Rackets Blog

The Drug War's Death Count is Higher Than Many Conventional Wars

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 03:56:38 GMT

Statistics, Charts, and Maps Illustrating the Murders Tied to the War on Drugs

The sky-high profits from illegal drugs lead to murders at all levels of the supply chain. Every country in the world suffers from this type of violence to some degree, but it is most concentrated in areas linked to high supply/demand.

The war on drugs is generally considered to be a law-and-order issue, not an actual war, yet we use military terminology to label the innocent bystanders who get caught up in the crossfire as “civilians” and “collateral damage.”

It’s time to recognize that the “war on drugs” is a real war that has several forms of violence:

Drug traffickers killing rival traffickers for turf or trafficking routes
Traffickers murdering police/military officials
Police/military officials murdering drug traffickers
(political violence) Traffickers murdering government officials, journalists, activists
Drug addicts murdering to steal drugs for consumption
Innocent victims caught in the crossfire of drug-war violence
Drug-related robberies resulting in murders
Murders involving drug transactions gone badly
Murders against individuals who provide information to law enforcement

The people who live in these high demand/supply areas are living in war zones. For the sake of comparison, the death toll from the drug war is not higher than every modern war, such as the Russo-Ukrainian War or the Second Congo War. However, the point remains the same; it is a real war and the death count is higher than many conventional wars.

Murders among organized crime groups resulted in 19% of all homicides throughout the world in 2017. That resulted in “many more deaths worldwide than armed conflict and terrorism combined.”

Yury Fedotov, UNODC Executive Director

The black market obviously benefits drug cartels and organized crime groups; it also helps arm violent non-state armed groups, such as Hezbollah and the United Wa State Army , which controls an autonomous region in Myanmar. As many as 23 U.S.-designated terrorist organizations are involved in illegal drugs, according to the DEA. The Marxist terrorist group in Colombia, the ELN , controls significant levels of coca production. Some terrorist groups, such as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) , profit by extorting or “taxing” drug traffickers who pass through their territory in northern Africa.

This study is focused on illustrating the scale of black-market violence linked to the underworld of illegal drugs. To do so, there needs to be an understanding of the supply and demand forces.

The United States is ironically one of the world’s strongest proponents of criminalization and a militarized approach to interdiction. The U.S. provides billions of dollars for other countries to beef up their counternarcotics measures all while Americans consume illegal drugs at a substantially higher scale than any other country.

There’s a clear correlation between the violence in drug production zones outside the U.S. and the trafficking routes to America. Black-market drug violence in the U.S. is generally isolated in low-income areas, which means that it is essentially out of sight and out of mind for most Americans.

Americans spend $153 billion per year on illegal drugs.

( Rand Corporation )

That study was based on the four most common illegal drugs (marijuana, methamphetamine, heroin, and cocaine).

Marijuana and methamphetamine production have an unlimited global footprint.

Cocaine and heroin production have a limited global footprint.

Marijuana can be grown indoors and outdoors in almost every climate. The majority of illegal marijuana in the U.S. is produced domestically . Likewise, methamphetamines can be produced anywhere in the world with the right chemicals, but most of America’s supply comes from Mexico . In theory, there is an unlimited geographic footprint for fentanyl production, but Mexican cartels are the primary groups processing fentanyl precursor chemicals from China and India into the final product.

Not all countries have comprehensive reporting or effective eradication efforts, but the seizure data alone demonstrates that there is a broad global production market for marijuana and methamphetamine:

link for data

Coca and opium poppy plants that can produce cocaine/heroin can only grow in certain types of soil, climate, and elevation. As a result, the financial incentives for criminal networks are even greater to control the production and distribution of heroin and cocaine due to the limited supply. Hence, there is more drug-war violence tied to those two drugs.

Global Opium Production

The opium poppy can be grown in many countries throughout the world. Several countries legally produce heroin for medicinal purposes, including China, Korea, India, Japan, Turkey, and Australia. However, illegal heroin has historically only been produced in large quantities in three regions:

Southwest Asia (Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran) (The Golden Crescent) (product is brown in color)

Southeast Asia (Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam) (The Golden Triangle) (product is white in color)

Mexico (product is black in color) (Colombia hasn’t produced a notable level of heroin since 2018 .)

(image Wikipedia)

The U.S. has the highest consumer demand for illegal drugs, but there is a global demand as well. Mexico produces much less than the world’s top producer of heroin, Myanmar , yet it supplies most of America’s demand. The Asian producers supply nearly all of the demand in that hemisphere . Proximity is the primary factor.

91% of the heroin in the U.S. originated in Mexico

UNODC

Here are the highest heroin production regions within Mexico:

Mexico produces roughly 24,100 hectares of opium per year. The primary region is in the “Golden Triangle” where the states of Sinaloa, Chihuahua, and Durango converge. Large concentrations are also found in the north of Nayarit and the states of Guerrero and Oaxaca.

Global Coca Production

Unlike heroin, there’s only one region of the world (the Andean Region) for cocaine production. Criminal groups grow coca in Guatemala , Honduras , and Mexico , but it’s not potent enough to be economically viable for export. Nearly all of the world’s cocaine is produced in just three countries :

Colombia

Peru

Bolivia

Here are the highest cocaine production areas:

link to data

Samples tested by the DEA found that 97% of cocaine in America was cultivated in Colombia. There’s a disproportionate amount of Colombian cocaine ( 70% of the world’s supply ), as opposed to Peruvian or Bolivian cocaine. It makes sense that criminals would make that choice because Colombia is the northernmost supply point of the three countries.

Drug traffickers have extreme potential consequences and financial incentives to follow the path of least resistance. The price for drugs will increase as the distance increases from its production zone because there are more logistical costs, traffickers, and corrupt government officials involved in the process.

The following map illustrates how proximity factors significantly into the pricing of cocaine.

sources Insight Crime , UNODC

Traffickers can make higher profits if selling cocaine in Africa, Europe, or Asia, but the American market is significantly larger. The European Union spends roughly $32.7 billion on illegal drugs annually, as opposed to $153 billion in the U.S. Due to the disproportionate demand for illegal drugs in America, there is substantially more violence in the Western Hemisphere for control of this racket.

“Prisoners of Geography”

The best-selling British author, Tim Marshall, coined this phrase that asserted that a nation’s geographic location can explain many of the foreign policy goals and challenges. Many of the citizens living in North America, South America, and the Caribbean have the unfortunate burden of being born in the path of lucrative illegal drug trafficking routes to the U.S.

Here's a look at the macro level of murder rates. There’s a clear correlation between the high murder rate in the world’s focal points of drug production, and transshipment points to the U.S. There is a dramatic drop-off in murder rates south of the cocaine production region where there is far less consumer demand.

link to data

Jamaica is a transshipment route to the U.S. for marijuana and cocaine, with a murder rate that is roughly ten times the global average (60.9 per 100,000). In January, the police killed one of Jamaica’s most notorious criminals, Othneil "Thickman" Lobban , the leader of the One Order gang. The government raised the official threat level in the country because his death prompted retaliatory gunfire and businesses being burned. The government issued an order banning local residents from leaving their homes as businesses and schools were closed and the police/military patrolled the streets to maintain order.

It’s reminiscent of when Jamaican authorities agreed to extradite the Shower Posse leader, Christopher “Dudus” Coke, to the U.S. in 2010. His fighters attacked police stations and the government deployed the military to capture Coke. For five weeks, thousands of local residents were stuck in a crossfire between security forces and this gang. Over 70 people were killed in the melee. The Shower Posse was reportedly responsible for 1,400 murders in the U.S. and Jamaica. Dudas admitted in U.S. court to smuggling over 3 tons of marijuana into the U.S.

Removing a kingpin like Dudas hasn’t improved the safety in Jamaica. It resulted in fracturing criminal groups , thus creating more rivalries and violence.

Trinidad and Tobago , a key transshipment point just seven miles from the Venezuelan coastline, is experiencing a similar situation. On December 30 ^th , Prime Minister Keith Rowley declared a state of emergency . That decision is akin to martial law and granted military forces search/arrest capability without a warrant.

This was prompted by a gang leader being killed after leaving a police station and another five gangsters were reportedly murdered in retaliation. There’s been ongoing rival gang violence in Trinidad with Venezuelan gangs muscling in on popular trafficking routes.

"Highway 10" is the informal term for the cocaine trafficking route along the 10th parallel transporting cocaine from South America to Africa. A large portion of that contraband is later smuggled into Europe. This illegal activity is a significant destabilizing force in Africa.

Map of Guinea-Bissau (Wikipedia)

Guinea-Bissau was labeled by the United Nations as Africa’s first “ narco state ” in 2008. It was an accurate assessment. It was easy for cartels to corrupt officials in this West African nation, which at that time, had no prisons and the world’s fifth-lowest economic development. The UNODC once illustrated how the estimated wholesale value of illegal drugs flowing through West Africa dramatically exceeds Guinea-Bissau’s GDP .

Those lopsided economic incentives have led to political violence. According to former Gambian President Yahya Jammeh, an attempted coup in Guinea-Bissau in 2009 “was actually a drug deal gone bad when five tons of cocaine turned up missing while it was in police custody.” There have been subsequent military coups, and attempted coups, in 2010 , 2011 , 2012 , and 2022 , that were related to drug trafficking.

This regional instability benefits some of the terror groups in northern Africa, such as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and Jama’at Nusrat al Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM) , which profit from the extortion of the drug trade in their territory. A report from 2017 estimated that AQIM generated $100 million from various illegal activities, including "taxing" drug traffickers.

Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) is a U.S.-designated terrorist group that is affiliated with Al Qaeda. It controls territory in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. It profits from "taxing" drug traffickers in its regional strongholds. (image @GI_TOC)

link to data

Nigeria is plagued by violence related to terrorism, kidnappings, fuel bandits, and separatist groups. Part of the bloodshed is also related to competition amongst criminals for control of the lucrative domestic and international drug trade, including the terrorist organization Boko Haram . Nigeria is one of the primary transit points for Brazilian traffickers to distribute cocaine throughout Africa, Europe, and Asia.

According to the FBI , Nigeria has the most powerful criminal groups in Africa and they conduct business in 80 countries. This is evident as Nigerians are the largest non-Latin American and European nationality arrested in European airports between 2016 and 2020 for drug trafficking offenses. The nation’s largest criminal group, Black Axe, has an estimated 30,000 members worldwide and specializes in international drug trafficking, among other rackets.

Nigeria and South Africa are two of Africa’s primary transit hubs for Asian heroin shipments in and out of the continent. Both countries are also Africa’s top producers of methamphetamine.

A convoy of Boko Haram fighters (image @WerbCharlie)

The murder rate in Asia (2.3 per 100,000) is well below the global average, but the profits from illegal drugs are fueling warfare.

Afghanistan has been one of the world’s top producers of heroin for decades. The Taliban leader issued an opium ban in 2000 and it resulted in a 94% reduction within a year. After 9/11, the U.S. allied with several Afghan warlords who were deeply involved in heroin trafficking. In turn, Afghanistan’s opium production dramatically spiked and it produced roughly 90% of global supply while U.S. troops occupied the country.

A Taliban opium ban seems in line with the group’s tyrannical fundamentalist Islamic directives. However, the black-market profits from heroin funded both sides of the war. In other words, the Taliban’s opium policy has shifted from time to time depending upon their circumstances. The UNODC estimated in 2009 that the Taliban generated $155 million per year from “taxing” Afghan opium traffickers during the war.

Less than a year after the U.S. withdrawal in 2021, the Taliban issued another opium ban and the market has shrunk by roughly 95% . The Taliban’s motivation is likely less about religious doctrine and more to do with self-preservation. By cutting off rival warlords from potential black-market profits, it helps to keep them in power.

Myanmar has been engaged in low-scale warfare against over 20 ethnic armed rebel organizations for decades. Just months before the Afghanistan opium ban, military leaders in Myanmar staged a coup in February 2021. That sparked a civil war between the military junta and armed ethnic groups. The war has killed over 50,000 people (including 6,000 civilians ), displaced 1.5 million , and exacerbated the long-term trend of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya minority. International observers have documented several war crimes committed by the regime and rebel forces .

Opium and methamphetamine were ubiquitous in Myanmar before the civil war, but it rapidly expanded into the top producer of heroin in the world. That was a market force reaction to the Afghan opium ban. The other reason is that both sides of the war , the military junta and several of the rebel groups, make significant profits from the illegal drugs.

(images left to right)

1 - The Arakan Army (AA), rebel group that profits from illegal drugs, capturing a junta stronghold. (image @PopularFront_)

2 - Rohingya refugees - There is an ongoing genocide being committed against this Muslim minority group in Myanmar. The Arakan Army (a Buddhist rebel group) is guilty of these offenses. (image @mabuasaker)

3 - Min Aung Hlaing, the de facto leader of Myanmar who profits from illegal drugs, among other rackets. (image Wikipedia)

4 - The United Wa State Army (UWSA) is an armed non-state actor with 30,000 soldiers that controls a region within Myanamr. The U.S. Treasury Department once labeled the UWSA as “the largest and most powerful drug trafficking organization in Southeast Asia.” (image Wa State TV)

 Europe has a murder rate of 2.19 per 100,000 .

The Netherlands provides a perfect example of how desensitized the masses are about drug-war violence. A Dutch public opinion poll found that 59% believed that their country has become a “ narco state .” This is in part because 70% of Europe’s cocaine passes through the Dutch ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam. This belief is based on some high-profile examples of drug-war violence , such as torture chambers in cargo containers.

A criminal case, the “Marengo trial,” that spanned years against one of the country’s most powerful trafficking organizations captured the public’s attention with massive media exposure. The leader of this Dutch-Moroccan gang ordered over ten murders or attempted murders , including a key witness’s brother, journalists, and lawyers.

If the Netherlands is a narco-state, it means the rest of the world is a narco-state. The drug war is certainly a contributing factor to the country’s homicide rate, but it is an overall safe country with a low level of violence. The Netherlands has a murder rate ( 0.74 per 100,000 ), which is below the European average. The Dutch people are simply acting as a healthy society that doesn’t accept/normalize the violence/corruption tied to the black market of illegal drugs.

link to data

The macro-level view of this violence on a country-by-country basis is convincing. Diving into the details at a more granular level is even more alarming. Some countries have multiple cities within the top 50 highest murder rates:

Brazil (13), Mexico (11), the U.S. (7), South Africa (6), Ecuador (5), and Colombia (3)

Yellow = Drug Production Zones

Red = City with a Global Top 50 Homicide Rate

Brazil borders the three countries that supply the entire global demand for cocaine. Roughly 40% of the world’s cocaine supply passes through Brazil. It is the primary trafficking route to Europe and Africa. It also has the second-highest consumer demand for cocaine in the world.

There are 2.3 million square miles of rainforest in the Amazon. That remote terrain leaves law enforcement authorities with an impossible task of stemming the flow of illegal drugs. The Amazon in Brazil should be one of the most peaceful regions of the world because it has the highest number of indigenous groups that have no contact with the outside world ( over 100 indigenous groups ). However, due to the isolated nature of the region, it is a haven for traffickers. Consequently, the Amazon is one of the most violent parts of the country and indigenous groups are frequently victimized by these criminals.

Brazilians need no reminder that there is an actual war on drugs. The country’s two most powerful organized crime groups, the PCC ( 40,000 members with another 60,000 contractors ) and Red Command ( 30,000 members ), broke a peace agreement in 2016. They continue to battle for control of the drug trade, among other rackets. Those criminal organizations often clash with police militia groups that are known to “ tax ” the drugs and have been linked with political assassinations .

Brazil’s military dictatorship ended in 1985. Traces of that legacy remain evident as the government has a highly militarized counternarcotics approach that factors heavily into the roughly 6,000 Brazilians who are killed by the police every year. One of Rio’s military police special forces, BOPE, still wear patches that are reminiscent of the former dictatorship’s death squads . Much like Jamaica , there is a culture of impunity for extrajudicial killings committed by the Brazilian police.

Six of the world’s most dangerous cities are Brazilian port cities that transport drugs to international markets. These are perfect examples of the principles behind the prisoners of geography. Many innocent civilians in these coastal regions are caught up in gang warfare to control these strategic territories. “More than 80% of violent crimes are directly tied to the war between drug factions over control of local markets, with considerable collateral damage,” according to the Amapá State Secretary of Justice and Public Security, José Lima Neto .

(images left to right)

1 - A firefight between police and the Red Command (image @baudorio)

2 - The BOPE, a police unit linked to many human rights violations, patrolling a favela in Rio de Janeiro. (image @BreeganDumb)

3 - The emblem of the BOPE unit. (image @BrianMteleSur)

4 - Marielle Franco, a Brazilian politician who was assassinated by a police militia group. (image Wikipedia)

Colombia has a history stained by rampant drug war violence. Both sides of a 52-year civil war profited from the black-market profits of the drug trade. The right-wing paramilitary groups fought in support of government forces that were battling against the communist guerrillas, the FARC and the ELN. That war resulted in over 450,000 murders of which roughly four out of five victims were civilians , over 121,000 people disappeared , and 7.7 million Colombians became refugees in their own country .

The Civil War officially ended in 2016 when the FARC agreed to a peace deal, but unresolved factors remain in place and the conflict continues today. The vast majority of FARC rebels ( 13,185 ) turned in their weapons and abided by the agreement, but the government failed to provide adequate protection. Over 400 former FARC rebels who signed the 2016 peace agreement have been killed, often by their former comrades , “FARC dissidents.”

Roughly 1,500 FARC dissidents refused the peace agreement from the beginning and remained actively involved in drug trafficking and warfare. Colombia’s other significant communist guerilla group, the ELN, never agreed to the 2016 deal and remains at war with the government. Its 6,000 fighters finance its operations primarily through the drug trade.

These groups, among others, fight to control the various large swaths of Colombia’s rural landscape that have little to no government presence where cocaine cultivation flourishes. It’s a tremendous challenge for security officials to stabilize these regions and eradicate the drugs. These areas are in remote treacherous terrain with no infrastructure connecting to larger cities.

As a tactic of war, the armed groups booby-trap their territory with improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and landmines. Last year, the Colombian government reported 998 incidents with landmines . This guerrilla warfare tactic creates invisible prison walls that intimidate the local population from leaving the area. It also deters rival criminal groups or government forces from entering their territory. In addition, the landmines eliminate the coca growers’ options to switch to a legal crop. Roughly 58,000 Colombians essentially live as hostages under the control of these militant groups in these ungoverned areas with no ability to leave.

An improvised explosive device (IED) used by the communist terrorist group, the ELN (image @war_noir)

The most powerful drug trafficking organization in Colombia is a neo-paramilitary group, the Gaitanistas Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AGC), with 8,000 fighters . The AGC is a successor of the right-wing paramilitary group, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. The AGC functions much like its terrorist predecessor. It frequently posts public death threats for violating their curfews, “social cleansing” against the LBGTB community, and naming leftist political leaders and community organizers who are “military targets.” They commit these murders with impunity. Colombia is one of the most dangerous places in the world for human rights/liberal political activists as 173 were murdered last year.

(images left to right)

1 - Colombia's most powerful drug trafficking organization, the Gaitanistas Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AGC) (image @AnalisisUrbano)

2 - A pamphlet circulated by the Gaitanistas Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AGC) threatening human rights organizations that it views a military targets. (image @pbiusa)

3 - Two captured Colombian soldiers held hostage by the FARC dissident group, Estado Mayor Central @LatamObscuro

4 The communist terrorist group, the ELN (image @jhonjacome)

537,000 Colombians can’t move freely within their area due to the armed conflict

(Norwegian Refugee Council)

A battle occurred a month ago in the northeast city of Catatumbo, an area known for cocaine production. The ELN attacked a FARC dissident group known as Estado Mayor Centro (EMC). Over 80 people were killed . The violence in the region is so intense that 46,000 people have been displaced in recent weeks.

In the last few years, multiple FARC dissident groups crossed the border into Ecuador to vie for power and heavily contributed to the massive spike in violence.

link to data

 Ecuador was one of the safest countries in this region with a murder rate of just 5 per 100,000 in 2017. Now it’s one of the most dangerous countries in the world. Trafficking Colombian cocaine through Ecuador has been a favored route for decades, in part, because Guayaquil has one of the busiest ports in South America.

There wasn’t much inter-cartel violence for many years because Los Choneros (12,000 members) held a near monopoly over the country’s drug supply routes. However, Colombian FARC dissidents began muscling in on Ecuadorian territory, and other foreign groups, such as the Albanian Mafia and the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel, entered the fray. They are all vying for power against Los Choneros and Ecuador’s second most powerful crime organization, Los Lobos (8,000 members).

There have been numerous high-profile acts of drug-war violence. Fernando Villavicencio was one of Ecuador’s most respected investigative journalists who fearlessly published reports detailing corruption and drug trafficking . He ran as a presidential candidate but was murdered eleven days before the 2023 election by six Colombian hitmen .

Last January, the leader of Los Choneros, Adolfo Macías Villamar aka “Fito,” escaped from prison, which led to a wave of prison riots, bombings, and kidnappings . Two days later, members of a gang affiliated with Los Choneros stormed a live news broadcast in Guayaquil with guns, grenades, and dynamite . They fired their weapons and temporarily held the broadcasters hostage.

A gang affiliated with Los Choneros stormed a TV news station in Guayaquil and held the broadcasters live on air. (image @insightfactor)

In response, Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa issued a state of emergency that designated 22 crime groups as terrorist organizations . However, that was one in a string of multiple declarations allowing the military to participate in law enforcement operations. Unfortunately, this isn’t an issue that simply more arrests can fix. The violence in Ecuador’s prisons is so extreme that a study revealed that if Ecuador's prison system were a city, it would be the second most violent city in the country.

Here is a look at the concentrations of violence north of the equator:

Yellow = Drug Production Zone

Red = City with a Global Top 50 Homicide Rate

95% of the cocaine entering the U.S. comes through Mexico or its territorial waters

UNODC

Mexico has been plagued by rampant cartel violence for decades, but December 2006 marks a tragic pivot point in history. Then-president Felipe Calderón launched the “kingpin strategy,” a militarized approach targeting the leaders of these organizations. That led to the death or capture of 25 of 37 cartel leaders . His successor’s administration, Enrique Peña Nieto, created a list of 122 top targets in which 110 cartel leaders were killed or captured.

The U.S. has provided over $3 billion in counternarcotics assistance, primarily military aid, via the Mérida Initiative since 2007, but Mexico is not any safer. The kingpin strategy caused mass violence as the largest groups splintered into several new rival organizations, which have diversified into multiple rackets beyond drug trafficking. Consequently, the murder rate has nearly tripled since 2006.

The homicide figures are understated because it’s impossible to properly document in Mexico. So many of the victims can’t be found. It’s a country in which over 3,000 unmarked graves have been discovered since 2006. Over 114,000 people have been forcibly disappeared in Mexico since 2006. That number was 267 in 2006.

The kingpin strategy is unpopular in Mexico for obvious reasons and Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) was elected in 2018 with the campaign promise to end it. AMLO’s critics had a field day in 2019 when Mexico’s security forces needed to retreat after an attempted capture of Ovidio Guzmán, the son of “El Chapo” Guzman. This was a perfect illustration of the force capability of these organizations.

A team of Mexican police/military briefly detained Ovidio Guzmán in Culiacán. In response, Sinaloa Cartel gunmen burned cars, set up blockades in the road, and exchanged gunfire with government forces for hours. They captured eight police officers and held them hostage. The government subsequently agreed to release Guzmán to reduce the collateral damage. AMLO defended that controversial decision. He said , “The capture of a criminal cannot be worth more than the lives of people.”

However, AMLO’s soft political rhetoric is far different from the reality on the ground. He created a new anti-drug task force that is headed by the Mexican Army . Now, over 281,000 members of the Mexican military are deployed domestically for law enforcement duties, more than any time in Mexico’s history.

That’s a dangerous precedent because Mexico’s military has a horrible human rights record. Its armed forces have a kill-to-wounded rate that is far above normal combat statistics. In other words, it’s clear that the military operates as a death squad and frequently kills people who pose no immediate threat. That’s particularly troubling as some autocratic leaders have used the war on drugs as a pretext to commit extrajudicial murders against political dissidents en masse as has happened in the Philippines , Bangladesh , and Thailand .

The drug war has resulted in a broken justice system in which 90% of crimes go unreported and 95% of reported crimes go unsolved. This type of systemic damage from the war on drugs is felt throughout Latin America , where only 20% of murders committed result in a conviction, compared to the global rate of 43%.

The criminals operate with impunity and the violence is targeted at many people outside of the criminal underworld. Mexico is the second deadliest country for journalists in the world (behind Iraq and tied with the Philippines) as 147 journalists have been killed there since 1998. Likewise, there were 330 violent attacks against political figures in the three months before last year’s election with a high percentage committed by organized crime groups.

The United States has a murder rate ( 5.7 per 100,000 ) that is in line with the global average ( 5.8 per 100,000 ). However, the homicide rate is significantly higher than in other economically-developed nations .

There’s a xenophobic tendency for Americans to think of the drug war as something that is limited to Tijuana, Juarez, and Medellín. However, the drug war is highly visible throughout this country even though there isn’t much of an American media narrative. America has seven of the most murderous cities in the world. The violence is so severe that the Mayor of Memphis coordinated a temporary gang truce last year.

This violence is usually concentrated in low-income areas with highly visible open-air drug markets. For example, 40% of the gunfire in Washington D.C. takes place within 2% of the city blocks . In other words, the war on drugs is out of sight and out of mind for most Americans because the violence doesn’t hit close to home.

There’s a clear link between high murder rates and drug trafficking. In fact, the black market for illegal drugs is the top catalyst behind murders in America's most dangerous cities. Here are a few estimates by police officials of how much of their city's murder rate is tied to illegal drugs:

Chicago - 80% of the city’s gun crime is directly related to the drug war.

New Orleans - 75% of homicides linked to street gangs involved in drug distribution.

St. Louis - 70% of homicides linked to drug trafficking organizations.

Detroit - 65–70% of homicides have a narcotics catalyst

Cleveland - 60% of homicides are drug-related

Baltimore - 40-60% of homicides are drug-related

One study by researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology did a review of all murders committed in Rochester, which has a historically high murder rate , over two years. It found that:

23.5% of murders involved drug-related robberies
11.1% of murders involved drug transactions gone badly or battles for turf

This study serves as a solid baseline. Based on Rochester’s data and those other cities’ estimates, it would be highly conservative to estimate that 20% of the murders in the world’s 50 most dangerous cities (32,558 murders) were tied to the drug war.

A conservative estimate of 6,511 people were killed in the drug war in the world’s 50 most dangerous cities in 2023

How does that level of violence from the drug war compare to other wars?

More people were killed in one year of the drug war in the 50 most dangerous cities than all U.S. troops killed in the entire Afghanistan War or Iraq War.

U.S. media often frames issues about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in terms of American troops. There were 2,324 U.S. troops killed over the course of 20 years in Afghanistan and 4,598 American soldiers were killed in 15 years in Iraq (2003-2011 and 2014-2021), according to the Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs at Brown University.

American public sentiment about the drug war shares some similarities with war in general. The draft was abolished in 1973 and with a volunteer army, less than 1% of Americans are active military. That means that when these soldiers return home in body bags, it doesn’t hit home for 99% of Americans.

U.S. media generally reports statistics that focus on American soldiers’ casualties, as opposed to total casualties, because it helps to whitewash U.S. foreign policy. For instance, so much of the post-9/11 war effort has been privatized. More U.S. contractors were killed in Afghanistan (3,917) and Iraq (3,650) than U.S. soldiers.

By focusing on U.S. soldiers’ deaths, it nullifies how many innocent civilians were killed in these wars. A combined number of 46,839 civilians, journalists, and humanitarian workers were killed in Afghanistan. Estimates for those same categories of innocent victims in Iraq range from 186,176 to 209,309.

A total of 176,000 people were killed in the Afghanistan War

(an average of 8,800 per year)

Costs of War Project

A total of 275,000 to 306,000 people were killed in the Iraq War

(an average of 20,400 per year)

Costs of War Project

One of the challenges with this type of study exploring drug-war violence is gathering reliable data. Estimates for death tolls range widely when reviewing different modern wars. The drug war is no different. Several news and non-profit organizations in Mexico attempt to gauge the scale of drug-war violence in their country. It’s a difficult task for a few reasons.

There are over 100,000 people who have been disappeared. Furthermore, many drug cartels have diversified into multiple illicit revenue streams, such as oil theft. The criminal groups have so many corrupt military, police, and political figures on the payroll that it blurs the lines for how to categorize the motivation for murders. Those same complications are present in other countries as well.

20,000 of Mexico’s 31,000 murders in 2023 were linked to organized crime

Visions of Humanity’s “Peace Index”

It’s difficult to provide credible statistics related to specifically drug trafficking murders, but here are a few high-profile studies:

70% of homicides in Colombia are related to drug trafficking (based on 20 years of data)

Colombia’s Attorney General's office

30% of murders in Brazil are linked to drug trafficking

UNODC

80% of Ecuador’s murders tied to cocaine distribution/exportation

Ecuadorian National Police ( PNE )

10.7% of murders in Trinidad and Tobago are related to drug activity

Trinidad and Tobago Police Service ( TTPS )

Based on those estimates, it’s fair to approximate that there were:

9,460 drug-war murders in Colombia in 2023

12,139 drug-war murders in Brazil in 2023

6406 drug-war murders in Ecuador in 2023

66 drug-war murders in Trinidad and Tobago in 2023

(Combined total of 28,071 in Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Trinidad)

Based on that data:

The drug war is deadlier on an annual basis, in these four countries alone, than the Afghanistan War and Iraq War.

The drug war’s death toll is much higher as it occurs throughout the world. According to the UNODC , 22% of homicides worldwide were gang/organized crime-related in 2023. There are usually around 400,000 to 450,000 homicides globally every year and the drug war is a significant factor. If using a more conservative estimate than earlier that 15% of murders are drug-war related, then this is a reasonable estimate:

The drug war results in roughly 60,000 to 67,500 murders per year.

There were 56 conflicts worldwide in 2024 resulting in 162,000 conflict related deaths, according to the Global Peace Index .

That means that the drug war is one of the deadliest modern wars.

Armed with this knowledge, there are only two paths forward. One path is ending the drug war with a combination of decriminalization/legalization, but that approach is highly stigmatized. The other path is doubling down on the failed status quo of a strong criminalized/militarized counternarcotics approach.

Ending the drug war would require a global coalition of countries. There is no panacea in which all the bloodshed could be eliminated because many drug trafficking organizations are diversified organized crime syndicates. However, drugs represent the most lucrative form of illicit crime, and diminishing the black market would remove the underworld’s best recruiting tool.

There is some political support for ending the war on drugs but not much momentum. Former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos called for ending the war on drugs during his 2016 acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize. Likewise, the current President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, has offered even more vocal support for ending the war on drugs .

Finding reliable polling data in the U.S. is a challenge. A 2021 poll by the Drug Policy Alliance and the ACLU found that 65% of American voters support ending the war on drugs and 83% believe that the war on drugs has failed.

Conversely, social conservatives can point to the miraculous results of the “Iron Fist” policy of the autocratic leader of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele. He declared a state of emergency in March 2022 in response to rampant gang violence. His country has historically had one of the highest murder rates in the world. It now has one of the lowest rates in the region (1.9 per 100,000).

Here are the problems with that approach. The government suspended the constitution and arrested over 80,000 suspected gang members with no regard for due process. There were rampant human rights abuses , widespread use of torture , and mass trials of groups as large as 900 people . Bukele has even admitted that 8,000 innocent people were arrested and eventually released. Do you want to expand this model globally and turn the entire world into a dystopian prison state?

Secondly, the “Iron Fist” approach isn’t even replicable worldwide from a law enforcement perspective. El Salvador is small in size (similar to New Jersey) and in population (over 6 million). Salvadoran authorities don’t face the same logistical challenges as Colombian or Brazilian counternarcotics officials. The members of El Salvador’s two most powerful gangs, MS-13 and the 18 ^th Street Gang, are easily identifiable for law enforcement with unmistakable tattoos. Also, drug trafficking is a secondary revenue stream for Salvadoran gangs as they profit primarily from extortion .

MS-13 members (image FBI)

The Trump administration is taking small steps in this direction by designating eight drug trafficking organizations in Latin America as terrorist groups , thus enabling more military resources. As demonstrated throughout this study, that type of designation would be justified, but history has shown that militant counternarcotics tactics are counterproductive.

If American military force, such as armed drone attacks and U.S. troop deployment, is used against foreign drug trafficking organizations, we will not be viewed as liberators. We will be viewed as an invading force and there will inevitably be many innocent civilian casualties, just like the war on terror. Furthermore, the death or capture of top cartel figures is not a stabilizing force. It creates a power vacuum and leads to more violence because it does nothing to reduce the overall demand for illegal drugs.

America has a notable historical precedent that it could learn from, the prohibition of alcohol. It was a failed social experiment. The murder rate dropped in the years after prohibition ended. As a sign of how desensitized Americans have become to drug war violence, consider how differently Americans reacted to the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929. Members of Al Capone’s “Outfit” dressed up as police officers and killed seven members of their rival, Bugs Moran’s gang. That moment in history grabbed the country’s attention and was one of the strongest political catalysts for ending the prohibition of alcohol.

Today, if seven people get killed in a drug-related crime, it often doesn’t even make the national news. And there’s no chance that it will spark a national debate about changing drug policy.

That type of debate will never happen until everyone recognizes that the war on drugs is an actual war. All wars eventually end, but there is no end in sight for the drug war.

America Taking Advantage of a Color Revolution in Bangladesh

Sun, 05 Jan 2025 23:13:24 GMT

D.C. Pushed for Regime Change to "Promote Democracy" as a Pretext to Improve America's Geopolitical Interests

Last August, the military stood by as thousands of protestors stormed the palace of Bangladesh’s Prime Minster, Sheikh Hasina. She fled on a military helicopter to India. This coup removed an authoritarian ally of India who had been in power since 2009 and installed an interim government led by US-friendly technocrats. This change in leadership has all the markings of a U.S.-supported “color revolution” and the American government has advanced its geopolitical position in the region.

What is a Color Revolution?

The American government has successfully orchestrated multiple successful revolutions/coups by funding foreign political opposition groups under the pretext of “promoting democracy.” Some examples are the 2003 “ Rose Revolution ” in Georgia, the 2004 “ Orange Revolution ” in Ukraine, and the 2005 “ Tulip Revolution ” in Kyrgyzstan.

Here’s how it works. The U.S. State Department funds “civil society” organizations that function as the Trojan horse of foreign policy, most notably the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Officially, “ NED is an independent, nonprofit foundation” that “makes more than 2,000 grants to support the projects of nongovernmental groups abroad who are working for democratic goals in more than 100 countries.”

Unofficially, NED is a CIA cutout group. By outsourcing much of the regime-change operations to non-government organizations (NGOs), it eliminates transparency and provides plausible deniability for the government. In fact, the founder of NED, Allen Weinstein, once told The Washington Post , “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” In a 1995 interview, the high-profile CIA whistleblower Philip Agee said, "Nowadays, instead of having just the CIA going around behind the scenes and trying to manipulate the process secretly by inserting money here and instructions there and so forth, they have now a sidekick, which is this National Endowment for Democracy."

NED, which received $315 million in U.S. government funding in 2024, has a long history of fomenting rebellion. The first of many successful post-Cold War color revolutions was the “Bulldozer revolution” in Serbia in 2000. That year the U.S. government paid $31 million to opposition groups in Serbia. That culminated in half a million protestors storming the streets of Belgrade demanding the resignation of Slobodan Milošević, even setting parliament on fire.

The leader of the opposition movement, Srdja Popovic, was a university student who founded, Otpor (“Resistance”). Otpor followed a model written by the late Harvard political scientist, Gene Sharp, who was the foremost expert on nonviolent revolutions. His books have been translated into 30 languages and spread around the world. Otpor, and all the subsequent color revolutions, used many of Sharp’s 198 “ Methods of Nonviolent Action .” However, these revolutions weren’t entirely grassroots movements. There’s been significant American involvement. For instance, the U.S. government provided $65 million and $26.5 million to opposition groups in the 2004 “Orange Revolution” and “Tulip Revolution.”

Otpor eventually disbanded as an organization, but Srdja Popovic created another group in 2003, the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS), which is actively training revolutionaries worldwide, which are often youth and student organizations. Popovic taught some of the early leaders of the Arab Spring protests in Egypt and Tunisia. There’s a formula and even the imagery shares similarities.

Color Revolutions images from different countries (Press and Quick Reaction Unit)

The Same U.S.-Led, Regime-Change Playbook in Bangladesh

One month after the Bangladesh coup, The Grayzone published a report of leaked documents from the U.S. government-funded International Republican Institute (IRI), one of the four core partners of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The report removes the veneer that IRI strictly operates to “promote democracy.” Instead, it reads more like a foreign intelligence operation. The IRI had developed 304 “key informants” and “identified over 170 democratic activists who would cooperate with IRI to destabilize Bangladesh’s politics.”

Here's some background on the IRI. Even though it is a “non-governmental organization,” its board of directors is filled with former and current congressional interventionists and war hawks, including Lyndsey Graham and Marco Rubio. John McCain was the chairman of IRI from 1993 until he died in 2018. The International Republican Institute (IRI) notably supported the military coup in Haiti in 2004 that overthrew the liberal democratically elected leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. McCain infamously encouraged thousands of protestors in Kyiv in 2013. A few months later, the U.S.-supported “Maidan Revolution” ousted the corrupt but democratically-elected Ukrainian leader, Viktor Yanukovych, who favored trade deals with Russia over the EU.

A U.S. Military Base in Bangladesh?

Sheikh Hasina told the Daily Star Bangladesh last May (before the coup) that she was offered a hassle-free election in January 2024 if she “allowed a certain country to build an air base in Bangladesh.” She didn’t specify the U.S. but mentioned that the “offer came from a white man.”

Just days after the coup, members of Hasina’s Awami League circulated an unconfirmed letter reportedly written by Hasina asserting that the proposition came from the U.S. seeking, in particular, St. Martin’s Island.

Hasina presumably did receive pressure from America as the U.S. State Department has repeatedly denied rumors of plans for a military base built on St. Martin’s Island. U.S. military control of that tiny island (three square kilometers) in the Bay of Bengal would represent a major geopolitical win for America in its growing rivalry with China. It would provide easy access to the Strait of Malacca, which is a critical chokepoint, where roughly 80% of China’s oil travels.

(Google Earth)

A more robust military partnership was the top priority for then-Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, during her visit to Bangladesh in 2022. After all, Bangladesh is one of the top countries in the world providing soldiers for UN peacekeeping operations . However, Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister didn’t fall in line and publicly rebuked Nuland’s maneuvers to support Ukraine’s war efforts.

Nuland’s name is synonymous with U.S. hegemony. In the weeks leading up to the 2014 Maidan Revolution in Ukraine, she made the patronizing gesture of taking a photo op while handing out bread to the protestors. More to the point, the audio from one of her phone calls with then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt was leaked to YouTube a few weeks later. In that conversation, Nuland and Pyatt discussed which Ukrainian opposition leader should take power before the

Nuland said, “I don’t think (opposition leader, Vitali Klitschko) should go into the government. I don’t think it’s necessary, I don’t think it’s a good idea.” Pyatt replied, “Just let him stay out and do his political homework and stuff.” They both agreed on Arseniy Yatsenyuk who installed as Prime Minister after the revolution that took place two weeks later. U.S. media spun the story by focusing on the curse words, rather than highlighting the real scandal in which U.S. officials were openly choosing Ukraine’s leadership while the U.S. tax dollars subsidized “restoring democracy.”

America’s Deserved but Hypocritical Criticism of Sheikh Hasina

Bangladesh’s entire history has been plagued by corruption and political violence. Hasina’s reign was no different as she had a horrible human rights record. Bangladesh’s paramilitary force, Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), acts as an unofficial death squad. A 2009 Human Rights Watch report linked the RAB to the murders of at least 350 people in custody, and the alleged torture of hundreds more. Another report by Amnesty International in 2019 connected the RAB to 466 victims of state-sponsored extrajudicial killings under the guise of the “ war on drugs .”

The U.S. government was certainly justified when it sanctioned that group in 2021. However, it should be mentioned that U.S. and U.K. intelligence trained the RAB. That relationship didn’t end until 2018 after years of evidence of widespread human rights abuses.

That terrible human rights record has been on full display over the past two years as there have been tens of thousands of protestors demanding Hasina’s resignation. The last cause célèbre was a decision in June by the Supreme Court reinstating a quota system that dedicated 30% of government jobs to children of independence war veterans. It was viewed as a corrupt program that benefited supporters of Hasina’s Awami League party. There was violence on both sides, but there was an alarming disproportionate use of force by government forces, including the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB). There were over 600 deaths and thousands injured.

U.S. Ally Installed

The student leaders of the Bangladesh revolution appointed Muhammad Yunus as the leader of the interim government. Yunus is the archetype of who D.C. wants in power. He’s a financier who favors Western-style economics with ties to the IMF and World Bank and attends the World Economic Forum in Davos. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009, and a Congressional Gold Medal in 2010.

Muhammad Yunus receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom (YouTube)

Yunus is well-known among the Washington elite. As far back as 2006, Bangladesh officials noted that the U.S. didn’t want either candidate to win the upcoming election and was “actively supporting 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus,” according to reports released by WikiLeaks. He wasn’t even a candidate, but he was considering establishing a reform party and also met with Indian officials in hopes of gaining support. However, that political party never came to fruition.

That political ambition seemingly led to retaliation from Sheikh Hasina. Yunus was pressured to resign from his banking position and he sought help from then-Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. Two of Yunus’s non-profit organizations donated over $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation and he became one of the highest profile examples from her “ pay-to-play ” scandal. Over half of Clinton’s official visitors while she led the State Department had donated to the Clinton Foundation. Clinton was unable to apply enough pressure to prevent Yunus from losing his banking role. However, the U.S. State Department subsequently provided 18 grants for $13 million to organizations led by Yunus.

