For what it’s worth, there is some evidence of precisely the behavior you suggest is so unlikely. Begin with the most publicicized, the links between the CIA and drug trafficking highlighted by Gary Webb:
http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Alliance-Contras-Cocaine-Explosion/dp/1888363932/ref=sr11?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239549186&sr=1-1
You might also check these out:
http://www.amazon.com/Politics-Heroin-Complicity-Global-Trade/dp/1556524838/ref=pdsimb_3
http://www.amazon.com/Powderburns-Cocaine-Contras-Drug-War/dp/0889625786/ref=pdsimb_1
http://www.amazon.com/Whiteout-Drugs-Press-Alexander-Cockburn/dp/1859842585/ref=pdsimb_4
]]>Obviously the extent to which governments cooperate with mafias varies with geography, and there are indeed some governments that have so much corruption they would meet your description. But suppressing a mafia’s competition? Profiting from drugs? I don’t see how that describes the U.S. or most any other Western government.
]]>OTOH, if black marketeers kill non-aggressive competing merchants who threaten their monopoly, it’s quite reasonable to assume that they’ll look upon cops as any other kind of organized crime bosses: i.e., they’ll be just as likely to make an accommodation with them to divide up the market, as to kill them. That’s why we see the levels of corruption that we do, under the infuence of the “Drug War”: cops being paid “protection money” not to interfer, or even to suppress the tributary gangster’s non-protection-paying competition. And the state often finds organized crime useful in carrying out its own activities, e.g. laundering money for “black ops” overseas (like the Contras and other death squads).
The state is an organized criminal that profits from the control of black markets, and cooperates or competes with other crime lords as its interests dictate.
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