Soob

Politics, Foreign Policy, Current Events and Occasional Outbursts Lacking Couth

Monday, March 03, 2008

Primer on South American Leftist Militias


Via Slate's "the Explainer."
A particularly intriguing snippet from the article:

The FARC has endured because the cocaine trade in Colombia has become a huge source of revenue for the group—by some estimates, $250 million to $500 million a year, or at least half of its income.

Some 90% of the cocaine (which sells for an astounding $80-$100 a gram here in VT; do the math and factor in quantity/cost and "yeyoh" by the ounce is still much more valuable than gold) that finds it's way to crackpipes and/or rolled up currency (nifty steel tubes for the more casual and affluent, perhaps) comes from Colombia.

To paraphrase the wise Steve French: "The War on Drugs makes living in the Gap pay."

2 comments:

The Red Son said...

And the coke in VT is probably at least 50 percent adulterants, so its like gold you can make into more gold! Of course my "paramilitary organization" does not partake in such lucrative enterprises. Felonies=no guns. On an unrelated note, the marijuana growing industry in Vermont is worth more than 10 million dollars a year, comparable to our apple harvest, a corner stone of our economy. Food for thought about the potential revolutionary conditions in Vermont...

March 4, 2008 at 12:46:00 PM EST  
Jay@Soob said...

Marijuana, from what I've read, is the #1 cash crop in the US.

That aside, is $10 million per year going to be enough to fund a resistance? That's about, what, one F-16?

March 6, 2008 at 8:45:00 PM EST  

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