Yunus later faced what appears to have been a politically-motivated prosecution, which upset the D.C. establishment. Obama, along with 170 global leaders, signed a letter in 2023 directed to Sheikh Hasina asking her to end the “continuous judicial harassment” against Muhammad Yunus. He faced over 150 charges but was only convicted of one offense, a labor violation. Yunus was facing six months in prison, but he won an appeal two days after the coup.

Yunus’s post-coup reception from the U.S. government couldn’t have been warmer. One month after the coup, USAID signed an agreement in September to provide over $200 million to the Bangladesh interim government. Biden also expressed the full support of this unelected leader in a literal embrace during a White House visit.

Two days later, Yunus met his with “ friend of over 40 years ,” former President Clinton, and spoke onstage at the annual Clinton Global Initiative event in New York City.

Muhammad Yunus at 2024 Clinton Global Initiative (YouTube)

Have Human Rights and Democracy Been Restored?

The Hindu minority (roughly 8% of the population) didn’t have much representation under Sheikh Hasina, but her Awami League party was the closest thing to an ally. In turn, discrimination and violence against Hindus increased substantially. A Bangladesh advocacy group asserted that 49 Hindu teachers were forced to resign in the first month. In just three weeks after the coup, there were an estimated 2,010 violent attacks . Sixty-nine Hindu temples were vandalized, looted, and set on fire. Another 157 families had their homes destroyed in the same manner.

As for promoting democracy, there seems to be no real progress. Last month, the U.S. State Department applauded Yunus’s announcement that elections would take place in late 2025 or early 2026. However, repression against free speech remains, but it’s now directed at the once-ruling party, Awami League. The Press Secretary for the interim government announced that the Awami League was banned from holding protests and labeled their party as “fascist.” Furthermore, the Bangladesh tribunal banned any form of dissemination of a post-coup speech from India made by Sheikh Hasina in which she criticized Yunus. This was labeled as “ hate speech .”

Shift Towards American Energy Policy

Peter D. Haas publicly resigned last June from his post as the U.S. Ambassador to Bangladesh as a form of protest insisting that U.S. foreign policy wasn’t taking strong enough action against Hasina. His actions in this role would be best described as adversarial, not diplomatic. He frequently met with opposition leaders and gave Hasina much-deserved criticism for anti-democratic practices.

Muhammad Yunus (left) Nurjahan Begum (center) and Peter Haas (right) LinkedIn - Hosting a dinner together in March, 2024

The 2024 election was boycotted by the main opposition party as there was a history of voter fraud and state-sanctioned political violence. Afterward, Haas wrote an op-ed in which he vowed that “(w)e will continue to support the brave members of civil society and human rights defenders,” which is a not-so-subtle nod to the NED-funded groups in Bangladesh.

Yet, the public criticisms from U.S. officials about Bangladesh’s anti-democratic practices have stopped. One month after the coup, Haas began working for Texas-based Excelerate Energy which has a long history in Bangladesh. Overall, the energy policy in Bangladesh has rapidly changed in a short period of time and it tilts in America’s direction.

The interim government began reviewing energy deals that were signed by Sheikh Hasina, particularly an agreement signed with the Adani Group. Gautam Adani is one of the richest men in India and is closely tied to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Adani is in the crosshairs of the U.S. government and faces charges by the DOJ for an alleged $250 million bribery scheme .

In a rapid fashion, Bangladesh’s new leadership has shifted away from India’s energy sources. Construction of the India-Bangladesh Friendship Pipeline (IBFP) began in 2018 at a cost of $44 million. The project was completed in 2023 and Bangladesh imported 42,000 tons of diesel worth $34 million from India. However, India has suspended the construction of an extension after the coup.

India's H Energy, Russia's Gazprom, China's Sinopec, and Uzbekistan's Ariel had deals that were nearly finalized under the prior leadership, but the interim government canceled all those agreements. Excelerate Energy, on the other hand, kept two of its three deals .

Peter Haas (left) representing Excelerate Energy in September 2024 meeting with Interim Government leader Muhammad Yunus (center right)

To sum up, the U.S. government can claim that it takes a principled stand against human rights violations and anti-democratic practices, but it is now looking the other way because the coup that it helped orchestrate benefits its strategic interests.

Ex-Paraguay prez finds himself on wrong side of US power

Wed, 04 Sep 2024 03:14:28 GMT

As a former leader, he is no longer useful to Washington, which can now act virtuous and punitive with sanctions

In early August, the U.S. Treasury quietly sanctioned the tobacco company of Paraguay’s former president, Horacio Cartes.

Before entering office, Cartes had extensive links to organized crime and took authoritarian actions while in power. However, Cartes faced no public pressure from the American government until long after leaving office in 2018. America’s leadership looked the other way for so long because Cartes fulfilled its mutual interests.

Accused financier of Moise assassination apparently advised by US intelligence

Wed, 04 Sep 2024 03:07:41 GMT

Court Documents Show that the Defendants Had Contact with the US Government Before the Assassination

Two plotters of the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse were exposed as DEA informants. Another was unmasked as an FBI informant. Now, newly-released court documents provide the most startling evidence yet linking the conspirators with the US government.

America's Long History of Supporting Cuban Exile Terrorists

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 03:07:56 GMT

Miami was the epicenter of Cuban American terrorists who were once trained/armed by the CIA for anti-Castro operations

The Biden administration removed Cuba from the U.S. State Department’s State Sponsor of Terrorism list in May. Cuba’s government has a horrible human rights record, and no real democracy, among other issues, but it’s not a haven for terrorism.

It needs to be noted that there is a political element to the State Sponsor of Terrorism list as Afghanistan, which is led by the Taliban, is not on the list. Here’s some background. Cuba was added to the list in the lame-duck era of the Trump administration and the justifications were flimsy.

The U.S. State Department pointed to Cuba’s refusal to extradite leaders of the communist terrorist organization, National Liberation Army (ELN), to Colombian authorities. However, this was intellectually dishonest. Cuba hosted negotiations between Colombia and the rebel group. It was a good-faith attempt at a peace deal. The ELN signed a temporary ceasefire in 2023.

The State Department’s poster child “terrorist,” was never charged with any terrorism crime. Her name is Joanne Chesimard, but she is better known as Assata Shakur. She can best be described as a political prisoner, not a terrorist.

Assata Shakur - FBI Most Wanted Terrorist

Shakur was a former member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army (BLA) when the FBI illegally persecuted black activists with its infamous program, COINTELPRO. She was arrested several times for various charges without convictions. That changed in 1973 when she was convicted in a highly contentious murder case.

Shakur, and two other BLA members, were pulled over by New Jersey State Troopers, supposedly for a broken taillight. The police searched the driver, Sundiata Acoli, and found a gun in his pocket. Both men grappled for the weapon which led to a shootout that led to bullet wounds for everyone on the scene and the deaths of New Jersey Trooper, Werner Forester, and Assata Shakur’s companion, Zayd Shakur (rapper Tupac Shakur’s father).

Werner Forester was shot with two bullets from Acoli’s gun and two bullets from his gun. The prosecution contended that Assata Shakur murdered Forester execution-style with his weapon at point-blank range. However, forensic evidence proved that she didn’t shoot a gun. Her fingerprints weren’t on the weapon, nor was any gunpowder residue on her hands. The evidence shows that she was shot in the back while her hands were in the air .

Despite the evidence, an all-white jury convicted her on two counts of murder (including her fellow BLA member, Zayd Shakur ) and six counts of assault. That was in large part due to the heavy media coverage of her arrest and her trial’s venue being moved to a different jurisdiction where 80% of residents believed that she was guilty. She was sentenced to 33 years in prison.

Shakur later escaped prison and eventually fled to Cuba where she was granted political asylum. That’s where she remains today. In a symbolic move, the FBI added Assata Shakur to the Most Wanted Terrorists list on the 40 ^th anniversary of these murders. Shakur was the first female on the list. She remains on the list today with a $1 million reward; whereas Sundiata Acoli was released on parole in 2022.

It must be noted that Cuba’s government is currently harboring a few fugitives of terrorism-related crimes and it refuses to extradite them to the U.S. But there’s much more context needed to evaluate this issue.

There should be a high bar for labeling a country as a state-sponsor of terrorism. For America to give another country this label, it should have a moral high ground to stand on. And that’s not the case. America is exponentially more guilty of this crime.

For decades, several Cuban-American exiles, who were trained/financed by the CIA, committed hundreds, possibly thousands, of terrorist acts against the Cuban government, Cuban civilians/infrastructure, the civilians/infrastructure of countries that have relations with Cuba, and Cuban-Americans who simply didn’t agree with their hardline stance against Castro.

Cuba has faced an unfathomable level of terrorism over the decades. It’s difficult to track the exact scale, but according to the government of Cuba, terrorism against its citizens has resulted in 3,478 deaths and 2,099 disabled persons. The U.S. government has protected so many of these terrorists from prosecution/incarceration. You could argue that America belongs on its own list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Terrorists Live Freely on U.S. Soil

The majority of Americans oppose our country’s hardline policies against the Cuban government. But keep in mind, Florida is a swing state and politicians from both major parties have routinely placated a large voting bloc of Cuban-Americans who want maximum pressure applied to the island. Albeit, there’s been a shift as the younger generation of Cuban Americans have more moderate goals.

In 2017, then-President Trump made an appearance in the Little Havana section of Miami to announce a reversal of some of Obama’s steps toward relations with Cuba. (Cuba was removed from the state sponsor of terrorism list in 2015.) Trump made this announcement at the Manuel Artime Theater in Miami. The city of Miami ironically gave that name to the theatre in 1982, the same year the State Department first designated Cuba as a state sponsor of terror.

The Cuban-American exile leader in Miami, Manuel Artime, was a long-time CIA asset who supported the Contras and helped finance the Watergate burglars' defense fund . Artime led Brigade 2506 in its infamous attack at the Bay of Pigs. Castro released the Bay of Pigs captives in 1962 in exchange for $53 million in economic aid. Upon return to the U.S., Artime and many other Bay of Pigs veterans promptly returned to continue committing acts of sabotage and terrorism against Cuba.

Manuel Artime - Wikimedia Commons

CIA operatives began planning assassination attempts within the first year, 1959, of Castro’s revolutionary government. President Eisenhower formally authorized the CIA’s program in March 1960, signing “A PROGRAM OF COVERT ACTION AGAINST THE CASTRO REGIME.” These attempts began with a plot to poison Castro with his favorite brand of cigar.

Having a common enemy can make strange bedfellows. The CIA partnered in assassination plots with multiple members of the mafia who were motivated because Castro had shut down Cuba’s casinos and ruined their cash cows.

This anti-Castro aggression increased under JFK. The CIA established a covert station, JM/WAVE, on the University of Miami campus. The U.S. government was so dedicated to overthrowing Castro that up to 400 CIA agents worked there making it the second largest station in the world, behind only Langley. A few thousand Cuban exiles were financed/trained through hundreds of South Florida front companies.

JM Wave - Wikimedia Commons

You can see just how far the mission creep expanded by examining “ Operation Northwoods . ” It was a proposal sent to the Secretary of Defense for different ways to provoke Cuba and justify a U.S. military invasion. Operation Northwoods included suggestions to commit acts of terrorism on American soil and blame it on Castro. The plan wasn’t accepted, but the fact that such outrageous tactics were considerable is eye-opening.

Numerous declassified documents illustrate the true nature of America’s extreme support of radical Cuban exiles. In March 1964, Desmond Fitzgerald, chief of the Western Hemisphere of the CIA, contacted the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs. Fitzgerald wrote , “The sabotage raids are conducted by Cuban exile groups held and trained in Florida and entirely subject to our planning and control.” He added that “our only real leverage on them is through our financial support but withdrawal of this support would probably be fatal to their operations in time.” In other words, these violent Cuban exile groups would likely cease to exist without U.S. government support.

Two months later, Manuel Artime’s group, the Revolutionary Recovery Movement (MIRR), attacked a sugar mill in Cuba destroying 70 tons of sugar. That created $3 million worth of economic damage.

The severity of Artime’s attacks escalated quickly and his targets shifted from infrastructure to civilians. In September 1964, his group overwhelmed a Spanish freighter, Sierra Aranzazu, with gunfire. The ship was carrying food to Cuba. They murdered three people and wounded eight others. This was not an act of “sabotage” as the extremist community labels these attacks; it was terrorism.

Afterward, the U.S. State Department helped to cover up the crime. Records show that Secretary of State, David Dean Rusk “assured the Spanish Ambassador that the United States would assist in the investigation of the incident.” Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department “generally agreed that the U.S. should not lend weight to the case against Artime and the findings should remain ‘as indeterminate as is plausible.’” That means that the American government helped cover up the crime, which is the definition of state-sponsored terrorism.

Freedom Fighters or Terrorists

Fidel Castro and Che Guevara visited New York a few months later for a meeting at the United Nations. While Guevara spoke at the podium, an explosion shook the building. A group of Cuban exiles had misfired a bazooka from across the East River.

These operatives from the “Cuban Nationalist Movement” terrorist organization were tied to U.S. intelligence . While awaiting trial, their attorney compared their violence to that of “Sinn Fein or Haganah without which we wouldn't have two states in being — Israel and (Ireland).”

That statement dives directly into the essence of what mars this discussion. There’s often a dishonest game of semantics with this subject. One person’s “freedom fighter” is another person’s “terrorist.” There needs to be a line drawn that labels terrorism for what it is and doesn’t hide behind the freedom fighter label.

The three members of the Cuban Nationalist Movement had their charges dropped due to a legal technicality because the NYPD didn’t allow them to have an attorney present during questioning. Two of those perpetrators, Ignacio Novo and Guillermo Novo, would go on to commit many other acts of terrorism.

The Cuban Nationalist Movement’s leader, Felipe Rivero, publicly took credit for multiple acts of terror, including a bazooka attack at the Cuban embassy in Ottawa, Canada. He said , “The Ottawa bazooka blast marks a new beginning for our movement.”

Unlike Osama Bin Laden who needed to record videos of his threats from a cave, Rivero declared these warnings as a free man in Miami. He didn’t need to hold back, in part, because the American media offered a sympathetic view, even once labeling him like “ James Bond .”

Another reason for Rivero’s hubris was the tremendous support that he had in the local community. It took nearly a year for him to be arrested after ordering the Cuban embassy attack and taking credit for it. Hundreds of Miami residents responded with a brief labor strike in an act of solidarity. Remarkably, Rivero served only a few months in jail before being released after signing an agreement to never commit terrorist acts in Canada again. Predictably, his organization was back forming violent plans within months .

As mentioned earlier, Ignacio Novo and Guillermo Novo continued committing acts of terror for the Cuban Nationalist Movement. Guillermo Novo was convicted in the U.S. in 1974 for conspiring to bomb a Cuban ship in Montreal. Remarkably, he was sentenced to only three years in prison and released on parole after serving a mere six months. That’s nowhere near the appropriate punishment for such a serious crime.

At that time, the Novo brothers collaborated with a high-profile Cuban exile/CIA asset, Orlando Bosch, who led a terrorist organization, CORU, which consolidated multiple terrorist groups into one organization. Those links led the Novo brothers to violate their probation and travel to Venezuela and Chile to meet with intelligence officials. They conspired to kill Orlando Letelier in one of the most heinous political assassinations on U.S. soil.

Orlando Letelier - Wikimedia Commons

Letelier fle d political persecution in Chile and became a high-profile critic of the dictator Augusto Pinochet. He worked for the D.C. think tank, the Institute for Policy Studies. On September 21, 1976, Letelier and his colleague, Ronni Karpen Moffitt, were killed in a car bombing. Pinochet’s goons chose to outsource the explosives to members of the Cuban Nationalist Movement.

Cuban terrorism peaked in the mid-1970s. For the sake of scale, there was an 18-month period in which over 100 bombings took place in Miami alone. In 1974, forty-five percent of global terrorism was committed by Cuban exiles, according to author José Luis Méndez Méndez.

One of the most notorious terrorists of the last century, Luis Posada Carriles, was trained by the CIA to be a “ demolitions expert .” Posada became a paid CIA informant (code-name AMCLEVE 15) in 1965. His handler at the agency severely miscalculated Posada’s character. Internal memos show that he viewed Posada as a moderate and valuable asset who could keep an eye on the extremist Cuban exiles. Early records show that Posada informed the CIA about a plan in 1965 by Jorge Mas Canosa to bomb a Cuban or Soviet ship in Mexico.

Luis Posada Carriles - Latin American Studies

By the 1970s, Jorge Mas Canosa was the unofficial political leader of the Cuban-American community who had direct communication with multiple American presidents . Mas Canosa fought hard to publicly distance himself from the terrorist elements in his movement. He even sued the New Republic for labeling him as a “mobster.” The U.S. government didn’t expose his links with terrorism until 2009 (via a FOIA request), which was 22 years after his death.

Mas Canosa had a clean public image and was revered in the exile community in Miami. He has a local street, school, and recreation center in his name. Mas Canosa’s advocacy group, the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), exerted pressure on both parties as it donated over $1.6 million to different candidates over 18 years. CANF also received funding from the CIA’s cut-out organization, the National Endowment for Democracy.

Jorge Mas Canosa (Wikimedia Commons), Jorge Mas Canosa statue (Po-Shen Loh - LinkedIn), Jorge Mas Canosa Middle School, Jorge Mas Canosa Blvd- @ermitadelacaridadmiami Instagram

Back to the man who the CIA in 1965 surmised had “good character,” Luis Posada Carriles. Records show that within a year after that assessment, this CIA-trained “demolitions expert” began providing bombs to Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal (the mafia-linked bookmaker portrayed by Robert Dinero in Casino) on multiple occasions. Rival bookies and thieves who didn’t want to pay the mob’s extortion money faced bombings.

Posada, as did other Cuban exiles, joined foreign intelligence agencies while being paid by the CIA. Officially, according to CIA documents, Posada was “amiably terminated from the agency” in June 1974, but his connections continued long after. That’s the same month that his accomplice who was mentioned earlier, Orlando Bosch, fled the U.S.

Orlando Bosch had already confessed to several terrorist attacks, according to DOJ documents . He also didn’t show up to court after being subpoenaed in the murder trial of the Cuban exile, José Elías de la Torriente, who many locals reviled for raising funds thousands of dollars to overthrow Castro and never following through with his plan.

Orlando Bosch - Wikimedia Commons

Bosch, up to this point in history already had an extensive background in terrorism and received the kinder side of U.S authorities. He, and five others, were arrested in 1965 in Florida when plotting to bomb an oil refinery in Cuba. The police confiscated 18 aerial bombs. His charges were light, considering the offense, merely exporting war materials without a license. He received a fortuitous break when the charges were dropped a few days later. A few months later police pulled him over and found another six aerial bombs and dynamite . Later that year, federal authorities also indicted Bosch for extorting Cuban exiles to fund his operations.

Bosch’s organization, Cuban Power, unleashed 15 attacks across New York City over eight months in 1968. He was arrested in September 1968 for shooting a bazooka at a Polish freighter off the coast of Miami. That led to an eventual conviction, but he miraculously only served four years before being paroled , which was aided by a recommendation from then-Florida Governor, Claude Kirk.

When Bosch fled the U.S. in 1974, he found a safe haven in Venezuela where Posada was an intelligence agent in the DISIP. Bosch wore out his welcome within months after bombing the Panamanian embassy in Caracas. He fled to Costa Rica and was arrested for possessing a fake passport. Even though he was a notorious fugitive, and Costa Rican officials offered extradition, the U.S. government declined .

The American government’s choices essentially provided freedom to Bosch who in June 1976 gathered the leaders of multiple Cuban exile terror groups. They agreed to merge into one group under Bosch’s direction, the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU). In what was likely not a coincidence, Luis Posada Carriles contacted the CIA in the same month asking for a U.S. passport so that he could have a “ vacation .”

The CIA and FBI knew Posada was up to no good. A high-level Venezuelan government official notified the FBI in September 1976 that CORU was developing plans to assassinate the Prime Ministers of Guyana and Jamaica (Forbes Burnham and Michael Manley) who had formed diplomatic relations with Cuba.

CORU also sought to attack Mexican government targets unless it released two of its operatives (Orestes Ruiz Hernandez and Gaspar Eugenio Jimenez) who attempted to kidnap the Cuban consul in Mexico. Gaspar Jimenez managed to escape prison in Mexico and find freedom in Miami even though he was suspected in the car bombing of a radio host, Emilio Milián, who spoke out against Cuban terrorism. He enjoyed that freedom due to a $50,000 bribe provided by the founder of World Finance Corporation, Guillermo Hernandez-Cartaya, whose bank was tied to drug money laundering and a suspected CIA slush fund.

Forbes Burnham, Michael Manley, Emilio Milián, Guillermo Hernandez-Cartaya

In September 1976, one of the CIA’s sources relayed that Orlando Bosch had returned to Venezuela and was under the protection of President Carlos Andres Perez who had reportedly received money from the CIA in the past. Bosch’s behavior was so brazen that he sought extortionary bribes from the Venezuelan government threatening that he’d provoke Cuban exiles to protest Perez when visiting the United Nations. It’s impossible to believe that an international fugitive terrorist acted in this way unless he was still under the protection of the CIA.

During that same meeting, Bosch said “Now that our organization has come out of the (Orlando) Letelier (assassination) looking good, we are going to do something else.” Days later Luis Posada Carriles said , “We are going to hit a Cuban airplane” and “Orlando has the details.” Did the CIA warn the Cuban government? No.

A bomb exploded on Cubana Flight 455 from Barbados to Jamaica on October 6, 1973. All 73 passengers died. Shortly afterward, Bosch received a message from one of the bombers, “A bus with 73 dogs went off a cliff and got killed.” This was the deadliest airline terrorist attack in the Western Hemisphere until 9/11.

Venezuelan authorities arrested Posada and Bosch. Months later, an American freelance journalist, Blake Fleetwood, somehow finagled his way into the jail and interviewed Posada and Bosch. They confessed to the crime. Fleetwood’s initiative was bold on multiple levels. Fleetwood communicated his whereabouts to Eugene Propper, the Assistant US Attorney in Washington D.C., who was investigating the Orlando Letelier murder. Propper warned him that the “CIA told the secret police everything. They are out to get you. You are in great danger.’’ Fleetwood managed to escape Venezuela unscathed and published the story without any mainstream media attention.

Posada remained in prison until 1985 when he escaped. Ricardo Mas Canosa later testified that his infamous brother, Jorge Mas Canosa, directed him to pay a $50,000 bribe to a Venezuelan prison worker to set him free. Another notorious Cuban exile CIA asset, Felix Rodriguez, transported Posada to El Salvador where he became a key player in the illegal Contra weapon supply line. Operatives like Posada are often the type that the CIA seeks out because of the legal leverage that they have over them.

The support for such a notorious terrorist, Orlando Bosch, in Miami was stunning. Former Miami mayor, Maurice Ferre, visited Bosch while he was on hunger strike in his Venezuelan jail cell. In fact, the Miami City Commission honored him by declaring March 25th to be “ Dr. Orlando Bosch Day. ” Even though Bosch and Posada confessed to a Trinidadian police official who visited Venezuela, Bosch was eventually acquitted in Venezuela because the judge didn’t accept their confessions into evidence.

Bosch was arrested upon his return to America in 1988, but he didn’t face charges for any of the plethora of terrorism offenses he committed. Instead, he was arrested for violating his parole. It helps to have friends in high places. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the first Cuban American elected to Congress, helped raise $265,000 for Bosch’s legal defense fund, which helped land Raoul Cantero, a future Florida Supreme Court justice.

The timing of this lobbying effort was ironic. The FBI released a study in 1989 finding that the city with the highest number of terrorist attacks in America was Miami. All of the attacks were committed by Cuban exile extremists targeting individuals considered too liberal towards the Castro government. Unfortunately, this form of terrorism has been effective and it has stifled free speech in that community.

Despite so much domestic terrorism in his home state, former Florida Governor, Jeb Bush, helped arrange a meeting for Ros-Lehtinen with his father in the White House. That eventually led to Bosch’s release . Bosch was never held accountable for his crimes and he never showed any contrition.

Posada never showed any remorse either. He told The New York Times in 1998 that he “ sleeps like a baby .” Bear in mind, he candidly admitted to directing a string of hotel bombings a year earlier in Havana, Cuba that killed one person and injured another eleven people. A few years later, Panama authorities arrested him for an assassination attempt against Castro.

Posada and his three accomplices, two of which were mentioned previously (Gaspar Jiménez and Guillermo Novo), served a few years in prison before they were pardoned by the Panamanian President, Mireya Moscoso, a few days before leaving office. Moscoso allegedly received a $4 million bribe from a Cuban exile and the U.S. embassy provided false documents to help Posada leave Panama.

Posada delayed returning to America, but his three accomplices were greeted with cheers from an adoring crowd when they returned to Miami. “I dreamt of this day, but I did not have the confidence that it would come. This is a triumph. ... It was the Cuban exile community that did this," said Guillermo Novo .

Guillermo Novo - Latin American Studies

Posada later returned to the U.S. seeking asylum. Fortunately for him, the FBI’s Miami field office had destroyed its evidence against him a few years earlier when it closed its case against Posada. This was part of why he never faced any charges commensurate with his level of violence. He was eventually indicted for obstruction of justice, immigration fraud, and perjury, but acquitted of all counts. Notably, there were no terrorism charges. The U.S. government even denied extradition requests from Venezuela and Cuba. One of the most notorious terrorists of his time, was never held accountable by the U.S. government and lived as a free man in Miami until his death.

There are so many other Cuban exile terrorists who benefitted from an unusually soft touch from the American criminal justice system. One of the other founders of CORU, Armando Lopez Estrada, participated in a televised CBS report by Bill Moyers, “ The CIA’s Secret Army ,” in which he admitted to multiple terrorist attacks. However, he denied being a terrorist; he preferred the term “ revolutionary .” He, and six others, were arrested a month later when three boats, a canon, and machine guns were confiscated by federal authorities.

Estrada and his accomplices were surveilled making trial runs for an attack on Cuba by U.S. Customs, the FBI, Dade County Public Safety Department, Miami Police Department, U. S. Coast Guard, and the ATF. This group was charged with the unlawful possession of firearms and destructive devices and violating the Neutrality Act, which prohibits Americans from waging war against countries that the U.S. isn’t at war with.

Judge Joe Eaton of the Southern District of Florida (Miami) dropped the Neutrality Act charges. Stunningly, Judge Eaton felt that the prosecutors couldn’t prove that Cuba was “a country with which the United States is at peace.”

All of the defendants confessed to planning the attack. But part of the defense was that Armando Lopez Estrada testified that the weapons were an old cache supplied by the CIA. Ultimately, all of the defendants were acquitted.

One of those defendants, Pedro Gil, was a long-time operative for the CIA. His name reappeared in the national press in 1986 as part of the Iran-Contra scandal. The Nicaraguan government captured two Cuban-Americans who were recruited/trained to fight for the Contras by Pedro Gil. In a puff piece by The New York Times, Gil acknowledged that he was on the CIA’s payroll for nine years but he claimed the relationship ended in 1971. It’s inconceivable that Gil could have operated as a recruiter/trainer for the Contras in Miami while working entirely independently from the CIA.

So many Cuban American extremists were able to avoid terrorism charges due to their links with the CIA. The court system in Miami has historically enabled their behavior as well. It would be a natural assumption that the actions by Judge Joe Eaton were an anomaly, but that type of mentality has been standard operating procedure for many years.

Alpha 66, which remains somewhat active today, has claimed credit for numerous attacks in Cuba over the years. One of its members, Ivan Leon Rojas, was captured in 1993 by the U.S. Coast Guard 50 miles north of Cuba. On his boat were machine guns, explosives, assault rifles equipped with rocket launchers, and 10,000 rounds of ammunition.

Despite all of the evidence, Rojas was only charged with one count of knowing possession of unregistered firearms. More noteworthy, Rojas’s attorneys actually argued that the Southern District of Florida (Miami) had typically acquitted defendants in similar cases. And that was the truth. Case in point, the same judge had dropped charges against six members of Alpha 66 under extremely similar circumstances a month earlier. In the end, U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King sentenced Rojas to only probation. “In this particular case, it was intended by this defendant, Ivan Rojas, not to harm America or any of its citizens, but a private war of his own,” King said.

Keep that laissez-faire sentiment in mind when reviewing the case of the “Cuban Five.” The Cuban government sent a group of intelligence officers, known as the WASP Network, to Florida to infiltrate the Cuban exile groups in hopes of preventing more of these crimes. The U.S. government was not aware of the WASP Network’s presence in the U.S. until June 1998 when FBI agents were invited to Havana.

Cuban officials provided the FBI with extensive details about 64 known terrorists living in the U.S. There’s no evidence that the WASP Network was spying on U.S. govt officials. Their operation was truly to defend against acts of terror and their information helped to prevent multiple attacks.

Nonetheless, U.S. authorities charged the “Cuban Five” a few months later with several espionage-related charges. The timing couldn’t have been worse for the Cuban Five because they awaited trial during the Elian Gonzalez international custody dispute that consumed the local Cuban-American population.

The Cuban Five (Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González)

Many in the Miami community were also looking for retribution for the controversial shoot-down in 1996 by the Cuban government of two “Brothers to the Rescue” planes. Jose Basulto , another CIA-trained, Bay of Pigs veteran who had committed attacks against Cuba in the 1960s, founded Brothers to the Rescue. His group branded itself as a humanitarian organization because it had helped rescue a few thousand Cuban refugees fleeing the island via raft.

Their organization also engaged in subversive acts. Over a two-year period, their pilots violated Cuban airspace on 25 occasions , often dropping propaganda leaflets. These flights all originated from the U.S. and the Cuban government requested that the American government stop these flights. That didn’t happen. In February 1996, the Cuban government shot down two of their unarmed Cessnas off the coast of Cuba, killing three of their members.

That made the Cuban Five a symbolic target for American authorities. The leader of the Cuban Five, Gerardo Hernández, faced trumped-up charges for conspiracy to commit murder related to the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown without any actual evidence . The Cuban Five’s attorneys asked for a change of venue because it would be difficult to get a fair trial in Miami, but that was denied. That type of concession has been accepted in other cases.

Unbeknownst to the public and court at that time, the U.S. government violated its propaganda laws and paid ten local Miami reporters who published over 1,000 prejudicial articles .

The Cuban Five were issued sentences ranging from two life sentences to 15 years. Eventually, diplomatic measures helped to ensure the freedom of the remaining members in 2014. Amnesty International and the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that it wasn’t a fair trial. The jurors reported to the judge intimidation tactics by members of the media who photographed them and their license plates. Considering the lengthy history of terrorism in Miami, it’s fair to say that these jurors would have put their lives at risk if they came back with a not-guilty verdict.

Is the Threat of Cuban Exile Terrorism Still Present?

There remains an element of extremism today within the Cuban-American community, but it has drastically dropped off. The most fanatical were armed, trained, and financed by the CIA in the early 1960s, but most of those militants have died or aged out of these violent activities. Nonetheless, it’s disheartening that the American government has never taken a firm stand to hold these people, nor their government enablers, accountable. After all, terrorism is a crime that has no statute of limitations and terrorism is the pretext for so much of America’s warfare worldwide.

TikTok ban is not to protect Americans. It’s a tactic directly from China’s playbook

Tue, 21 May 2024 02:55:18 GMT

The US Government Has No Credibility with the American People on This Issue, But There are Legitamate Concerns

President Biden signed a well-publicized bill last month that would ban the TikTok app if the Chinese portion of its ownership is not sold to different investors within a year. On its own merits, the original bill (H.R. 7521) passed in the House 352 to 65. However, the TikTok ban was attached to a bill (H.R. 815) that provides roughly $95 billion of aid (mostly military) to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan.

In the same week that members of Congress patted themselves on the back for protecting Americans from potential Chinese government spying, it passed a bill that extended and expanded a U.S. government surveillance program (Section 702) that routinely violates Americans’ constitutional right to privacy.

The message from our government is clear. Dear Americans, don’t worry about China spying on you; that’s our job. We all should be concerned about foreign espionage via a popular app, but we should be more concerned about our government doing the same thing because our government can throw you in prison.

With that in mind, you need to view the TikTok ban as merely the U.S. government throwing China’s tactics right back at them. China doesn’t play by the same set of rules. Practically every high-profile American social media platform, news outlet, search engine, and messaging app is banned in China.

Edward Snowden leaks

Eleven years ago, the Edward Snowden leaks led to some positive reforms that protect against the government abusing our civil rights. However, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) continues to be routinely exploited by the U.S. intelligence community to conduct warrantless surveillance of American citizens.

Section 702 allows the intelligence community to monitor digital communications of non-U.S. citizens outside of America. However, American citizens often communicate with people outside of the U.S. and this program provides a backdoor for law enforcement to violate the Fourth Amendment. The NSA gathers this data and then law enforcement agencies can query the data. In 2021 alone, the FBI conducted up to 3.4 million warrantless searches of Section 702 data.

This is the program that former Director of National Intelligence (DNI), James Clapper, infamously testified to Congress that the NSA does not collect data on millions of Americans, “not wittingly.”

The impropriety is clear as there are documented examples of the FBI using this information to illegally investigate a U.S Senator, a judge, Black Lives Matter protesters, among other scandalous behavior. That’s why the vast majority of Americans support discontinuing this program.

The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, was also a prominent critic of the program but he flip-flopped in April after receiving a private intelligence briefing. In fact, he placed the decisive tie-breaking vote (212 to 212) that blocked a warrant requirement for these searches.

Was the TikTok Ban Legal?

While in the White House, Donald Trump signed an executive order in August 2020 to ban TikTok in 45 days if the company’s foreign ownership wasn’t divested. However, a few months later, a federal judge blocked the ban from taking place. He ruled that the executive order was “arbitrary and capricious.” Similarly, eight of TikTok’s founders filed a lawsuit this month against the government contesting that the ban is a violation of the First Amendment.

Donald Trump, a long-time proponent of hard-ball tactics against China, has since switched his stance on a TikTok ban. Trump’s change of heart was likely prompted by one of the Republican party’s top donors, Jeff Yass. His firm owns roughly 15% of TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, worth about $40 billion .

Is TikTok a Chinese Company?

TikTok's CEO Chew Shou Zi was grilled by Congress with a variety of questions regarding its ties to China. TikTok is based in Singapore and Culver City, California. Sixty percent of the shares are owned by institutional investment firms. A group of TikTok employees worldwide own 20% of the company. Another 20% of the company is owned by its parent company, ByteDance, which is based in Beijing, China. That’s where the complexity lies.

There is cause for concern because there is an inherent connection between Chinese private businesses and their government. The Chinese government passed a law in 1993 that requires all companies based in China to allow the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to have a presence within their operations.

That influence is apparent. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute found records of an internal meeting between ByteDance management and CCP officials. The editor-in-chief at the company asserted that the CCP should “take the lead” across “all product lines and business lines” to make sure the algorithm has the “correct political direction” and “values.” At the same meeting, the vice president of products, said that the app should match users’ profiles and “highlight socialist core values.” That same report documented multiple examples of TikTok manipulating its algorithm to achieve a political agenda.

Another concern is whether TikTok is a backdoor spying device for the Chinese government. The directors of the FBI, CIA, NSA, and DNI have all asserted that TikTok is a threat to America’s national security . However, these threats, as of today, are hypothetical. The intelligence community hasn’t provided concrete examples of TikTok being used in an act of aggression.

There isn’t a full separation between TikTok and ByteDance. Buzzfeed News published a scoop in June 2022 based upon leaked audio from more than 80 internal TikTok meetings and it showed that China-based employees of ByteDance often obtained nonpublic data about American TikTok users. A more disturbing report from December 2022 found that ByteDance employees in China used TikTok to access the location information of American journalists.

Currently, TikTok’s user data is stored on servers in Virginia and its backup storage is in Singapore. But, in January 2023, TikTok proposed “Project Texas,” which entailed the creation of a new subsidiary, TikTok U.S. Data Security Inc. (USDS). This subsidy only employs U.S. citizens and is supposed to act as an independent buffer to audit against manipulation of its algorithm, having Oracle host all the U.S. data, among other reforms. Some good-faith steps have been implemented , but this project is not yet complete.

Personal Freedom Issue

Several countries have already issued either a partial or full ban of TikTok:

Afghanistan, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, European Union, France, India, Indonesia, Latvia, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Somalia, Taiwan, United Kingdom.

We have to ask ourselves if this is the direction that we want for our country. There are 170 American TikTok users. There should be no problem with Congress taking action to reform the ways that children can access and use the app. After all, the anecdotal evidence shows so many negative consequences from over-indulging in this app. That’s why the Chinese equivalent app of TikTok, Douyin, has a different algorithm and children are limited to 40 minutes per day. With that said, an American adult should be able to use whichever social media apps they choose, no matter the company’s questionable background.

Congressional and media attention on TikTok seems to have negated the fact that American social media companies aren’t trustworthy either. Congress heard testimony from the former Deputy Director of the CIA, Michael Morell, who explained that the current U.S. Secretary of State and then senior advisor to the Biden campaign, Antony Blinken, was the instigator behind the false claim that the New York Post’s reporting about Hunter Biden was Russian propaganda. Fifty-one national security officials signed a letter incorrectly labeling the story as Russian disinformation. Consequently, Twitter blocked the story from being shared and Facebook reduced its visibility during the last days of the 2020 election cycle. Even more stunning is that this happened after the FBI verified the authenticity of the Hunter Biden laptop report.

To sum up, all of the social media companies have repugnant qualities but the difference between TikTok is that it is outside of the American government’s sphere of influence…at least for the time being.

Notorious Drug Kingpin Assassinates Political Dissidents for Iran

Sun, 07 Apr 2024 20:21:48 GMT

This Notorious Criminal Seemingly Has a Quid Pro Quo Relationship with the Iranian Regime

Earlier this year the US government unsealed a grand jury indictment against an Iranian drug trafficker, Naji Sharifi Zindashti. He is accused of organizing a political assassination attempt on two unnamed Iranian dissidents living in the US on behalf of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). Prosecutors allege that Zindashti paid $350,000 to two members of the Hells Angel to carry out the murder-for-hire plot.

Zindashti is linked with other state-sponsored murders by the Iranian government. As mentioned in the previous Jeffrey Epstein article , intelligence agencies often partner with organized crime syndicates. The agencies have leverage over these criminals and their backgrounds provide plausible deniability for the government’s covert operations.

Zindashti’s life is rich in the shady details illustrating how rogue governments often operate. He is an international criminal wanted in multiple jurisdictions, yet he has a safe haven in Iran. He was even honored by Iran’s Education Ministry in 2022 as one of the members of the Charity for School Constructions. The Iranian authorities could extradite him at any time if he doesn’t uphold his end of the arrangement. Ironically, he’s a drug trafficker in a country that has the death penalty for drug offenses. Zindashti escaped an Iranian prison in 1996 while awaiting the death penalty for drug charges. He subsequently crossed the border into Turkey where he flourished for decades and built a larger smuggling organization.

In 2007 Zindashti was arrested for possession of 75 kilos of heroin . By acting as an informant, he was released after only three years in prison. He didn’t snitch on rival drug lords; he acted as a secret witness accusing two judges of taking bribes.

Like many jailhouse snitches, their information is often unreliable. Most people will say whatever is necessary to get out of prison. In this instance, Zindashti’s information was politically charged. He was talking with Zekeriya Oz , a prosecutor linked with the controversial Turkish cleric, Fethullah Gulen, who was conducting the infamous Ergenekon trials.

The Ergenekon trials garnered a lot of international press as hundreds of Turkish officials were accused of plotting against the government. However, the superficial nature of these cases eventually came to the forefront and it became obvious to most that this was a political witchhunt. Even Turkish President Erdogan admitted as much in 2014, but that was only out of his self-interest.

Erdogan initially benefitted from the Ergenekon trials as Gulen-linked prosecutors helped to eliminate some of his rivals. However, Erdogan spoke out after those same prosecutors started filing charges against Erdogan’s inner circle in December 2013. Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric who lived in the US since 1999, has links to the CIA. This rivalry exploded rapidly in 2014 and led to an attempted coup in 2016.

(left to right) Turkish President Erdogan (Wikimedia Commons), Fethullah Gulen (Wikimedia Commons), Zekeriya Oz (Twitter)

In 2014 as Turkish political machinations gained international headlines, so did the Iranian trafficker Naji Sharifi Zindashti for his involvement in one of the largest drug busts in European history.

Greek authorities captured over two tons of heroin aboard a tanker, Noor One . A group of different drug lords were set to receive their portion of the shipment with Zindashti’s portion being 300 kilos. However, it appears that Zindashti was willing to sacrifice his portion of the contraband and informed the DEA about this massive shipment, possibly as a means of harming his competition.

In September 2014, Zindashti received an email stating, “You spoiled our plans, you spoke against us, you stole from us, you made fools of us.” Days later, his Zindashti’s daughter, and nephew were murdered near his home. This set off a series of 13 gangland killings across Turkey, Belgium, and Dubai and generated much media attention.

Zindashti had initially hitched his wagon to the losing horse (Gulen) but presumably, he bribed enough influential members of the Erdogan wing of the government to act unharmed in such a flagrant manner. He remained free in Turkey until April 2018 after Turkish authorities obliged a Greek arrest warrant on charges related to the Noor One bust.

He was released from prison only six months after being arrested for drug and murder charges. Zindashti fled to Iran, but many members of his organization remained in Turkey. The exact reason for his release is unknown, but it is speculated that Zindashti had blackmail material on the Turkish politician Burhan Kuzu, of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, who helped him out of prison. Reportedly Kuzu believed it would help Turkish/Iranian relations .

At that time, Zindashti was a valuable global intelligence bargaining chip. Not long before going to prison in 2018, Zindashti added a bullet point for state-sponsored assassination to his criminal resume. It’s unclear exactly when or how Zindashti linked up with Iranian intelligence, but it’s obvious that he has not conducted these extrajudicial killings out of patriotic zeal. He’s doing it for protection.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Wikimedia Commons)

In April 2017, Saeed Karimian, the CEO/founder of the Persian-language TV channel, GEM TV, was murdered by masked gunmen while driving his car in Istanbul. GEM TV’s critical coverage of the Iranian government led to Karimian being convicted in absentia for “spreading propaganda against the system and violating the security of the nation” just one month before his assassination. One of Zindashti’s associates conducted surveillance on Karimian, according to the US Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

Saeed Karimian (Twitter)

Just months before Zindashti was released from prison, an Iranian dissident, Masoud Molavi Vardanjani, also fled to Turkey to avoid the repercussions of the government. Vardanjani was a former Iranian defense staffer who rapidly developed a large social media presence in Turkey exposing corruption and political assassinations by Iran. However, that political speech led to an associate of Zindashti murdering Vardanjani in Istanbul in November 2019. Turkish officials arrested several of the individuals involved but Turkey released a high-level official from the Iranian consulate in Istanbul.

