Why not apply spy technology to money laundering, tax evasion and other financial issues?

Sean Dunagan went to Monterrey, Mexico, to crack down on drugs. As an intelligence analyst for the Drug Enforcement Administration, he wanted to bring down the cartels and other trafficking organizations. He brought his family with him because Monterrey seemed like a peaceful, vibrant place to live. But things changed.

Sean saw that the drug war he was fighting was actually fueling more and more violence, creating the same kind of nasty black market that existed under Prohibition.

If there were a suspected al Qaeda operation in Mexico, and the US Government knew that arms dealers in US border states were selling massive quantities of arms for delivery to that al Qaeda operation, what do you think the US government would do to those arms dealers?

A “war on drugs whose objective is to eradicate the drug market,” Eduardo Porter of the New York Times recently wrote, “is a war that cannot be won.” In the report, he highlights how the “war on drugs” has been a complete and utter failure. The “illegal drug market,” he argues, “cannot be eradicated.” The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has not been able to stop drug supplies from reaching the United States, which is why the cost of a gram of cocaine is lower in price than it was in 2001. On top of that, tens of thousands of people from Central America and fifty-five thousand people from Mexico have been killed or murdered as a result of violence, which stems from the “war on drugs.”

This is the climate for film director Oliver Stone’s latest movie, Savages,.

It could just be coincidence, of course. But just as a huge scandal unfolds in Washington over a seemingly botched guns-drug operation, and a possibly cover-up by Attorney General Eric Holder, the Department of Justice has announced a big crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries in California, long the leader in the medical marijuana movement. Something is very wrong here.

The guns-drug operation, run through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF), was titled “Fast and Furious.”

The government’s long-running war on drugs is having little impact, according to documents just released. The National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) of the Justice Department reports demand for drugs is rising and the demand is being supplied by major transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) or cartels, which adapt to government “counterdrug efforts” modifying interrelationships, altering drug production levels and adjusting trafficking routes and methods.

The Rand Corporation is notorious for its history of pro-drug-war studies. A report of theirs from earlier this year on Proposition 19 was full of dubious claims based on what even they had to admit were just guesses. Once again, with their newest report about marijuana legalization, the Rand Corporation buries the lede from their own study, one which strongly supporters the anti-cartel claims made by marijuana reformers. While not part of the press release, the study, in fact, backs up one of the main arguments of the supporters of marijuana legalization. The study determines legalizing, taxing and regulating marijuana could eliminate all the profits the Mexican drug cartels currently make thanks to cannabis prohibition.

The money that now goes to the cartels, with which they buy weapons and fund criminal enterprises of all sorts, could instead be paying teacher salaries and going into the coffers of states that badly need the revenue to meet their budgets.

American Meth, Justin Hunt’s blunt look at methamphetamine use in the American heartland, is pretty brutal, but then so is meth, the “devil’s serum,” as one interviewee calls it. It is a killer drug, worse than heroin, worse than crack, based on what I’ve seen in real life and what you’ll see in this film.

Hunt interviews users, law enforcement officials and anti-meth advocates–including the founders of Faces of Meth and the Montana Meth Project.

The efforts to keep Wall Street and all its celebrated creativity intact could serve to make it easier for banks like Wachovia to engage in widespread money-laundering. That is, it’s not just shadow banking as it is politely understood, but banking for entire shadow networks, both our own and our enemies.