Wish I could mod you up.

No, it's because hijacking of airplanes ended on 9/11. Unless you can get more hijackers than passengers onto a plane (or at least enough hijackers to physically overpower the passengers) it can no longer work. It only worked before because passengers figured if they just went along all would end well and they would be - at worst - inconvenienced. That changed on 9/11/2001.

There have been people try to hijack planes since then. Here's one story:

http://news.investors.com/ibd-...

6 people tried to hijack a plane - 4 of them survived. I probably don't have to explain it but the other 4 didn't exactly "meet their objectives" if you know what I mean.

Here's a guy who actually had a gun on the plane - I think he was the one who's life was saved by the police who stormed the plane after it landed. He had boiling water thrown on him before the beating:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Again, he had two guns, it didn't matter.

Hijacking was ruined by Mohammed Atta and friends 13 years ago. Since then we had the shoe bomber (failed) and Smokey the Terrorist who set fire to his own penis (brilliant) before being subdued by the other passengers. Even on Flight 77 over Pennsylvania on 9/11/2001 the passengers found out what was going on, but the hijacker was able to ditch the plane before they breached the cabin door. The sap that they had left out to keep an eye on the passengers was burned with boiling water and beaten with a fire extinguisher - keep that in mind in case you have stupid hijacking friends and they want to lock you outside the cabin.

Silk Road did a spinoff where guns were being sold as the primary goods (the Armory) and they closed it because it wasn't profitable enough.

You're probably unaware that the GP specifically used 'HSBC' because they were caught laundering trillions of dollars of drug money and nobody was indicted.

He probably isn't unaware of that. He may well have actually read the indictment itself or a detailed summary of it, which made clear that the US case was very weak to the point of hardly working at all. In particular, not only did they fail to clearly establish that drug money was really moving (their case was "there is so much cash, some of it must be from cartels") but in particular they failed to show intent by HSBC execs to help drug cartels. Actually their case boiled down to HSBC didn't try hard enough, they weren't suspicious enough, etc. (I'm ignoring the Iranian transactions here which gets into issues of international jurisdiction, as you only brought up drugs).

The reason you think the are guilty is twofold. Firstly US anti money laundering laws are unbelievably extreme. The PATRIOT Act removed the need to have intent to be found guilty of money laundering. Bankers can now be found guilty of AML violations even if they genuinely tried hard and had no intent to break the law. Hence the accusations from the DoJ that were of the form "HSBC should have designated Mexico as high risk", etc. Secondly as part of the plea agreement HSBC had to act guilty and accept whatever the DoJ said about them. So you only heard one side of the story, the prosecutions side (except there was no court case). No surprises that you think the whole thing is cut and dried.

It's no crime to be ignorant of such things, but just try not to hold any policy positions on the subject.

Given that there was never any court case and HSBC was never able to defend themselves, pretty much everyone is ignorant in this case because we never heard the full story. But I'm pretty sure if DoJ had emails from HSBC execs that looked like the ones from BitInstant there would indeed have been prosecutions.

The problem is that federal Byrne grants are very lucrative and legalized marijuana is probably a losing proposition financially for states. Or, at least, for police agencies. Ever wonder why the officers on COPS turn into raving lunatics looking for drugs every time they pull some poor guy over? I mean, seriously, they act like addicts looking for a fix. The reason is that if they find drugs they make money from the feds, so every little joint is worth money.

We've set up a system of perverse incentives. Apparently in Nebraska it's reached the point that subsequent arrests for drugs aren't yielding more federal dollars so it's not worth it to them.

You do know that all the blocks have already been bought up, right?
Of course you don't. Hell, you probably don't even know what I mean.

Some of us care about other human beings. If you can't get that, then please take a long walk off a short pier.

WTF are you tlaking about? What 'evil'? What 'therapy'?

Clearly you know NOTING about Cuba, so stop saying idiotic things.

The Goal we have for Russia is different then the one we have for Cuba, you simpleton.

here you go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

FInally?
Everything is better by any measure.
To quote Chris Rock:
Only President Obama could get gas to $2.50, end 2 wars, get bin Laden, bring unemployment below 8%, then be told he's failing as president.