Masoud Molavi Vardanjani (Twitter)

Zindashti is also accused of facilitating the abduction and illegal extradition of other Iranian dissidents. Habib Chaab was self-exiled in Sweden for 14 years. He led an Iranian separatist organization, Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz (ASMLA), before being lured by a woman into Turkey. That woman was part of a honey pot organized by Iranian intelligence. Chaab was drugged and smuggled into Iran. He was subsequently tortured into a confession and railroaded through a “ gross unfair trial ,” according to Amnesty International, and sentenced to death by hanging.

Habib Chaab (Twitter)

To sum up, there will always shady gangsters like Zindashti, but governments aren’t supposed to enable their crime, let alone use them to outsource extrajudicial killings. Unfortunately, Iran is not the only government to conduct these types of heinous crimes.

Timeline of Jeffrey Epstein: Espionage, Blackmail, & Depravity

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 03:34:03 GMT

A Detailed Timeline of Jeffrey Epstein's Life Showing the Extent of His Crimes and His Extraordinary Protection from the Government

Lazy journalists labeled Epstein as a “financier,” a “man of mystery,” a “philanthropist,” etc. This was one of the most sought-after stories of recent times, yet the corporate media dropped the ball through self-censorship and ineptitude. The evidence indicates that Epstein was involved in the intelligence community and protected by the government. It defies logic to think otherwise considering that he was so deeply tied to one of the largest Ponzi schemes of its time, involved in international arms dealing, owned a fake passport, operated a blackmail scheme that masqueraded as a sex trafficking ring, influenced key business/political leaders, held hundreds of millions of dollars of nebulous wealth, among other reasons.

Here's a timeline of events that will help to clear up many of the questions surrounding his life.

Timeline

1974 June – Epstein finished studying at Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University without receiving a degree.

1974-1976 - Epstein was a teacher at Dalton School in Manhattan, an elite private school.

1976 – Epstein was dismissed from Dalton School. Six of his former students spoke to a reporter at The New York Times . They said that he didn’t touch them, but he crossed lines of appropriate behavior, particularly when he attended high school parties.

1976 – Epstein joined Bear Stearns and started as a junior assistant to a floor trader. He gained this opportunity because he impressed then Bear Stearns CEO, Alan “Ace” Greenberg, during a parent-teacher conference . Epstein reportedly tutored the son of Greenberg and was friendly with Greenberg’s daughter.

1980 – Epstein had a rapid rise through the company and became a limited partner in Bear Stearns.

1980 Oct - Epstein featured as Cosmo magazine's “Bachelor of the Month.”

1981 March 12 - Epstein resigned from Bear Stearns. This was after the firm fined him $2,500 for breaking a regulatory rule by letting a friend/client borrow money to buy stock. He also received a 60-day suspension.

1981 April 1 – Epstein testified to SEC officials about his time at Bear Stearns. The SEC questioned him about the suspicious timing of his resignation. It came days before an insider trading scandal. The Seagram Company attempted a takeover of St. Joe’s Mineral Corp. Traders at Bear Stearns were suspected of using offshore accounts to trade based on that nonpublic information. Epstein maintained that his resignation had nothing to do with that investigation and never faced charges. This is the beginning of a pattern of Epstein’s connections to financial scandals without facing time behind bars.

1981 August – Epstein formed his financial advisory firm , Intercontinental Assets Group Inc, which he ran out of his apartment in New York City.

1981 – Epstein was a natural charmer/networker/manipulator/con artist. However, when he met Douglas Leese at a Texas oil tycoon’s party, that was seemingly when he became a player in the intelligence community. Douglas Leese’s name is kind of a footnote in most contemporary Epstein reporting, but Leese was a prominent British arms trafficker. That’s an industry that often is a nexus between intelligence agencies, corrupt politicians, and savvy money launderers; the latter being where Epstein’s help was likely welcomed.

Douglas Leese was one of the facilitators of Britain’s largest arms/corruption scandal in history. According to the British Parliament , he helped to arrange some of the bribes, possibly using the offshore bank, the Bank of NT Butterfield in Bermuda, for the Al Yamamah oil-for-arms deal between Saudi Arabia and the British defense contractor worth £43 billion in revenue between 1985 and 2007.

Douglas became a mentor to Epstein, according to Douglas Leese’s son, Julian Leese. Douglas Leese was also linked with the Saudi arms trafficker, Adnan Khashoggi. He was one of the key brokers in the Iran-Contra affair .

Adnan Khashoggi - Wikimedia Commons

Khashoggi lived an ostentatious lifestyle and even at one point claimed to be the richest man in the world , but, more importantly, he was a high-profile intermediary between the intelligence communities of Saudi Arabia, the US, the UK, Israel, and Britain. Years after Khashoggi’s prominence, Epstein claimed that he had a business relationship with Khashoggi.

1986 – A wealthy insurance executive, Robert Meister, introduced Epstein to Leslie Wexner who was the head of Limited Brands. That company expanded into Bath & Body Works, Victoria's Secret, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Express.

1987 – The British arms dealer, Douglas Leese, introduced Epstein to Steven Jude Hoffenberg who was the founder/chairman of Towers Financial Corporation. That company would later be exposed as one of the largest Ponzi schemes of its time. Epstein claimed that he was introduced to Steven Jude Hoffenberg by John Mitchell, the former attorney general, who was an advisor for the company.

The Douglas Leese link between Epstein and Hoffenberg seems much more likely as his son, Julian Leese, worked for Towers Financial as well. Regardless of who made the introduction, Epstein and Hoffenberg hit it off immediately and began a close friendship and business relationship. Epstein began receiving $25,000 per month for his “consulting.” Hoffenberg later acknowledges that Epstein was essentially his business partner .

1988 Dec - A segment on 60 Minutes, " American Girls in Paris ," detailed accusations of teen models being sexually abused by French model scout Jean-Luc Brunel, who later became a close friend and business associate of Jeffrey Epstein.

1989 – Leslie Wexner asks his financial advisor, Harold Levin, to meet with Epstein to vet out Epstein’s potential investment ideas. Levin immediately recognized that Epstein was a fraud. He said , “There were no visible signs of a trading operation; just Epstein sitting behind a desk that didn’t even have a computer.”

Levin warned Wexner, but this backfired as Epstein convinced Wexner to fire Levine. Epstein slandered him by spreading rumors that Levin was an embezzler. Epstein even strong-armed Levin into surrendering his equity in a real estate project, likely costing Levin millions, he said.

Numerous events that follow suggest that Epstein’s grip over Wexner went well beyond manipulation. Epstein begins to take on a role that is far greater than the conventional financial advisor relationship. It’s natural to speculate that Epstein blackmailed Wexner.

1990 – Epstein received property in New Albany, OH from Leslie Wexner as a gift (7558 King George Dr, New Albany, OH 43054)

1990 – Epstein starts to become a large political donor .

1991 – Leslie Wexner cofounded a secretive organization known as the “ Mega Group ” composed of American/Canadian Zionist billionaires. The other cofounder was Charles Bronfman. Much of his family fortune dates back to the bootlegger days, along with another Mega Group member, Max Fisher. Another member, Laurence Tisch was part of the prohibition era “Purple Gang.”

1991 July – Epstein gains power of attorney for Leslie Wexner, which essentially meant that he full control of Wexner’s money/assets.

1991 Nov – The British media mogul, Robert Maxwell, dies at sea under mysterious circumstances. His dead naked body was discovered by the Spanish Coast Guard floating near his yacht, which was named after his daughter, “Lady Ghislaine.” It’s not clear whether he committed suicide, if it was an accident, or if he was murdered.

There’s strong evidence that Robert Maxwell was an asset of Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad. At the time of his death, a few scandals were coming to the surface exposing his connections to intelligence and his usefulness was diminishing. Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist, Seymour Hersh, published The Samson Option, which asserted that Maxwell’s newspaper, The Daily Mirror, handed over a whistleblower to the Mossad and acted as a facilitator for Israeli arms trafficking.

Mordechai Vanunu revealed Israel’s secret nuclear to the media, but he was led into a “ honey trap .” After contacting the press, he was lured by a woman to leave London to travel to Rome where he was captured, drugged, and renditioned to Israel. He was convicted of treason and sentenced to 18 years.

Israeli nuclear whistleblower, Mordichai Vanunu - Wikimedia Commons

Hersh published The Samson Option a month before Maxwell’s death. Maxwell sued Hersh for libel and he countersued. Hersh eventually, after Maxwell’s death, was awarded substantial damages from Maxwell’s news publishing group which apologized " unreservedly " in court.

Just weeks after Maxwell’s death, reporters revealed that Maxwell had looted roughly £526 million from The Daily Mirror’s pension fund. Authors Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon of Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy: The Life and Murder of a Media Mogul theorized that Maxwell may have stolen funds intended for the Mossad to help offset his company’s losses and that led to his death. Nonetheless, this type of financial criminality was Maxwell’s specialty. After his death, reports surfaced that Maxwell helped the Bulgarian dictator Todor Zhivkov embezzle $2 billion of public funds and launder the money.

Maxwell appears to have been a burned intelligence asset, but he was given the highest possible honors in death. Born in Czechoslovakia, he was a survivor of the Holocaust and a war hero. Maxwell was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, one of the highest honors. The Israeli President, Prime Minister, and six former leaders of the Mossad attended his funeral.

This is not well-sourced, but some Epstein staffers say that Epstein had a relationship with Robert Maxwell .

What is clear is that in 1991 Epstein met Robert Maxwell’s daughter Ghislaine . They quickly developed their lifelong relationship/sex trafficking racket.

Robert Maxwell - Wikimedia Commons

1992 – Ghislaine Maxwell began managing Epstein’s Palm Beach property.

1992 Feb – Epstein begins leasing a Manhattan mansion (34 East 69th Street) for $15,000 per month. The building had been a diplomatic home for Iranian officials , but it was confiscated by the US State Department after the two countries severed relations in 1980.

1992 Nov - Video of Epstein partying with Donald Trump at Mar a Lago later published by NBC.

1992 Nov – Epstein purchases a New Albany, Ohio property (5025 East Dublin Granville Road) for $3.5 million from JW & CPK & Co, a Wexner company.

1992 Nov – The London newspaper, Mail on Sunday , published a report, “The mystery of Ghislaine Maxwell's secret love; REVEALED: THE UNLIKELY ROMANCE BETWEEN A BUSINESS SPY AND THE CROOKED FINANCIER'S FAVOURITE DAUGHTER.”

It points out that Ghislaine’s relationship with her former sugar daddy, Count Gianfranco Cicogna, ended in 1990. Yet, she maintained her aristocratic lifestyle, which would run out of funds quickly based on the $80,000 left to her in a trust fund. The implication was that she was living off of the criminal proceeds of her father or another sugar daddy, i.e. “Jeffrey Epstein, a shadowy, almost maverick New York ‘property developer.’”

More important, the newspaper dips its toes into revealing the truth about Epstein. It does so in a tepid manner that avoids a libel lawsuit from a powerful individual. It said, “One outrageous story links him to the CIA and Mossad.”

Golly gee, what an outrageous story.

1993 – Epstein begins a state lease agreement for grazing cattle on public lands near his New Mexico ranch, which was once owned by former governor , Bruce King.

49 Zorro Ranch Road

Stanley, New Mexico 87056

He later built a 33,339 square-foot mansion and there’s a private airstrip and hangar and helipad.

1994 - According to federal prosecutors , this is when Ghislaine Maxwell first starts finding girls for Epstein.

1994 - Epstein arranged for Southern Air Transport (SAT) to move from Miami to Rickenbacker Air Force Base in Columbus, OH, according to Bob Fitrakis of the Columbus Free Press. The airline, formerly Air America, was an infamous CIA front company involved in arms and drug trafficking. Not coincidentally, SAT filed for bankruptcy on October 1, 1998, which was the same month the CIA Inspector General issued a declassified report linking the CIA with drug trafficking by Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

1995 April – Steven Hoffenberg pleaded guilty to running a Ponzi scheme through his company, Towers Financial Corp, which also involved Epstein.

1995 – A young artist, Maria Farmer, met Epstein and Maxwell when they attended a graduation show at the New York Academy of Art. They were donors (Epstein a former board member) and pressured the director to get Farmer to sell her painting for $6,000, which was half of a previous offer. They wanted her painting, a semi-naked man observing a sleeping girl, inspired by Edgar Degas’s The Rape. Months later, Epstein hired Maria Farmer to manage his art collection and be the door person at his Manhattan mansion. She testified in 2019 that she witnessed underaged females entering Epstein’s home and didn’t believe they were interviewing for model jobs as she was told.

1996 – Epstein moves into Leslie Wexner’s mansion in Manhattan, 9 East 71st Street.

1996 Spring – Unbeknownst to Maria Farmer at the time, her younger sister, Annie Farmer (16-year-old), was molested by Maxwell and Epstein at their New Mexico ranch. She was lured to the property based upon the lie that he would help her to get admitted into UCLA . Annie didn’t tell her older sister about the abuse until later.

1996 Summer - Maria Farmer (then 25) came to Wexner’s home (later Epstein’s home) in New Albany because she was promised to be able to work on an art project for the film “As Good as It Gets.” According to Farmer, Epstein and Maxwell raped her there. Epstein’s security team wouldn’t let her leave immediately. They forced her to wait 12 hours for her father to drive from his home in Kentucky. When Maria returned to New York, she contacted the police, but they told her to report the crime to the FBI. According to Maria, the FBI never followed up on her complaint . She also told Eileen Guggenheim of the New York Academy of Art who connected them. According to Farmer, Guggenheim “ blamed me and mocked me. ”

1998 – Epstein bought Wexner’s Manhattan property for $20 million .

1998 – Wexner bought the 5025 East Dublin Granville Road, New Albany, OH property back from Epstein for $8 million .

This is part of a pattern in which they’re switching properties over a short period of time. It is reminiscent of day traders doing wash trades.

1998 April – Epstein purchased an island in the US Virgin Islands, “Little St. James” He used the company called L.S.J. LLC in which he was the sole member.

Little St James Island (Flickr Navin75)

2000 – Then JPMorgan CEO, Sandy Warner, introduced JPMorgan executive, Jes Staley, to Epstein. Warner told Staley: “You should meet Epstein. He’s one of the most connected people I know of in New York.”

2000 March – The New York Post puts the spy secret into the public sphere in a similar way to the Mail on Sunday did in 1992. It stated, “EPSTEIN is an enigmatic figure. Rumors abound — including wild ones about a career in the Mossad and, contrarily, the CIA.”

2000 March – The magazine, Maximum Golf, does a profile of Donald Trump on his plane with Epstein and Maxwell for a flight from New York to Palm Beach. The reporter, Michael Corcoran withheld mentioning that Epstein and Maxwell “did board with a young woman of indeterminate age. I wouldn’t be able to tell if she was 15 or 20.” He even cleaned up a quote by Trump in which he said , “There is nothing in the world like first-rate pussy.”

(2000-2002) During this period, then Virginia Roberts (now Virginia Giuffre) was trafficked by Epstein. Ghislaine Maxwell first approached when she was 17 years old working as a locker room attendant at Mar-a-Lago. Maxwell proposed that she and Epstein would help Roberts get licensed as a massage therapist.

However, the sexual abuse started on the first arrival to Epstein’s home and Maxwell made it clear to Roberts that they knew powerful people and she should never turn against them. Virginia was already a survivor of sex trafficking. She ran away from home at age 11 due to being molested by a family friend. While living on the streets, she was coerced by a sex trafficker, Ronald Eppinger , who generally victimized women from the Czech Republic.

According to Virginia Giuffre, Epstein/Maxwell had sex with underage girls practically every day in her presence. Within months of meeting Epstein, she was living in an apartment paid for by him and traveling to be sex trafficked for numerous high-profile business & government leaders in a blackmail operation. In a 2016 civil lawsuit, she named former New Mexico Governor (and presidential candidate) Bill Richardson, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, Prince Andrew, hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin, MIT professor Marvin Minsky (Artificial Intelligence founder), Thomas Pritzker (Hyatt Hotel family fortune), among others.

Some refused to comment on the allegations, but Prince Andrew gave one of the more dubious denials. He claimed that he was incapable of sweating as Virginia Giuffre mentioned that he sweat all over her on the dancefloor.

2001 - Epstein bought a Paris apartment at 22 Avenue Foch for $3.5 million. The property was recommended by his friend/sex trafficking accomplice, Jean Luc Brunel.

2001 Jan – The London Newspaper, Evening Standard , publishes, “Prince Andrew's fixer: she's the daughter of Robert Maxwell and she’s manipulating his jetset lifestyle”

The title says it all.

2002 Sep –Bill Clinton, Chris Tucker, and Kevin Spacey travel to AIDS treatment sites in Africa on Epstein’s private jet.

2002 Sep – The New York Post’s Page Six reports on the Africa trip. This prompts media attention and he becomes more of a known public figure outside of the New York/Palm Beach social scene.

2002 Oct – New York Magazine publishes, “Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery.”

This is the article where a popular meme originated. Donald Trump said, “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

A spokesman for Bill Clinton said, “Jeffrey is both a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist with a keen sense of global markets and an in-depth knowledge of twenty-first-century science.”

Fortunately, this article marks the beginning of some true investigative journalism that begins to chip away at Epstein’s cover story and starts questioning the origin of his wealth. “My belief is that Jeff maintains some sort of money-management firm, though you won’t get a straight answer from him,” says one well-known investor. “He once told me he had 300 people working for him, and I’ve also heard that he manages Rockefeller money. But one never knows. It’s like looking at the Wizard of Oz – there may be less there than meets the eye.”

2003 - The Wexner Family Charitable Fund gave $10 million to the COUQ Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization run by Epstein.

2003 – Just months after the unflattering article in New York Magazine, Epstein is part of a group that tried to purchase New York Magazine , including Harvey Weinstein.

2003 March – Vicky Ward for Vanity Fair writes, “ The Talented Mr. Epstein ,” which builds upon the New York Magazine article. With all of the available information today, this would seem look like a puff piece, but at the time, this was the strongest attempt at accountability for Epstein. Unfortunately, the article didn’t publish the accusations from Maria and Annie Farmer who went on the record .

This article accused him of being a part of the Ponzi scheme Towers Financial and insider trading at Bear Stearns.

Again, financial leaders questioned his background, but they didn’t want to go on the record. “The trading desks don’t seem to know him. It’s unusual for animals that big not to leave any footprints in the snow,” says a high-level investment manager.

More notably, the article mentioned that Epstein was a member of the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations. If you’re unfamiliar, these are the types of groups that are synonymous with the elite such as Davos, the Bilderberg Group, etc, i.e. secretive groups that have far too much influence on public and business policies.

2003 Dec - Page Six published the article “SINGLING OUT APPLE’S TOP STUDS,” which mentioned Epstein as a potential bachelor.

2004 – Epstein introduced Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, to JPMorgan investment bankers and he becomes a major client, with over $4 billion invested .

2004 – The Wexner Foundation, when Epstein was among the foundation’s trustees, gives $2.3 million to Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister. The Wexner Foundation claims that Barak was paid to conduct two lengthy studies, one on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the other on leadership. Barak only completed one of the studies. Barak said that he was introduced to Epstein by former Israel Prime Minister, Shimon Peres.

This corrupt practice is reminiscent of the legal, but ethically bankrupt practice in the U.S. in which politicians become obscenely well-paid lobbyists after leaving office as long as they abided by the special interests while in office. Also, it’s similar to six-figure “speaking fees” that many former political leaders receive after leaving office.

2004 Nov – Trump and Epstein get into a bidding war over a bankruptcy auction of a Palm Beach mansion. Trump won the bid for $41.35 million. This seems to be when Trump’s friendship with Epstein ended.

2005 March – A woman called the Palm Beach Police Department after finding out that Epstein sexually assaulted her 14-year-old stepdaughter.

The teen was later interviewed by police. She explained that another student at her high school, Haley Robson, recruited her to give Epstein a massage. Epstein sexually molested her during the massage. Afterward, the victim was paid $300 and Robson received a $200 finder’s fee.

2005 April – Palm Beach Police began going through Epstein’s trash to gain evidence for the investigation.

2005 Oct – Epstein’s assistant, Adriana Ross, came to Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion to take away three of Epstein’s computers, according to Epstein’s butler, Janusz Banasiak .

2005 Oct 3 – The Palm Beach Police question Haley Robson . She explained that she had been recruited by another girl from her high school. She performed a massage for Epstein and refused his sexual advances. That’s when Robson became a recruiter for Epstein. He told her the younger, the better. Robson brought a 23-year-old to his home and she was turned away. The appointments were arranged through Epstein’s assistant, Sarah Kellen. Robson gave the police the names/contact info for the girls she recruited. They interviewed several girls.

2005 Oct 20 – Epstein’s home (358 El Brillo Way in Palm Beach) was searched by the Palm Beach Police Department. They found pictures of naked teenage girls. They found records of phone numbers and matching names of the accusers and even one girl’s high school transcript.

No computers were found. The lead detective, Joseph Recarey, publicly stated later that he believed that Epstein was tipped off. Five years later, Adriana Ross, the Epstein assistant who allegedly removed his computers from the home a month before the search warrant, was questioned under oath.

Adriana Ross was asked if Samuel Richard "Sandy" Berger, the National Security Advisor for Bill Clinton, tipped off Epstein about the search warrant. She pled the fifth. She was also asked if she was aware that Sandy Berger called Epstein’s home three weeks before the search warrant was executed. Again, she pleaded the fifth .

The attorney didn’t ask about Berger’s flight on Epstein’s jet one month prior to the search. If Berger did warn Epstein about the warrant, it doesn’t sound out of the realm of possibility. Berger was a fervent defender of Israeli policy, even receiving an honorary degree from Tel Aviv University, and he was willing to cross legal lines as he pled guilty in 2005 for removing classified documents from the National Security Archive.

Sandy Berger - Wikimedia Commons

2006 March 7 – The scheduled testimony by all of Epstein's accusers for a grand jury was canceled because the prosecutors wanted more time to examine the accusers’ MySpace pages that Epstein’s attorney, Alan Dershowitz, had provided. Remarkably, Dershowitz attacked the character of the victims by providing examples in which these teens referenced using drugs and alcohol. More remarkable, this ploy was considered a valid defense by the prosecutors.

At various points, Epstein was defended by numerous high-profile attorneys besides Dershowitz, such as Roy Black, Jack Goldberger, Gerald Lefcourt, Guy Lewis (former AUSA), Lily Sanchez (former AUSA), Kenneth Starr, Martin Weinberg, and Joe D Whitley.

2006 March 14 – Epstein organizes a science convention in St Thomas with famous physicists, including Steven Hawking .

2006 April - Palm Beach Police Detective Joe Recarey indirectly accused Epstein of obstruction of justice. He said that the Epstein victims were told "(t)hose who help him will be compensated, and those who hurt him will be dealt with."

2006 April - Assistant State Attorney Lanna Belohlavek told Palm Beach Police Detective, Joe Recarey, that the state attorney's office had offered Epstein a plea deal that would not require him to serve jail time or receive a felony conviction. This incensed Recarey. Fortunately, that deal subsequently fell apart.

2006 May 1 – The Palm Beach Police files its probable cause affidavit . It pushes for stronger charges, “unlawful sex acts with a minor” and “lewd and lascivious molestation.”

Numerous details of the investigation were revealed, including an infamous, oft-repeated detail in the media; one victim said that Epstein had an “egg-shaped” penis. Police interviewed Epstein’s butler, Alfredo Rodriguez, who said that he found sex toys in the room after massages. Rodriguez was once told to deliver flowers to one of the girl’s high school theatre performances.

2006 May 1 – In a courageous move, Palm Beach Police Department Chief, Michael Reiter, wrote a letter to State Attorney Barry Krischer. Reiter was upset with the leniency that Krischer was offering to Epstein and he urged Krischer to leave the case due to his “highly unusual” behavior.

2006 May – PBPD lead Detective Joe Recarey met with Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) Ann Marie Villafaña and the FBI because he felt that the state attorney was doing a terrible job .

2006 July 19 – The Palm Beach grand jury indicts Epstein on only one charge. It’s a lesser charge, felony solicitation of prostitution.

2006 July 24 – The FBI formally begins its investigation and subsequently finds over 40 victims .

2006 July 29 – Palm Beach Post report - Richard Tendler, local defense attorney, said he was surprised that the State Attorney didn’t charge Epstein with the stronger charges proposed by the Palm Beach Police Department. Instead, the State Attorney chose the grand jury option and left that choice up to the discretion of the jury. Tendler said, “It’s a way for the prosecutor’s office to not take full responsibility for not filing (the charge) and not doing what the Palm Beach Police Department wanted.”

Years later, State Attorney Barry Kirschner told the DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) that his office prosecuted minors at that time as young as 14 for prostitution and that he would have been forced to charge the victims, which was something he didn’t want to do.

2006 Aug – Palm Beach Post report “The man who had everything: Jeffrey Epstein craved big homes, elite friends and, investigators say, underage girls”

The report noted that “(h)idden cameras were found in the garage area and inside a clock on Epstein's desk, alongside a girl's high school transcript.”

2007 May - Marie Villafaña, Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA), provided a 53-page draft of a 60-count indictment against Epstein for her supervisors.

2007 May - Marie Villafaña, Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA), confirmed that Epstein did arrange to have the computers removed from his Palm Beach mansion before the search warrant was issued. She contacted Epstein’s attorneys requiring them to hand it over. However, her attorneys delayed and never had to do so due to the eventual non-prosecution agreement.

2007 July 6 - Epstein’s lawyers, Gerald Lefcourt and Alan Dershowitz, wrote a 23-page letter that mentioned that "Mr. Epstein was part of the original group that conceived the Clinton Global Initiative…” He also donated to the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Unfortunately, having high-powered political connections can be seen as a defense strategy.

2007 Sep 19 – Marie Villafaña, Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA), built a strong case against Epstein, but over time, his attorneys helped to redirect the government’s priorities. Villafaña wrote an email to Epstein’s attorney, Jay Lefkowitz, saying this, "I will include our standard language regarding resolving all criminal liability and I will mention 'co-conspirators,' but I would prefer not to highlight for the judge all of the other crimes and all of the other persons that we could charge ... maybe we can set a time to meet, if you want to meet 'off campus' somewhere, that is fine…”

2007 Sep 21 – State Attorney, Barry Krishner, wrote an email to Marie Villafaña, Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) about Epstein’s case. It said, “Glad we could get this worked out for reasons I won't put in writing. After this is resolved I would love to buy you a cup at Starbucks and have a conversation."

2007 Sep 24 - Epstein signs a non-prosecution agreement with federal authorities in exchange for pleading guilty to two state court prostitution-related charges.

Years later, then US Attorney Alex Acosta told the Trump transition team that he was ordered to give Epstein a sweetheart deal . “I was told Epstein belonged to intelligence and to leave it alone.”

2007 Sep 24 - An email from Epstein’s attorney, Jay Lefkowitz, asked AUSA Villafaña to “do whatever you can to prevent (the non-prosecution agreement) from becoming public.”

2007 Dec – New York Magazine publishes a puff piece that literally acknowledged in the first sentence that it was arranged by his PR consultant.

2007 Dec – Epstein gave his Ohio property (7558 King George Dr, New Albany, OH 43054) to Wexner with no money exchanged .

Was he trying to hide assets?

2007 Dec – A letter between Marie Villafaña, Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) and Epstein’s attorney, Jay Lefkowitz, shows that the federal government sent notification letters to three of the victims about the non-prosecution agreement, which is a requirement under Crime Victims’ Rights Act.

However, Epstein’s attorneys pressured the prosecutors to stop sending the letters and they complied; none of the other victims were informed.

2008 Jan 10 – The remainder of Epstein’s victims were deceived by the government. There’s no other way to state it. The FBI sent a letter to some of the victims urging patience while they “conduct a thorough investigation” and reinforced their right “to be reasonably heard at any public proceeding in the district court involving (a)…plea.”

It did not say that the federal investigation was already over and that a non-prosecution agreement was signed.

The victims’ lawyers argued that the settlement was illegal because it was executed without telling Epstein’s victims, a violation of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act.

2008 Jan 31 – The FBI and AUSA met with Jane Doe 1 . She provided details for the investigation, yet these government officials didn’t notify her that a non-prosecution agreement was already signed.

2008 April 28 – Epstein returned to Florida after a visit to Israel . He considered moving there permanently to avoid jail time.

2008 June 28 – A high-profile Kazakhstan-Russian model, Ruslana Korshunova, fell from the 9 ^th floor of her Manhattan apartment and died in an apparent suicide . She had flown on Epstein’s plane to his island just two weeks before his 2006 indictment.

2008 June 30 - Epstein pled guilty in state court to two felonies — solicitation of prostitution and solicitation of a minor for prostitution. These were less severe charges than what the Palm Beach Police Department wanted.

The fix was in. The state prosecutors chose to only have one witness testify for the grand jury even though they interviewed 13 underaged victims . (The FBI identified 40 victims .)

More stunning, this plea deal applied to only one of his victims and it was not the 14-year-old girl who first spoke with the police. It was one of his 16-year-old victims. This was essentially kept secret from the public/victims as the girl’s age wasn’t mentioned in the court documents; that specific girl didn’t even know. This was a crucial detail because it allowed Epstein to avoid registering as a sex offender in New Mexico and permitted him to be considered a low-risk offender in the Virgin Islands.

Most of the details were withheld from Palm Beach Circuit Court Judge Deborah Dale Pucillo at his sentencing. She asked Assistant State Attorney Lanna Belohlavek if there was more than one victim. She acknowledged that there were several. However, Belohlavek did not tell the truth when she told the judge that all of the victims agreed with the plea deal.

The victims and attorneys were misled by the FBI and federal prosecutors. They were told that the federal investigation was still open; hence, they didn’t know that the sweetheart plea deal in state court would be the end of Epstein’s legal troubles .

Epstein was sentenced to only 18 months. He managed to avoid federal prison where would have been forced to serve 85% of his time. Nor did he have to serve time in state prison where sex offenders are often assaulted, extorted, raped, and murdered. Instead, he served his time at the Palm Beach County Stockade.

2008 July 7 - A victim, “Jane Doe,” filed an emergency petition in federal court in the Southern District of Florida alleging that the government violated the Crime Victims’ Rights Act .

2008 Sep – An internal FBI memo confirms that Epstein provided information to the Florida State Attorney and FBI as part of his plea deal.

2008 Oct - Epstein received even more leniency. His request for work release was almost instantly approved even though the sheriff had a policy banning sex offenders from receiving work release.

Epstein began spending 12 hours a day “working” at his seemingly bogus non-profit organization, “Florida Science Foundation.” Epstein allegedly paid for sex with multiple young women at that organization.

2009 Feb – Epstein’s cell changed to an area of the jail with no inmates. Epstein’s organization, Florida Science Foundation, paid the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office $128,136 during his incarceration to provide him security .

2009 July 22 – Epstein was released from jail. He began house arrest, ironically, where the crimes were committed.

2009 Aug – Epstein violated his probation , yet he was excused by his probation officer.

2009 Nov – Epstein signed an undisclosed settlement agreement with Virginia Giuffre. The agreement was later unsealed and it showed that he paid $500,000 .

2010 July – Ghislaine Maxwell attended Chelsea Clinton’s wedding . She was supposed to have a deposition in the Virginia Giuffre civil trial, but she lied, saying that she had a family issue that she needed to attend to in the UK.

2011 - Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Gaffney (under Cyrus Vance Jr ) asked a judge to register Epstein as the lowest-level sex offender so he wouldn’t be required to check in with authorities every 90 days. The judge declined saying that she had “never seen a prosecutor’s office do anything like this.”

2011 Feb – Epstein was quoted by the New York Post saying, “I’m not a sexual predator, I’m an ‘offender,’…It’s the difference between a murderer and a person who steals a bagel.”

2011 Oct - David Wassong, managing director of Soros Fund Management LLC, was photographed with Ghislaine Maxwell at a charity event. Bloomberg labeled Maxwell as an " oceanographer ," which was part of a philanthropic branding. Such branding protected this wolf in sheep's clothing while attending the New York Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Children's 2013 Spring Luncheon , the 2014 Children's Benefit Gala , and serving as a panelist for the 2014 WIE Symposium (Women: Inspiration & Enterprise.

2012 – Epstein purchased the infamous painting of Bill Clinton in a blue dress from a New York student.

2012 - Ghislaine Maxwell founded an ocean conservation charity, the TerramMar Project. It was an attempt to clean up her reputation while opening more doors to wealthy, powerful individuals. This bogus charity gave out only $874 in grants during its entire five-year existence.

The Clinton Foundation publicly supported TerraMar Project's alignment with another non-profit, Sustainable Oceans Alliance , which was linked to Paolo Zampolli . He is an Italian-born owner of a modeling agency, ID Model Management. Zampolli recruited Melania Trump (then-Melania Knauss) to move to the U.S., facilitated her visa process, and introduced her to Donald Trump in 1998. That's been a point of contention because Melania threatened to sue Hunter Biden for repeating a claim that Jeffrey Epstein introduced her to Trump.

Zampolli was friends with the French modeling agent Jean Luc Brunel, who partnered with Jeffrey Epstein. In fact, Zampolli married his wife, Amanda Ungaro, when she was 19 years old. She flew on Epstein's plane as Jean Luc Brunel's guest when she was underage .

Trump has remained close throughout the years to Zampolli, or "my Paolo," as he calls him. He worked for Trump's real estate company from 2004-2006. After that, Zampolli transitioned into multiple nonprofit and diplomatic roles. Trump appointed him in February 2025 as the U.S. Special Envoy for Global Partnerships. Within days of that appointment, Trump made his infamous "Riviera of the Middle East" plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza. Influential Israeli businessmen wrote that formal proposal , but Zampolli came up with a similar branding as far back as 2016 .

2014 – The current CIA director, William Burns, met with Epstein three times, including one instance at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion. This was revealed by a report last year by The Wall Street Journal .

Burns is a career-long diplomat and, at the time, he was the Deputy Secretary of State. The State Department and the CIA are closely intermingled. In fact, several CIA officials gain positions in the State Department to cover their clandestine activity. Burns hasn’t publicly commented on the report, but a CIA spokesperson gave a preposterous response. The CIA claimed that Burns didn’t know about Epstein’s background and that he was meeting with Epstein for career advice.

Either William Burns was the least-informed leader of an intelligence agency or Epstein was a useful intelligence asset.

William Burns - Wikimedia Commons

2014 March - Ghislaine Maxwell spoke in front of the United Nations under the guise of her fake charity, the TerraMar Project. Later in 2014, she gave a speech at a TEDx and at the Council on Foreign Relations , which is arguably the most influential foreign policy think tank in Washington, DC.

2015 Jan – Gawker published the flight logs of Epstein’s pilot which included numerous powerful people, such as former heads of state, foreign policy officials, business leaders, etc. His private jet was dubbed “Lolita Express” by the media. Initial reports showed that Bill Clinton flew on his jet eleven times. Fox News later revealed that Clinton flew on Epstein’s jet 26 times.

2015 Jan – Gawker published Epstein’s “ little black book ” that has over 2,000 phone numbers. It includes high-profile celebrities, scientists, business people, and politicians.

2015 Sep – Virginia Giuffre filed a defamation suit against Ghislaine Maxwell. This led to a massive public-records release this year that many have incorrectly labeled as the “Epstein List.”

2016 April – Ghislaine Maxwell denied all allegations during her deposition.

2016 May 3 ^rd - Virginia Giuffre deposition (detailed earlier 2000-2002)

2016 Sep – Epstein pled the 5 ^th Amendment roughly 600 times during his deposition.

2017 Oct – Palm Beach Post report – Court documents reveal that Epstein paid a combined $5.5 million in settlements for three of his victims.

2018 Nov – The Miami Herald published a series of articles, particularly “ Perversion of Justice ,” that illustrated the white-glove treatment that Epstein received from prosecutors. Epstein reportedly gave information about two Bear Stearns executives . That information didn’t even lead to a conviction .

This series of articles sparked a national audience and elicited a palpable outrage that seemingly led to criminal charges.

2018 Dec 3 – Former Senator (R-NE) Ben Sasse wrote a letter to the Inspector General of the Department of Justice. He cited the Miami Herald to pressure the DOJ to investigate the circumstances of his non-prosecution agreement. Two months later, the DOJ responded affirmatively saying that it had opened an investigation.

2019 Feb 27 - Epstein had an ongoing text thread with Stacey Plaskett (Delegate to the United States House of Representatives) during a critical session of the House Oversight Committee. Plaskett, among others, questioned Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen, before the House Oversight Committee. Epstein and Plaskett exchanged messages before, during, and after her time with Cohen. Epstein's advice was intended to do damage to Trump.

2019 July 2 – A federal grand jury in the Southern District of New York charged Epstein with one count of sex trafficking of minors and one count of conspiracy of sex trafficking of minors.

2019 July 6 – Epstein was arrested at an airport in New Jersey after flying from Paris. He was charged in the Southern District of New York for crimes in Florida, New York, New Mexico, and the Virgin Islands. There were over 40 victims. These charges did not violate Epstein’s constitutional protection against double jeopardy because Epstein’s guilty plea involved only state crimes. This case involved federal law.

2019 July 10 – Secretary of Labor, Alex Acosta, held a press conference to do demand control regarding the non-prosecution deal that he arranged in 2008 as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. Acosta blamed the Florida State Attorney’s Office which he claimed “was ready to allow Epstein to walk free with no jail time, nothing.”

2019 July 11 – A report by New York Magazine questions Epstein’s financial bona fides. “Not one institutional trading desk, primary or secondary, had ever traded with Epstein’s firm.”

2019 July 11 – Israeli news report from Haaretz – Epstein invested $1 million in 2015 in former Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s tech start-up.

2019 July 12 – Alex Acosta’s PR attempt didn’t work. He resigned as Secretary of Labor.

2019 July 15 – Information in reports about the raid indicates that Epstein was tied to intelligence. Authorities found a fake Austrian passport with a fake name and Epstein’s picture. There were stamps , dating back to the 1980s, for multiple countries, including

France, Spain, the UK and Saudi Arabia.

2019 July 17 – A report in Barron's , “Despite His Wizardly Reputation, Jeffrey Epstein’s Investing Trailed the Market” shows that Epstein’s fund traded at below-market rates. Clearly, he didn’t make his fortune as a “financier.”

2019 July 23 – As an inmate in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, Epstein is placed on suicide watch after he was found on the floor unconscious with bruises on his neck. He had an orange cloth around his neck. His cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione (a convicted murderer of four people), said that Epstein tried to kill himself.

31 hours later – He was taken off suicide watch. Epstein told the jail psychologist that he had a “wonderful life” and “would be crazy” to end it. Epstein initially told the staff that Tartaglione tried to kill him but he slightly recanted by saying that he didn’t remember what happened and asked to be housed with the same cellmate.

Nicholas Tartaglione - Facebook

2019 July 30 - Efrain “Stone” Reyes is assigned as Epstein’s new cellmate .

2019 August 1 – Epstein met with his attorney, David Schoen, for five hours . "I had mapped out a kind of a four-prong defense approach that I thought we should take, and he was very excited about it, very upbeat," said Schoen.

2019 August 8 ^th – Epstein signed his will, which lists his attorney, Darren Indyke, and his accountant, Richard Kahn, as the executor. Boris Nikolic, a former Bill Gates advisor, is listed as a “successor executor” if Indyke and Kahn can’t perform the role. Nikolic said he was “ shocked ” when the news became public.

Did Epstein have more assets hidden in offshore accounts?

Epstein’s estate, which is known as “The 1953 Trust,” is worth $577 million. It includes :

$56.5 million in cash

$127 million in equities

$18.6 million in aviation assets, automobiles and boats

$195 million in hedge funds and private equity investments.

$56 million for his Manhattan mansion

$72 million for his New Mexico ranch

$8 million for apartment in Paris

$12.4 million for his Palm Beach house

$86.4 million for two private islands (Great St James and Little Saint James) in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

2019 Aug 9 (8 AM) – Epstein’s cellmate, Efrain “Stone” Reyes left the cell and was transferred to another facility . Epstein was left alone not long after being placed on suicide watch.

2019 Aug 9 6:58 – Epstein makes an unmonitored 19-minute phone call (a violation of prison policy).

According to the DOJ’s Inspector General :

“Although Epstein said he was calling his mother, in actuality he called someone with whom he allegedly had a personal relationship.”

The report didn’t identify who he called.

2019 Aug 10 (6:33 AM) - Epstein is discovered by prison staff found dead by presumably hanging himself with bedsheets. The prison guards on watch, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, were later charged with falsifying records because they didn’t check on him throughout the night. At times, they seemed to be asleep. Even though Epstein was suspected of attempting suicide by hanging himself with clothing a month earlier, the staff left Epstein with excess blankets, linen, and clothing.

Jeffrey Epstein's prison cell after his death on August 10, 2019 - Department of Justice.

As far as the cameras, the official story is that there is no video footage of Epstein’s death. Multiple cameras malfunctioned. There was one camera working in the area near his cell. According to the DOJ’s Inspector General :

“…anyone entering or attempting to enter Epstein’s (cell) from the SHU common area would have been picked up by that video camera. Epstein’s cell door, however, was not in the camera’s field of view. The OIG reviewed the video and found that, between approximately 10:40 p.m. on August 9 and about 6:30 a.m. on August 10, no one was seen entering Epstein’s cell tier from the SHU common area.”

2019 Aug 12 – The NYPD and FBI raided Epstein’s Virgin Islands mansion.

Keep in mind, this raid took place two days after his death. CNBC published drone footage of the raid that was posted by the Youtube channel, Rusty Shackleford. That channel was later taken down. Three computers were seized by authorities. Some of those officers noticed the drone and then began covering the windows to block the view of the camera. This evidence has never been released publicly.

