think of the Children!!!
That’s the problem with attempts at hyperbolic parody. Sometimes reality gets just as absurd (or more so.)
Shawn,
I had hoped this would qualify as more than an attempt at hyperbolic parody
Sorry, but Mexico isn’t plagued by ‘drug-related violence.’ It’s plagued by PROHIBITION-related violence. Drug prohibition fuels violence because prohibition IS violence. It’s the policy of using force [(]men with guns and cages[)] in a futile attempt to eliminate the market for certain drugs. All of the OTHER violence that surrounds the [(]non-alcohol, non-tobacco[)] drug trade is fundamentally a REACTION to the state-sponsored violence of prohibition. Prohibition renders contracts unenforceable and makes it impossible for competitors to use the courts or police to settle disputes or challenge intimidation. Those conditions promote violence. Today you don’t see rival beer distributors engaging in deadly shoot-outs over turf, but you USED TO — during alcohol prohibition.
But if we did away with drug prohibition the police wouldn’t have an excuse for waging war against people they don’t like. They wouldn’t have an excuse for invading quiet homes at the the break of dawn and murdering the people who live there.
http://patdollard.com/2011/05/tucson-police-shoot-iraqi-war-veteran-over-60-times-admit-he-had-broken-no-laws-with-video/
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Over the past year in the middle east, cell phones and social media technologies were crucial to the insurgents’ uprising. This has surely not gone unnoticed. Political power may come from the barrel of a gun, but it also comes from the ability to direct and coordinate people.
As always, the forces of tyranny seek to disarm those they hope to enslave. As communication is a threat to them on par with the power of a gun, they will increasingly seek to thwart or contain it.
I don’t get the reference in the title of this post. What does veinte (20) refer to in this case? Just curious, thanks for any knowledge…
Buck,
CB lingo. As in “What’s your 20 good buddy?” That translates to “What is your location my dear fellow?”
On Cell Phones, the Patriot Act specifies that you can’t buy more than 2 prepaid (burner) phones in one store in one day.