D Block Law 12 - OK so I don't want to heap on the pressure here but it's coming down to the wire right? You have today in the library to work on your major project that is due next Friday (that's eight days from now). Tomorrow we'll begin reviewing for our final exam days next week (Wednesday & Thursday). So...nose to the grindstone time; pound out the work and do the best that you can. Good Luck.
C Block Crime, Media and Society 12 - Today we'll watch the remainder of the "To Catch a Predator" show and looked at one way that property crime is portrayed in Media. Don't forget you have a question to answer:
Phishing and Scamming are two high profile property crimes that have received a great deal of media attention Why?
After, we'll look at the Robin Hood/folk outlaw metaphor in criminal activity on TV (although it has shifted somewhat to vigilantism). We'll watch "The 12-Step Job" from Season 1 of Leverage. From the TNT Leverage site: The team goes after an unscrupulous financial director who stole from charity. After forcing him into rehab for his many addictions, the mission changes when Nate learns their mark is in fact robbing the rich (and criminal) and giving to the poor. You'll have one question to answer:
Why do you think there is a trend in crime media involving the inadequecies of the police? Look at Elementary, Lie to Me, the Mentalist, Person of Interest Leverage, and the Dateline episodes to Catch a Predator or to Catch a Con Man. Each one of these shows involves a private consultant or specialist that helps the police solve their crimes that they apparently cannot solve on their own. What subtle or overt messages about policing and authority do these shows portray? Why do you think this is a popular trend in crime media?
B Block Social Studies 10 - Today we are back in the library for your last day this week for research on your family history assignment. Remember, your task is to research your family history, which includes learning how to conduct academic research, making critical evaluations regarding sources, and managing information. Please remember that I want you to focus on the context of history- did your ancestor fight in the war of 1812? What was life like for farmers during early settlement of the west? Why do you have American relatives? Use the primary documents and stories you find to uncover what daily life might have been like for your relatives. I'll have a sign up sheet in the library for you to select a day to present your findings next week.
A Block Criminology 12 - Today we'll continue our look at gangs and gang activity in Canada. I will show you a History Channel show called Gangland. The episode I'd
like to show you is from season three and it's called "To Torture or to Kill".
This episode is about "Los Zetas" and the drug corridor along the Nuevo Laredo
- Texas border. Miguel Treviño Morales, alias "Z-40," the leader of Los Zetas was captured an arrested in July 2013 however los Zetas still survive (as does Sinaloa and others).Economist - Mexican Drug War
InSight Crime Los Zetas
CNN Mexican "Drug War" fast facts
National Post Los Zetas Trevino Morales
You can watch the Gangland documentary in class, on the link here or watch it below...
This past February Chicago declared Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán its first "Public Enemy No. 1" since Al Capone. "While Chicago is 1,500 miles from Mexico, the Sinaloa drug cartel is so deeply embedded in the city that local and federal law enforcement are forced to operate as if they are on the border," Jack Riley, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Chicago office, told CNN.
The infiltration of the Windy City shows the extent to which Mexican drug syndicates have made inroads in the United States -- the Associated Press and others have reported that cartel cells are operating in Atlanta, Ga., Louisville, Ky., Columbus, Ohio, and rural North Carolina. In fact, according to an excellent National Post infographic based on data from a U.S. Justice Department report and other sources, it's much easier to list states that don't have a drug trade tied to Mexican gangs. There are only twelve that haven't reported the presence of one of four Mexican cartels since 2008: Alabama, Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Montana, North Dakota, Utah, Vermont, WestVirginia, and Wisconsin. The Mexican drug trade is everywhere else.
Detected cartel operations range from traditional drug-running to using a horse ranch as a front for laundering drug money, as one group did in Oklahoma. The Sinaloa cartel, which has emerged as Mexico's dominant syndicate, has carved out new territory in the United States by controlling 80 percent of its meth trade (Mexican cartels have come to dominate the U.S. market by aggressively bumping up the purity of their meth while dropping the price per gram). All told, Mexican cartels reside in 1,200 American communities as of 2011, up from 230 in 2008, according to the Associated Press.
Another great article for the magazine states...
Drugs are just the tip of the iceberg. In the popular U.S. television series Breaking Bad, about a high school teacher turned methamphetamine kingpin, there was an instructive exchange. When the show's antihero, Walter White, was asked whether he "was in the meth business or the money business," he replied, "I'm in the empire business."
The same can be said of the DTOs, which are independent and competing entities -- not an association like OPEC. The sale of cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and meth remains extremely profitable. The U.S. Justice Department has put the cartels' U.S. drug trade at $39 billion annually. But the DTOs have diversified their business considerably, both to increase their profits and to exclude rivals from new sources of revenue. For example, they are dealing increasingly in pirated intellectual property, like counterfeit software, CDs, and DVDs. The most destructive new "product," however, is people. The cartels have built a multibillion-dollar business in human trafficking, including the shipment of both illegal immigrants and sex workers.
What the DTOs are really selling is logistics, much like Wal-Mart and Amazon.com. Wal-Mart was one of the first retailers to run its own fleet of trucks, providing tailored shipping at a lower cost that in turn gave the company an edge over its competitors. Similarly, Amazon may have started as a bookseller, but its dominance, as Fast Companyput it, is "now less about what it sells than how it sells," providing a distribution hub for all sorts of products. Drug-trafficking organizations are using the same philosophy to cut costs, better control distribution, and develop new sources of revenue.
The one element of the U.S.-Mexico relationship that has received no shortage of attention is the border, yet the technology and money dedicated to enhancing security there have not been enough to thwart creative DTOs. The Sinaloa cartel, for example, has an extensive network of expertly constructed tunnels under the border, some featuring air-conditioning. (The workers who build the tunnels are frequently executed after the work is completed.) At the other extreme, traffickers have used catapults to launch deliveries from Mexico into the United States.
Logistics, then, are the DTOs' main source of revenue, and illegal drugs are but one of the products they offer. As the cartels' revenue streams become increasingly diversified, the drug trade will become less and less important. In fact, the prospect of the DTOs' selling their services to terrorists, say by transporting weapons of mass destruction across the U.S.-Mexico border, has begun to frighten analysts both inside and outside government.
And from the Daily Beast: The songs (Narcocorrido) sound like a cross between mariachi and polka and come from the norteño folk tradition. The first of these ballads go as far back as the 1930s, and the lyrics, while they’ve always dealt with drug traffickers and murderers, have, since the Mexican drug wars began in 2006, become exponentially swaggering in their brazen glorification of violence.Americans listen to gangster rap and love to watch mob flicks. We relish crime depicted well and expect a level of authenticity in the portrayal. It’s nothing out of the ordinary to hire mafia members as movie consultants. We might even prefer musicians with street cred. It seems that as consumers we demand the real thing, not some impostor.
So from Breaking Bad a Narcocorrido about Heisenberg (Walter White)
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