Footage of FBI and NYPD raiding Epstein's island two days after his death - Youtube Rusty Shackleford

2019 Aug 13 – Yahoo News report – This article suggests that two of Jeffrey Epstein’s lawyers, Darren Indyke and Jeffrey Schantz, were deeply involved in his business dealings for decades. The investigation couldn’t find a single client for those two attorneys, other than Epstein.

2019 Aug 16 - New York City’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Barbara Sampson, ruled Epstein’s death a suicide .

2019 Aug 27 – Twenty-three of Epstein’s victims gave statements in court to put Epstein’s actions on the record. The judge allowed those statements even though the case was dropped due to Epstein’s death.

2019 Oct - Dr. Michael Baden (former New York City chief medical examiner) said on Fox and Friends that Epstein’s injuries, including fractures to his larynx and hyoid bone, were “extremely unusual in suicidal hangings” and more consistent with “homicidal strangulation.” Epstein’s brother, Mark, independently hired Dr. Michael Baden.

2020 Jan – The video footage of Epstein’s first suicide attempt in July 2019 was accidentally deleted by prison officials, according to federal prosecutors.

2020 Jan - Dr. Michael Baden appears on the Dr Oz show. He says that the evidence from Epstein’s autopsy suggests that Epstein was murdered , instead of committing suicide. Baden highlighted how Epstein’s burst capillaries and lower extremities were pale and not purple or bluish. Epstein’s hyoid was broken in three places, which is unheard of in suicide, according to Baden.

2020 Feb – New York Times report – Epstein’s estate transferred $12 million to a banking company in the Virgin Islands, Southern Country International, which Epstein established years earlier and had been dormant since its inception.

2020 July – After a year of avoiding charges, FBI agents captured Ghislaine Maxwell. She was hiding at a 156-acre property in New Hampshire that she acquired in an all-cash transaction via an anonymous shell corporation .

2020 July – A report in the New York Daily News said that Ghislaine Maxwell had an entire floor of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn to herself.

2020 Nov – A report by the Justice Department Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) notes that one of Epstein’s attorneys, Lilly Ann Sanchez, had a romantic relationship with Matthew Menchel, one of the prosecutors who worked on the plea deal. They dated for a few weeks in 2003.

2021 Feb – The Attorney General of the Virgin Islands charges Epstein’s attorney and accountant (Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn) as part of a sex trafficking conspiracy. The charges allege they were not an attorney/accountant; instead they were active participants in Epstein’s trafficking operation, including the organization of three arranged marriages to help transport victims to the island.

2021 Dec 6 – FBI Special Agent Kelly Maguire gives bombshell testimony in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial. She said that they found binders on the fifth floor with several CDs with names on them. You have to conclude that there was intelligence/blackmail contained in some of those files.

Also, on the third floor, they discovered the safe that contained his fake passport, cash, jewelry, and diamonds. This was publicly disclosed by the DOJ. However, there were more CDs and hard drives in the safe. The CDs and hard drives had not been disclosed publicly by the DOJ.

Evidence seized from Epstein's safe - DOJ

Agent Kelly Maguire testified that they did not seize this evidence because they only had a warrant to search the premises, not to remove evidence. Instead, they photographed the items and marked them with evidence tape. However, the FBI did not station anyone at his home and left. It’s unbelievable that the FBI didn’t have enough resources in place to prevent this from happening.

When the authorities returned four days later with a broader warrant, voilà, that evidence was missing from the house. Agent Maguire reached out to Epstein’s attorney, Richard Kahn, to have it returned and he did. Remarkably, Kahn never faced obstruction charges. Maguire testified that she believed that all of the evidence was returned.

We will never know if some of that evidence was withheld and/or tampered with by Epstein’s handlers. What’s even more maddening is that the FBI discovered a plastic bin on the first floor filled with hard drives on the first day of the search. These hard drives were already wrapped in police evidence tape before the FBI arrived. How in the world did he manage to retrieve his own incriminating evidence from law enforcement?

Maguire testified, “We found them with evidence tape. We did not place that there.” The prosecutor asked, “As you sit here today, do you have personal knowledge of why there was evidence tape on these boxes?” She replied, “No, I don't.”

The FBI discovered this plastic bin in Epstein's home wrapped in evidence tape. - DOJ

2021 Dec 29 – Ghislaine Maxwell is convicted on federal sex trafficking charges in New York.

2021 Dec – New York Post report - Jeffrey Epstein visited the White House at least 17 times in the early years of President Bill Clinton’s administration.

2022 Feb - Jeffrey Epstein’s French business partner/accomplice, Jean Luc Brunel, committed suicide in a Paris prison.

2022 Feb - Prince Andrew reached an undisclosed settlement with Virginia Giuffre.

2022 July – The Attorney General of the Virgin Islands accused the executors of Epstein’s will (Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn) of embezzling $13 million of the estate for their personal gain.

2022 Nov - The U.S. Virgin Islands and Jeffrey Epstein’s estate agreed to a financial settlement for sex trafficking charges. They agree to $105 million in cash and half of the sale value of one of his islands.

2022 Dec – The Attorney General of the Virgin Islands, Denise George, filed suit against JPMorgan for its links with Epstein. Just days later, Denise George was fired by the governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands, Albert Bryan Jr., and no reason was given.

2023 Jan - Apollo Global Management is one of the largest investment firms in the world with over $500 billion in assets. Its co-founder, Leon Black, paid the U.S. Virgin Islands a $62.5 million settlement to avoid further charges related to Epstein. The government subpoenaed his communications with Epstein. Black was accused of raping a 16-year old autistic girl with Down syndrome at Epstein's island in 2002.

2023 Feb – Court records released in the lawsuit against JPMorgan filed by the U.S. Virgin Islands in New York federal court. It showed that JPMorgan knowingly facilitated Epstein’s trafficking organization. Prosecutors alleged complicity at the highest level by the CEO, Jamie Dimon. It cited an email from one month after Epstein’s guilty plea in which the bank would likely be forced to dismiss Epstein as a client. It read, “I would count Epstein’s assets as a probable outflow for ’08 ($120mm or so?) as I can’t imagine it will stay (pending Dimon review).” Epstein remained as a client.

Over a 15-year period, JPMorgan serviced over 55 Epstein-related accounts totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. JPMorgan also processed Epstein’s payments of nearly $1.5 million to known recruiters/victims of his sex-trafficking organization, including the MC2 modeling agency (Jean Luc Brunel). Another recipient was a woman whom JPMorgan’s due diligence reports that Epstein purchased her at the age of 14. He also paid over $150,000 to private investigators , another hallmark of an elaborate blackmail operation.

Even worse, it appears that the senior executive of JPMorgan who handled Epstein’s account, Jes Staley, may have paid for his sex trafficking services. The timing coincides with Epstein’s “work release” program. Epstein wired $2,000 and $3,000 to an Eastern European woman after arranging visits with Staley. In a creepy fashion, Staley emailed Epstein with a message, “That was fun. Say hi to Snow White…” Epstein responded “(W)hat character would you like next?” Staley replied, “Beauty and the Beast.”

2023 July – Apollo Global Management’s board of directors commissioned the law firm Dechert LLP to examine Leon Black’s payments to Epstein. The Dechert report found that Black paid Epstein, who was neither a licensed tax attorney nor a certified public accountant, a total of $158 million in several installments over a five-year period.

There is no reasonable explanation, other than blackmail, for such exorbitant payments from Black. He can access just about any financial expert in the world and he chose Epstein.

Extortion is clearly one of the main sources of Epstein’s “unexplained wealth.”

2023 May – JPMorgan asserted that the former first lady the U.S. Virgin Islands, Cecile de Jongh, “actively facilitated” Epstein’s deviance. Cecile de Jongh received a $100,000 salary and $50,000 tuition reimbursement for her as the office manager of his company, Southern Trust . JPMorgan contended that there was a quid pro quo relationship. His company allegedly received $300 million in tax incentives and he had his sex offender restrictions waived. The bank even proclaimed that she helped one of Epstein’s victims obtain a visa.

2023 Nov – JPMorgan agreed to a $290 million settlement with Epstein victims.

Former First Lady of the US Virgin Islands, Cecile de Jongh - Facebook

Conclusion

It should be patently obvious that Epstein was involved in the intelligence community. After all, the former US Attorney, Alex Acosta, even admitted as much in a moment of high pressure. The more difficult question is defining his role in the intelligence community. I believe that he was an asset of the Mossad. The Mossad and the CIA often share intelligence and their objectives frequently overlap.

There is a stark difference between an agent and an asset. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies (particularly FBI, DEA, and CIA) often use criminals as informants because they have leverage over them. Criminals provide plausible deniability and operational skill for covert operations. Even better, as in the case with Epstein, once an asset is burned publicly and loses their utility, it’s easy to flush them down the toilet.

The media focused heavily on his sexual depravity, as it should have, but his elaborate blackmail operation, which had at least $150,000 benchmarked for private investigators, and government protection represented only a tiny fraction of his press coverage. On a similar note, his trafficking ring can help to explain some of his wealth, but it’s only a small portion of his known half-billion dollar net worth. The JPMorgan proceedings showed him exchanging thousands of dollars for sexual transactions. Whereas, Leon Black, alone, paid him $158 million in an apparent blackmail scheme. There’s exponentially more money in extortion.

The more difficult question is whether Epstein committed suicide, if he was coerced to commit suicide, or if he was murdered. The fact is that determining the truth behind Epstein’s death is a legitimate question and this fact is an indictment of our system.

The argument that he committed suicide of his own volition isn’t outlandish. He was no longer a useful intelligence. He was facing potentially the rest of his life in prison with no more “Get Out of Jail Free” cards. That’s what happened to Ghislaine Maxwell. Also, prison is the most dangerous place for a pedophile and it’s not unusual for prison guards/officials to be woefully negligent.

Whereas, it’s difficult to argue against the theory that he was murdered. Why would a man who has comprise material on so many of the world’s rich/powerful people would need to commit suicide? Epstein’s attorney David Schoen was skeptical that he committed suicide. He said, "It doesn't seem logical to me that someone would actually hire me in a case nine days earlier and be excited up until the day of his death about fighting it, based on the strategy we had come up with, setting up meetings for me with the other lawyers."

Personally, I don’t have a strong opinion about how he died. However, we can all agree that the government isn’t giving us the full story. The circumstances around his death read like something in a Hollywood script. He placed an unmonitored call twelve hours before his death. The evidence from his first suicide or murder attempt is missing. The video of his actual death isn’t available. The FBI allowed evidence to be removed from his home and then allowed his handlers to return the evidence to the authorities. And just like a mob clean-up crew, the FBI swooped into his Virgin Islands property two days later and snatched up all of the evidence on the property.

Move over Afghanistan, Myanmar is Now the World’s Top Opium Producer

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 04:04:16 GMT

With US Troops out of Afghanistan, it is No Longer the Epicenter of Opium Production.
Drug Trafficking is Fueling a Civil War in Myanmar.

For the last two decades, while U.S. forces occupied the country, Afghanistan has been the epicenter of the world’s opium production with roughly 90% of global supply. After American troops withdrew from the country, and with the Taliban in charge, Afghan opium production drastically declined. There were an estimated 6,200 tons produced in 2022, as opposed to 333 tons in 2023, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

That may surprise some readers as the Taliban have been credibly linked with the heroin trade. The UNODC estimated in 2009 that the Taliban generated $155 million per year from Afghan opium. They weren’t traffickers but they forced traffickers and farmers to pay a “tax” in their territories. Even though those were handsome profits, the Taliban were relatively a minor part of a massive black market worth then roughly $3 billion annually.

History shows that the Taliban’s policy on opium has shifted from time to time depending upon their circumstances. An opium ban in Afghanistan seems to fall in line with the Taliban’s tyrannical fundamentalist Islamic modus operandi. However, it also benefits those in power. Several Afghan warlords derive much of their authority as a result from black market profits. Hence, whoever controls the opium trade, or lack thereof, in Afghanistan holds all the cards in a country where the average annual income is 378 US dollars.

After the Taliban gained control of Afghanistan in 1996, they struggled to find international recognition. Therefore, the Taliban killed two birds with one stone when its former leader, Mullah Omar, issued an opium ban in July of 2000. That edict was beyond effective. According to UNODC estimates, Afghan opium production dropped from 3,276 tons in 2000 to 185 tons in 2001. The U.S. State Department even approved $43 million of humanitarian assistance for the Afghanistan government just months before 9/11 due to its strong counternarcotics efforts.

After 9/11, the Taliban’s power decreased but didn’t cease. America installed a deeply corrupt transitional government. In turn, opium production escalated exponentially. America sided with militias entrenched in the opium trade who opposed the Taliban, such as the Northern Alliance. But, the Western media has only reported in drips and drabs about the U.S.-allied politicians/warlords who have been far more prominently involved in heroin trafficking.

The corruption ran to the top. There are too many flagrant examples to list concisely, but notably, a man carrying 183 kilos of heroin was released by the police because he was carrying a signed letter of protection from Afghanistan’s drug czar, General Mohammad Daud Daud. Wikileaks revealed that former President Hamid Karzai once pardoned five police officers who were captured with 124 kilos of heroin. Even Hamid Karzai’s half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, was a known drug smuggler who had been on the CIA payroll for years. Practically the entire Karzai administration was on the CIA’s payroll all while the agency knew these officials were drowning in drug money.

The U.S. government’s selective counternarcotics enforcement efforts were just as glaring in Afghanistan. To be specific, the Pentagon had an official list of 50 Taliban-linked traffickers who were targeted to be killed or captured. However, the American government used the kid gloves when it helped on the battlefield. Haji Juma Khan was captured in 2001 and almost immediately released. He went on to become a DEA and CIA informant while maintaining his heroin empire. He was eventually arrested by U.S. authorities in 2008 after siding with the Taliban .

Less than a year after the U.S. withdrawal in 2021, the Taliban regained power and their leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, issued another opium ban in April 2022. Today, we have a situation in which the opium market has shrunk by roughly 95% now that America’s cronies are no longer in power.

Afghanistan police seizing opium

It’d be easy to assume that there’s a grand conspiracy by dirty U.S. government officials to pocket drug money. However, that’s not the case. If we’re going to examine ulterior motives in foreign policy, the $3 billion annual opium black market pales in comparison to the $2.3 trillion that the American government has spent waging war over 20 years in Afghanistan. In other words, the legal racket from the military industrial complex is far more lucrative than the drug game.

In many ways, America doesn’t wage a “war on drugs,” instead it selectively enforces these laws where it advances its interests. In other words, a corrupt foreign world leader can enjoy a fruitful relationship with the American government if he aligns with America’s economic and military agenda. Think of Panamanian strongman, Manuel Noriega. He was on the CIA’s payroll for years despite a well-known link with drug cartels . However, as his allegiances shifted, he became persona non grata in DC which eventually led to the Panama invasion of 1989.

Last month, the UNODC announced that Myanmar became the world’s top opium producer. It’s not shocking news. Myanmar had long been the 2 ^nd largest producer; albeit, a far distant second place. Keep in mind, this country was already one of the main global manufacturing hubs of methamphetamine. It’s also not shocking because the U.S. government has long played a role in the black markets of Myanmar.

Not long after Burma (present-day Myanmar) declared independence from Britain in 1948, it became embroiled as a proxy in the Cold War. (The Burmese military junta changed their country’s name to Myanmar in 1989 and the U.S. government has never recognized the new name.)

The communist dictator, Mao Zedong, began his revolution in China in 1949. That pushed the former Chinese leader, Chiang Kai-shek, out of power. Chiang Kai-shek fled mainland China to Taiwan and his nationalist party, Kuomintang (KMT), ruled the island with an iron fist.

Several KMT troops also crossed the border into Burma. Their original intention wasn’t to take over Burma. Rather, they wanted to use the country as staging grounds for future operations to overthrow the Mao government. The KMT migrated to a region in Burma (Shan State) that lacked development/infrastructure and opium was the main cash crop. The KMT heavily taxed these farmers, which indirectly forced them to produce much more product to make the same income.

President Truman authorized a secret mission, “Operation Paper” in 1950 in hopes of overthrowing Mao by having the CIA arm and train the KMT. There were several incursions into China by the KMT but no real success. The KMT couldn’t point to many results on the battlefield, but the support it received from U.S. intelligence facilitated a massive increase in opium in the region. There were roughly 30 tons of opium produced in 1950, which increased to over 300 tons by the mid-1950s.

Keep in mind, none of this activity was authorized by Congress. Hence, the KMT’s drug money helped to keep their group operational. The KMT never felt a moral obligation to hide their connection to drug trafficking. The KMT General, Tuan Shi-wen, told a reporter , “Necessity knows no law. That is why we deal with opium. We have to continue to fight the evil of communism. To fight, you must have an army. An army must have guns. To buy guns, you must have money. And in these mountains? The only money is opium.”

Alfred W. McCoy, history professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is the foremost resource on this topic. During the Vietnam War, there were numerous reports of how the Golden Triangle (Myanmar, Thailand, and Laos) had become the opium production center of the world and notable U.S. allies were involved. However, when McCoy published The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade in 1972 it put the pieces of the puzzle together and exposed how our government brazenly enabled traffickers in the Golden Triangle in hopes of crushing communism.

For Myanmar’s entire history, there have been large regions that are essentially ungoverned and lack economic development/infrastructure. These regions have been ruled by armed non-state actor groups, many of which are largely funded by criminal proceeds. Both U.S. intelligence and the Myanmar government have tried to foster loyalty by enabling this criminality. However, both sides have miscalculated that they could buy loyalty from these narco warlords.

The Burmese dictator, U Ne Win, made a businesslike decision in 1963 to allow militia groups to traffic opium as long as operated as defense groups against rebel factions. However, these ostensibly pro-government forces, known as Ka Kwe Ye (KKY) (which means “defense” in Burmese) did very little to protect the Burmese junta’s interests, and the program was disbanded ten years later.

A couple of the world’s most notorious drug kingpins, Khun Sa and Lo Hsing-han, were part of this KKY program. Both of them got their start within the KMT and managed to maintain off/and/on relationships with both the Myanmar government and foreign intelligence. Khun Sa, “King of the Golden Triangle,” at one point had a 20,000-member private army , that controlled 80% of Myanmar's opium production and approximately half of the world's supply. He eventually agreed to a truce with the Myanmar government in 1996 and gained safe haven.

Lo Hsing-han enjoyed an even lengthier criminal reign. One year after Khun Sa retirement from drug trafficking, the U.S. government publicly criticized Myanmar’s government for empowering Lo Hsing-han. One State Department official said , “Since 1988, some 15 percent of foreign investment in Burma and over half of that from Singapore has been tied to the family of narco-trafficker Lo Hsing Han.”

What the State Department failed to mention was that their organization and the CIA went to extraordinary lengths to protect Lo Hsing-han. A few years earlier, the State Department and CIA successfully pressured the DEA to transfer their most tenured agent in Myanmar, Richard Horn, for simply doing his job too well.

Richard Horn’s phone conversations were illegally recorded by the CIA. Horn had communications with an informant, U Saw Lu, a community leader in the autonomous Wa State. U Saw Lu was a local anti-narcotics official and he notified Horn about a senior Myanmar intelligence official who protected Lo Hsing-han’s drug shipments. Horn and U Saw Lu were also in the preliminary stages of seeking international assistance to create an opium crop substitution/eradication program in the Wa State.

The CIA’s station chief in Myanmar, Arthur Brown, spiked this initiative by leaking a U Saw Lu-signed document about this plan to a Myanmar intelligence official. That decision put U Saw Lu in serious danger. Myanmar’s junta had previously nearly tortured him to death. He was hung upside down for 56 days, beaten with chains, given electric shocks to the groin, and had urine repeatedly poured on his face.

Richard Horn sued the two CIA officials in 1994 for violating his civil rights. A 15-year legal battle ensued and the CIA agreed to a $3 million settlement. In that same year the Myanmar government formed a program, Border Guard Force (BGF), which was similar to the Ka Kwe Ye (KKY) program of 1963. Myanmar attempted to assuage the several ethnic armed organizations that refused to agree to a ceasefire. These groups were allowed to become a Border Guard Force (BGF) and receive income from the government to protect their territory.

This was a formalization of a decades-old informal policy. Since the coup of 1962, Myanmar’s army, known as the Tatmadaw, has essentially played a game of wack-a-mole with the country’s ethnic rebel groups. Currently, there are 21 ethnic armed organizations controlling large portions of the country and it’s an impossible task to militarily defeat them all. Therefore, Myanmar’s leaders have found the carrot to be a more effective counterinsurgency strategy than the stick. In other words, these Border Guard Forces (BGF) engage in criminal activity, with little to no interference, as long as they aren’t openly hostile to the government.

The United Wa State Army (UWSA) is the largest ethnic armed organization in Myanmar. Their organization agreed to a ceasefire in 1989. That neutrality helped enable this group to become arguably the second most powerful non-state actor (behind Hezbollah in Lebanon) in the world with as many as 30,000 soldiers . The U.S. Treasury Department once labeled the UWSA as “the largest and most powerful drug trafficking organization in Southeast Asia.”

United Wa State Army (UWSA) (Wa State TV)

Again, the criminal lifestyle is also cozy for the junta’s BGFs. The Kokang BGF, for instance, oversees a region rife with drug trafficking and illegal gambling . That’s not to mention the cyber scams that are run by human trafficking victims. The UN has estimated that as many as 100,000 victims (primarily from China) have been lured to Myanmar to work in these fraud centers. That’s not even counting the number of victims to their scams. If these human trafficking victims don’t meet their quotas, they’re tortured and, in some cases, murdered. It should be no surprise that the profits from such brazen depravity lead directly back to the Myanmar junta’s highest levels .

The drug money corruption also goes all the way to the top of this narco dictatorship. For example, during a drug and arms trafficking in Bangkok, Thai officials found records linking Myanmar’s de facto leader, Min Aung Hlaing. Title deeds and banks of his daughter and son were found at the home of the trafficker.

As mentioned earlier, Myanmar now has the highest opium production in the world. However, the timing of this frenzied drug trafficking coincides with the military coup that took place three years ago on February 1, 2021. The coup removed a quasi-democratic government that had been in place since 2010. A civil war ensued and continues to this day. Over 6,000 civilians have been killed, along with 1.5 million displaced .

Min Aung Hlaing (de facto leader of Myanmar) (Wikipedia)

Myanmar’s junta is rapidly losing territory and soldiers now that some of the rebel groups are fighting in an aligned front. This momentum shift peaked on October 27, 2023 with Operation 1027. This was a joint military operation waged by the Three Brotherhood Alliance, primarily composed of three ethnic armed organizations, the Arakan Army (AA), Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), and Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA).

After facing numerous humiliating military defeats, and losing over 130 military posts , Myanmar’s de facto leader, Min Aung Hlaing, made a declaration that gained several international headlines. He stated that the rebels are funded with drug money .

In particular, he pointed to the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA). These allegations are true. The MNDAA has a long history connected with the drug trade, although the organization has made some strides to cut back on this type of activity in its region. Likewise, the Arakan Army (AA), Karen National Liberation Army , and other rebel groups are linked to drug money. However, not all of these rebels are complicit in this trade. The Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) enforces a strict anti-drug policy in its territory.

All in all, this is a complex issue in one of the most lawless countries in the world, but what is clear is how the U.S. government, along with Myanmar, isn’t truly fighting a war on drugs. They’re using the war on drugs as a pretext to advance their interests. Decades ago, then-Burma had a serious drug problem, but the U.S. intelligence agencies dumped gasoline on the flames. And now, our American officials root for the narco rebels to defeat the narco regime so that a semi-democratic state can be restored in Myanmar.

American Foreign Policy Helped Manufacture the World's Refugee Crisis

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Sat, 03 Sep 2022 03:11:53 GMT

Decisions by US Lawmakers Have Fueled so much Suffering and Bloodshed Throughout these Regions

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) recently released a report with some staggering statistics about the state of the world. In 2021, there were 53.2 million people who were Internally displaced people (IDPs) or domestic refugees within the borders of their countries because of violence and warfare. The average American citizen takes the peaceful existence within our borders for granted. Americans generally relish their country's role as the world’s policeman and view it as the reigning force of stability. However, the same people are rarely aware of how U.S. foreign policy (primarily the Cold War and the War on Terror) created pervasive problems with long-lasting effects. By no means is America responsible for all of the world’s problems, but we need to examine our government’s part in these catastrophes.

Here's a look at the ten countries with the highest number of “internally displaced” citizens or domestic refugees and a further examination of the U.S. role in each country. (Part 1 examines one through five.)

1 - Syria - 6.7 million internal displaced citizens

Syria entered a civil war in March 2011 after President Bashar al-Assad’s government forces responded violently to public protests. This conflict may be more accurately described as a proxy war. Russia and Iran are aiding the Assad government; the U.S., the U.K., Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Turkey support the rebels.

The UN has documented over 350,000 deaths . Anyone who has taken a cursory look at the situation has likely read about the horrific war crimes committed by the Assad regime, such as barrel bombing and mass hangings. But, Western media has done little to expose the war crimes committed by the rebels.

The Syrian opposition consists of different organizations with varying motivations. The U.S. government insisted that they were supporting “moderate” rebels, but there’s extensive documentation that says otherwise. Some of them were directly tied to al Qaeda and ISIS. Former CIA director, David Petraeus, asserted that the U.S. should support members of Al Qaeda to fight against ISIS. Max Blumenthal wrote a brilliant book, The Management of Savagery , which detailed U.S. links with extremist rebels.

The U.S. recognized the Syrian rebel coalition, Syria’s National Coalition, in 2012 as the legitimate government even though their links with terrorists were well known. These organizations didn’t even try to hide the connections. Twenty-nine militant groups signed a petition in that same year condemning the U.S. designation of Al Nusra, an al Qaeda affiliate, as a terrorist organization. Their petition even declared that “we are all Al Nusrah” and urged their supporters to raise Al Nusrah’s flag.

Al Nusra Front (Karam al-Masri/Flickr)

In that same year, Hillary Clinton received a State Department email notifying her that “(Al Qaeda) is on our side in Syria.” Likewise, a FOIA request from Judicial Watch exposed a report by U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency which stated that “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood and AQI (now ISIS), are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.”

In 2013 Obama authorized a CIA program, Timber Sycamore, to arm and train Syrian rebels. According to Brown University’s Cost of War project, the U.S. spent $54 billion over the next five years making it one of the most expensive covert operations in U.S. history. While speaking at the Institute of Politics at Harvard in 2014, Joe Biden tried to shift some of the blame on our allies (Turkey, Saudi Arabia, UAE). Biden said they were “so determined to take down Assad” that they had launched a “proxy Sunni-Shia war” funneling “hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad. Except the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra, and al-Qaeda.”

One year after arming proxies via Timber Sycamore and seeing how Syria descended into chaos, Obama ordered direct U.S. military action. There initially weren’t U.S. ground troops, but he authorized airstrikes in Syria to target ISIS fighters. That’s classic American foreign intervention, i.e. create the problem and then act as the savior.

U.S. airstrikes against ISIS were not welcomed by the Syrian government. An active-duty Army Captain, Nathan Smith, later filed a lawsuit against then-President Obama contesting the legality of the U.S. mission because it was never approved by Congress. The case later carried over to the Trump administration. The federal court system ultimately refused to rule on the case stating that the judiciary didn’t have the jurisdictional power to overturn the president’s decision. Needless to say, that’s a terrible state of affairs when the president can essentially act as a dictator and order military action with no accountability. (You can hear more about the case on the Rackets Podcast .)

President Trump differed from all other previous presidents. His predecessors often hid behind rhetorical causes such as defending “democracy” or “human rights” to justify using military force for foreign interventions. Trump openly celebrated U.S. imperialism as though it added to a tough guy persona. He later faced political pushback after ordering most of the U.S. troops to withdraw from Syria in 2017 because it jeopardized the Kurdish coalition (SDF) who fought alongside the U.S. (Mind you this is a group linked with the PKK , a designated terrorist organization, and reports of child soldiers .) Afterward, Trump noted that around 400 would remain. He said , “But we did leave soldiers because we’re keeping the oil. I like oil. We’re keeping the oil.”

A politically-connected U.S company, Delta Crescent Energy, received a one-year sanctions waiver in 2020 to drill in Syria under U.S. military protection. President Biden did not extend that sanctions waiver. However, the Syrian government alleges that the U.S. is still plundering its oil. This month, the Syria Oil Ministry stated that U.S. forces “steal up to 66,000 barrels every single day from the fields occupied in the eastern region,” They provided surveillance footage from the Russian military showing a convoy of several tankers taking the oil to Iraq.

2. Congo – 5.3 million internally displaced citizens

The Second Congo War was the deadliest war since WWII with a death toll of over 5.4 million people . It took place from 1998 to 2003 and many of the factors involved in that war are still present today.

Before addressing the Second Congo War, it’s important to note that America truly destroyed Congo’s first attempt at independence. Congo had been subjected to horrific conditions by the Belgian King Leopold II. As many as 10 million people died as a result of his tyrannical reign.

On the day of their independence, Patrice Lumumba (the first democratically-elected Congolese leader), gave a speech in 1960 that is widely viewed as the reason for his eventual assassination. Lumumba simply stated facts about the suffering and colonialism imposed upon his people.

The U.S. soon afterward conspired with the U.K. and Belgium to assassinate Lumumba. Former President Eisenhower ordered the CIA to kill Lumumba because he viewed him as an ally of the Soviet Union. A firing squad not only killed Lumumba; his body was mutilated and then dissolved in sulfuric acid. A Belgian officer kept his finger and tooth as “a type of hunting trophy.” This June (over five decades later) the Belgian government returned that tooth to Lumumba’s family as a pathetic gesture as a means of amends.

Patrice Lumumba (Wikipedia)

The Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the wealthiest nations in the world in terms of natural resources (gold, tin, coltan, uranium, tungsten), an estimated $24 trillion . For instance, the uranium for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombs came from a Congolese mine . The workers toiled in dangerous conditions for terrible wages. And not much has changed since then. Very little of the country’s tremendous resource wealth has trickled down to the people, in part, because anti-colonialist leaders such as Lumumba were never able to exercise their agenda.

A dictatorship led by Mobutu Sese Soko (1965-1997) followed. Western foreign powers enabled his glaring corruption. Mobutu embezzled billions from public coffers and allowed foreign corporations to exploit the country’s vast resources.

The Second Congo War was essentially a proxy war fought by various African nations within the borders of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The DRC’s main aggressors were its neighbors Rwanda and Uganda, both strong U.S. allies led by longtime dictators, Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni. Both leaders have received extensive military from the U.S. In fact, Kagame attended the military college at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.

Multiple foreign countries’ competing motivations led to the Second Congo War, but one common factor was a desire for the DRC’s vast resources. A 2002 UN report detailed extensive use of sexual violence against women, human trafficking, and conscripting children into military service. The report also detailed rampant profiteering by Rwandan, Ugandan, and Zimbabwean army officers growing rich from looting the country’s gold, diamonds, cobalt, copper, and coltan. Likewise, numerous Western foreign corporations joined in the exploitation. The same report listed 85 companies from the U.S., Europe and South Africa that took part in this shameful oppression.

Justice for the Congolese people has been slow and lackluster. In February of this year, the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered the Ugandan government to pay $325 million to the DRC for crimes against humanity committed two decades ago. The reparations are for “the loss of life, rape, recruitment of child soldiers, displacement of civilians…looting and plundering of gold, diamonds, and timber.”

The Second Congo War officially ended, but the plundering of resources and support of rebel groups with the DRC by outside foreign actors hasn’t. The U.S. Department of Treasury estimates that over 90% of the DRC’s gold is smuggled out of the country, primarily to Uganda and Rwanda, by armed rebel groups. The Treasury sanctioned a Belgian businessman, Alain Goetz, whose gold refinery in Uganda seems to be one of the main destinations. Goetz is at arm’s length with the inner circle of Uganda’s dictator, Yoweri Museveni, and even reportedly receives protection from his armed forces. Yes, the American government has sanctioned Goetz, but it has done nothing to cut off the head of the snake that benefits from this conflict resource. The U.S. has never taken strong action against Museveni as he is considered a strong ally in the War on Terror.

Alain Goetz (Twitter)

There’s even less accountability for the authoritarian leader of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, who once won the Clinton Global Citizen Award and the American Academy of Achievement . Again, it appears that Alain Goetz is the middleman enabling conflict gold to be exported throughout the world. According to a report by The Sentry, Rwanda’s exports of gold increased 755% over the following after the government joined in a partnership with Goetz to refine gold presumably smuggled from the DRC.

The after-effects of the Second Congo War still linger today. Rwanda has recently stepped up its aggression in the DRC. The Rwandan-backed rebel group, M23, laid down its arms in 2013. However, in the last few months, they’ve resumed their aggressions and an estimated 79,000 people have been displaced from their homes. To this day, Rwanda’s government refuses to admit that it supports the M23 rebels, but extensive evidence says otherwise, thus linking it with atrocious war crimes .

3. Colombia - 5.2 million displaced citizens

Colombia has quietly been the host of America’s Cold War aggression. The average American thinks of the violence in Colombia and connects it with the War on Drugs. That is a somewhat accurate description, but that is also part of the branding by the U.S. government. In 2000, Congress passed a bill, known as Plan Colombia, which allowed the U.S. to provide the Colombian government with over $10 billion of military aid for counternarcotics efforts. Plan Colombia hasn’t been an effective anti-drug strategy, but it has helped the Colombian government to fight Colombian communist rebel groups.

American defense contractors obviously profit from this initiative, but it was U.S.-based oil companies that spent millions of dollars lobbying in support of Plan Colombia. Those companies and their workers have legitimate security concerns about terrorism committed by communist rebels in Colombia. The sponsor of the bill, Paul D. Coverdell, didn’t mince words with his intentions; the bill had little to do with countering drugs and much more to do with protecting U.S. corporate interests in Colombia.

For over five decades (1964-2016), Colombia’s civilians have been caught in the middle of a civil war between the government’s forces and the communist rebels fighting to overthrow the government. According to the recently released report by a Colombian Truth Commission, the prior numbers were incorrect. The Civil War resulted in over 460,000 deaths . Roughly 80% of those victims were civilians . Another 8 million people were displaced .

The vast majority of the main rebel group, the FARC, laid down their weapons in 2016, but a few thousand of their members are dissidents who remain dedicated to warfare and organized crime. Likewise, the communist rebel group, ELN, remains active in the country and is accurately designated as a terrorist organization.

The U.S. continues to arm this country’s government even though it has a horrible human rights record. The truth commission report found that 5,733 members of the left-wing political party, the Patriotic Union, were killed between 1984 and 2016. In short, the Colombian government has extensive ties with right-wing paramilitary groups that committed mass atrocities. A truth commission found that Colombia’s government forces and its paramilitary groups committed the vast majority of the Civil War’s massacres .

A typical scenario involving these paramilitaries took place in a rural town, Mapiripán, in 1997. Over one hundred paramilitary fighters surrounded the town and singled out community members who they viewed as “communist sympathizers.” Even the slightest connection was considered a death sentence, such as merely a vendor selling water to a rebel. Everyone was forced to watch as the paramilitaries tortured and eventually dismembered these people with chainsaws and machetes. The violence lasted for five days and the military ignored calls for help. The exact number of victims is unknown, in part because their bodies were tossed in the Guaviare River, but experts say at least 30 died, with the highest estimate at 77 .

The United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia) (AUC) - http-//ojosparalapaz-colombia.blogspot.com)

What’s arguably more sadistic is how several Colombian entrepreneurs and multinational foreign corporations swooped in to profit from the conflict resources in Colombia. For instance, an Italy-based corporation, Poligrow Ltd , benefited from the landgrabs committed in Mapiripán. Researchers estimate that as much as 15% of the land in Colombia has been stolen by the paramilitaries in coordination with powerful business interests and politicians.

Several U.S.-based corporations have been implicated with the paramilitaries. Chiquita Banana pled guilty and paid a fine of $25 million in 2007 for making $1.7 million in payments to terrorist groups in Colombia. Undoubtedly, the payments to the communist groups were extortionary. However, the payments to the paramilitaries were not as clear. Internal company documents show that the company felt that they couldn’t “get the same level of support from the military” as they could from the paramilitaries. They killed and intimidated labor rights and union activists. In other words, their interests were aligned.

The paramilitary groups officially disbanded in 2006, but they’ve simply rebranded under different names known as BACRIMs. In other words, the government labels them as criminal groups, not right-wing death squads. Even though the Colombian government denies that there’s any connection to its military or proxies, Colombia remains the most dangerous country in the world for liberal organizers with 87 activists killed in 2022 alone.

This isn’t a matter of the American government making a poor choice in its foreign allies. The U.S. government has blood on its hands as it was just as complicit. For instance, Human Rights Watch issued a report detailing how the U.S. Department of Defense and CIA coordinated with the Colombian military in 1991 to target and murder Colombian civilians who were not actual rebel enemy combatants. They were people suspected of being “ communist sympathizers .”

The American judiciary system isn’t any better. A large group of Colombians sued Chiquita Banana under the Alien Tort Statute, which dates back to 1789. That statute allows non-U.S. citizens to file charges against corporations or individuals for violation of international law. Unfortunately, the U.S. federal judge ruled that the court didn’t have jurisdiction to try the case.

Time and time again, there have been horrific scandals involving the Colombian government and the U.S. government looking the other way. The most symbolic example is the “false positives” scandal. To keep the funding from the United States, the Colombian military felt quota-driven pressure to show a high kill count of communist rebels. As a result, when they couldn’t find actual enemy combatants, they simply killed innocent civilians and framed them to be communists. As many as 6,400 people were killed. Their victims were often people on the fringes of society, i.e. homeless people, and drug addicts, who were lured into isolated locations with promises of job prospects only to be killed in staged executions to look like rebel fighters.

4. Afghanistan – 4.3 million displaced citizens

This country has suffered through over three decades of foreign military occupation. Three decades! The Soviet Union invaded in 1979 after a coup deposed their favored dictator, Nur Mohammed Taraki. Over 30,000 Soviet troops promptly stormed the country to install a new puppet dictator, Babrak Karmal.

Zbigniew Brzezinski exemplifies the hubris of American foreign policy. He was Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor. He wrote to Carter that he wanted to induce the USSR into its own “Vietnam war.” His goal was to bait the Soviet Union into a costly, prolonged war by funding Islamic rebels to fight in Afghanistan.

The French news outlet, Le Nouvel Observateur , interviewed Brzezinski was interviewed in 1998 about the blowback from arming extremist groups who eventually became al Qaeda and spawned the Taliban. He said, “What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?”

At the time, Brzezinski wasn’t aware that the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers would later occur on 9/11. Nonetheless, he failed to factor in the Afghan people in his rationalization. Their nation was caught between two empires vying for geopolitical power. Roughly 1.3 million Afghans were killed during the Soviet occupation, along with 5 million more people forced into refugee status.

Most Americans have the “Charlie Wilson’s War” view of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In other words, the general belief is that America responded to Soviet aggression, which is not entirely true. It was five months before the Soviets invaded when President Jimmy Carter authorized a covert program in 1979 (Operation Cyclone) to arm and train the Mujahideen “freedom fighters.” Carter implemented that program with an initial budget of $500,000 .

Initially, the CIA provided Chinese, Egyptian weapons. It also from funneled its aid through Pakistan to provide a level of plausible deniability . However, this support became more of an open secret. Reagan expanded the operation to the tune of billions of dollars in aid. The Mujahideen freedom fighter cause even gained congressional support in 1984 with a $50 million allocation . It became a popular issue widely supported even through pop culture. Remember Rambo 3? The plot was shaped around Sylvester Stallone teaming up with the Mujahideen to defeat the Soviets. That film was released a month after the Soviet Union agreed to a troop withdrawal.

Rambo 3 (footage)

The CIA deferred to the Pakistani intelligence agency (ISI) when choosing which rebel leaders to support. That was a disastrous decision. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar held the most extremist views and he received the most assistance of the group, over $1 billion in weaponry. He, along with other Mujahideen leaders, flourished from opium trafficking, but the American government protected them from prosecutions.

The “freedom fighters” of today often turn into the terrorists of tomorrow.

Hekmatyar, along with other Mujahideen leaders, toppled the Soviet-aligned government in 1992. However, they never formed a functioning central government and the country descended further into civil war with the different Mujahideen leaders vying for power. Hekmatyar was the worst offender and armed with copious amounts of sophisticated foreign weaponry, he often indiscriminately bombed Kabul killing tens of thousands of civilians. Upon CIA direction, Hekmatyar even launched attacks outside of Afghanistan in two Soviet republics, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan .

Mujahideen fighters (Wikipedia)

Roughly 35,000 Muslim radicals from around the world joined the Mujahideen and the most notorious member was Osama Bin Laden. He was less a fighter and more of a fundraiser for the Mujahideen. He went on to establish al Qaeda. There’s no publicly-available information that directly ties Bin Laden to the CIA, but both entities were clearly swimming in the same direction. He had a somewhat open media profile during the Soviet invasion.

The Taliban provided safe haven for Bin Laden after fleeing Sudan due to U.S. government pressure. It seems unlikely that the Taliban would have come into existence if not for the U.S. support of the Mujahideen. Millions of Afghan refugees fled the country in the 1980s to escape the war. Many of the Taliban’s founders were refugees who as youths were educated in Saudi-financed schools in Pakistan, known as madrassas , which taught an extreme form of Islam. These schools were breeding grounds for terrorism. The Taliban literally means “students of Islam,” which is an homage to their upbringing.

Al Qaeda committed several acts of terrorism before 9/11, but there had never been an attack on that scale, particularly on U.S. soil. Of course, an American military response was expected, but what followed wasn’t necessary. Ironically, Zbigniew Brzezinski wanted to drag the Soviet Union into a costly war like Vietnam, but the U.S. war in Afghanistan made the Vietnam War pale in comparison.

The anti-war activist, Scott Horton, published a brilliant book reviewing America’s numerous blunders in the Afghanistan War. There are too many takeaways for this format, but here’s some key information. The Taliban agreed to hand over Bin Laden to stand trial, but that never happened. Instead, America wanted a show of force. Over 176,000 people died and the war led to millions of refugees.

Bin Laden also wanted to bait America into a Vietnam-like war and he accomplished it. He said:

“All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of

cloth on which is written al-Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations.”

There were only a few hundred members of Al Qaeda at the time of 9/11. That number has grown exponentially since then. America’s foreign invasions have been the exact recruiting tools that Bin Laden wanted.

5. Yemen – 4.3 million displaced citizens

There is a proxy war in Yemen that follows along religious lines. The Sunni monarchies of Saudi Arabia and the UAE are fighting the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Iran, a Shia-majority country, supports the Houthis (a Shia sect), albeit at a significantly lower level.

This war stems primarily from a 2014 coup in which the Houthis took power. The war in Yemen started in 2015 and it’s been labeled by the UN as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The UN estimated that 377,000 Yemenis have died. However, most of these victims have not been killed in combat. Seventy percent of them are children under the age of five. This is a result of an air and naval blockade imposed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that is blocking food, drinking water, and medicine to the civilians in Yemen. Another 23.7 million Yemenis are in need of humanitarian assistance. (Nearly 80% of its population.)

A mother and her child in the Al Dhale'e Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) Camp in Yemen. (UN)

Western media has described the war effort against the Houthis as the “Saudi-led coalition,” but that’s far from the case. The U.S. had the power to end this crisis immediately. The Saudis and the UAE are entirely dependent upon the American government’s logistical support, intelligence resources, weaponry, and training. The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) provided Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with $54.6 billion of military support since 2015.

The bombing campaign over Yemen is primarily executed by Saudi pilots who were trained by the American military, flying in planes built by American manufacturers , and guided by shared intelligence from the U.S. government agencies. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence heard testimony asserting that fact. Bruce Riedelsenior, fellow and director at the Brookings Institution who spent thirty years working for the CIA explained that “only the United States of America and to a lesser extent the United Kingdom continue to provide the kind of support that allows this war to go on.” It’s obvious from the outside looking in that the Saudis and the UAE can’t sustain their war effort without foreign assistance. For instance, The New York Times reported that both nations needed to recruit soldiers (many of which are children) from war-torn Sudan. Likewise, the UAE leaned on Blackwater founder, Erik Prince, to outsource hundreds of Colombian mercenaries as well.

The Houthis have committed human rights violations and war crimes, but the war in Yemen is truly asymmetrical. Since 2015, the Houthis have killed 59 Saudi Arabian civilians via missile and drone strikes. In contrast, Saudi coalition forces have conducted over 25,000 air raids in Yemen that killed over 10,000 civilians and injured another 9,000. This bombing campaign with weaponry produced by Lockheed Martin and Raytheon often target civilian infrastructure . That includes attacks on schools, cell phone towers, food processing plants, water treatment facilities, hospitals, and more. That is a deliberate strategy of repeated war crimes to slowly kill the civilian population and it's part of why there was an outbreak of cholera that infected over 1 million Yemenis.

You’d like to think that Congress debated at length about the pros and cons of engaging in such a conflict. However, America casually entered into this war without congressional approval; the Obama White House simply offered a press release . “President Obama has authorized the provision of logistical and intelligence support to GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council]-led military operations.” The Obama administration continued to authorize multi-billion arms sales to Saudi Arabia despite internal documents showing that the administration fully knew that it was complicit in war crimes.

Again, Barack Obama craved the image of a humanitarian, but his actions were far different from the image. When questioned about the war crimes in Yemen, his press secretary simply passed the buck , " I would refer you to the Saudis .” On the other hand, Trump didn't care about the human violations. He viewed the Saudis as an opportunity to brand himself as an "America first" jobs creator and dealmaker. He infamously held up a poster-board labeled “12.5 BILLION IN FINALIZED SALES TO SAUDI ARABIA” for the White House press corps during the Saudi Prince/de facto leader's (Mohammed bin Salman) visit in 2017.

Most of the media gave Obama a pass, but Trump's smug imperialistic persona prompted more negative news coverage of the Yemen war. Over time, the cruel, preventable nature of this war prompted Congress in 2019 to pass the first-ever invocation of the War Powers Act of 1973. The war powers have shifted far from the original constitutional mandate in which Congress decides whether to go to war, not the president. In 2019, Congress demanded that President Trump end his support for the Saudi/UAE war effort in Yemen. However, Trump later vetoed that bill, which was yet another reminder of how far the Constitution no longer resembles its original intention.

President Biden promised to end the war in Yemen in his first foreign policy speech, but his actions haven’t matched the rhetoric. The Biden approved additional aircraft sales to the UAE. In fact, this position doesn’t even make political sense. The liberal commentator, Thom Hartmann, pointed out that Trump threatened Saudi Arabia with cutting off military support in 2020 if the gulf monarchy didn’t decrease oil production so that gas prices would increase. The Saudis complied.

While we’re experiencing record gas prices and inflation, Biden has tried to persuade the Saudis to increase production to get gas prices down. However, reports show that the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the UAE initially refused to accept Biden’s phone calls. Based on Biden’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia, it doesn’t seem that he pr essured the kingdom to change its ways with Yemen.

In April both warring sides agreed to a truce. This month, they agreed to extend the truce for two more months, but this agreement seems tenuous at best. Unfortunately, the Saudis and UAE haven't been restricted in any meaningful as the Biden administration he approved a $5 billion weapons deal for nations this month.

Did a Narco-Linked Former Haitian Leader Have President Moïse Assassinated? (Part II)

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Sat, 19 Mar 2022 23:43:17 GMT

Former Haitian President Michel Martelly Has Links with the Suspected Assassins

The assassination of Haiti’s former president, Jovenel Moïse, leaves many questions unanswered. An article, “ Haiti’s Leader Kept a List of Drug Traffickers. His Assassins Came for It ,” by Maria Abi-Habib of The New York Times presented one of the more plausible theories. Moïse compiled a list of prominent Haitians suspected of drug trafficking that was supposed to be given to U.S. law enforcement.

Those individuals were Moïse’s rivals. If he truly believed that suddenly partnering with America in its “war on drugs” was his path to longevity, then his beliefs were utterly naïve. The U.S. government has propped up narco-dictatorships in Haiti on multiple occasions if the leader supported U.S. corporate and geopolitical interests.

Maria Abi-Habib’s reporting was wonderful. However, the editing created a narrative (either intentionally or unintentionally) that suppressed the U.S. government’s role in this assassination, which was detailed in Part 1 . That narrative spawned reports such as this one by Vice , “ Did Drug Cartels Murder Haiti's President? ” A title like that implies that Pablo Escobar-like figures may have assassinated Moïse.

The New York Times buried the lede. The biggest takeaway from this report is that the narco-linked inner circle of a former Haitian president may have killed Moïse. Furthermore, these individuals have been in the good graces of the American government for years.

Maria Abi-Habib found that Moïse investigated former President Michel Martelly, who is a strong U.S. ally , and his entourage. That was more than just a slap in the face; Martelly is the one who put Moïse into power. Before entering office, the Martelly government assisted Moïse with a massive land grab for Moïse’s banana exporting business. He seized over 2,300 acres of communal land that was used for subsistence housing and peasant farming. That’s in addition to receiving millions of dollars in government loans and well as sweetheart tax concessions.

Martelly had extensive influence over Moïse’s political decisions, including the choice of Prime Minister , Ariel Henry, who is now the de facto leader of the country. Moïse was an unknown political entity until Martelly made him his hand-picked successor from Martelly’s party, Tèt Kale (PHTK). He was Martelly’s placeholder because Haiti’s constitution bars a president from serving consecutive terms due to its history of dictatorships.

(Left to Right) Former President Michel Martelly (Wikipedia), Former President Jovenel Moïse (Twitter), Current President Ariel Henry (Wikipedia)

It's clear from Moïse’s track record in office that he was anything but an anti-corruption crusader. Hence, Moïse’s sudden penchant for prosecuting drug traffickers seemed like a decision to eliminate his rivals and stay in power. He had a horrific human rights record , was tied to a massive embezzlement scandal , and overstayed his constitutional mandate .

Moïse ordered the investigation of Charles “Kiko” Saint-Rémy, the brother-in-law of former President Martelly. Haitian authorities scrutinized the records of his connection with the eel industry for evidence of money laundering . Saint-Rémy was an influential advisor for Martelly and served in his cabinet. He even intervened to help have the charges dropped against a close friend of Martelly, Woodly Etheart, who was arrested in 2015 as the reported leader of the Galil Gang. That kidnapping syndicate allegedly amassed nearly $2 million in ramsons.

Woodly Etheart (Haiti National Police)

The DEA has investigated Charles “Kiko” Saint-Rémy for years , particularly a high-profile drug bust in 2015 in Port-au-Prince. A company owned by one of Haiti’s wealthiest businessmen, Marc Antoine Acra, received a freight shipment of sugar from Colombia aboard the Manzanares MV. During the offloading, one of the packages burst open and revealed that the ship was loaded with illegal drugs. A mad scramble ensued before the DEA and U.S. Coast Guard arrived.

Charles "Kiko" Saint-Remy (Twitter)

Keith McNichols, a former DEA agent, said that Dimitri Hérard (Moïse assassination suspect ) led a group of Haitian police officers who grabbed the drugs and fled the scene. An estimated 800 kilos of cocaine and 300 kilos of heroin (a combined $100 million street value) were on board that ship, but only about 11% of the contraband was actually brought into evidence. Dimitri Then-President Michel Martelly shielded Hérard from investigators and later recommended for him to become Moïse’s head of security. Marc Antoine Acra was appointed as an ambassador months later.

Only one person, a low-level operator, was prosecuted in the Manzanares MV case. American media outlets referred repeatedly to this as a “ bungled ” investigation as though the DEA agents involved were a bunch of Keystone cops. However, what happened is that high-level U.S. government officials interfered in the investigation to protect a small group of powerful Haitians.

Former DEA agents, Keith McNichols and George Greco, blew the whistle about institutional efforts to bury the truth. Remarkably, a Haitian investigator was paid by a DEA official with $1,500 of U.S. taxpayer money to destroy the confiscated drugs. The whistleblowers also reported internally that a senior DEA official received $1.2 million in “irregular expenses.” That same official met privately with Charles “Kiko” Saint-Rémy on multiple occasions. That was a violation of DEA policy. Their members are barred from private meetings with trafficking suspects because it leaves room for corruption.

Just to reiterate, Haiti is a major drug trafficking corridor and the President’s brother-in-law/advisor met privately with a DEA official who potentially accepted as much as $1.2 million in bribes. You can read between the lines.

You can also tell a lot about an organization by how it handles a crisis. Does it root out corruption or punish the messenger? In this case, the government official involved in backroom conversations never faced any consequences. In contrast, Keith McNichols and George Greco didn’t receive their government-mandated whistleblower protections. They both resigned from the agency after facing continual retribution for simply reporting potential fraud, waste, or abuse.

If it sounds inconceivable that the American government would safeguard a Haitian drug kingpin for political reasons, there is plenty of historical data that tells otherwise. The DEA’s most high-profile whistleblower, Michael Levine, told an investigative reporter in 1993 that what has then happening in Haiti was “just another example of elements of the U.S. government protecting killers, drug dealers and dictators for the sake of some political end…I saw the drug traffickers take over the government of Bolivia in 1980, ironically with the assistance of the CIA, and we (the DEA) just packed up our office and went home.”

What happened in Bolivia was informally labeled the “Cocaine Coup.” The CIA supported the removal of Bolivia’s President Hernan Siles Zuazo, a democratically-elected leader and moderate leftist. Gen. Luis Garcia Meza led the brutal right-wing military dictatorship and his regime’s enforcers included U.S. intelligence assets, such as Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie.

Bolivian cocaine production and trafficking increased substantially. The drug lord, Roberto Suárez, was an integral part of this junta and the corruption was ubiquitous. Yet, Michael Levine’s efforts to arrest Suárez and other Bolivian kingpins were suppressed by high-level DEA officials. Levine faced tremendous retribution within the DEA for trying to take down major trafficking networks in Bolivia tied to U.S. intelligence and he wrote about this mind-boggling hypocrisy in The Big White Lie: The Deep Cover Operation That Exposed the CIA Sabotage of the Drug War . The key takeaway is that the DEA plays second fiddle to the CIA.

The Bolivian “Cocaine Coup” was similar to the coup in Haiti in 1991. Even though Haiti declared its independence in 1804, their country’s first free and fair election didn’t take place until 1990. It’s impossible to concisely summarize the U.S. government’s anti-democratic practices in Haiti over the last two centuries, but here are a few highlights. The CIA supported a coup that led to the brutal “Papa Doc” Francois Duvalier dictatorship (1957-1971). As many as 50,000 citizens were killed by his regime. The CIA also equipped/trained the enforcers of his son’s dictatorship, “Baby Doc” Jean-Claude Duvalier (1971-1986).

Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier (standing) and Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier (seated) - Wikipedia

A CIA-backed general, Henri Namphy, overthrew “Baby Doc” Duvalier. Namphy was heavily involved in narcotics , but he never faced charges. Namphy, like other Haitian military junta leaders who took power after Baby Doc’s demise, were all well-received by the U.S. power structure.

The elite Haitian bourgeoisie and several American leaders felt threatened by an influential preacher, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who eventually became Haiti’s first democratically-elected president. He practiced what is known as liberation theology, which essentially combines religion and social justice. For popularizing such beliefs, he faced multiple attempts on his life.

Former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide - Wikipedia

The most notable example was the St. Jean Bosco Massacre. Aristide was able to escape the St. Jean Bosco church on September 11, 1988, but 13 people were killed and another 77 were injured. Franck Romain, who was then the Mayor of Port-au-Prince, ordered the attack. Romain had trained many years earlier in the U.S. at the notorious School of the Americas and had led Papa Doc’s notorious enforcer unit, the Tonton Macoutes.

Tonton Macoute - (Images from Latinamericanstudies.org and Twitter)

Nonetheless, the U.S. media shielded the human rights abuses in Haiti. One week after that massacre, The New York Times published a puff piece for Haiti’s military dictator, Prosper Avril. It provided this vignette, “Despite his staunch support for the Duvalier dictatorship, General Avril has no reputation for cruelty.” Prosper Avril is a perfect example of a Haitian narco dictator who the U.S. government safeguarded. Testimony from a U.S. Senate Subcommittee directly named Prosper as a significant facilitator for Colombian cartels, yet he never faced charges and even lived in the U.S. for years after leaving power in Haiti.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide was viewed as a man of the people and won a decisive victory in December 1990 over the CIA’s favored candidate. The Senate Intelligence Committee demanded to know which Haitian candidates the CIA financed, but CIA officials refused to give names. The Senate Intelligence Committee responded by cutting off funds for this program. However, records show that the CIA’s cut-out organization, the National Endowment for Democracy, provided Marc L. Bazin (a former World Bank official) with $36 million .

Aristide served less than a year in office before a paid-informant of the CIA, Haitian Gen. Raoul Cedras, led a coup against him. This de facto regime was directed by members of a Haitian intelligence unit (SIN) that had been armed/trained by the CIA . SIN was ironically supposed to be an anti-narcotics unit, but that group turned the island into one of the world’s biggest drug transshipment points after Aristide’s ouster.

Another graduate of the School of the Americas, Lt. Col. Joseph-Michel François, acted as the regime’s enforcer. He was nicknamed “Sweet Micky” reportedly because he smiled widely as his forces issued widescale violence against anti-coup protestors. Michel Martelly, the future president of Haiti, who was then a nightclub owner and singer, shared the same nickname. Martelly’s nightclub, “The Garage,” regularly catered to the post-Duvalier regime’s military leaders. At a time of high animosity toward the government, Martelly played compas, which was the only genre allowed during the Duvalier dictatorships. Michel Martelly was admittedly a member of the Tonton Macoutes in his youth and he was friends with Joseph-Michel François, so much so that Joseph-Michel François reportedly gave him the nickname.

Long after he was of use for imperialist purposes, American authorities arrested Joseph-Michel François in 1997 for trafficking 33 tons of cocaine and heroin. However, the red flags were visible from the early days of the junta. The DEA’s station chief in Haiti, Tony Greco, had to flee the country for his safety. After a successful drug bust, he received a death threat on his private telephone line that only Raoul Cedras and Joseph-Michel François possessed.

Many of the political murders were also committed by the Haitian paramilitary group, FRAPH, which was aided and financed by the CIA. The CIA’s director, James Woolsey, later said , “The worse the group, the more we are likely to want to collect intelligence from them…Human-rights violations make a group of more interest to us.” The Haitian government subsequently convicted the leader of FRAPH, Emmanuel Constant, for murder.

Constant was convicted in absentia because the U.S. government safeguarded him on American soil. You may be asking, “How’s that possible?” Congress passed the 100 Persons Act which allows the CIA to provide legal immigration status to 100 individuals per year for “national security” reasons even though this distinction is often given to war criminals like Emmanuel Constant. Ironically, Constant was not held accountable by U.S. law enforcement for his crimes in Haiti. Instead, he was arrested for mortgage fraud committed in New York in 2006.

(Left to Right) General Raoul Cedras and Lt. Col. Joseph-Michel François, FRAPH leader Emmanuel Constant (Images PBS, Alchetron, SOA Watch)

An estimated 4,000 people were killed by the post-coup Haitian government, along with thousands more tortured during the three-year reign of terror. Despite American complicity in the coup, the U.S. government showed no humanitarian sympathy for the people of Haiti. As many as 34,000 Haitian refugees were denied entry and held at U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Clinton administration eventually negotiated to have Aristide return to office in October 1994. The U.S. military mission was named “Operation Uphold Democracy.” Despite the sanctimonious nature of this mission, the U.S. didn’t allow Aristide to return unless he agreed to a few conditions from the IMF and World Bank .

Conversely, the Clinton administration offered remarkably cushy terms for Haiti’s narco leaders. Raoul Cedras lives in Panama in the lap of luxury. He and his right-hand man, Gen. Philippe Biamby, were able to have the $79 million in U.S. accounts unfrozen as well. Gen. Biamby, along with 23 members of his and Cedras’s family, were allowed to move to America. The U.S. government even agreed to pay rent to Cedras for his multiple properties in Haiti. “(This) was something (Cedras) felt strongly about, and it wasn't something we were going to allow to disrupt his departure,” said White House spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers.

Aristide had been removed from power for three years, but he still abided by the strictest interpretation of the Constitution by leaving office in February 1996. That’s an important distinction as President Jovenel Moïse tried to overstay his term for another year because his entry into office was delayed by a year.

As mentioned earlier, the Haitian Constitution bans a president from serving consecutive terms. René Préval served as Aristide’s placeholder just like how Moïse was thought to be Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly’s placeholder. Aristide was elected again in 2001, but the early warning signs of the next coup were evident.

Part I of this series described the outlandish control over Haiti held by the Core Group, a shadowy group of ambassadors from Germany, Brazil, Canada, Spain, the U.S., France, the European Union, along with representatives from the U.N. and the Organization of American States (OAS). The early stages of this coup were held in the 2003 “Ottawa Initiative on Haiti” meeting in which U.S., French, OAS, and Canadian officials discussed overthrowing Aristide and placing the country under U.N. control.

French leaders were motivated to see Aristide go as he had demanded $21.7 billion in reparations. In 1804 Haiti gained independence by defeating the French military to become the first country founded by former slaves. However, the French king later demanded “ indemnity ” payments to guarantee their freedom because the French viewed this revolution as a loss of property. The Haitian government settled upon a payment of 90 million francs ($21 billion in current value), which was several times the country’s GDP. These indemnity payments to French and U.S. banks crushed Hait’s prosperity and saddled the country with a form of debt slavery that lasted until 1947 .

Aristide’s demand was not unjustified. And this idea had widespread support . However, his detractors in Haiti were gaining steam. As Part I of this series detailed, Ariel Henry, the current de facto leader of Haiti, was then an opposition leader of the Democratic Convergence that called for overthrowing former President Aristide. He received funding from the CIA-linked International Republican Institute . Henry later became part of the “ Council of Sages ,” a group that held de facto power over the country after the coup.

The coup began on Feb 5, 2004. George W. Bush sent U.S. troops to Haiti a few weeks later to “ protect the U.S. embassy ” in Port-au-Prince. This attack was led by U.S.-trained paramilitary leaders who crossed the border from the Dominican Republic where they organized the coup. The top commanders were Guy Philippe who was heavily involved in drug trafficking , Jodel Chamberlain ( FRAPH leader ), and Gilbert Dragon who was part of the Moïse assassination . This group was also reportedly funded , in part, by “Sweet Micky” Joseph-Michel François. He fled to Honduras where government officials refused to accept extradition requests for him to face drug charges in the U.S.

(Left to Right) Guy Philippe, Jodel Chamberlain, and Gilbert Dragon (Images - Indybay, Alchetron, Latinamericanstudies.org)

Despite the junta’s obvious ties to drug trafficking, American leaders tried to use the “War on Drugs” as a pretext for overthrowing Aristide. Earlier that morning, news reports quoted anonymous U.S. officials alleging that they’ve witnessed “uniformed Haitian police unloading planeloads of cocaine for traffickers” and that the corruption reaches “the highest levels of the government.”

Later that evening on February 28, 2004, the U.S. military surrounded the presidential palace and forced Aristide to leave the country. According to Aristide, he was told that the rebels would soon be at the presidential palace and the U.S. would not protect him . He, along with thousands of Haitians would be killed, if he didn’t resign. Aristide was then brought to the airport where he was flown to the Central African Republic (CAR) under the supervised custody of President François Bozizé who gained power a year earlier in a coup.

Ironically, it was Luis Moreno from the U.S. embassy, a former “ drug warrior, ” who accepted Aristide’s “resignation.” That led to another era that was similar to the “cocaine coup” of 1991. The post-2004 military junta inflicted rampant violence on the population with as many as 3,000 Aristide supporters being killed .

U.S. troops patrol Haiti during the 2004 "peacekeeping mission" (Image - Latinamericanstudies.org)

Aristide’s administration was filled with corrupt officials who enabled drug trafficking, but there’s no compelling evidence that Aristide was involved. For instance, his former head of security, Oriel Jean, was captured in Canada and extradited to the U.S. after fleeing the country. Oriel Jean had accepted lucrative bribes from drug traffickers. U.S. prosecutors offered him a sweetheart plea deal in which would serve no time in prison, get a new identity, witness protection, and money in exchange for testimony against Aristide. Jean testified against various Haitian officials to have his sentence reduced to three years in prison, but he never implicated Aristide.

The 2004 coup installed Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue who had been in the U.S. for the last 16 years . He was a former World Bank and IMF official. Gerard’s cousin is Senator Youri Latortue, an ally of former President Michel Martelly. A Wikileaks cable described as Youri Latortue someone who “may well be the most brazenly corrupt of leading Haitian politicians” and deeply involved in drug trafficking.

A few years later, the Core Group intervened in the 2010 election. Ricardo Seitenfus, the former Organization of American States (OAS) special representative to Haiti, acknowledged that the Core Group “decided who the next president of Haiti would be before the elections even took place.” Their favored candidate was Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly. At that time, Martelly had never held public office and was the country’s most popular musician. That background allowed Martelly to craft an image of a rebellious outsider. However, the more accurate label would have been a puppet for foreign interests entrenched in Duvalierism.

Michel "Sweet Mickey" Martelly (Facebook)

The Core Group created an “ electoral coup ” in Haiti. Martelly came in third place in the first round of the election, which meant he wouldn’t have been eligible for the mandated runoff election for the two finalists. However, the head of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), which was established after the 2004 coup, threatened to remove President Préval from the country just like Aristide if Martelly wasn’t included in the runoff election.

Préval didn’t back down. Then the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, threatened to cut off foreign aid to Haiti. Likewise, Hillary Clinton, then serving as Secretary of State, traveled to Haiti to meet with President Préval. The pressure from Hillary Clinton propelled Martelly into the runoff election and the candidate from Aristide’s party was removed. That international support, along with financial assistance from U.S. aid organizations , helped guide Martelly into the presidential palace.

Martelly, a long-time Miami resident and son of a Shell Oil executive , made it one of his first orders of business, before he officially became President, to travel to Washington D.C. to meet with Hillary Clinton and World Bank and IMF officials. Martelly’s administration was riddled with corruption, but his international supporters carried water for him no matter the circumstance. That included scandals for him receiving roughly $2.5 million in kickbacks for handing out lucrative government contracts. Also, one of his advisors was arrested for murder and released months later. There hadn’t been a parliamentary election since 2010, which allowed Martelly to rule by decree, yet the Core Group said that it would “trust that the Executive…will act with responsibility and restraint.”

Martelly’s connections with drug trafficking were evident before the Manzanares MV case. One of Martelly’s friends and major campaign donors was arrested for drug trafficking under strange circumstances in 2013. Evinx Daniel was a wealthy businessman and owner of a beachfront hotel that Martelly frequented. Evinx Daniel claimed that the 23 packages of marijuana on his yacht had been discovered floating in the ocean. His friend, Charles “Kiko” Saint-Rémy (Martelly’s brother-in-law) notified the DEA about the drugs before landing ashore so that the drugs could be handed over to the authorities.

The prosecutor, Jean Marie Saloman, didn’t believe Daniel’s good Samaritan act. Saloman arrested him as he likely notified the authorities to preempt against a larger drug conspiracy charge. The Justice Minister intervened, and Daniel was released the next day. Saloman was suspended from his position afterward and needed to flee the country.

Michel Martelly then visited Daniel’s beachfront hotel and stayed overnight. It seemed to be an odd sign of support from a sitting president to visit a suspected drug trafficker’s place of business so soon after a highly-visible arrest. However, that visit may have had been made for another reason, something similar to a fishing trip with Fredo. Three months after the arrest, Daniel went missing. The police later found a burnt body that is unofficially believed to be Evinx Daniel. The last person to have seen him alive was Jovenel Moïse , a former business partner of Daniel.

As mentioned earlier, Maria Abi-Habib’s investigation pointed out that Charles “Kiko” Saint-Rémy helped to have the kidnapping charges dropped in 2015 against Martelly’s close associate, Woodly Ethéart. The charges were subsequently re-issued by a judge in 2018, but he never went into custody. Ethéart was a fugitive , but he had remained in the open in the affluent areas of Port-Au-Prince over the years. However, Ethéart was seen taking pictures with Michel Martelly before his concert in the Dominican Republic in May 2021. That led to his arrest by Dominican authorities. He was extradited to Haiti to face charges of kidnapping, money laundering, and drug trafficking.

According to Maria Abi-Habib’s sources, Moïse was thrilled when finding out about Ethéart’s arrest. And he refused to accept numerous phone calls from Martelly and Saint-Rémy on Ethéart’s behalf. Moïse’s son, Joverlein, agreed that the arrest could have been the motivation behind the murder. He said, “It is possible that Martelly saw that arrest as some kind of disrespect, that my father was a traitor and was betraying the Martelly family.”

Conclusion

Moïse’s assassination doesn’t fall within the customary pattern of U.S.-sponsored coups. Typically, the national security establishment favors regime change when there’s a leftist reformer who opposes American economic and military interests. However, Moïse’s resume was more like the type of right-wing, puppet authoritarian leader who is installed after a U.S.-supported coup.

Moïse supported the U.S. geopolitical agenda. He recognized Juan Guaidó as the president of Venezuela. That was a provocative move considering that Venezuela’s Petrocaribe program provided Haiti with billions of dollars of subsidized oil. Ironically, Moïse’s companies were implicated in a smaller part of an overall $2 billion embezzlement scandal of Petrocaribe funds.

On a similar note, with a fiscal crisis in place, he followed the neocon blueprint of seeking IMF loans and implementing austerity measures. A series of deadly protests followed after Moïse obliged the IMF’s demand that oil subsidies were removed. That raised the price of gas to $4.60 per gallon in a country where 78% of the population lives on an income of less than $2 per day.

He also employed what were essentially right-wing death squads . That kind of draconian force was meant to prevent any kind of populist uprising. There were multiple massacres committed in poor, left-leaning areas in which police/gangs torched entire neighborhoods, tortured people, committed acts of sexual violence, and killed people en masse.

However, Moïse didn’t stay within his role. As mentioned earlier, Moïse was viewed as the placeholder for Martelly’s next term. The media dubbed him the “Banana Man” because he was an unknown political entity who had a banana exporting business. Oddly enough, Moïse’s lack of political background may have cost him his life as he seemed to truly take America’s “War on Drugs” at face value. What he apparently didn’t know is that the American government often aligns with narco political leaders as long as such leaders advance the U.S. geopolitical agenda.

Moïse was essentially a puppet of a puppet. Better said, he was a puppet until he wasn’t. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, multiple sources close to Moïse said that he didn’t plan to support Martelly in an upcoming election. Moïse’s term was supposed to end on February 7, 2021, but he didn’t plan on leaving office until February 7, 2022. And Moïse, at times, alluded that he may be changing the Constitution and staying longer .

On February 7 ^th , a government raid arrested 18 people, including a sitting Supreme Court judge, a high-level police inspector, and a former government minister. They were accused of fomenting a coup against him. Two days later, he fired three Supreme Court justices. Those were the telltale signs of someone who was looking to consolidate power.

When The New York Times buried the lede, it did not provide the appropriate context for its investigation, “Haiti’s Leader Kept a List of Drug Traffickers. His Assassins Came for It.” The drug trafficking angle is a red herring that helps to avoid asking the question of whether the former president of Haiti was involved in Moïse’s assassination. In no way was there definitive proof, but it presented strong circumstantial evidence. With that said, Martelly may eventually cruise to an easy victory next year and return to the presidential palace.

The aspect that every American citizen needs to ask is whether our government was involved. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest so, but like the case against Martelly, it’s far from conclusive as well. Unfortunately, Haiti’s history shows that the true intellectual authors behind this crime won’t be held accountable unless the masses dig deeper for the truth.

Honduran President Hernandez was Washington’s man, until he wasn’t

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Wed, 02 Mar 2022 03:54:25 GMT

The former leader spent years stealing, defrauding, trafficking drugs and worse. When he wasn’t useful anymore, the US indicted him.

The former President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, or JOH, was arrested last week and will likely soon face charges by the U.S. Justice Department for allegedly trafficking roughly 500,000 kilos of cocaine. An Associated Press headline dubbed it a “stunning fall,” but the U.S. government provided him with significant support despite extensive evidence linking him to drug smuggling.

Aside from his ties to narcotics, Hernandez was involved in several scandals, including embezzling funds from Honduras’ social security system, stealing from World Bank development programs, credible fraud allegations in his 2017 re-election, and pervasive human rights violations by the police and military. In private conversations, Hernandez bragged about siphoning U.S. aid via phony NGOs .

The DOJ declined to press charges until after he left office last month. JOH was referenced as “ CC-4 ,” or co-conspirator 4, in his brother’s drug trafficking case, along with other cases in the Southern District of New York. Nonetheless, this right-wing leader, who steadfastly supported U.S. economic, immigration, and military interests, enjoyed eight years of cordial relations with the White House.

American diplomats looked the other way as Honduras developed into a narco-state. Adding to this hypocrisy, the U.S. provided millions of dollars of aid for counternarcotics that trained/equipped a police and military bureaucracy riddled with corruption. In turn, Honduran security forces have acted viciously against peaceful protest .

The former president’s brother, Tony Hernandez, was arrested in Miami in November 2018 on drug trafficking charges. Prosecutors alleged that he transported a whopping 185 tons of cocaine into the U.S. The jury heard from drug kingpins that JOH extorted them for protection money.

One of those witnesses was Tony Hernandez’s partner, Amilcar Alexander Ardón Soriano, a convicted trafficker and a former Honduran mayor. Juan Orlando Hernandez solicited $1.6 million from Ardón Soriano for his 2017 presidential run. Ardón Soriano also testified that he arranged a meeting in which El Chapo handed the former President $1 million in cash in exchange for protecting his shipments within Honduras.

Tony Hernandez’s cocaine labs in Colombia and Honduras branded his product with a “ TH ” logo for law enforcement officials to know what not to touch. In addition, he padded his profits by partnering with multiple cartels to buy logistical support/protection from Honduran authorities, even renting his personal helicopters so their representatives could verify that shipments weren’t intercepted. Hernandez also ordered the murder of rival traffickers and potential snitches. These revelations led to Tony Hernandez’s conviction in October 2019 and a life sentence.

"TH" Branded Cocaine - Southern District of New York

Juan Orlando Hernandez will likely meet a similar fate, but it begs the question of why the DOJ delayed action for so long. Prosecuting a foreign head of state poses jurisdictional challenges, among others. However, the Justice Department hasn’t demonstrated the same deference to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. He, along with 14 other Venezuelan officials, was indicted in March 2020. The Justice Department’s Narcotics Rewards Program is even offering a reward of $15 million for information leading to Maduro’s arrest or conviction.

The reluctance to prosecute JOH had to do with international politics, not legal formalities. Case in point: George H. W. Bush launched Operation Just Cause in 1989 to capture the Panamanian dictator, Manuel Noriega. Much like JOH, the U.S. government was fully aware of Noriega’s ties to drug trafficking; he was on the CIA’s payroll for decades.

JOH wasn’t an intelligence asset, but he offered a subservient relationship. That was a change from the left-of-center President Manuel Zelaya who was elected in 2006. Zelaya wanted moderate economic reforms, but he shifted further to the left after entering office. This was partially prompted by the heavy-handed tactics of American diplomats.

U.S. Ambassador Charles Ford provided Zelaya with a list of prospective nominees for cabinet positions whom the U.S. found to be acceptable. Such gestures, among others, proved to be counterproductive as Zelaya developed relationships with Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro and suggested that he may seek a constitutional amendment that would permit him to seek a second term. Those moves helped neoconservatives, such as Otto Reich and Elliott Abrams, and right-wing U.S. lawmakers, notably Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), to defend the 2009 military coup by labeling Zelaya as an “autocrat determined to turn Honduras into an undemocratic, hostile state.”

Obama publicly criticized the coup as “ illegal ” and briefly withheld foreign aid but restored most of it in March 2010 after a controversial election that most international monitoring groups, including the Organization of American States and the European Union, refused to observe. The winner, Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo, ironically made Reich’s warnings about Zelaya take actual effect. Lobo’s right-wing National Party (JOH’s party) began to consolidate its control over post-coup Honduras that would be increasingly characterized by kleptocracy, corruption, gang violence and human rights abuse, recalling the country’s past as the original “banana republic.”

Several anti-corruption leaders, such as the country’s drug czar and anti-money laundering prosecutor , as well as civil-society activists, were assassinated during Lobo’s four-year tenure, while drug-trafficking flourished as never before. Remarkably, Pepe Lobo’s own son, Fabio, was indicted and prosecuted by the U.S. Justice Department for transporting thousands of kilos of cocaine (beginning in 2009) in partnership with the Honduran Cachiros Cartel whose leader testified that Fabio was acting on behalf of his father. While Fabio is currently serving a 24-year prison sentence, DOJ has so far failed to press charges against the former president. The State Department added Lobo and his wife to its “ corrupt and undemocratic actors ” list, thus making them ineligible to legally enter the U.S. However, DOJ hasn’t proceeded with forfeitures against the couple’s Florida real estate holdings .

The corruption under JOH, who served as president of the National Congress under Lobo until his own election as president in 2013, was even more obvious. After only four days in office, the police made the first-ever discovery of an opium-growing operation within Honduras. They arrested two Colombian nationals, confiscated weapons and 1,800 opium poppy plants and 800 cannabis plants. However, Tony Hernandez interceded and helped gain the release of the two Colombians from police custody. The officer who led the raid, Leandro Osorio, was removed from his post and soon fled the country due to death threats .

The former national police chief, Ramon Sabillon, also fled the country. He apparently did his job too well and was fired by JOH after making high-profile drug busts, including the leaders of the Valle Cartel. Multiple whistleblowers exposed the Hernandez family’s criminality, but this information was largely ignored by the mainstream U.S. media.

That omission contrasted with the media attention — particularly after then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016 sought to use growing anti-immigration sentiment as the basis for his presidential campaign — devoted to unprecedented levels of emigration of Hondurans whose daily lives were increasingly dominated by deepening poverty and gang warfare. Once Trump was elected to the White House, immigration superseded drug-trafficking or geopolitical concerns as Washington’s top policy priority vis-a-vis Central America. When JOH agreed to fully cooperate with Trump’s anti-immigration policies — eventually even signing an agreement allowing Washington to deport potential asylum seekers to Honduras — Washington effectively turned a blind eye to the Honduran president’s misdeeds.

Thus, when JOH used his hand-picked members of the country’s Supreme Court to permit him to run for a second term in 2017, the Trump administration, as well as the U.S. neoconservatives and right-wing lawmakers who had so aggressively denounced Zelaya as a tyrant for suggesting holding a referendum on amending the constitution, simply looked the other way. Worse, despite widespread denunciations of the election itself as rigged — the OAS, for example, found so many irregularities that it called for a rerun — the U.S. ambassador nonetheless commended the credibility of the electoral process.

And even after his brother’s 2019 conviction in a U.S. federal court, the State Department continued to publicly praise JOH’s anti-drug efforts. Out of power, however, the former president has lost his usefulness. A moderate reformist, Xiomara Castro, former President Zelaya’s spouse, soundly defeated the National Party’s candidate two months ago.

Before leaving office, however, Hernandez appears to have sought some form of assurance that he could avoid prosecution. In the waning days of his tenure, he moved the Honduran embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem where he reportedly received assurances from Israeli officials — some with close ties to the neoconservatives in Washington who defended the 2009 coup that brought the National Party to power — that they would use their influence to help prevent his extradition to the U.S. In the end, however, their efforts proved insufficient.

As with Noriega, however, JOH’s relationship with the United States illustrates much about U.S. foreign policy. Whether it’s drug trafficking, immigration, or countering the influence of geopolitical or ideological foes that constitute the priority du jour, the fate of small countries like Honduras will depend disproportionately on Washington’s domestic political agenda rather than the actual needs and aspirations of the local population.

Suspects for Haitian Leader's Assassination Don't Belong in a U.S. Courtroom (Part I)

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Sun, 30 Jan 2022 20:10:52 GMT

A Deep Look at the Assassination of Haiti's President and the Links to the U.S. Government

The U.S. government has intimate ties with several individuals involved in the assassination of Haiti’s former President Jovenel Moïse. Those connections include multiple U.S.-based contractors linked to coup attempts against other countries, high-level DEA informants, and multiple government officials tied to the 2004 coup (including the current leader of Haiti, Ariel Henry). Therefore, it’s difficult to believe that the U.S. government, at a minimum, didn’t have some advanced warning of what would occur. That’s, in part, why some of the key suspects don’t belong in a U.S. courtroom.

Arcángel Pretel Ortiz and Antonio Intriago are the owners of CTU Security LLC, which contracted the group of Colombian mercenaries who murdered Moïse. There’s no public information listing Arcángel Pretel Ortiz or Antonio Intriago as U.S. intelligence assets, but their actions perfectly align with the U.S. intelligence community’s goals. This pair has been part of multiple attempts at regime change against U.S. geopolitical rivals.

Arcángel Pretel Ortiz (his real name is Gabriel Pérez) is a Colombian businessman living in Miami. He, like one of the Moïse assassins, Duberney Capador, worked in the 1990s as part of the counternarcotics unit called the Bloque de Busqueda or Search Bloc. That group was trained by the U.S military and coordinated with the CIA to dismantle the Medellin and Cali cartels. Pretel Ortiz eventually moved to the U.S. as an informant for the FBI. He was part of a politically-charged reverse sting operation by testifying against a Colombian linked with the communist rebel group, the FARC.

His business partner, Antonio Intriago, is a right-wing ex-pat who moved to Miami from Venezuela and is focused on undermining the Maduro government from abroad. Intriago has some distant connections to Maduro’s rival, Colombian President, Iván Duque. He was also one of the organizers of the 2019 Venezuela Live Aid concert on the Colombia/Venezuela border.

Colombian President Iván Duque (left) and Antonio Intriago (right) - Twitter @calimanarawak

If you’re not familiar with that event, an aid concert doesn’t seem like anything nefarious. However, NPR explained that the Red Cross and the UN refused to collaborate with this aid because it was “also designed to foment regime change in Venezuela.” A government agency audit later revealed that USAID’s efforts weren’t in line with humanitarian purposes. Instead, USAID pushed their officials to make decisions to boost Venezuela’s opposition leader, Juan Guaido. In fact, a large portion of the money ended up being embezzled by Guaido’s cronies.

The 2019 Venezuela Live Aid concert was a brilliant propaganda stunt. To the casual observer, Maduro appeared to be cruel by refusing to accept humanitarian aid from the U.S. government during a hunger crisis. Two months later, Guaido organized an attempted overthrow of the government, Operation Freedom. The head of Venezuela’s intelligence organization, Manuel Cristopher Figuera, was also a key conspirator in this unsuccessful coup attempt. He and his family now live freely in the U.S. He told The Washington Post that U.S. government officials tried to incentivize the coup by offering to return his property in the U.S that had been confiscated as part of the U.S. Treasury’s sanctions program.

One year later, the Venezuelan military easily warded off another attempted coup, “Operation Gideon,” which the media dubbed the “Bay of Piglets.” There was no connection to Arcángel Pretel nor Antonio Intriago, but it illustrates a pattern in which the U.S. government harbors the aggressors who attempt to overthrow a foreign government. In this instance, Juan Guaido contracted with another Florida-based company, Silvercorp USA INC, which provided security for the Venezuela Live Aid concert. Silvercorp’s CEO, Jordan Goudreau, a former Green Beret, has publicly stated that the mission intended to capture Maduro and he has never faced charges in the U.S.

Former U.S. soldiers captured in Operation Gideon - Prensa Presidencial - Government of Venezuela

On a similar note, a former Venezuelan General, Cliver Alcalá-Cordones, who publicly acknowledged his role in organizing Operation Gideon within the jungles of Colombia, is facing charges in the Southern District of New York, but not for attempting to assassinate Maduro. Alcalá was part of a 14-person indictment , including Maduro and other Venezuelan officials, as part of a narco-trafficking conspiracy. Last week, his attorneys stated that officials at the CIA, among other agencies, were aware of Operation Gideon. Alcalá’s attorneys provide an interesting legal argument. They’re essentially saying that Alcalá wasn’t part of a drug trafficking conspiracy involving the Maduro government because he was part of a conspiracy to assassinate Maduro that the U.S. government was privy to.

Anyhow, back to Arcángel Pretel and Antonio Intriago. The Bolivian government also accused both men of plotting a coup in their country. They entered Bolivia a few days before the 2020 election and stayed blocks away from the presidential inauguration. They were joined by a former Colombian Military Colonel, Germán Alejandro Rivera Garcia, aka “Colonel Mike,” who was one of the assassins of Haiti’s President Moïse. Ultimately, a coup didn’t take place in Bolivia in October 2020. The prevailing theory is that there wasn’t enough support among Bolivia’s military coup plotters because the leftist Luis Arce won by too wide of a margin.

German Rivera Garcia, Arcangel Pretel, and Antonio Intriago - Bolivia Government Minister

Arcángel Pretel and Antonio Intriago later contacted Colonel Mike for the preliminary steps of the Haiti plot. Colonel Mike couldn’t travel to the U.S. for a meeting because he didn’t have a U.S. visa. However, his brother, Jhonatan Rivera Garcia, was living in Miami working as a restaurant server; he acted as a liaison. The first meeting took place on Valentine’s Day 2021.

Two months later, Jhonatan Rivera Garcia traveled to Port-au-Prince, Haiti with James Solages, a former US Marine of Haitian descent who worked security for the Canadian embassy in Port-au-Prince. Solages was one of the men captured at the site of the assassination. According to Jhonatan Rivera Garcia, they were told that the original plan was to provide security for a Haitian-born, Florida-based preacher, Christian Emmanuel Sanon, who was supposed to take over Haiti.

James Solages has since claimed that he was merely an interpreter for a U.S. government-approved operation to arrest, not assassinate, Moïse. The pretext for this mission was that CTU Security LLC’s contractors were supposed to serve an arrest warrant issued in February 2019 for President Moïse concerning a massacre in the La Saline community of Port-au-Prince.

In April 2021, Solages met with agents of the Haitian National Police (PNH) and he claimed to be a representative of the U.S. Justice Department, according to a report by a Haitian NGO, the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights (RNDDH). Vincent Joseph, another U.S. citizen who was captured at the scene of the assassination, was also at that meeting. Vincent told the PNH that he was a CIA agent.

There’s no evidence that Vincent worked for the CIA, but DEA sources have confirmed that he worked for their agency as a confidential informant for several years. He reportedly helped the DEA capture Guy Philippe, a former Haitian paramilitary leader who led the 2004 coup, just days before Philippe was about to be inducted into the Haitian Senate and gain immunity from criminal charges.

Meanwhile back in Florida, the Haitian American preacher, Christian Emmanuel Sanon, led a meeting on May 12 ^th at the Tower Club in Fort Lauderdale. He claimed that he wanted to rebuild Haiti’s infrastructure and turn it “into a free and open society” while never mentioning an overthrow of the government. Several in the media labeled Sanon as the “mastermind” of the assassination, but that seems unlikely. There should have been more attention paid to the people who financed him.

The Washington Post published records that two companies would provide Sanon with over $865,000 in loans. A quarter of those funds would come from Arcángel Pretel and Antonio Intriago via CTU Security LLC. The remainder would come from Worldwide Capital Lending Group, owned by a South Florida businessman, Walter Veintemilla, from Ecuador. According to their contract, Sanon was supposed to repay them from Haiti’s assets.

That same group, Arcángel Pretel, Antonio Intriago, Walter Veintemilla, Christian Emmanuel Sanon, were seen flying one month later on a private jet to the Dominican Republic with the tail number HI949. According to Haitian authorities , this group met in a hotel in Santo Domingo with Haitian opposition politicians, former Sen. John Joël Joseph and Marky Kessa (Mayor of Jacmel).

Venezuela’s Ambassador to the U.N., Samuel Moncada, pointed out that the same aircraft H1949 transported Jovenel Moïse’s wife, Martine Moïse, back to Haiti from the U.S. after she received medical attention from the wounds inflicted by her husband’s assassins. That same aircraft also transported Juan Guaido to peace negotiations with the Venezuelan government in September 2019.

While in the Dominican Republic, CTU Security LLC paid 19 Colombians with military backgrounds (several with U.S. training experience), to travel to hear their sales pitch. There’s reason to believe the version of the events from this group. They claim that they only agreed to “provide security to personalities from Haiti, and to the future President, Christian Emanuel Sanon,” not assassinate the President. These men were paid roughly $2,700 per month. They also shared the images of themselves in CTU uniforms and at various locations throughout the Dominican Republic. Criminals often make dumb mistakes, but such decisions seem unlikely if you know that you’re about to assassinate a head-of-state.

Assassination suspects posing in front of the National Palace in the Dominican Republic - Facebook- Manuel Antonio Grosso Guarín

The group of Colombians then traveled in early June to Sanon’s residence in Haiti and provided him with a security detail. However, two of them abandoned the mission, including Colonel Mike’s brother Jhonotan, in late June when the true nature of the operation escalated quickly. According to Colonel Mike, Arcángel Pretel shifted the mission from protecting Sanon to arresting President Moïse. They were told that there would be suitcases with $45 million in his home and that the group would keep $18 million for themselves. And Arcángel Pretel assured Colonel Mike that the mission was sanctioned by the U.S. government. He had sent Colonel Mike images of himself entering various U.S. government agencies.

The eventual order to kill President Moïse came from another DEA informant, Joseph Felix Badio . Anyone who backed out would be killed . He had worked in the Haitian Justice Ministry anti-corruption unit until May 2021 when he was fired. Badio was an instrumental figure in this assassination. He rented an apartment in front of Moïse’s home to monitor the operation and provided the assassins with the vehicles and weapons.

Joseph Felix Badio - Haiti National Police

The group also abandoned its loyalty to Christian Emanuel Sanon in the final days before the assassination. That suggests that he was merely a “useful idiot” who was duped into this scheme for those with much better means and motives to assassinate Moïse.

A former judge, Wendelle Coq Thélot, was the new chosen successor. Wendelle Coq Thélot held meetings in her home with DEA informants, Joseph Vincent and Joseph Felix Badio, and James Solages, former Sen. John Joël Joseph, along with another DEA informant, Rodolphe Jaar.

Jaar, a dual citizen of Haiti/Chile, wasn’t some nickel bag dealer. He comes from a wealthy Haitian family that is a distributor for Coca-Cola and is a known acquaintance of former President Michel Martelly. Jaar was indicted in 2013 for distributing seven tons of Colombian cocaine. He agreed to become an informant after his arrest. He received a remarkably light sentence and returned to Haiti in 2016.

These loose connections with U.S. law enforcement helped to provide this large group of assassins with the veneer of legitimacy when they arrived at the President’s home in the early morning hours of July 7 ^th . They traveled in six vans (each accompanied by three to four Haitian police officers) and entered in four groups . They were provided with DEA badges by a former police commissioner, Gilbert Dragon, who also was one of the U.S.-trained paramilitary leaders who launched the 2004 Haiti coup. (Gilbert Dragon later died in police custody from COVID.)

(left to right) Gilbert Dragon (after 2004 Coup as leader of National Revolutionary Front for the Liberation and Reconstruction of Haiti - Latinamericanstudies.org - former Senator John Joël Joseph, Rodolphe Jaar, and Wendelle Coq Thélot (Haiti National Police)

This group entered the President’s home without much resistance. A few shots were fired, but they easily breached the building. It seems that most, if not all of the 23 guards on duty, reportedly received a combined $100,000 in bribes from Jean Laguel Civil, the Presidential Security Coordinator.

After hearing those shots, President Moïse made two frantic phone calls to Jean Laguel Civil and Dimitri Hérard, the head of the General Security Unit of the National Palace (USGPN). Neither of them came to his aid. Hérard arrived promptly on the scene, but he didn’t come to the rescue. James Solange stated over a megaphone, “Everybody stand down. DEA operation. Everybody back up,” and Hérard reportedly complied.

That was a convenient excuse for Hérard, but records show that he was in constant communication with the assassins before the murder. The National Network for the Defense of Human Rights (RNDDH) alleges that he supplied them with weapons and ammunition. At the time of the assassination, he was under investigation by the U.S. law enforcement agencies for arms trafficking in Haiti. Reportedly, Moïse had relayed to Hérard not to worry about the investigation because the U.S. would drop the matter. Hérard’s company, Tradex Haiti S.A., had received a U.S. State Department contract for distributing riot gear to the Haitian National Police (PNH). Bear in mind, Haiti doesn’t manufacture weapons and the U.S. is the top supplier of arms in Haiti where several politically-motivated massacres have occurred with police complicity.

And with the Presidential security at bay, the assassins felt comfortable enough to stay in the home for approximately 30 minutes. They fired into the President’s bedroom before entering. The First Lady, Martine Moïse, was also shot seven or eight times. Fortunately, she survived by lying motionless pretending to be dead.

According to Martine Moïse, the men first searched for a specific document before killing him. After they found what they were looking for, one of the men made a call to someone outside (presumably Joseph Felix Badio). He gave a physical description of President Moïse and then apparently the order was issued. A former Colombian soldier, specifically Víctor Pineda Cardona , allegedly shot Jovenel Moïse 12 times with a M4 rifle. This version of the events falls in line with a credible theory published by Maria Abi-Habib of The New York Times in which Moïse was murdered because he was compiling a list of Haiti’s powerful elite who had ties to drug trafficking.

As the men made their escape, they expected that Joseph Felix Badio would have the premises secured from Haitian police, but that wasn’t the case. Badio had left the scene of the crime and the Haitian security forces blocked off the roads. They exchanged gunfire with the Haitian security forces. Colonel Mike remained in contact after the assassination with Arcángel Pretel who told them that they would be rescued promptly; that never happened.

Three Colombians were killed in the aftermath. Two of which, Duberney Capador and Mauricio Romero, were found with roughly $50,000 in cash in their possession. The remainder eventually surrendered, other than Mario Antonio Palacios Palacios who managed to escape. The Haitian police displayed these men for the international media.

Mario Antonio Palacios Palacios - Haiti National Police

A legal question remained as to who would take leadership of Haiti. Claude Joseph was the interim Prime Minister. However, Moïse appointed Ariel Henry as the Prime Minister just two days before his death. Both men have ties to CIA cut-out organizations. Claude Joseph was part of the protest movement funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) that supported the 2004 coup. The Washington Post infamously noted that NED is “doing in public what the CIA used to do in private.”

Ariel Henry was an opposition leader of the Democratic Convergence that called for overthrowing former President Aristide and accepted funding from the International Republican Institute . He was part of the “ Council of Sages ,” a group that held de facto power over the country after the 2004 coup.

Ariel Henry - Wikipedia

The Fox is Guarding the Hen House

Ultimately, it was the international community, not the Haitian people, who chose Ariel Henry. Claude Joseph wanted to keep the position, but the Core Group pressured to have Henry installed on July 20 ^th . That is in part why Daniel Foote, the U.S. special envoy for Haiti, resigned from his post. If you’re not familiar with the Core Group isn’t familiar, it’s likely because it’s not an elected group. The Core Group is comprised of ambassadors from Germany, Brazil, Canada, Spain, the U.S., France, the European Union, along with representatives from the U.N. and the Organization of American States (OAS). This group unofficially organized the early stages of the 2004 Haitian coup and has repeatedly supported anti-democratic practices in Haiti for multiple elections, including the 2010/2011 election of former President Michel Martelly.

With Ariel Henry at the helm, it appears that there will no justice any time soon. Henry had two phone calls with one of the key organizers of the assassination, Joseph Felix Badio, for a total of seven minutes within three hours of the assassination. Ariel Henry claims that can’t recollect what was discussed on that call. The world is supposed to believe that their conversation was just random chit-chat at 3:00 AM on a Wednesday. Joseph Felix Badio also reportedly visited Ariel Henry’s home twice after assassination while being one of the country’s most wanted fugitives.

Furthermore, two months after the assassination, Ariel Henry had the lead prosecutor fired after he asked the judge to charge Henry as a suspect and ban him from leaving the country. Ariel Henry also dissolved the national election commission and postponed indefinitely the elections that were supposed to take place in November.

Ariel Henry is also accused of protecting the opposition Senator John Joël Joseph who played a role in organizing the plot and reportedly paid for the assassins’ rental vehicles in cash. Another suspect, a Haitian Palestinian businessman named Samir Handal who lives in Miami part-time, also received police protection to leave the country. He’s the person who rented his property to Christian Emmanuel Sanon.

However, the handling of the situation with fugitive Mario Antonio Palacios Palacios is arguably the most puzzling. He was one of the Colombian mercenaries who escaped arrest. While he wanted as one of the country’s most wanted fugitives, Palacios gave an interview to the Colombian news organization, Semana. He explained that he found a bilingual American who gave him access to a house before crossing the border to the Dominican Republic and making his way to Jamaica.

Why make the extra trip to Jamaica? Maybe it has to do with extradition treaties? Jamaica does not have a formal extradition treaty with Haiti. Palacios was arrested in Jamaica in October for illegal migration. Jamaica’s deputy prime minister, Dr. Horace Chang, faced public pressure for not handing him over to the Haitian authorities. However, Chang pointed out in December that Palacios couldn’t be extradited to Haiti because he hadn’t been formally charged by Haiti’s government.

Consequently, Palacios is now in U.S. custody and facing murder charges in the Southern District of Florida . Likewise, the DEA informant, Rodolphe Jaar, who helped fund and organize the assassination is facing the same charges in the same courtroom. And it’s likely that the opposition leader, former Sen. John Joël Joseph, will also be extradited to the U.S. A Haitian official told The Sunday Gleaner , “(The) Haitian government wants John Joel Joseph to be extradited to Haiti. But as for now, it is recommended that he goes to the USA than be transferred to Haiti.”

A U.S. courtroom isn’t the appropriate venue for these cases. After all, Jaar gave an interview to The New York Times while in hiding in Haiti. He claimed that he went along with the plan because the plot was supported by the U.S. government. Jaar is far from being a 100% credible source. For example, after his arrest in 2013, he agreed to work as an informant. However, he was caught stealing 50 kilos of cocaine from a drug bust that helped arrange. Nonetheless, if there’s even a semblance of truth to his allegations about the assassination, a U.S. courtroom is the last place that his case belongs. It’s clear that the investigation in Haiti has no teeth, but it doesn’t excuse the U.S. government for violating Haiti’s sovereignty. The United States is hardly an independent arbiter in this matter.

Look at the track record with the U.S.-based suspects. Neither Arcángel Pretel Ortiz, Antonio Intriago, nor Walter Veintemilla have faced any charges. According to Antonio Intriago’s attorneys, the FBI was “ aware ” of their security operation. In an even more odd circumstance, the FBI searched Pretel’s Miami apartment on July 27 ^th (three weeks after the assassination) and he has since disappeared . Mind you, he is the person who was reportedly on the phone with the assassins after the crime took place.

To sum up, the circumstances surrounding the assassination create more questions than answers. And those questions may never be answered. We know who committed the crime, but we don’t know everyone who facilitated the crime.

There are several U.S. informants tied to the assassination, but we shouldn’t always take the word of a snitch as the gospel. There’s no guarantee that these people acted in compliance with their American handlers. Nonetheless, a U.S. courtroom isn’t the appropriate forum to dig for the truth. With the U.S. judicial system taking the lead in these key prosecutions, it appears on the world stage like the cover-up of a crime.

(This is the first part of the story about the assassination of Jovenel Moïse. The second part will examine possible motives behind the murder and the connection between the U.S. government and Haiti’s drug trafficking.)

‘Otoniel’ is no mere kingpin. He’s a creature of bad US-Colombia policy.

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 23:59:39 GMT

Otoniel is one of Thousands of Right-Wing Terrorists whom the Colombian Government Enabled to Fight Communist Rebels with US Weaponry & Intelligence

Last month, the lengthiest manhunt in Colombian history culminated in the capture of the country’s most-wanted criminal, Dairo Antonio Úsuga aka “Otoniel,” head of the notorious crime organization known as Gulf Clan or Urabeños. Colombia's Defense Ministry estimates that this cartel, one of the country’s most powerful criminal organizations, smuggles up to 200 tons of cocaine annually, and has killed over 200 members of Colombia’s security forces.

Otoniel deserves to be brought to justice, but the media’s oversimplified narrative about the takedown of “a drug kingpin” inadvertently serves as free public relations for the United States government’s disastrous foreign policy. The ugly truth is the American and Colombian governments indirectly enabled Otoniel’s rise to power through the decades-long War on Drugs.

Is Tesla’s Supply Chain Linked to Blood Diamonds, Bribery, Child Labor, & Sanctions Evasions?

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Sun, 25 Apr 2021 22:50:57 GMT

Several Corporations are Looking the Other Way at Vast Human Rights Violations all for the Sake of Profits

Tesla has a positive corporate reputation, but most people are unaware of the human suffering associated with the rare mineral, coltan, necessary for making electric car batteries. Tesla deserves scrutiny for agreeing last year to purchase up to 6,000 tons of cobalt annually from the mines of the scandal-ridden commodity firm, Glencore, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Here’s a little background. Glencore’s founder, Marc Rich, was once on the FBI’s Most-Wanted List. Marc Rich evaded millions of dollars in taxes and violated embargoes, particularly importing massive oil supplies into Iran during the Iranian hostage crisis. He subsequently received an infamous pardon from Bill Clinton after his wife sprinkled enough money around Clinton’s inner circle. Glencore’s corporate misconduct expanded from there, including scandals with Colombian paramilitary narcoterrorists , allegedly paying police officials to violently repress protestors in Peru, and much more.

Glencore’s pattern of corporate criminality is just the tip of the iceberg with what is wrong with Tesla’s decision to secure cobalt from their mines in the DRC. First, Tesla may be violating U.S. sanctions law because Glencore has a royalty agreement with the company’s former partner, Dan Gertler. The Israeli billionaire’s name is synonymous with blood diamonds. Gertler is believed to be the inspiration for Leonardo Dicaprio’s character in the film Blood Diamonds. He paved his way to riches by befriending the former President of the DRC, Laurent Kabila and his successor Joseph Kabila. In turn, he acquired a monopoly of the country’s diamond trade for only $20 million . That fire sale occurred because the country was in the middle of the Second Congo War, the deadliest war since WWII.

Dan Gertler - Vitrine RDC via YouTube

Joseph Kabila also used Gertler as a middleman to extract bribes from international corporations for mining concessions and hide the proceeds offshore, according to the U.S. Treasury. A Bloomberg investigation concluded that Kabila and his siblings owned shares in at least 70 companies that collectively brought them hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, according to a Bloomberg investigation.” Dan Gertler was allegedly the middleman in one of the highest-profile Foreign Corrupt Practices Act cases that involved the largest Wall Street hedge fund, Och-Ziff. Bloomberg confirmed that Gertler was the unnamed Israeli businessman from the DOJ’s 2016 report who bribed DRC government officials to grab mining rights at bargain-basement rates.

Gertler was officially sanctioned in 2017 via the Magnitsky Act. The U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) wrote, “Dan Gertler is an international businessman and billionaire who has amassed his fortune through hundreds of millions of dollars worth of opaque and corrupt mining and oil deals in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.” It’s estimated that Gertler’s corrupt actions cost the DRC’s public sector over $1.36 billion of revenue between 2010 and 2012 alone. Bear in mind, such predatory wealth extraction is particularly damaging in a country such as the DRC, which is the third poorest country in the world, where only 42% of the population has access to drinking water.

At first, Glencore observed the sanctions against Gertler and stopped making royalty payments to him. However, Glencore restored those payments in 2018 ($29 million), albeit in the form of Euros, after Gertler took legal action. Did Glencore resume these payments strictly as a result of litigation? Or was the company afraid to cut ties with an influential fixer?

Gertler’s power in the DRC waned in 2019 when the 19-year autocratic reign of Joseph Kabila ended, but not much. The successor, President Tshisekedi, has openly disputed U.S. sanctions against Gertler. A pair of NGOs that are dedicated to this issue, Global Witness and the Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa (PPLAAF), released a report about a sophisticated money-laundering network that reportedly allows Gertler to continue to operate in the DRC and avoid sanctions. That should have prompted a series of anti-corruption investigations, but the two bank workers who exposed this scandal faced threats and needed to find refugee status in Europe. In an astonishing development, those two whistleblowers were sentenced to death in absentia in the DRC.

The corruption in the U.S. leaves much to be desired too. There’s a niche racket for former U.S. government officials who know how to grease the wheels for the foreign individuals wrapped up these sanctions. Dan Gertler acquired the services of the former FBI director, Louis Freeh, who is no stranger to this type of client. For example, Freeh’s firm lobbied on behalf of Beny Steinmetz who was recently convicted in Geneva for bribing the wife of the former President of Guinea to gain exclusive rights to the country’s premier iron mine. Gertler’s team also hired famous civil liberties attorney Alan Dershowitz. He had never registered as a lobbyist before then, but Dershowitz is a strong ally of Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

It helps to have friends in high places and Gertler’s investment eventually paid off. Even the Director of Mossad (Israel’s intelligence agency), Yossi Cohen, and Israel's former Ambassador to the U.S., Ron Dermer, stepped in on Gertler’s behalf . On January 15 ^th , five days before the end of the Trump administration, the U.S. Treasury reversed the sanctions against Gertler. However, this success was short-lived and the Biden reversed this decision just seven weeks later.

Tesla’s decision to source its cobalt from Glencore’s mines in the DRC enables this flagrant corruption. And that’s just one of multiple human rights issues with that decision by Tesla. It’s an industry that still parallels the country’s colonial past. Several multinational corporations extract the resources, leave behind terrible environmental damage , and overlook horrible work conditions.

Glencore’s track record in the DRC is shameful. The BBC provided evidence in 2012 that Glencore was dumping acid in the local river by one of its mines. That same report showed children as young as 10 were working in one of the company’s mines. However, it’s not a cut-and-dry situation.

Glencore had stopped operating the mine four years earlier. A local company worked the mines with independent or artisanal miners, some of which included the youths captured on video by the BBC. The materials from those mines were sold to Groupe Bazano, one of Glencore’s partners in the DRC. Glencore denied profiting from child labor despite evidence to the contrary.

Glencore isn’t the only company to turn a blind eye to this issue. UNICEF estimated in 2012 that 40,000 children work in cobalt mines across the DRC and not much has improved. The U.S. Department of Labor reported in 2019 that “the DRC made no advancement in efforts to eliminate the worst forms of child labor.”

As much as 30% of the DRC’s cobalt industry is sourced informally through artisanal mining and child labor is just one of the issues. The work conditions are often unsafe and, in some cases, deadly. For example, a collapsed tunnel killed 43 artisanal miners in July 2019 on the premises of a Glencore mine. Putting aside how the company acquired the rights to the mine, Glencore denied all responsibility and tried to brush off the tragedy as a security issue in which they need to keep “illegal miners” from trespassing on their property.

The human rights group, International Rights Advocates, filed a pending federal class-action lawsuit in December 2019 on behalf of child victims working in cobalt mines in the DRC and it could shatter Glencore’s convenient narrative. The plaintiffs’ lawyer claims that Apple, Alphabet, Dell, Microsoft, and Tesla “knew or reasonably should have known that the cobalt supply chain ventures operated by Glencore…were using forced child labor.”

The plaintiffs allege that Glencore essentially uses intermediaries to purchase the cobalt from the artisanal miners on their sites. “Glencore may never admit it, but they rely on penny-wage artisanal cobalt mining to boost their production at minimal expense,” said Siddharth Kara, a senior researcher on the subject. “When those people are injured or killed, they claim illegal trespass and that their sites are overrun.” Glencore denies the allegations.

The lawsuit alleges that children as young as six were working in these mines and some were victims of human trafficking. One of the plaintiffs, John Doe 1, says that he began working in the mine at age nine and is now paralyzed from the waist down after falling in a tunnel on site. Other plaintiffs claim that their family members died in a tunnel collapse.

What can a company do to ensure its materials are responsibly sourced?

One company, BMW, took a positive step forward last year by committing to purchasing its cobalt from Glencore’s mines in Australia and Morocco due to the terrible work conditions in the DRC. And if more companies do the same, it will pressure the corporations and government to make actual improvements for the workers.

However, the solution is not as simple as every multinational corporation ceasing its operations in the DRC. As exploitive as the industry is, a mass exodus of capital would only further harm this vulnerable population. Such an option isn’t even possible as the DRC supplies roughly two-thirds of the global cobalt supply. Furthermore, several of the other major cobalt suppliers have serious issues too.

There aren’t many legal or ethical options for U.S.-based businesses to purchase cobalt. Cuba, which is sanctioned by the U.S., has the world’s third-largest cobalt reserves. Russia is in second place, but a sanctioned Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, is a significant shareholder of the leading company, Nornickel. Vladamir Potanin, the CEO of Nornickel, is the wealthiest person in Russia. He pioneered the “loans-for-shares” program after the fall of the USSR that pilfered billions of dollars of the country’s wealth by privatizing Russia’s public companies into the hands of a select group of oligarchs. It’s much like what happened in the DRC.

Considering the situation at hand, Elon Musk has pledged in the past to eventually eliminate the use of cobalt in Tesla’s batteries. However, that type of change requires significant technological advances that don’t materialize overnight. What can be done in the meantime?

Companies, such as Tesla and Apple, that enjoy broad support among a progressive consumer base need to ensure that their supplies are ethically sourced. Tesla claims that it takes adequate measures by having the Responsible Mineral Initiative certify its supplies from Glencore. However, that’s just passing the buck for social responsibility. The responsibility lies with the company itself, not a third-party monitor. These companies have multi-billion-dollar balance sheets and the resources to dramatically reduce suffering tied to their supply chains. It’s time for Tesla, and all other companies receiving cobalt from the DRC, to face the appropriate scrutiny necessary to hold them accountable.

Honduras Is A Bonafide Narco State, Yet Trump Praises Its Useful Leader

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Fri, 03 Jul 2020 05:43:44 GMT

Welcome to your Drug War: Corrupt Latin American governments favored by Washington get tons of aid and yes, U.S. troops.

There’s no need to read John Bolton’s memoir to know that President Trump thought it would be “cool” to invade Venezuela.

In April, Trump ordered the U.S. Navy to conduct anti-drug surveillance off the coastline of Venezuela. One week earlier, the DOJ indicted Nicolas Maduro and 14 other Venezuelan officials for “narcoterrorism.” The Venezuelan first lady, Cilia Flores, may also face drug charges. Venezuela is overrun with corruption, but it’s clear that the drug war is America’s Trojan horse of foreign policy when examining a few U.S. allies’ track records.

The Supreme Court At Last Moves To Curb Civil Asset Forfeiture

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Mon, 11 Mar 2019 05:50:29 GMT

It's a narrow victory but an important one in the fight for the right to property.

In a huge victory against government abuses of power, the Supreme Court has finally put some curbs on civil asset forfeiture.

Last month, the court ruled unanimously in favor of the plaintiff in Timbs v. Indiana, establishing that states must protect your Eighth Amendment protection against excessive government fines.

El Chapo: Another Case For Ending The Drug War

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Mon, 18 Feb 2019 07:00:16 GMT

The sordid details of his trial only show that prohibition will enable another kingpin after him.

On Tuesday, the jury in the federal court of Brooklyn found Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán guilty of all 10 counts of the drug trafficking offenses that had been brought against him. For good reason, the head of the Sinaloa Cartel will likely spend the rest of his life in prison.

A Real Killing: How Greedy Corporate Pushers Caused The Opioid Crisis

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Wed, 23 Jan 2019 07:04:51 GMT

An Upcoming Court Battle Can't Levy a Penalty Large Enough for the Enablers of Thousands of Deaths

A federal judge has ruled that a massive lawsuit that blames drug manufacturers, distributors, and pharmacies for the American opioid epidemic will proceed to trial.

“It is accurate to describe the opioid epidemic as a man-made plague, twenty years in the making. The pain, death, and heartache it has wrought cannot be overstated,” blasted U.S. District Judge Dan Polster of the Northern District of Ohio in his ruling last month.

Trump Kicking Out Salvadorans Could Be A Boon For MS-13

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Sat, 19 Jan 2019 18:05:05 GMT

Prepare yourself for the next wave of violence-driven migration, and as usual, U.S. policy will have a hand in it.

On January 8, the Trump administration announced that the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) of immigrants from El Salvador would be revoked. This will affect 200,000 Salvadorans who have been living and working legally in the United States since Hurricane Mitch devastated their country in 1998.

Putting aside the obvious humanitarian ramifications for a moment, this decision will, ironically, most certainly backfire in regards to Trump’s expansive promise to “defeat MS-13.”

Fighting Corruption in the U.S. Criminal Justice System

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Thu, 13 Dec 2018 07:12:37 GMT

Over 2,000 people have been exonerated from criminal convictions since 1989. But to blame mere incompetence or simple negligence would be a mistake. In the majority of these cases, it was criminal or unethical behavior by witnesses, law enforcement, and even the government that put these individuals behind bars in the first place.

When Forensic Evidence Goes Bad

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Tue, 28 Aug 2018 06:17:12 GMT

A whole cottage industry has been built around hair, blood, and bite-mark analyses—but what happens when it puts the wrong people in jail?

“(It is better) that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.” It was the 18th-century English jurist Sir William Blackstone who first coined this theoretical basis of criminal justice, and it’s a principle with which a majority of Americans agree.

Unfortunately, far too many criminal convictions have been overturned due to false evidence, including what is often considered to be gospel—forensic evidence.

Throwing Children Away: The School-To-Prison Pipeline

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Fri, 03 Aug 2018 06:21:12 GMT

Zero tolerance and the proliferation of cops on campus are sending more kids into a life of incarceration than ever.

Imagine receiving a phone call that your child had misbehaved at school. Imagine if that call came from the local police.

Tens of thousands of parents go through this scenario every year. And while it’s natural to assume the police will only get involved if a serious offense is committed, the majority of these cases—and arrests of juveniles at school—involve bad behavior, not criminal activity.

Malaysia’s Top Intelligence Official Sought Support From the CIA Before Election

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Fri, 03 Aug 2018 05:33:11 GMT

Would the U.S. Government Look the Other Way if Evidence of Election Fraud Were to Come to Light?

Last month, a letter sent to CIA Director, Gina Haspel, was leaked publicly and spread across social media.

Argentina Militarizes the Drug War

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Mon, 30 Jul 2018 05:19:06 GMT

Pro-Western Leader Taking Steps Towards Authoritarian Rule

The President of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, announced last Monday that the military would now be involved in domestic crime efforts. It was a reversal of a law akin to the U.S. law, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. (The Posse Comitatus Act was also amended by Congress during the Reagan administration as part of the war on drugs.)

Trump Is Backing His Scandalous Ally In Guatemala

Wed, 25 Jul 2018 00:22:00 GMT

Trump Enabling the Corruption of Guatemalan President, Jimmy Morales, Who Shares Several Similarities

The Unreal Scope Of China’s Intellectual Property Theft

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 06:27:23 GMT

Afederal judge recently issued a $1.5 million fine to a Chinese wind turbine company, Sinovel, for stealing key intellectual property from a Massachusetts technology company, American Superconductor (AMSC).

China’s intellectual property (IP) theft costs the U.S. economy between $225 billion to $600 billion annually, according to the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property. Trump cited that estimate when issuing a $34 billion tariff on Chinese goods that went into effect earlier this month.

Keeping Cops’ Hands Out Of Your Pockets

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Mon, 16 Jul 2018 06:32:54 GMT

Finally, a case that might put a real crimp into civil asset forfeiture abuse.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently agreed to rule on a case that could have a major impact on civil liberties and whether civil asset forfeiture can continue to serve as low hanging fruit for bureaucratic interests run amok.

Timbs v. Indiana involves a man whose $42,000 Land Rover was confiscated via civil asset forfeiture. Attorneys from the libertarian public-interest law firm, Institute for Justice, don’t deny their client Tyson Timbs was convicted of selling $385 worth of heroin in two transactions and that his vehicle was used in the sale.

To Ted Cruz: Further Militarizing Mexico’s Drug War Is a Horrible Idea

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Tue, 26 Jun 2018 18:21:42 GMT

America Has a Disastrous Track Record of Militarizing the War on Drugs in Foreign Countries

Ted Cruz recently provided an exclusive interview to Breitbart News. He asserted that the U.S. military should be working in conjunction with the Mexican government to fight the cartels. He didn’t suggest a full-scale invasion, but he did propose something similar to our program, "Plan Colombia."

America’s Gulf Ally: A Hub For Terrorist Money Laundering

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Fri, 22 Jun 2018 06:40:22 GMT

We claim to be fighting terrorism. So why don't we get tougher on the United Arab Emirates?

A recent report should demonstrate once and for all that one of America’s top Middle Eastern allies, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is a money laundering hub for international criminals. Dubai’s real estate market has provided a safe haven for illicit funds connected to terrorism, drug cartels, and war profiteers, according to the Center for Advanced Defense Studies.

As of 2002, foreign nationals have been allowed to buy property in the UAE. Those records are private, but the Center for Advanced Defense Studies received leaked city data. Their organization identified 81 luxury properties (valued at $107 million) in Dubai that were owned by individuals or networks of people sanctioned by the United States government.

Narco Terrorists in Peru Mimicking the FARC

Wed, 20 Jun 2018 03:09:00 GMT

A Splinter Group of the Shining Path emerges in Peru

Former State Dept Anti-Trafficking Chief Admits Efforts Are Overly Focused On Sex Trafficking

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Thu, 31 May 2018 06:44:55 GMT

Politics Can Even Sway an Issue as Important as Combating Human Trafficking

Marc P. Lagon directed the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons at the U.S. State Department from 2007 to 2009. During a recent meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations titled, “ The Reality of Modern Slavery ,” Lagon acknowledged some sobering truths about the issue of human trafficking.

Debate on this topic inevitably leads to discussions about the sex industry. However, Lagon cautioned against focusing entirely on sex trafficking because it is far less pervasive than human trafficking involving legal professions, i.e labor trafficking.

Lagon noted that the anti-trafficking movement in the U.S. and EU was generally formed by “religious and feminist activists” with an “image of women flowing out of the former Soviet Union into sex trafficking.” He added:

There’s much more labor-related trafficking than sex trafficking in the world. They are both important, but you must not talk only about sex trafficking. And that for labor trafficking, it is not only undocumented or irregular migrants, but sometimes guest workers with papers in debt bondage, and that the impunity rates, the lack of punishment, is much higher in the area of labor trafficking. Basic facts.

Obviously, human trafficking is a contentious issue and there are no exact statistics. However, the International Labour Organization estimates that sex trafficking victims comprise 19% of all human trafficking victims throughout the world. That’s obviously a disproportionate percentage considering the numerous industries throughout the world. Then again, there’s a disproportionate level of attention focused on sex trafficking, as opposed to labor trafficking.

With that in mind, the moderator of this discussion, Kira Kay (Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University), raised the question of why this is happening. “The number of prosecutions are so much higher (for sex trafficking),” said Kira Kay.

She’s certainly correct. From 2001 to 2005, roughly one out of four federal human trafficking prosecutions focused on sex trafficking . However, those figures were reversed within a few years. Eighty-two percent of federal human trafficking prosecutions from 2008 to 2010 were primarily focused on sex trafficking. Furthermore, the U.S. State Department reported last year that 439 traffickers were convicted in 2016. “Of these, 425 involved predominantly sex trafficking and 14 involved predominantly labor trafficking, although several involved both.”

In a question to Marc Lagon, Kira Kay asked, “Why is that? Is there just more political will? Is it easier to identify? Does the media drive this? I certainly know from my own journalism, you know, sex trafficking in Cambodia is an easier sell than brickmaking in Cambodia.”

Lagon agreed on all three fronts. He also added that “monied interests are tougher to beat.” Lagon alluded to examples from Brazil, and elsewhere in the world. However, he didn’t cite the monied interests in the U.S. that are guilty of this horrific crime.

This topic has received a lot of indirect media coverage lately. A recent Senate hearing revealed that the Department of Health and Human Services had lost track of 1,475 immigrant children who came to this country without their parents.

The PBS Frontline documentary, Trafficked in America , profiled some of those children who ultimately ended up being victims of labor trafficking. These children were housed in decrepit living conditions and were threatened with the death of their parents if they refused to pay their “debts” to their traffickers.

Fortunately, the traffickers, in this case, were convicted. However, there is little to no political will to investigate potential complicity on the part of the Ohio egg-production company, Trillium Farms, which profited from this labor.

Labor trafficking is a difficult crime to investigate. The victims work in legal industries such as construction, agriculture, and domestic work, but most victims are illegal immigrants. Thus, there are few whistleblowers willing to risk being deported. Likewise, the individuals or companies that profit from this crime, or “monied interests,” are much more capable of hiring competent defense attorneys.

On the other hand, sex trafficking is low hanging fruit for career-minded bureaucrats and politicians are more than willing to throw a lot of money at this crime. Those cases are also much easier to prosecute as many activists have successfully conflated the entire sex industry with sex trafficking. Furthermore, some laws have removed the universal standards of human trafficking, i.e force, fraud, or coercion. That includes the most recent federal trafficking legislation, Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act ( FOSTA ).

Meanwhile, the average American has never heard about human trafficking involving the military. Nonetheless, it occurs at a fairly high frequency. The Department of Defense reported in 2016 that it conducted 13 human trafficking investigations involving military personnel.

What’s much more common is human trafficking involving private defense contractors. In many cases, defense companies have subcontracted with human trafficking organizations posed as legitimate outsourcing companies.

Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR), a former subsidiary of Halliburton, has been involved in multiple cases of human trafficking. In one example, the company used a subcontractor that lured a group of men from Nepal with promises of certain wages at a Jordanian luxury hotel. Instead, their passports were confiscated before being trafficked into an Iraqi war zone where all but one of the men were murdered by insurgents. The lone survivor was forced to work at an army base in Iraq. Regardless, KBR has continued receiving generous government contracts .

A major Pentagon contractor, ManTech, is facing a civil lawsuit for allegedly violating the False Claims Act, i.e. defrauding the government. (ManTech has previously violated this law, yet it, and several other contractors that guilty of the same crime, has continued receiving lucrative contracts.)

The current case against ManTech alleges that the company committed fraud involving a contract worth over $2 billion. The lawsuit also alleges that the company forced some of its workers into human trafficking work conditions. Nonetheless, it is highly unlikely that this company will be held accountable if the allegations are true.

The worst-case scenario for these, and many other corporate criminals, is a deferred prosecution agreement from the DOJ in which these companies pay a fine and promise to no longer engage in such activity.

We’ll continue to see this dynamic in place until the U.S. government exhibits the fortitude to punish companies that are guilty of this crime. For a government that claims to have a “zero tolerance policy” for human trafficking it sure has a soft spot for labor trafficking, particularly when it involves companies within the military industrial complex.

How the “Cocaine Mitch” Saga Deflected the Spotlight on Corruption

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Fri, 18 May 2018 06:53:47 GMT

Conflicts of Interest Seemingly Steered McConnell's Policies Towards China

The West Virginia Senate Republican Primary ended last week with Don Blankenship in third place. He would have otherwise been considered a fringe candidate, but a series of attack ads against Mitch McConnell launched him onto the national scene.

Blankenship, the former CEO of Massey Energy, is no stranger to controversy. He served a year in prison for conspiracy to willfully violate mine health and safety standards. The trial was in response to an explosion that killed 29 coal miners.

The NBA's "Integrity Fee" Is Ridiculous, But Not Unprecedented (Pt II)

Wed, 09 May 2018 23:54:00 GMT

EU Nations Have a Better System for Regulating Sports Betting

The NBA's "Integrity Fee" is Ridiculous, But Not Unprecedented (Pt I)

Mon, 07 May 2018 14:42:00 GMT

The NBA's Proposed Fee Shows How Little the League Knows About the Legal Sports Betting Industry

A Chance for Better Relations With Cuba

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Sat, 05 May 2018 06:57:33 GMT

There is a new President of Cuba, Miguel Diaz Canel. He’s the first non-Castro leader since the revolution of 1959. Does that mean that Cuba will move in a new direction? It doesn’t appear so.

Raul Castro will remain as the one who is truly in control. He will continue to lead the military and the Communist Party, which controls the entire political process. Therefore, this wasn’t much of a transition of power.

US Journalist Tim Rogers Leaves Nicaragua Due To Threats From Sandinista Groups

Sun, 29 Apr 2018 15:02:00 GMT

US Intelligence Has Many Reporters in its Network, but that Provides an Excuse for Ortega to Label all Critics as Enemies of the State

Protests erupted throughout Nicaragua last week in response to plans to reduce social security benefits. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega later reversed this decision after as many as 63 protestors have been killed by government forces.

The Latin-America-focused news organization, Fusion, sent its editor, Tim Rogers, to report on the story. However, he left on Friday due to threats from pro-Sandinista groups labeling him as a CIA agent, per Nicaragua-based La Prensa .

Anyone familiar with the work of Fusion would never confuse it with a CIA front. (A correspondent from…say…The Washington Post, on the other hand, could deservedly receive such speculation.) Rogers ( who had been fairly supportive of Ortega's cause ) had lived and worked as a journalist in Nicaragua for many years. However, his critical anti-corruption reporting resulted in these kinds of smears in the past. With that said, being labeled as a CIA agent can be viewed as a death threat in Nicaragua in its current tumultuous state.

If you're not familiar with Nicaragua's current politics, Daniel Ortega is repeating the legacy of the Somoza dictatorship; albeit, as a corrupt left-wing tyrant. He’s been in power for decades and his real-life House of Cards saga was cemented by choosing his wife as his Vice President.

Daniel Ortega was legitimately elected president in 2007. However, he was reelected to a third consecutive term in 2016, which had been unconstitutional until the majority-party-dominated National Assembly voted to remove term limits .

Such egregious power grabs and more, however, haven’t been widely opposed. The Nicaragua economy has steadily improved during his time in office and crime has remained one of the lowest in a region plagued by violence. That has helped to placate opposition uprising.

Despite rampant corruption, Ortega has leveraged his geopolitical relationships. His vehement anti-American rhetoric has helped maintain strong ties with Venezuela, which has supplied Nicaragua with generous subsidies that have helped fund the country’s social programs.

To the contrary, Ortega has also been able to avoid much pressure from the U.S., in part, because he has been friendly to multi-national corporations. Although he professes to be a socialist, Ortega has given many cushy tax incentives for foreign investment.

All in all, there hasn’t been much public unrest as Ortega has consolidated political power. However, this recent protest may be a sign of changes to come.

Trump Considers Pardoning Dubious Sex Trafficking Conviction After Signing Dubious Sex Trafficking Bill

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Fri, 27 Apr 2018 07:02:47 GMT

Trump’s Support for Counterproductive Sex Trafficking Law (FOSTA) will Repeat Our Nation's Troubling Past

Last Saturday, President Trump tweeted that he was considering a posthumous pardon of Jack Johnson. This pardon is more than deserving as Johnson was the victim of the Jim Crow era, but Trump’s recent support of a similar, counterproductive sex trafficking law (FOSTA) will also help to create wrongful convictions.

Jack Johnson was the first black heavyweight boxing champion and his victories over white opponents sometimes resulted in race riots. He also openly courted white women which made him a target of public ire and the federal government. In fact, Congress passed a law in 1912 banning interstate transportation of boxing films to thwart Johnson’s fame and prevent future riots.

Boehner’s Marijuana Lobbying is Symptomatic of Special-Interest Problem

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Fri, 20 Apr 2018 07:13:38 GMT

Several Former Conservative Lawmakers Have "Evolved" on the Marijuana Issue Now That They're Lobbying on Behalf of the Industry

The former Speaker of House, John Boehner, and former Massachusetts Governor, Bill Weld, were added to the Board of Advisors for Acreage Holdings, an investment company heavily involved in the legal cannabis industry.

This pair of former conservative leaders will certainly help to bring bipartisan support for the pro-legalization movement. They’re also part of an emerging trend of conservative revolving door lobbyists working on behalf of the legal marijuana industry.

Trump Is In No Position To Sign A Human Trafficking Bill

Thu, 12 Apr 2018 23:49:00 GMT

Trump's Business Partners are Linked to Credible Allegations of Human Trafficking

Congress’s New Sex Trafficking Bill Won’t Solve Anything

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Thu, 12 Apr 2018 07:18:47 GMT

Can third-party websites be accountable for the crimes of users? The government just took a dangerous step in that direction.

Congress recently passed a controversial human trafficking bill, drafted with the clear intention of prosecuting the owners of websites such as Backpage.com.

Why? Backpage.com looks and functions similarly to Craigslist by allowing users to post advertisements for various goods and services. However, a Senate investigation revealed that 93 percent of Backpage’s revenue was generated from the “adult services” section in which sex workers tout their services.

The War on Drugs Is Far Deadlier Than Most People Realize

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Mon, 26 Mar 2018 07:24:07 GMT

A significant percentage of the world’s violence could be prevented by ending the War on Drugs.

While accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said:

"The manner in which this war against drugs is being waged is equally or perhaps even more harmful than all the wars the world is fighting today, combined.”

The death toll from the drug war is much less than the actual warfare throughout the world. However, his sentiment is quite appropriate because a significant percentage of the world’s violence could be prevented with a flick of a pen by ending the War on Drugs.

Without a Hint of Irony, Former CIA Director’s Podcast Discusses Solutions for the Opioid Crisis

Tue, 06 Mar 2018 00:24:00 GMT

Michael Morell, former CIA Director, hosts a podcast “Intelligence Matters.” He recently had a very inspiring guest on his show , retired U.S. Navy Admiral James “Sandy” Winnefeld.

Winnefeld’s son died of an overdose from fentanyl-laced heroin. After his son’s death, Winnefeld has dedicated a tremendous amount of effort to find solutions for the opioid crisis. In fact, he formed a non-profit group dedicated to this cause, Stop the Addiction Fatality Epidemic (SAFE) .

Overall, I strongly agree with most of Winnefeld’s strategies. During this podcast, he brought up several points that most of America views as highly controversial. For instance, he advocated for safe injection sites. Although this concept is controversial in the U.S., several countries have hosted these types of facilities which have proven to be a highly-effective form of harm reduction.

Every one of these facilities are staffed by health professionals equipped with the opioid-overdose-reversal drug, naloxone. There have been several overdoses in these facilities, but there has never been an overdose death. Furthermore, safe injection sites are a major boost to public health by providing clean needles, thus reducing HIV and Hepatitis. One study concluded that the city of San Francisco would save $3.5 million in public costs.

Hence, although this concept is highly stigmatized, Winnefeld stated during the podcast that he wished these facilities had been legal in the U.S. while his son was still alive. If so, he may still be alive.

Winnefeld brought up other very important points. In particular, the vast majority of drug arrests are for possession, not trafficking. In addition, a large percentage of those charged with trafficking are merely supporting their habit.

However, Winnefeld and I disagree on the extent of decriminalization. I support the full decriminalization (and eventually the legalization) of drugs, not just the users. Nonetheless, Winnefeld offered a great deal of insight during this podcast, which is worth a listen.

However, I would be remiss to not point out the irony of a former CIA Director commenting on evidence-based solutions for the opioid crisis.

If you’re not familiar with the CIA’s extensive complicity with drug trafficking, there are several research resources available. However, there’s also a tremendous amount of speculation and disinformation on this topic. With that said, if you’re interested in reading about this issue, my first book, The Drug War: A Trillion Dollar Con Game , goes into great detail with extensive documentation.

Let’s Acknowledge US Interference in Foreign Elections

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Fri, 23 Feb 2018 08:35:50 GMT

No Country Has Interfered in More Foreign Elections than the United States

Last week, the Mueller investigative team indicted 13 Russian nationals for charges related to interference in the 2016 election. One of the individuals is a Russian billionaire, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is allegedly the financier of the "troll farm." This company that is solely dedicated to sowing political discord via fake news and false online identities is known as Internet Research Agency.

Eric Holder Flirts With Presidential Bid, Hooks Up With Hollywood

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 08:40:50 GMT

The former AG is the inspiration behind a new TV series. Expect it to gloss over his shilling for the world's rich and powerful.

CBS recently ordered a pilot episode of a new show, “Main Justice,” in which the protagonist will be based on former Obama attorney general Eric Holder. Since Holder is an executive producer, the narrative will no doubt depict him as the crusader for justice that he sees in his own mirror every day. It will also likely serve as campaign propaganda now that Holder is openly flirting with running for president in 2020.

To be fair, Holder’s career has had some high points. But no objective review of his record would ever conclude that he’s a maverick who bucked the system in the pursuit of justice. That part is pure Hollywood.

Trump-style Latin American leaders

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Wed, 21 Feb 2018 08:53:11 GMT

Donald Trump met with Guatemala's President, Jimmy Morales, in a context of global resurgence of extreme right-wing populism that has a specific impact in Latin America.

Donald Trump met with the President of Guatemala on February 8. Officially, topics discussed included the moving of the Guatemalan embassy to Jerusalem and “restoring democracy” in Venezuela.

One day prior to their meeting, it was reported that Trump told Pentagon officials to plan a military parade. He reportedly came up with the idea after having witnessed the Bastille Day parade in France. However, if the project goes ahead, it will be as if the Trump administration was inadvertently taking a page out of the Morales playbook. There are, in fact, many uncanny instances of the Trump and Morales administrations mimicking each other.

Mayor of Juarez Threatens to Kill Journalist - Impunity Throughout Latin America

Wed, 14 Feb 2018 00:30:00 GMT

It's Just One Instance of How America's Drug War is Devastating Mexico

Two weeks ago, the mayor of Cuidad Juarez, Armando Cabada Alvídrez, threatened to kill a prominent local journalist, Hector Gonzalez. The mayor was brazen enough that he made these threats in public and threw a punch at one of Gonzalez’s companions.

This was nothing new for Gonzalez. As a matter of fact, this type of intimidation against reporters is widespread throughout Mexico. Also, the crimes against journalist are rarely punished. Of the 426 reported instances of violence against journalists in 2016, only 0.25% of those cases resulted in a conviction! (My free ebook, “ America’s Drug War is Devastating Mexico ,” goes into full detail explaining the severity of the problem.)

This is an issue in which the worlds of organized crime and politics intermingle. It’s well known that reporting on crime in Mexico is a dangerous occupation because the cartels enforce a brutal form of censorship. However, in many instances, reporting on politics can be just as, if not more, dangerous. The reason is that the cartels have deeply corrupted politics and the government provides little to no protection for journalists.

My last book focused on Mexico, but this is a problem throughout Latin America and one of the primary causes of this violence is the war on drugs. Last month, a Guatemalan newspaper reporter, Laurent Ángel Castillo Cifuentes, and radio station worker, Luis Alfredo de León Miranda, were murdered.

Their bodies were discovered in Suchitepéquez with clear signs of torture. This coastal-region state is a major transshipment point for South American cocaine. Consequently, the area is overrun with organized crime and reporters have faced extreme violence in this region. The Associated Press had previously reported that 10 journalists had been killed in this one state over the last ten years.

Nonetheless, the U.S. government has a complicit role in this wave of violence. Clearly, the prohibition of drugs in the U.S. has created a culture of black market violence throughout Latin America. Worst of all, the U.S. has aided, supported, armed, and financed some of the most corrupt governments throughout Latin America as long as these countries have been geopolitical allies.

There are too many examples of this hypocrisy to list in a blog post. However, since Guatemala is the current focus, we’ll examine the U.S. government’s relationship with the last President of Guatemala, Otto Perez Molina.

Molina received training at the infamous School of the Americas (now WHINSEC) in Fort Benning, GA. This former general was involved with numerous human rights abuses during the U.S.-supported Civil War in Guatemala, including the Ixil massacre . As a matter of fact, many historians identify this Civil War as a genocide because the vast majority of victims of government death squads were indigenous civilians .

Nonetheless, a 2007 WikiLeaks document during his presidential campaign shows that U.S. officials were aware of information connecting Molina with the country’s top drug cartel. However, they weren’t highly concerned based on this quote from the document.

“Given that Guatemala is awash in narco-money, it is improbable that none of it has found its way into Perez Molina's campaign, but we currently have no grounds to suspect that Perez Molina knowingly accepted narco-funds.”

Ultimately, it turned out that the rumors were well substantiated. Molina is currently in jail on charges of corruption. His Vice President, Roxana Baldetti, is also in jail awaiting trial for drug and corruption charges. She reportedly accepted a $250,000 bribe from Los Zetas. Likewise, the Minister of Interior, Mauricio Lopez Bonilla, reportedly received a $1.5 million bribe from Los Zetas.

This same destructive political dynamic with U.S. complicity is visible throughout Latin American. Much of my work has focused on exposing these truths, particularly in El Salvador , Honduras , Peru , Colombia , etc. (Please read and share the articles from the links in the previous sentence. However, for a more thorough explanation, grab a copy of my book, The Drug War: A Trillion Dollar Con Game, which will make it abundantly clear that the drug war is often nothing more than a geopolitical bargaining chip.)

With the Shutdown Over, The Government Can Go Back to Suppressing Your Rights

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Thu, 01 Feb 2018 17:57:09 GMT

In a bipartisan manner, Congress recently passed the FISA Reauthorization Act of 2017. On January 19th, President Trump signed this bill into law.

That bill extended the controversial Section 702 program that allows the NSA to conduct warrantless surveillance of non-U.S. citizens or residents. This program clearly benefits our intelligence agencies in matters of national security. However, millions of Americans’ private information is also collected in this program.

Support Via The U.S. Drug War Helped Keep Former Peruvian Dictator, Fujimori, In Power

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Mon, 15 Jan 2018 18:10:59 GMT

Last month, the President of Peru, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, pardoned the country’s former dictator, Alberto Fujimori, who had been convicted of authorizing extrajudicial murders and corruption. Thousands of protestors responded to the pardon by organizing in the streets of Lima.

Many people wonder why Kuczynski issued this pardon to Fujimori, who embezzled as much as $600 million of public funds, according to Transparency International. After all, the current President had promised during his campaign to not pardon Fujimori.

It appears that a quid pro quo prompted this decision. Kuczynski faced an impeachment vote stemming from his involvement with the Brazilian construction giant, Odebrecht, which has paid massive bribes to many high-level Latin American leaders in exchange for lucrative contracts. Thus, it was quite suspicious that Kuczynski's company received a $782,000 consulting fee from Odebrecht while he served as Peru’s Minister of Economy.

However, on December 22nd, Kucynski narrowly avoided impeachment because 21 members of Congress abstained from voting. Several of Congress members who abstained from voting are members of the opposition party, which is led by Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of Alberto Fujimori.

Adding to the appearance of impropriety, her brother, Kenji Fujimori (another member of Congress within the same party), openly took credit for organizing those members to abstain from voting for Kuczynski’s impeachment. And, voilà, Alberto Fujimori received a pardon for “humanitarian reasons” three days later.

This apparent backdoor deal, by itself, is disturbing enough, but it’s more important to fully understand the history of Alberto Fujimori’s abuses of power and the support he received from the United States government.

Alberto Fujimori had a rapid transition into power after working as an obscure college professor. This was, in part, aided by a campaign donation of $1 million from Pablo Escobar, according to Roberto Escobar (Pablo’s brother).

That accusation was publicly aired ten years after Fujimori was first elected president in 1990. However, his links with drug trafficking were known to the U.S. government from the beginning. In particular, Fujimori’s right-hand man and Peru’s de facto head of intelligence, Vladimiro Montesinos, was closely aligned with several infamous criminals.

Before joining the Fujimori administration, Montesinos received military training on U.S. soil at the infamous School of the Americas , which is linked with numerous right-wing death squads and military coups in Latin America. In fact, he was kicked out of the Peruvian military under suspicion that he passed secret documents to the CIA .

Afterward, Montesinos became an attorney who specialized in defending several high-level Peruvian government officials accused of drug trafficking. He also represented some members of the Medellin cartel and his services went beyond legal advice, such as arranging a prison escape . His services also brought him into the highest confidences of Fujimori who helped avoid a tax evasion charge during the 1990 election.

Again, the extensive ties between the criminal underworld and the Fujimori administration were well known to the U.S. government. One U.S. State Department memo from May of 1991, “ Narcotics Corruption in Peru: Several Shades of Black ,” detailed the pervasive corruption with all levels of the Peruvian government, in particular, the military and Montesinos.

In fact, the links between Montesinos and drug trafficking were a matter of public record in all of the major newspapers, yet he was invited to the CIA’s headquarters in 1991 to establish a counternarcotics program . He was provided with a $1 million annually over the next ten years.

With that said, several members of the U.S. Congress wanted to cut off foreign aid to Peru until the Fujimori administration improved its human rights record. However, George H. W. Bush was a strong supporter of Fujimori and urged Congress to provide his government with a $94 million economic and military package. During a White House meeting between the two leaders in September of 1991, Bush said :

Unfortunately, Congress has placed a hold on the disbursement of these funds, chiefly because of stated human rights concerns. We share these concerns, and so do you, Mr. President. But you have made progress on human rights, and let’s also then see progress on releasing these funds.

Not long after this meeting, on November 3, 1991, a paramilitary death squad (Grupo Colina) committed a massacre that was authorized by Fujimori. Fifteen people who were falsely suspected of being members of the communist rebel group, Shining Path, were killed at a barbeque in Barrios Altos. He also subsequently authorized the same paramilitary group to commit another massacre in which a professor and nine students from La Cantuta University were abducted and murdered. They also were falsely suspected of being members of Shining Path.

At that time, Peru was in the middle of an unofficial civil war with the country’s two communist rebel groups, the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru) (MRTA). Of those groups, the Shining Path, which is designated as a terrorist organization and remains somewhat active, was the far more militant. It’s estimated that their members murdered 11,000 Peruvian citizens.

Hence, the challenges that Fujimori faced were very clear, but he took draconian measures to eliminate this national security threat. In April of 1992 Fujimori installed what was known as an “auto-coup.” He asserted full dictatorial powers. The Congress and judiciary were dissolved, political rivals were detained, and martial law was established.

Beforehand, it’s clear that U.S. officials were willing to overlook the Peruvian government’s extrajudicial violence because it thwarted a rapid communist terrorist group. However, the coup was too controversial on the international stage. It forced the Bush administration to temporarily halt any more foreign aid to Peru.

On the other hand, the U.S. government continued to privately fund the Fujimori regime. As mentioned earlier, the CIA never stopped making payments for the counternarcotics program of Vladamiro Montesinos, the de facto second-in-command behind Fujimori.

Immediately after the auto-coup, the Peruvian military began aggressive anti-drug enforcement in the Huallaga Valley, which was the top cocaine production area in the country. This region was controlled by the Shining Path and these drug interdiction efforts cut off a major source of income for this terrorist group.

Contrarily, the Peruvian government unofficially sanctioned major drug traffickers who weren’t connected to communism. That included Demetrio Chávez Peñaherrera, aka “ Vaticano ,” who was a supplier for the Medellin and Cali cartels. The leader of another major drug trafficking organization, Los Camellos, alleged that Montesinos allowed to him to use Peruvian military helicopters for $100,000.

With these narco bribes, Montesinos funded various anti-communist forces, including Grupo Colina. In the end, as many as 70,000 Peruvians were killed in Peru’s war against the Shining Path and suspected enemies of the state were subject to torture, kidnapping, and murder.

Although he was a brutal tyrant, roughly 70-90% of Peruvians actually approved of the “auto-coup.” In particular, Fujimori’s support was tied to a drastically improve the economy, which was collapsing under an 8,000% inflation rate when he took office. Also, most Peruvians were relieved to see the Shining Path dwindling in power.

However, his popularity was largely due to muzzling the free press. His post-coup regime implemented an extremely far-ranging terrorism law that censored independent journalism. Also, the few journalists who dared to give unflattering coverage were often surveilled by the government, and, in some cases, assassinated .

Fujimori eventually took cursory steps to re-establish some semblance of democratic norms, such as restoring a Congress and judiciary with far less political rivals. A new Constitution was also written in 1993 that allowed him to run for a second term. (Presidents were limited to one term under the previous Constitution that was in effect when he was first elected.)

He was re-elected in 1995 and it was widely viewed, at that time, as free and fair by international observers. However, a former intelligence officer acted as a whistleblower two years later with details of wide-scale fraud in which thousands of police officers were forced to vote for Fujimori and election votes were switched in his favor.

Nonetheless, those steps towards a faux democracy, along with Fujimori’s false PR as an anti-drug crusader, helped persuade the U.S. government to formally restore its foreign aid to Peru. In fact, from 1993 to 1998 Peru received more U.S. aid than any other Latin American or Caribbean country.

In his second term, Fujimori continued with his corrupt and brutal ways, but most of these scandals were kept out of the public eye. One of his most cruel abuses of power was cloaked as a free health care program. As many as 350,000 people (mostly indigenous women) were tricked into a forced sterilization program in which they were told they would receive a free health checkup. Fujimori argued that this program was necessary to eliminate poverty.

Despite his tyrannical reign and links with drug trafficking, the Clinton administration maintained a fairly cordial relationship with Fujimori. After all, Fujimori had all the trappings of a puppet dictator operating in the interest of American corporations.

Case in point, the largest gold mine in South America, Yanacocha, is located in Peru. However, there was a Peruvian Supreme Court case deciding ownership over this valuable real estate. It was a battle between U.S.-based Newmont Mining and three companies based in France, Australia, and Peru respectively. Ultimately, the court ruled in favor of Newmont Mining due to direct pressure from Montesinos with the judge who held the deciding vote .

The backdoor deals of Montesinos often involved anyone who stood in the way of the administration, i.e. journalists, Supreme Court justices, and members of Congress, etc. He also blackmailed his rivals, including a sex tape of a presidential candidate. Bear in mind, he used the drug war surveillance technology acquired from the CIA to spy on his rivals.

Fortunately, Peruvian whistleblowers eventually leaked a series of tapes with evidence of stunning corruption on the part of Montesinos. That included rigging the 2010 Presidential election. (Congress passed a law in 1996 allowing him to run for a third term, in violation of the Constitution. A poll found that 70% of Peruvians didn’t approve of him running for a third term .)

This scandal prompted Montesinos to flee to Panama as a fugitive of justice. Nonetheless, the U.S. government intervened unsuccessfully in an attempt to grant him political asylum . He was ultimately extradited and convicted over the course of multiple trials for various charges of corruption, human rights abuses, drug and arms trafficking. His latest conviction took place in 2016 with a sentence of 22 years for the death and torture of two college students who were buried beneath his intelligence agency.

Fujimori, on the other hand, managed to avoid justice for a long time. He resigned months after the tapes were leaked and fled to Japan, the country of his ancestry. In turn, Japan recognized him as a Japanese citizen and refused extradition. However, he traveled in 2005 to Peru’s southern neighbor, Chile, in hopes of running for President again. Upon arrival, Fujimori was detained and eventually extradited to Peru to face trial.

Fujimori’s crimes against humanity are too lengthy for this limited space, yet he has never demonstrated a bit of contrition. He and his supporters point to the national security and economic crises that he inherited upon entry in office, but the tyrannical means that he used, in no way, can justify the ends.

U.S. foreign policy deserves criticism as well. The Peruvian government has continued to receive foreign aid despite similar patterns with political graft and drug corruption. The motivation behind this disastrous policy is fairly straightforward--Peru is a loyal military ally.

All four post-Fujimori administrations have been implicated in the Odebrecht scandal. In fact, the last President, Ollanta Humala, is currently in jail awaiting trial for this scandal. Likewise, the Trump administration has faced public pressure to extradite Alejandro Toledo, who served from 2001 to 2006 and is believed to be living in San Francisco, to face corruption charges in connection with Odebrecht .

His successor, Alan Garcia who served from 2006 to 2011, also has ties to Odebrecht. He returned to Peru in 2001 after the statute of limitations had passed for corruption charges stemming from his first term (1985-1990). During his second term, Garcia infamously granted “narco-pardons” to 400 top drug traffickers and his attorney is now in prison for arranging related bribes .

And the current opposition party offers no improvement. Keiko Fujimori, who lost the last Presidential election by less than 1%, is following in her father’s footsteps. She also has been implicated in the Odebrecht scandal. Furthermore, one of her top aides is under investigation by the DEA for reportedly laundering $15 million for one of the country’s major drug traffickers.

Peru has consistently remained as one of the world’s top producers of cocaine due to rampant corruption, yet the U.S. has never wavered in its financial support. In 2015 the U.S. provided $213.5 million of military/counternarcotics funding when one year earlier as many as 700 political candidates had been either investigated or convicted of drug charges.

In that same year, the AP’s report , “Peru military fails to act as narco planes fly freely,” thoroughly documented the links between cocaine trafficking and the military. In fact, one Peruvian military official was quoted analogizing their involvement in the top coca region as “putting four street dogs to guard a plate of beefsteak.” U.S. tax dollars not only subsidize the Peruvian military, those funds benefit the federal police force which was exposed in an appalling death squad scandal in 2016.

Suffice it to say, there are many other disturbing news events like these. However, the consistent trend is that the U.S. government has turned a blind eye to these scandals because it is determined to maintain its strong military presence in the region. Furthermore, this military support hasn’t been politically controversial in the U.S. because it cloaked in the name of the drug war.

US Support for Honduras Election: Another Front in the New Cold War

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 18:18:46 GMT

In November of last year, the Honduran election commission announced that Salvador Nasralla, a liberal political-outsider, held a five-point lead in the presidential election after the first 57 percent of the votes were tallied. However, the election commission stopped publicizing the results until the near end. Ultimately, the right-wing incumbent, Juan Orlando Hernandez, was proclaimed the winner in an election that was widely condemned by the international community.

It's no longer the "Napoleon Complex," It's Officially the "Trump Complex"

Mon, 08 Jan 2018 16:00:00 GMT

Trump's Narcissistic Behavior is Endangering the World

Most people are familiar with the pseudo-psychological belief, “Napoleon Complex,” “Napoleonic Complex,” or “Short-Man Syndrome.” The theory is that the French ruler Napoleon Bonaparte overcompensated for his height with a quest for worldwide domination. (Napoleon, who was 5’7”, wasn’t actually short for that period of time. He was average height.)

Armchair psychologists like to believe that this is the underlying cause of overly aggressive, narcissistic behavior from people who are small in size. Let’s leave it up to the trained professional to decide if there’s any validity to this theory. However, his tweets from last week firmly cemented the need to change the name to the “Trump Complex.”

It’s difficult to find a public figure throughout history who has openly expressed such glaring insecurity. Long before becoming President, he took every opportunity possible to brag about his wealth. His name is synonymous with the expression, “Born on third base, thought he hit a triple.” He even reportedly worked as his PR person, “ John Miller ,” to tout his business acumen, in addition to spreading rumors that Madonna and Kim Basinger hoped to date him. Yet, for someone who presented himself as the ultimate success in every aspect of life, Trump has displayed an unbelievable level of sensitivity when criticized.

He has a long history of using his financial leverage to attack his detractors in a variety of ways. For example, he successfully pressured a small brokerage to fire one its analysts, Marvin Roffman , after predicting that Trump’s Taj Mahal casino would fail.

Ultimately, Roffman’s assessment proved to be accurate. Trump already owned two Atlantic City casinos and the decision to add a third casino, by way of heavy debt, cannibalized his profits. All three casinos went bankrupt, thus sending Trump’s PR people into overdrive.

Ironically, Trump has aggressively targeted people outside of his authority, such as Roffman, to get them fired. However, he has never been willing to take such action within his own company. Obviously, that assertion contrasts the image crafted on The Apprentice with his famous line, “You’re Fired.” That show allowed him to look like an assertive decision maker. However, Barbara Res, a former executive with the Trump organization, has said that she never saw him actually fire anyone. He always ordered someone else to handle this uncomfortable task.

Someone who is supposed to be living such a charmed life shouldn’t be provoked by harsh comments on Twitter. However, Trump has a list of online feuds that is too lengthy for this post. In fact, some within his inner circle truly believe that he decided to run for President this last time because he was mocked at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

That campaign brought his “Trump Complex” to the forefront. After the “Little Marco” comments, Rubio criticized the size of Trump’s hands. Trump decided to use the debates to claim, “I guarantee there’s no problem.” Afterward, he claimed those hands are able to drive a golf ball 285 yards . Yet, Trump apparently needed two hands to grip a glass of water during a speech.

During campaign media stops, Trump felt the need to proclaim a high level of intelligence. There were many gems, such as “I have a very big brain.” He also tried to brand himself as a tough guy in many ways, including praise for Putin’s “strong leadership” and promoting violence against protestors at his rallies. This man, who avoided serving in the Vietnam War via five deferments, asserted that “he knows more about ISIS than the generals’ do.” He also felt the need to belittle McCain’s service by stating, “I like people who weren’t caught.”

Even though he drew large crowds with adoring fans for campaign rallies, he consistently felt the need to exaggerate the size of the crowds. This trend continued into the White House. Ex-Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, was clearly pressured to do the same. He said, “That was the largest audience to witness an inauguration, period,” despite the demonstrable proof that it was far from accurate.

By the same token, Trump’s first televised cabinet meeting started with “introductions” from each member. Instead of his cabinet members telling a little bit about their background, they were clearly obligated to praise the President and what followed was nothing other than groveling. Hence, when reports later surfaced that Rex Tillerson called him a “moron,” he felt the need to compare IQ test scores .

Trump also couldn’t accept the fact that he lost the popular vote by 2.8 million votes. Consequently, he claimed that 3-5 million people voted illegally. Hence, taxpayer funds were used to assuage his ego to form a voter fraud commission, which was shut down last week with no evidence to back up his ridiculous claim.

Nonetheless, he claimed it was a “massive landslide victory” with the Electoral College votes. Check out Trump’s response when fact-checked by a reporter about his claim that it was “the biggest Electoral College win since Ronald Reagan.”

Trump clearly didn’t have a decisive victory. But, can he stand behind a great Presidential record? He claimed that his administration passed more bills than any President. However, GovTrack found his administration passed the fewest number of bills going back to the Eisenhower administration.

Likewise, it appears Trump tried to repair his ego when he wasn’t chosen by Time Magazine to be “Man of the Year.” He tweeted that he “probably” was going to be chosen, but he “took a pass.” After all, this particular magazine seems to be an obsession. Some of his properties have been decorated with fake issues of Time Magazine in which Trump appears on the front cover with the caption, “The ‘Apprentice’ is a television smash!”

On a final note, there are too many of these types of examples to list. However, the comments from his Inside Edition tape may best encapsulate the deep psychological issues of Donald Trump. Who would describe bragging about sexual assault as “locker room talk”?

At this point, the terms “Napoleon Complex” or “Napoleonic Complex” for deeply insecure actions need to be discontinued. This now needs to be known as the Trump Complex. Let's use the #TrumpComplex every time in the future when he displays this kind of conduct.

Washington’s Gutless Approach To Our Addiction Crisis

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Wed, 03 Jan 2018 18:22:47 GMT

While other countries decriminalize, Trump is keeping Big Pharma and Big Prisons happy.

Just before the New Year, Norway’s parliament voted to decriminalize the possession of all illegal drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, and heroin. Drug trafficking and possession will remain illegal. Essentially, drug users will now have the option of going to rehab—instead of jail—if they are arrested with a small amount of drugs.

This concept is rapidly gaining support worldwide, particularly in Europe, and several countries have taken steps toward this new direction in the war on drugs. However, Portugal would be the most direct comparison to Norway’s recent policy change.

An Ex-Cop Talks About Police Shootings

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Fri, 29 Dec 2017 18:28:05 GMT

“Cops have to wait. You have to see that gun…"

The graphic video from the killing of Daniel Shiver was released after the jury decided to acquit ex-Mesa police officer Philip Brailsford of second-degree murder and reckless manslaughter. The Mesa police department and Mesa police union both supported Brailsford, but it’s important to receive feedback from police sources who don’t have a vested interest in the case.

International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

Mon, 18 Dec 2017 14:28:00 GMT

This Marginalized Segment of Society is Simply Asking for Their Basic Right to Protection Against Violence

Has a Major Private Prison Company Made Progressive Changes?

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 18:36:54 GMT

The Associated Press (AP) recently published a story, “Private prisons firm to lobby, campaign against recidivism,” which provided some positive press for the second largest private prison corporation, CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)).

Privately-operated prisons obviously have a financial incentive to cut costs to a bare minimum to maximize profits. That often leads to the understaffing of correctional officers, hiring unqualified workers, offering limited health care, etc.

Trump, Christie Square Off Over High-Stakes Gambling

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Mon, 04 Dec 2017 18:41:40 GMT

U.S. Supreme Court will settle legal battle between Governor Chris Christie and Trump's DOJ over the federal ban on sports gambling

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments in Christie v. NCAA, which ironically pits New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and President Donald Trump against each other over the federal ban on sports gambling. Both men have had big interests in gambling—Christie runs a state that wants it, and Trump used to own three casinos there. But now Trump is in the White House, and his lawyers say the ban needs to stay in place.

Campaign Finance and other Rackets

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Fri, 27 Oct 2017 17:50:52 GMT

There are Stunning Ways in Which Our Legal System can be Legally Corrupted

If you haven’t already, you should check out the article by The New Yorker, “How Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump, Jr., Avoided a Criminal Indictment.” To be brief, the Trump family was under investigation in 2012 by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office for misleading potential buyers about their Trump SoHo property.

This is being overly concise, but the investigation was dropped after Trump’s attorney made a $25,000 donation to the campaign of the Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus Vance.

Disney's Ridiculous Anti-Gambling Crusade

Fri, 27 Oct 2017 01:05:00 GMT

There is a potential ballot measure in Florida for 2018 that is worthy of your attention, the “Florida Voter Approval of Casino Gambling Initiative.” If passed, all future casino businesses would need permission from Florida’s voters, not the legislature, to operate in this state.

We all should support a more inclusive political environment. However, we also need to fully understand the corporate interests behind such an initiative; Disney has aggressively funded this anti-casino lobbying effort.

It’s a natural assumption that Disney’s long-time opposition to casino expansion has to do with maintaining the family-friendly reputation of the company. After all, you’ll never see images of Mickey Mouse rolling a pair of dice or celebrating a successful spin at the roulette table. However, Disney’s subsidiary, ESPN, makes considerable profits from the dissemination of gambling information.

ESPN’s website offers an entire section, “Chalk,” which is purely dedicated to gambling. That’s where you can evaluate the latest sports betting odds, check out Chad Millman’s podcast “Behind the Bets,” in addition to a variety of other gambling-related content.

ESPN has also accepted advertisements from Bet 365, a U.K.-based sportsbook. Likewise, ESPN and another U.K. bookmaker, William Hill, once developed an app, ESPN Soccer Goals, which directly enabled U.K. sports fans to bet the games online.

That wasn’t Disney’s first foray into the gambling sector. Disney acquired PureSkills.com in 2000 and rebranded it as SkillGames.com after investing millions of dollars into the company. The website was set to be launched in 2001 in a venture of what could be best described as “skill-based gambling.” Participants had to pay to play various games (word, trivia, sports, etc.) with the chance to win cash prizes. However, Disney ultimately backed out of this deal at a time when a few influential Congressmen were trying to outlaw Internet gambling.

Disney’s connections with gambling aren’t limited to online content. For example, very few people think of professional poker as a sport. Nor has anyone ever viewed the World Series of Poker and thought to themselves, “Wow. What a collection of the world’s greatest athletes.” Regardless, ESPN, “the Worldwide Leader in Sports,” earns hefty revenues from its extensive coverage and broadcasts of these competitions.

(Colin Cowherd - Wikimedia Commons)

Furthermore, several ESPN commentators openly discuss the betting odds of the upcoming games. Albeit, they often provide a disclaimer such as, “I don’t condone gambling, but…” Then again, the former ESPN show host Colin Cowherd never offered such a pretense. On a weekly basis, he extensively analyzed the point spreads with his guest, R.J. Bell of the sports handicapping service PreGame.com.

If Disney truly had a moral aversion to gambling, it wouldn’t have accepted millions of dollars in advertisements from the daily fantasy sports DraftKings during the 2015/2016 football season. Likewise, Disney wouldn’t have entered into negotiations to purchase a $250 million stake in DraftKings as it did one year earlier. Disney never closed that deal, but suffice it to say, Disney isn’t opposed to gambling. It’s opposed to the competition from gambling.

Their company has donated over $1 million this year to multiple anti-casino groups to promote the “Florida Voter Approval of Casino Gambling Initiative.” Again, there is nothing wrong with giving the voters more power. In fact, we should support such an initiative. However, let’s have an honest conversation about the pros and cons of the legislation. Let’s examine if additional casinos would hit a point of diminishing economic returns, along with all of the other relevant issues. Also, let’s be fully aware of the special interests involved.

Think Poker Isn't A game of Skill? Think Again.

Tue, 17 Oct 2017 22:30:00 GMT

A Detailed Review of AI Machine Learning Proves the Point

There have been numerous variations of this adage, but the movie Rounders opened with a brilliant line that perfectly sums up the skill aspect of poker.

“If you can’t spot the sucker at the table within the first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker.”

With that in mind, I’d like to offer my own variation:

"If you think poker isn’t a game of skill, then you obviously haven’t acquired the skill."

It’s stunning that this can still be controversial in some peoples’ minds. Yes, in the short term, bad luck can trump a perfect poker strategy. However, over time, the luck of the draw evens out and a player’s skill level will determine his or her success rate.

A successful hedge fund that consistently beats the market isn’t viewed as merely “lucky.” Then why is a professional poker viewed so differently? The answer has to do with perceptions, legality, and stigma.

After all, poker was once shrouded in mystery and dominated by the riverboat grifters of the 19th century who literally had tricks up their sleeves. But, televised poker tournaments have helped to provide full transparency. By making the hole cards visible and providing the exact probabilities for each hand, these contests educated millions of viewers about the complexities of the game.

Despite having thousands of participants, year after year, we see many of the same faces consistently at the top of these tournaments. That doesn’t happen by chance. One of those players, Annie Duke, has the perfectly succinct explanation for why poker is a game of skill. She accurately stated that you can’t intentionally lose a game of chance; conversely, that is entirely possible with a game of skill.

So what does it matter if people have a difference of opinion on this matter? The issue is that it affects the legality of the game. The courts are generally more lenient with forms of gambling that are primarily based upon skill.

This issue is particularly relevant in Pennsylvania where the state legislature is considering a bill to legalize online gambling and video gambling terminals. If passed, Pennsylvania would become the fourth state to legalize online poker.

The Pennsylvania legislature is moving in this direction due to a budget shortfall , however, the state’s judicial system has been less welcoming of this game. To be more specific, the state ruled that poker is not a game of skill via Pennsylvania v Dent .

Walter Watkins, along with his girlfriend Diane Dent, organized small-stakes Texas Hold’em games out of his garage. He didn’t take a rake but asked for tips from the players. Watkins and Dent were eventually busted by an undercover cop for gambling charges.

The pair successfully contested the charges in court due to a judge agreeing that poker is a game of skill. However, the State Superior Court reversed that decision in 2010 and ultimately ruled that poker is based primarily upon chance.

The Pennsylvania legislature has the chance to partially rectify this inaccurate ruling by the State Superior Court by legalizing online poker. However, that obviously wouldn’t eliminate wasteful undercover investigations that led to Pennsylvania v Dent.

Meanwhile, the state’s outdated gambling laws have done nothing to reduce the demand. WITF of Central Pennsylvania reported that illegal poker video game terminals have become increasingly popular in the state. Bear in mind, this market is completely unregulated and untaxed.

There is growing black market in large part due to lobbying efforts of the casino magnate, Sheldon Adelson. To be brief, he claims his objection to Internet poker is for “moral” reasons, but this crony-capitalist charade was fully debunked in my book Dealing From the Bottom of the Deck: Hypocritical Gambling Laws Enrich Crooked Politicians, a Select-Few Casinos, and the Mob .

From state to state, the game of skill debate is usually left to the interpretation of the courts. However, a Virginia State Senator, Louise Lucas, introduced a bill earlier this year to recognize poker as a game of skill. The Senate version passed , but we’ll have to wait and see if the companion House bill has the same success.

Again, the case for the game of skill argument is fairly obvious. All anyone has to do is read one the 580 books on poker strategy currently available on Amazon.com. However, I think what may be the best close for this discussion is acknowledging a project that isn’t directly related.

Let’s just say that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is well above my pay grade, but even an outsider can recognize the amazing technological advances. In particular, AI in poker has a fairly lengthy history. So without any further ado, let’s check out this amazing infographic detailing the advancements of AI with poker. The infographic is impressively designed and has numerous interesting facts, but it also indirectly demonstrates that poker is a game of skill. You can check out the official link here .

Trump Pressures Colombia to Reinstate Aerial Spraying Program

Mon, 02 Oct 2017 23:48:00 GMT

If you haven’t already, please check out my latest piece with The American Conservative , “What Trump’s ‘Warning’ to Colombia Really Means.” It goes into detail about the way in which America’s drug war is selectively enforced to advance a Cold War-style agenda.

The Trump administration has criticized Colombia’s anti-drug efforts and pressured their country to reinstate its aerial fumigation program. This program was somewhat effective with reducing coca production, but this one method isn’t a silver bullet for eliminating the drug supply.

Also, aerial spraying does nothing to combat the demand for cocaine. Hence, cocaine supply always responds to demand and the production is displaced from one region to another. However, you may be wondering why Colombia discontinued this program. The problem is that it also results in widespread collateral damage.

The chemical that is sprayed over the coca fields in Colombia, glyphosate, was banned by the Colombian Supreme Court in 2015 due to research by the World Health Organization, which pointed to a variety of negative environmental and health consequences.

This aerial fumigation program is also unpopular with Colombia’s farming sector because the spraying is indiscriminate and the chemicals kill all plants in the area, not just coca. In fact, the government of Colombia reached a $15 million settlement in a lawsuit with its southern neighbor, Ecuador, due to the damage from aerial spraying that drifted over the border.

Despite these facts, Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson , and the Trump administration have continued to bang the drum calling for the Colombian government to restore this program. Keep in mind, aerial spraying conveniently benefits a couple of politically-connected corporations.

For fifteen years, the U.S. government contracted with the private defense company DynCorp to spray glyphosate, which is developed and patented by Monsanto, over the coca fields in Colombia. (Glyphosate is the key chemical in their weed-killer, RoundUp.)

That brings up another interesting topic. The Trump administration is indirectly promoting Monsanto’s interests at a time when other government entities are confronting the company’s tactics. Case in point, Monsanto’s officials and lobbyists were recently banned from the European parliament. Coincidentally, this decision came about after Monsanto’s representatives declined to attend a meeting about allegations that their company manipulated safety studies related to glyphosate. (The New York Times also published an excellent article recently about the company’s woes in the U.S.)

Anyhow, back to Colombia. The U.S. government’s insistence upon this aerial spraying program has little to do with the effectiveness of the program. It has more to do with who benefits from illegal drug trafficking in Colombia. Again, my latest article goes more in-depth, but to be brief, the U.S. government is more concerned with drug money ending up in the hands of the top communist group in Colombia, the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).

On the opposite side, Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos also has some unspoken objectives that should be addressed. He seems to be using the drug war as a bargaining chip. The Santos administration has justifiably remained steadfastly opposed to aerial spraying. However, the FARC openly opposed aerial spraying as part of their negotiations. They have justifiable reasons for opposing this program as well, i.e. legitimate agricultural. However, it’s widely-known that their group is one of the top drug trafficking organizations in the country.

Nonetheless, with this olive branch in place, it looks like there may be a reprieve from the extreme violence in Colombia. Just yesterday, Colombia’s second leading communist rebel group, the ELN (National Liberation Army), began their cease-fire agreement . Likewise, the leader of Los Urabenos has reached out to the government in hopes of forming a truce as well. Los Urabenos is a splinter group from the now defunct right-wing paramilitary group, the AUC.

Keep in mind, the Trump administration has tried to paint Santos as soft on drugs, but the leader of Los Urabenos is only looking to form a peace agreement because the government has been aggressively pursuing this group with the full force of the military. They’ve successfully killed or captured many of its highest members.

Although Santos is on the cusp of reaching peace agreement with the top remaining destabilizing force in the country, Los Urabenos, there will still be dissidents. That has been the case with the FARC as there is a fairly sizeable number of former FARC who refused to lay down their arms. Likewise, there will be many dissident ELN members.

And there lies the rub. The demand for cocaine will never go away and these rebels will be able to finance their warfare from illegal drugs, as long as the U.S. doesn’t discontinue its antiquated its war on drugs.

What Trump’s ‘Warning’ To Colombia Really Means

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Mon, 25 Sep 2017 18:04:52 GMT

The US Government Uses the Pretext of the War on Drugs as Leverage for its Aggressive Foreign Policy Agenda

President Trump took a tough tone on international drug trafficking last week, warning Colombia it could lose foreign aid if it cannot contain its illicit coca production and smuggling. But Colombia need not worry—Trump stopped short of designating it “non-compliant” under current foreign aid requirements, because “the Colombian National Police and Armed Forces are close law enforcement and security partners of the United States.” which has little to do with drugs and everything to do with protecting U.S. interests in the region.

City accused of driving down home prices for eminent domain

Fri, 08 Sep 2017 14:15:00 GMT

The Institute for Justice is Fighting a Legal Battle for Decency and Common Sense

From the outside looking in, someone could look at my work that has a strong libertarian lean with personal freedom issues and conclude that I'm an anti-government activist. However, that isn't the case. There are the Ted Cruz-es of the world who like to talk the fiscal conservative talk until tragedies like Hurricane Harvey affect them personally.

I certainly see a major role for government in our lives, but there is a glaring need for reforming our government and reducing spending to more reasonable levels that don't expand our national debt. Hence, so much of my work focuses on exposing fraud, waste, and abuse that is committed by government officials. And that leads to a very disturbing report released by The Institute for Justice. That is a non-profit organization that contests cases from a libertarian advocacy standpoint.

In particular, the Institute for Justice contests many cases involving eminent domain. In this instance, the city counsel and the mayor of Charlestown, IN have been seeking ways to force homeowners out of a low-income neighborhood, Pleasant Ridge. The plan is to bulldoze the area after all of the properties have been acquired by a single developer and set up a high-end neighborhood.

One of the ways of forcing the homeowners out has been via assessing onerous fines on a daily basis for petty code violations. However, not every homeowner has given in and sold their properties to the developer. In turn, various local government officials privately discussed using use eminent domain to take the remaining homes.

Obviously, eminent domain is a controversial topic. In theory, it should be used for developments that benefit the public and the homeowners should be paid a fair market value for their private property. However, in this case, the Institute for Justice uncovered documents proving that city officials privately conspired with the developer to artificially drive down the market prices before the homes were acquired.

The Institute for Justice has a pending civil case against the city on behalf of the homeowners. However, in my personal opinion, this goes far beyond a civil matter and this should be investigated by the DOJ.

The “Alt-Right” is More Sizeable than a Fringe Movement

Wed, 16 Aug 2017 22:13:00 GMT

The Amount of Internet Traffic That These Neo-Nazi Websites Generated is Alarming

It’s amazing how many conservatives can criticize the politically correct movement and still use terms like “Alt-Right” or “White Nationalists.” It’s time to label these people for who they are-- Neo-Nazis, racists, homophobic sexists, bigots, etc. Better yet, we can accurately refer to this group as the “Racist-Right.”

Make no mistake, I’m not in any way categorizing all conservatives or Republicans as racists. There’s nothing wrong with having a right-wing or conservative ideology. However, it’s horrible that openly racist activists can spread their hatred under the banner of merely being “Alt-Right.” There’s no room for mincing words and Vice’s embedded coverage of the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” Rally gave them the opportunity to show their true colors.

Too many people in the right-wing media praised Trump after he read a scripted speech that denounced the right-wing hate groups. That was, of course, after he had been widely criticized for his initial remarks, which essentially sided with the “Racist-Right” hate groups. However, Trump went off-script yesterday and reverted back to his initial remarks.

Trump’s response to the violence at this rally has been extremely well covered in the news, yet his approval numbers only dropped three points , from 37% to 34%. Therefore, we have to examine how much influence the racist-right has in this country.

A Neo-Nazi news and commentary website, DailyStormer.com, essentially applauded the death of Heather Heyer who was murdered by a speeding vehicle during that rally. That website described Heyer as a “drain on society,” a person “of no value,” and “a fat, childless, 32-year old slut.”

You’re probably thinking that such views came from a fringe group on the dark web. Well, that’s sort of accurate. DailyStormer.com is now only available on the dark web. However, that is only due to wide public outcry that prompted GoDaddy and other tech companies to discontinue their service.

Before being shut down, the DailyStormer billed itself as “The World’s Most Genocidal Website.” To get a more thorough description of the hatred spewed on that site check out this horrific report by the Southern Poverty Law Center .

How Popular Was DailyStormer.com?

This website received much more traffic than you would expect. As of this morning, it was ranked #2,344 in the U.S. and #10,496 in the world, according to Alexa’s site information. It also should be noted that the site’s traffic increased substantially after Trump was elected.

F or the sake of perspective, DailyStormer.com ranked significantly higher than many legitimate news & commentary websites:

NewRepublic.com #2,405 in the U.S.

Observer.com #3,235 in the U.S.

Reason.com #3,601 in the U.S.

TheNation.com #3,956 in the U.S.

ProPublica.org #4,329 in the U.S.

There are several websites that are similar to DailyStormer, albeit with less traffic . Obviously, the views expressed on these websites don’t conform to mainstream culture. However, we have to remember the fact that President’s approval numbers barely budged after his horrible response to the Charlottesville tragedy. Therefore, you have to wonder what percentage of the American population that, in some ways, sympathizes with these hate groups.

Latest Government Research is Skeptical of Treating Pain & PTSD with Marijuana

Tue, 15 Aug 2017 21:44:00 GMT

studies

Top 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidates' Views on Legal Marijuana

Fri, 11 Aug 2017 01:38:00 GMT

A Look at the Candidates' Views on This Issue

5 times a charm: The feds finally nailed the world’s most successful sports bettor, but not for gambling

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 18:10:54 GMT

The ultimate “insider” in the world of sports betting, Billy Walters, was sentenced last week to five years in prison for leading an insider trading scheme. Understandably, this was a well-publicized case because Walters had received nonpublic information from a board member of Dean Foods. Walters also passed some of this information along to his personal friend, Phil Mickelson, who profited over $1 million from these tips.

However, by not pinning gambling charges on Billy Walters, this was a seemingly a bittersweet victory for some government officials. State and federal officials have tried to lock up Billy Walters for decades.

Third Parties Key to Accountability for Trump & Future Presidents

Fri, 28 Jul 2017 14:00:00 GMT

The Two-Party System is Ruining America

As you probably know, President Trump announced via Twitter that he planned to reinstate the ban on transgender people from joining the military. It’s hard to believe that this decision was anything other than an attempt to rally his base and distract from the Mueller investigation. After all, he pointed to the healthcare costs from transgender soldiers, but that figure is only a fraction of the security expenses from his trips to Mar-A-Lago .

There’s one thing that we do know--Trump knows how to manipulate the media cycle. For one day, the attention was no longer on his financial ties to Russian mobsters , or the meeting between Russian with his son, son-in-law, and campaign manager. Trump certainly seems to be in panic mode as he’s already questioned his attorneys about pardoning himself and his family.

This week, his distraction targets have been Jeff Sessions and the transgender community. Who knows who will be in his crosshairs next week or even tomorrow?

The silver lining in this circus show of a presidency is that the American public is being exposed to the power of the executive office. For instance, maybe we can now begin discussing checks and balances, such as limitations on launching nuclear attacks? Or how about we address the Obama administration’s authorization of drone attacks against American citizens, charging whistleblowers with the Espionage Act, spying on American citizens through our intelligence agencies, etc.?

Unfortunately, these lessons seem to be lost the American public. Politics tend to be reactionary, rather than proactive. Likewise, we tend to focus on individuals, rather than reforming systems and establishing proper precedents.

One of the main problems is that our political system methodically blocks independent, outside voices. That’s why you didn’t hear many important issues raised during the presidential debates. And that leads to the issues raised in my last article with The American Conservative, “ Democratic Party Fraud: Like Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders never had a fair shot .”

In short, that article pointed to a few lawsuits that could actually open the political process. The first involves a class-action lawsuit against the Democratic National Party, Carol Wilding et al. v. DNC Services Corp. The plaintiffs are making the case that the DNC violated its fiduciary duty by committing fraud and colluding against Bernie Sanders. In turn, the DNC hasn’t denied these claims. Instead, their defense is that they have a right to operate their organization in this shady manner.

I wish the plaintiffs luck, but it’s unlikely that the government can properly regulate political parties ensuring the integrity of the nomination process. Then again, candidates such as Bernie Sanders or Ron Paul have only run within the two main party because our system unofficially blocks third parties. That leads to the other important pending lawsuits, Level the Playing Field v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) and Johnson v. Commission on Presidential Debates.

To brief, the lawsuits contest that the 15% polling standard by the Commission on Presidential Debates is akin to an antitrust violation. Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, The Libertarian Party, and the Green Party are leading these lawsuits. And that’s where most people fail to see the point. They focus on Johnson’s and Stein’s chances at winning the election. Instead, we need to focus on the concept of third-party candidates’ ideas winning and gaining influence.

The average person underestimates the potential impact of third-party candidates in the debates. Take Ross Perot for example. He pulled off the impossible by making the national debt the dominant topic of interest. As a result, the Clinton administration and the Republican Congress made balancing the budget a top priority. In his first year, Clinton’s $16 billion stimulus package was rejected by Congress and the deficit was reduced to $354 billion (down from $413 billion in the prior year). This budget-conscious political landscape eventually resulted in a $290 billion surplus in Bill Clinton’s last year in office.

Obviously, there are many factors for why the Congressional budget has gone off the rails. However, one reason that is rarely mentioned in the media is that it’s been 25 years since a budget-focused third-party candidate has been on the presidential debate stage! Last year our federal budget deficit was $552 billion , and our total national debt is now approaching $20 trillion dollars !

Last year, our country had a real opportunity for political progress if Gary Johnson and Jill Stein had been allowed to debate. That would have forced Trump and Clinton to debate policies in detail that were outside of their comfort zones. Here are few in which the current administration has already made or attempted to make drastic changes:

Legal Marijuana
Mandatory Minimum Sentences
Civil Asset Forfeiture
Private Prisons
Equal Rights for the LGBTQ community

Needless to say, the current President is quite thin-skinned and doesn’t respond well to criticism. With that in mind, our country would be in a better position if he had been pressured to make a concrete position on those and other important issues before taking office.

“It’s all by design, man.”

It’s an open secret that the Commission on Presidential Debates firmly protects the two-party system, blocks independent candidates, and is controlled by the political establishment. It’s a private company that is sponsored by a few powerful corporations. Click here for a list of the past donors.

The organization’s leadership is a smorgasbord of Republican and Democrat loyalists. That includes the former Chairmen of the DNC and the RNC, Frank Fahrenkopf and Paul G. Kirk. What is not as well-known is the extent to which the Commission on Presidential Debates capitulates to the demands of the two major parties.

Contrary to popular belief, Ross Perot was not selected by the Commission on Presidential Debates in 1992 purely on the merits of his polling numbers. This is obscure knowledge, but the two major parties formed secret contractual agreements each election cycle to decide the rules of the debates, including the height of the podium.

George Farah, the founder of the nonprofit group, Open Debates, received leaked documents from those agreements. He found out that both parties had veto power over third-party candidates. Surprisingly, the Republicans didn’t use that power in 1992 to block Perot because they thought he would take away more votes from Clinton.

Four years later, Bill Clinton and Bob Dole successfully blocked Perot from debating even though he grabbed 19 percent of the popular vote in the prior election. The Commission received a lot of criticism for that decision. In turn, their organization instituted the 15% polling number in 2000 to increase “transparency,” but it’s clear that such a high threshold is meant to obstruct any challenges to the political establishment.

To wrap up, both the DNC Fraud case and the lawsuits against the Commission on Presidential Debates could establish some incredibly important precedents for our democracy. Again, I wish the plaintiffs luck in the DNC Fraud case, but neither major party will likely respond adequate to government regulations, despite public pressure. Nonetheless, that case needs as much publicity as possible in order to shine light on the DNC’s corrupt practices.

On the other hand, public pressure due to increased awareness could have an impact on the corrupt practices of the Commission on Presidential Debates. Our country needs to hear new, outside voices; few positive changes are going to be offered by the Democratic or Republican parties.

Gary Johnson has aggressively marketed through social media to let the public know about these lawsuits. You don’t have to support Gary Johnson or agree with any of his political views. However, we’d all benefit by supporting his right and other future third-party candidates’ right to debate.

Democratic Party Fraud

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Thu, 29 Jun 2017 18:15:32 GMT

There Was Nothing "Democratic" About How the DNC Blocked Bernie Sanders

The mainstream media—perhaps not surprisingly—is virtually ignoring three pending lawsuits against the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Commission on Presidential Debates, all of which cast a glaring light on the bald corruption eating away at the current political process. But they should not be ignored. More than just footnotes to the tumultuous 2016 election, these are legal battles that could have broader implications on third-party and independent political movements in U.S. elections going forward.

Former Head of NY DEA Office Touts Prevention, Not Incarceration

Sat, 17 Jun 2017 15:31:00 GMT

A Former Hardliner Now Advocates for a More Nuanced Approach

A local news outlet in Winston-Salem produced a brief feature, “ Former federal agent says putting drug addicts in prison is a ‘mistake. ’”

I don’t think the title truly reflects the gravity of this story. Those are not the typical words of someone like Robert Stutman who is a former DEA special agent. He was later promoted to be the Chief of the New York DEA Office. He has certainly earned his stripes in the war on drugs. Case in point, the Medellin Cartel at one time had a price on his head.

Stutman aggressively promoted a strong response to illegal drugs during his time as a leader within the DEA. He was quoted in my book, The Drug War: A Trillion Dollar Con Game , because he openly “used the media” to hype the drug war. He stated that the media exploited the crack cocaine crisis of the 80s, calling it the “hottest combat reporting story to come along since the end of the Vietnam War.”

Stutman played a major role in one of the most influential drug war media presentations of the 1980s, 48 Hours on Crack Street . In fact, he appeared on the show. It was a two-hour CBS documentary with Dan Rather and Bernie Goldberg exploring some of New York City’s most crime-infested areas. It was aired in September of 1986 to the tune of 15 million viewers, which was the highest ratings for a TV documentary in five and half years.

48 Hours on Crack Street was one of many crack-related news segments that had American voters clamoring for tougher drug laws. One month later, Congress passed the infamous Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which made the penalty for crack 100 times longer than the same amount of powder cocaine.

Stutman retired from the DEA in 1990 and he began vocalizing his criticisms of the war on drugs in a very public manner. For nearly three decades, Stutman has been a strong advocate for more spending on drug education and treatment, rather than law enforcement. In fact, he formed his own company, Employee Information Services Inc, which specializes in providing drug rehab services.

In an interview with Frontline, Stutman asserted that politicians love to “patronize voters” with the tough on crime approach to drug addiction, but it isn’t effective policy. However, despite this liberal mentality, Stutman isn’t an advocate of decriminalization. Although I certainly disagree with Stutman’s views on that subject, it’s quite refreshing to hear someone with his background who doesn’t “toe the company line” by insisting that harm reduction (drug education and treatment) needs to be prioritized over law enforcement.

New Venue for Kid’s Charity Not Good Enough for Goodell: ‘We’ll See You in Court’

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Mon, 12 Jun 2017 18:28:57 GMT

The NFL's PR Team Blocks Charitable Acts to Project an Anti-Gambling Public Image

Strikes For Kids is a nonprofit group that partners with numerous pro athletes and organizes bowling events to raise money for various youth charities. Normally, these events take place across the country without a hitch. However, back in 2015, the NFL took issue with the organization’s choice of location in Las Vegas. It was the bowling alley at the Sunset Station. Consequently, the NFL blocked 25 of its players from participating unless the venue was changed.

Donut Day Breaks the Internet & International Sex Workers’ Day Gets No US Media Coverage

Tue, 06 Jun 2017 21:30:00 GMT

It's Time to Recognize Basic Human Rights

A Series of Cannabis Bills Vetoed by States' Governors

Mon, 05 Jun 2017 12:22:00 GMT

In a States' Rights Issue, Governors Need to Better Evaluate This Issue

The Governor of Vermont, Phil Scott, vetoed a bill last month that would have legalized recreational marijuana. This would have been an unprecedented moment in history. Sure, eight states and the District of Columbia had already legalized recreational use. However, those states legalized recreational marijuana via ballot measures or public referendums. In other words, you can’t give credit to the politicians; it was left up to the voters to decide.

The Vermont legislature, on the other hand, passed this bill. Regardless of the fact that the Governor vetoed the bill, no state legislature has ever accomplished this task. With that in mind, this was a very positive development for the American democracy. After all, a strong majority of Americans support legalized marijuana. Hence, this is the perfect example of the manner in which special interests exert control over the legislative process.

Will recreational marijuana be legalized in Vermont?

The state legislature could overrule the Governor’s veto with a two-thirds majority vote. But, that seems unlikely because the bill wasn’t passed in the House by a wide margin , 79-66. The margin was much wider in the state Senate, 20-9.

The legislature reconvenes on June 21st. Most likely, the members will have to make some alterations to secure the Governor’s signature in the future. Governor Scott has expressed vague concerns about “protecting children,” the regulations, and the methods for roadside testing for impairments.

If we are to take him at his word, no system would “protect children” better than a legal and regulated cannabis industry. Secondly, the regulations can be hammered out before the new laws go into effect. As for the roadside testing, we’re at the mercy of the scientific community. There are many new, promising forms of technology in the works, but a perfect method has yet to be finalized. Hopefully, Governor Scott doesn’t lean on these excuses as a crutch to avoid signing this bill.

With that said, Phil Scott has publicly supported the general idea of legalizing recreational marijuana. He said , “Generally, I view it through the lens of a libertarian, I believe what adults do behind closed doors and on their own personal property is their own choice so long as it doesn't negatively impact the health and safety of others.” For the short term, he should deserve the benefit of the doubt and we’ll see if a compromise bill can be finalized later this month.

A Disturbing Trend

Someone who doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt is New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez. This may seem familiar if you read my column, “ Want to Solve America’s Public Defender Crisis? Stop Arresting People for Cannabis .” Governor Martinez, a GEO Group campaign finance recipient , has taken her loyalty to various conservative special interest groups to a ridiculously absurd level. She has twice vetoed bills to legalize industrial hemp.

When I first read about vetoes, I immediately thought of that iconic soundbite from Allen Iverson, “We’re talking about practice?!?” In this instance, we’re talking about hemp?!? This should be a noncontroversial issue. The restrictions on hemp are completely unnecessary. Industrial hemp production and recreational marijuana are two entirely different issues. Hemp contains only trace amounts of the psychoactive chemical, THC, within marijuana. In other words, it’s impossible to get “high” with hemp.

Long story short, it is inexcusable for a politician in 2017 to block industrial hemp production in this country. Keep in mind, Governor Susana Martinez vetoed two hemp bills in the state with the highest unemployment rate.

With that sentiment in mind, the governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, also vetoed an industrial hemp bill last month. That’s particularly disturbing because Ducey’s website claims that it’s his mission to “boost economic growth, create new jobs and promote 21st-century innovation that improves the way Arizonans live.”

There is a tremendous economic upside with hemp, but the United States is far behind the curve. Thousands of products can be derived from hemp and several other countries are progressing with some amazing innovations. For instance, Canadian-based Motive Industries has built one of the most eco-friendly cars on the planet, the Kestrel . The body of the car is composed of hemp, which makes it lighter and more crash resistant. In fact, unlike all other cars, the hemp panels of the Kestrel can actually pop back into place after an accident has occurred.

Likewise, homebuilders in the U.K. are constructing houses with several different materials derived from hemp, particularly concrete. Hemp can also produce eco-friendly versions of plastic, fuel, clothing, paint, etc. Suffice it say, there are too many hemp products to list in a concise manner.

Unfortunately, our nation will continue failing to achieve its full economic potential until the Governors’ offices across this country stop blocking the bipartisan progress with legal cannabis legislation.

(Update 6-6) Just hours after this was posted, the Governor of Florida Rick Scott vetoed line items that would have allocated $3 million to medical marijuana research . That's a disappointing decision on multiple levels, in particular, Florida hosts the most senior citizens in the U.S. However, this decision was part of a record-setting day of vetoes in which Governor Scott blocked $11.9 billion of spending.

Virginia Delegate Drops the Mic Before Becoming a Lobbyist

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Tue, 30 May 2017 18:44:23 GMT

It should be an honor to represent your community as a lawmaker. Politics shouldn’t be a racket.

Published on Blacklisted News on May 30, 2017

David Albo, a 24-year veteran of the Virginia State House of Delegates, announced in April that he wouldn’t run for re-election. On his final day in office, he literally dropped his desk microphone and left on a fashionable note by saying, “Dave Albo, out.” You can see the reaction of his colleagues here .

According to Albo, his personal finances prompted this decision. The salary for Virginia State Delegates, $17,640, is far less than that of their counterparts in the U.S. House of Representatives, $174,000.

David Albo, like most state lawmakers, didn’t rely solely on his government salary. He’s a partner in a successful criminal and civil defense law firm. However, the firm will be shut down in the next year because Albo’s partner is set to become a local circuit judge.

Where can a former politician always turn to for employment after a stint of public service? The answer, of course, is the corporate lobbying sector. Albo was hired this month by a powerful law and lobbying firm, Williams Mullen .

Albo tried to reassure reporters with the Richmond Times-Dispatch that the fear of the revolving door is overblown. “People have this bad image of lobbyists — I’ve never thought that,” he said. “Particularly in a part-time legislature, they provide a very valuable service.”

Albo’s explanation couldn’t be more wrong. Suffice it to say, the corrupt nature of the revolving door between government and the private sector is something covered in depth in my book series, Rackets, and in previous articles with Blacklisted News.

Revolving door lobbyists clearly possess the potential for undue influence. That’s why there are various rules in place, even though many former officials exploit the loopholes. In some instances, these revolving door exits result in remarkable conflicts of interest.

For example, the press release by Williams Mullen mentioned that “Mr. Albo restructured the entire ABC (Virginia Department of Alcohol Beverage Control), changing it from an Agency to a Private Authority.” It should be noted that there were multiple red flags surrounding that decision. First of all, the alcohol industry was his top contributor last cycle, with over $61,000 in donations. Secondly, the lobbying firm that hired Albo, Williams Mullen, is well known for the services that it provides for many companies in the alcohol industry.

Granted, there was a valid argument for privatizing Virginia’s oldest alcohol regulatory body. After all, the agency had been involved in some high-profile governmental abuses of power. The state’s Department of Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) received unflattering national headlines two years ago that involved a then 20-year-old student at the University of Virginia, Martese Johnson. He was denied entry into a local bar. Afterward, ABC agents detained the young man and slammed his head into the concrete. The injury required ten stitches. Johnson has a pending civil lawsuit.

The Virginia Department of Alcohol Beverage Control reached a $212,500 settlement after a similar debacle unfolded two years before that incident. Another 20-year-old student at the University of Virginia, Elizabeth Daly, was also confronted by ABC agents. A group of six plainclothes agents converged toward Daly after she exited a grocery store late at night in a dimly lit parking lot. They mistook Daly’s bottles of sparkling water for alcoholic beverages. One of the agents pulled a gun and another showed his badge. She was later arrested for resisting arrest after driving away from the scene because she didn’t trust that these men were actually government agents.

Anyhow, as a reminder, the decision to privatize the Virginia Department of Alcohol Beverage Control was led by former Delegate David Albo. And it goes without saying that such decisions need to be made without a hint of impropriety. Well, one of the specialties of Albo’s law firm is helping companies in the alcohol industry comply with regulations.

In fact, an advertisement stated, “Few are as intimate with Virginia law as Mr. Albo. As a veteran legislative leader, Mr. Albo has helped write every change to Virginia’s ABC laws for the past 18 years.” In other words, Albo’s firm profits by providing regulatory guidance for the same laws that he helped to write.

The press release by Albo’s new employer, Williams Mullen, also mentioned that Albo “closed literally hundreds of loopholes in DUI and criminal laws.” It didn’t mention that Albo’s firm profited from those loopholes. The best example comes from a blistering article written by Radley Balko. He quoted a claim from Albo’s website that touted, “Our client had a .33 BAC (Blood Alcohol Concentration), and got off!”

Balko’s article pointed out that Albo had written several proposals to stiffen the penalties for DUI. And it doesn’t take a genius to deduce that such legislation is good for any business such as Albo’s which has the URL, www.VirginiaDUI.com. Yes, another specialty of Albo’s practice is defending traffic offenses.

That leads to the other issue in Balko’s article. The state of Virginia passed an aggressive spending bill for transportation in 2007 that was funded by drastically increasing the fines for speeding tickets. Anyone driving 20 miles per hour over the speed limit is guilty of reckless driving. Also, driving over 80 miles per hour (even on an interstate with a speed limit of 70 mph) is considered reckless driving. That’s a class 1 misdemeanor in Virginia that is punishable by a maximum of one year in jail and a total of $3,550 in fines and taxes! And as you probably guessed, David Albo was the author of that bill.

The article by Radley Balko concluded with this thought, “This is pretty brazen stuff. I wonder why it hasn’t been more of a story. And why Albo’s still in office.”

Well, that article was written ten years ago and he has kept up to his old tricks. Albo’s website posted a blog in 2013 that was titled, “Effort to Repeal Reckless Driving Law Fails.” The post acknowledged the draconian nature of the law:

“Thus, one can be convicted of criminal Reckless Driving if speeding only 11 miles over the posted limit. This small margin surprises a number of motorists. Those opposed to increasing the speed threshold cite the danger of high speed driving.”

(If you noticed, the blog post used the term “those opposed,” instead of pointing out that Albo wrote the law.)

Since the time that Balko wrote that article ten years ago, Albo continued writing legislation for tougher DUI laws. One of which was a proposal to lower the legal blood alcohol level (BAC) to .02 for anyone driving with a suspended license. In addition, he wrote multiple laws for tougher drug penalties and a variety of other crimes.

To wrap up, Albo was the author of numerous bills during his 24 years as a delegate. There was no apparent financial conflict of interest with the vast majority of his proposals. But, that should never be the case. It taints the entire integrity of the legislative process when the author of a bill stands to profit directly from such legislation.

It should be an honor to represent your community as a lawmaker. Politics shouldn’t be a racket.

The Kentucky Derby: One Day When Sports Gambling is Glamorous, Sophisticated

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Mon, 08 May 2017 19:10:55 GMT

There's an Odd Hypocrisy Around What America Considers a Sophisticated Form of Gambling

Several media outlets spent the weekend in Louisville obsessing about celebrities, goofy hats, and mint juleps. There was also plenty of coverage of updated betting odds. After all, the Kentucky Derby received a record number of total wagers, $209.2 million.

But, it’s remarkable how easily our society doesn’t seem to notice the hypocrisy. Two months ago, a bill failed in the Kentucky legislature that would have legalized and regulated daily fantasy sports (DFS). Similar bills also recently met the same fate in Georgia and Florida.

Want to Solve America’s Public Defender Crisis? Stop Arresting People for Cannabis

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Thu, 04 May 2017 20:41:22 GMT

The Scale of Drug Law Arrests Overwhelms the Criminal Justice System

Most Americans can’t cite the Constitution’s Sixth Amendment, but nearly everyone is familiar with this portion of the Miranda rights: “If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.”

We tend to take this right for granted, but it’s not nearly as available as we assume. In a recent 60 Minutes segment, Anderson Cooper reported on a decision last year by New Orleans chief public defender Derwyn Buntin to not accept any more felony cases.

White House Meeting Reveals Concerning Drug Policy

Tue, 02 May 2017 12:02:00 GMT

A Fact-Based Discussion is Needed at the White House

"Pay to Play" for Private Prisons?

Wed, 26 Apr 2017 21:19:00 GMT

A Clear Example of Legalized Corruption

Legalized Corruption Fueled the Death of Internet Privacy: The Problem is Worse at the State Level

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Thu, 06 Apr 2017 20:46:47 GMT

Follow the Money to See How Our Elected Leaders Sold Out to Corporate Interests

( Published on Blacklisted News on April 6, 2017 )

The Congressional bill that allows Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to sell your browsing history has been met with a lot of critical media coverage. However, few reporters have set their sights on the flow of money that helped set this legislation in motion.

In general, Internet privacy is a bipartisan issue among the American people. However, this was a partisan issue on Capitol Hill with Republican lawmakers supporting the bill. It was passed in the Senate and House by a very narrow margin, 50 to 48 and 215 to 205 respectively. With that said, there were 15 House Republicans who voted outside of their party lines to keep Internet privacy intact.

As you may have guessed, those 15 House Republicans received far less campaign money from the telecoms (AT&T, Comcast, etc.), which stand to benefit from selling your Internet history. A report by the non-profit organization, Center for Responsive Politics, showed that they received an average of $77,000 in contributions. Conversely, the other House Republicans received an average of $138,000. In other words, it appears that the telecoms executed an effective strategy for buying the necessary number of votes.

The telecom industry has donated nearly $564,000 to Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), the author of this bill, over the course of eight terms in the House of Representatives. It’s possible that she will be voted out of office next term, but that’s unlikely. Then again, she is only one member of Congress and her removal will not solve the core issue of legalized corruption, which is a systemic problem. Even if Blackburn were to be voted out of office, she would likely be rewarded with a more lucrative career as a corporate lobbyist.

AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon spent a combined $40.78 million in lobbying expenses last year. That helped to fund a trade group with a “doublespeak” name, the 21st Century Privacy Coalition. A total of 308 corporate lobbyists worked on behalf of these companies and 225 of them are part of the revolving door between government and the private sector. Of those 225 former government officials, ten of them are former members of Congress:

Don Nickles (R-OK)

Ron Klink (D-PA)

Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)

Jim McCrery (R-LA)

Vic Fazio (D-CA)

John Breaux (D-LA)

Trent Lott (R-MS)

Bob Livingston (R-LA)

Steven D Symms (R-ID)

Jack Fields (R-TX)

We need stronger rules in place to block politicians from becoming part of this revolving door. Otherwise, our elected officials have a powerful incentive to do the bidding of various special interest groups, not the public interest. As of now, U.S. Senators can’t lobby their former colleagues for two years after leaving office and former U.S. Representatives have a one-year delay. This “cooling-off period” is a bare minimum regulation because it doesn’t block the revolving door; it only slows down the process.

Unfortunately, this problem is worse at the state level. Wisconsin is one of the sixteen states that allow politicians to become paid lobbyists immediately after leaving office. Jay Heck, the director of a non-profit group Common Cause Wisconsin, has been trying for two decades to persuade his state’s lawmakers to make a change. He told The Washington Times that many lawmakers haven’t bothered to hide their self-interest when objecting to Heck’s proposal. He’s heard, “Well, what else would we do.”

On the bright side, Wisconsin has a pending bill that would mandate a one-year cooling-off period. However, this is essentially the same bill from 2013 that didn’t receive a hearing. There was a hearing for the bill in 2015, but it was never put up for a vote.

There seems to be more bipartisan backing this time around, but one key player has yet to support this proposal -- Scott Fitzgerald, Wisconsin’s Senate Majority Leader. After all, he’s more than familiar with this subject. His brother, Jeff, is the former Speaker of the Assembly who became a corporate lobbyist two days after leaving office in 2013.

Michigan also doesn’t have a mandatory cooling-off period. An excellent article by Petoskey News-Review, a local newspaper of Northern Michigan, pointed to two former State Representatives who tried to establish a mandatory waiting period. Unfortunately, neither bill received enough votes to become law, but there was an ironic twist to this article. Both co-sponsors of the bill, Lesia Liss and Paul Opsommer, began working as lobbyists, three months and five months respectively after they left office.

Making matters worse, there are glaring conflicts of interest related to their revolving door exits. While in office, Opsommer adamantly obstructed a public works project that was opposed by his current employer. Likewise, Liss once served on a health care committee that she now lobbies for an insurance company.

Again, a 1 or 2-year cooling-off period is a fairly minor restriction. As a matter of fact, it can be a mere formality in some cases; there are ways around these restrictions. (This was covered in more detail in my article from two weeks ago, “Revolving door lobbyists are exploiting the rules.”)

For example, a prominent former member of the New York State Assembly, Keith Wright, joined a powerful law and lobbying group this January, two days after his term ended. State law bars him from lobbying his former colleagues in the Senate or Assembly for two years. However, a blog, State of Politics, astutely pointed out that Wright can immediately lobby the Governor’s office without violating any rules.

Likewise, an influential former North Carolina State Senator, Tom Apodaca, began working with his former colleagues in January as a lobbyist. Oddly enough, Apodaca, who was the Chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, wouldn’t be in his current place without skirting the rules. By resigning before his term expired, he avoided the state’s mandatory six-month cooling-off period. He’s now representing companies, such as Blue Cross Blue Shield, which helped finance his campaigns.

In fairness, Tom Apodaca didn’t create this loophole to avoid the cooling-off period; it was the State Ethics Committee. But, bear in mind, that’s the same Ethics Committee that infamously ruled that sex between lobbyists and officials didn’t need to be disclosed because these relationships are not “reportable expenditures made for lobbying.”

By the way, that name, Tom Apodaca, may sound familiar to you. He has made national headlines in the past with another story that demonstrated how money clearly corrupts politics. Notably, Apodaca sponsored an “anti-Tesla” bill in 2013 after receiving the maximum donation ($8,000) from the North Carolina Auto Dealers Association. That law required car buyers to make their purchase through an auto dealership, not online, which nullified Tesla’s business model.

All in all, efforts need to be made for systemic changes at the state and federal level to prevent special interest groups from gaining undue influence. In an ideal world, there would be a lifetime ban on lobbying for former members of Congress. However, a compromise bill with a much lengthier waiting period could become reality if there was enough popular support. The problem is that the general public isn’t widely aware of the corrupting influence from the revolving door.

This is one of multiple reforms that need to be made to improve the integrity of our political system. Otherwise, we’ll continue to see more bills, such as the one that was signed into law this Monday, which established a market for purchasing everyone’s browsing history. That’s much like the way in which our elected officials can be legally purchased by the highest bidder.

Court Upholds Warrantless Search Based on Torn Plastic Bag and a Reclined Seat

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 20:54:02 GMT

In the name of "Law and Order," the War on Drugs Routinely Strips Away at our Constitutional Rights

It’s well known that the drug war is one of the main sources of our country’s overpopulated prisons. However, there is another negative aspect of the drug war that is often not addressed.

Drug laws allow police to routinely conduct searches based on expansive interpretations of probable cause. In turn, any evidence of a crime unrelated to drugs is admissible in court, as long as it was discovered within the “plain view” of the officer.

Unfortunately, the standard for probable cause seemingly continues to diminish, and the drug war indirectly provides law enforcement with a blanket justification for violating the 4th Amendment.

Revolving Door Lobbyists are Exploiting the Rules

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Fri, 24 Mar 2017 21:02:08 GMT

Congress Members Can Make Far More Money by Obliging Lobbyists' Interest and Joining their Firms After Leaving Office

(Published on Blacklisted News on March 4, 2017)

There are now 432 former members of Congress working as registered lobbyists. This “revolving door” is ruining the integrity of our political system. It’s no secret that lobbying firms can offer exorbitant salaries to lawmakers after leaving office. That conflict of interest leaves a cloud over Capitol Hill making us wonder who is truly operating in the public interest.

Thankfully, Congress included a common sense measure within the “Honest Leadership and Open Government Act” of 2007. It bars former members of Congress from lobbying their former colleagues immediately after leaving office. There is a “cooling-off period” of two years for U.S. Senators and one year for U.S. Representatives.

Unfortunately, the cooling-off period hasn’t limited the revolving door. Slightly less than 66% of the members of the Congress who left office in January of 2015 are now working for former lobbying clients or as lobbyists, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Remarkably, there are loopholes that allow former politicians to avoid the cooling-off period. For example, David Vitter’s term in the Senate ended this January. However, he was hired earlier this month by a top lobbying firm. In fact, Vitter reportedly began exploring potential lobbying opportunities before leaving office.

Vitter can’t lobby his former colleagues in the Senate for two years, but he can immediately begin lobbying Trump administration officials on behalf of his clients. This is a violation of the intent of the law, not the letter of the law. All in all, Vitter was an ironic addition to the revolving door. He sidestepped the rules of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 even though he supported the bill and wrote multiple amendments that added ethics regulations.

One of the more controversial additions to the revolving door, former Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY), demonstrated another way of avoiding the cooling-off period. Whitfield resigned from office last September while reeling from an ethics scandal. Investigators found that he had granted political favors to his wife who is a lobbyist. Nonetheless, Whitfield was hired as a partner by a powerful lobbying firm within the same month of his resignation. In what other industry is this possible?

Again, Whitfield can’t directly lobby his former colleagues in the House for one year. Nevertheless, the insider knowledge and personal relationships of Representatives like Whitfield can be exploited to gain undue influence for various special interest groups. By the same token, former Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) publicly announced, just weeks after leaving office, that he’s considering opening his own lobbying firm. Kirk mentioned that he’s already had talks with Boeing.

Several politicians have also avoided the cooling-off period by merely using other titles. This is what watchdog organizations refer to as “shadow lobbying.” The former U.S. Senate Majority Leader, Tom Daschle (D-SD), is the unofficial face of shadow lobbying. Daschle lobbied as an “advisor” or “strategist” for eleven years. He even formed his own “strategic advisory firm” two years before officially registering as a lobbyist in 2016. Daschle skirted the rules for over a decade because he wasn’t required to register if less than 20% of his time was spent lobbying for a single client. Consequently, many people refer to this as the “Daschle loophole.”

To sum up, all of the technicalities for avoiding this waiting period, such as the “Daschle loophole,” need to be eliminated. There also needs to be a much longer cooling-off period for former members of Congress. However, the challenge is obvious. Congress isn’t eager to regulate themselves, nor minimize their future earnings.

Even remarkably symbolic proposals, such as the “Revolving Door Pension Prevention Act,” have been shunned by our elected officials. That proposal by former Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) would have forced former lawmakers making over $1 million a year as lobbyists to forfeit their Congressional pensions. Needless to say, Israel’s bill never received any support. Likewise, Sen. Michael Bennett (D-CO) wrote a bill, the “Close the Revolving Door Act of 2015,” which would have established a lifetime ban from lobbying for former members of Congress. Predictably, Bennett’s bill never made it out of committee.

Despite the challenges, it’s important to remember that everyone can lobby their elected officials. You only have to pick up the phone or send an email. Corruption is one of those few issues in which all voters can find common ground. There needs to be collective effort to solve this problem. The vast majority of Americans are unaware of the specifics about the revolving door. If they were, there would be a groundswell of support for eliminating it.

What does Trump’s ‘Conservative’ Nominee Mean for Sports Betting?

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Mon, 13 Mar 2017 21:15:59 GMT

Trump's Solicitor General nominee seems unlikely to support New Jersey’s appeal in favor of legalized sports betting

It's official. Noel Francisco was nominated last week by Donald Trump to be the next U.S. Solicitor General. He will file a brief that will state whether or not the U.S. Supreme Court should try New Jersey’s federal appeal to overturn the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA). That federal law prohibits the expansion of legal sports gambling.

Steve Wynn’s Relationship with Online Gambling: It’s Complicated

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Fri, 10 Mar 2017 22:20:26 GMT

Wynn's Crony Capitalistic Approach Shows How Easily our Legislative System can be Manipulated

Once again, Wynn Resorts has a different stance on legalized online gambling. A representative of Wynn Resorts told Massachusetts regulators that their company wouldn’t oppose efforts to legalize Internet gambling as long as only land-based, licensed casinos could offer this service.

Steve Wynn’s opinion on Internet gambling has shifted back and forth over the years, seemingly in accordance with what best helps his company’s bottom line. He was quoted in 2009 saying that Internet gambling “would be impossible to regulate.” Also, representatives from Wynn Resorts openly suggested that online gambling could cannibalize the profits of brick & mortar casinos.

Did Chuck Schumer Indirectly Harm the Future of Legal Sports Betting?

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Thu, 02 Mar 2017 22:25:31 GMT

Potential Solicitor General, Miguel Estrada, won't accept the nomination, in part, due to the Democratic Leadership

Tuesday’s column, “Legal Sports Betting May Happen Soon Due to Potential Trump Nominee,” mentioned that Miguel Estrada was reportedly the top choice for the U.S. Solicitor General. However, Estrada has publicly announced that he will not accept the position.

To review, whoever accepts this nomination will have a direct impact on the future of legalized sports betting. The next U.S. Solicitor General will file a brief that provides guidance in deciding if the U.S. Supreme Court will try New Jersey’s appeal to overturn the federal law banning the expansion of legal sports gambling, Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA).

Legal Sports Betting May Happen Soon Due to Potential Trump Nominee

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Tue, 28 Feb 2017 22:32:34 GMT

Potential Nominee for Solicitor General May Ease the Path to Legal Sports Betting

New Jersey passed a statewide voter referendum to legalize sports betting in 2011. The sports leagues sued the state of New Jersey as their legislation violated a federal law that bans sports betting, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA), in every state other than Nevada, Delaware, Montana, and Oregon. In response, the state of New Jersey appealed the constitutionality of this decision through the federal courts. Their attorneys contested, to no avail, that PASPA violates the 10th Amendment.

 New Jersey appealed this decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to take their case. However, the U.S. Supreme Court recently asked the Solicitor General to file a brief with more details. In other words, one or more of the justices seem to be interested in this case. Therefore, if the new U.S. Solicitor General believes that there is merit to New Jersey's appeal, then there is a good chance that the U.S. Supreme Court would hear their case. Hence, whoever is appointed as the next U.S. Solicitor General could have a major impact on the future of sports gambling.

Why Corporations are Too Big to Jail in the Drug War

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Fri, 17 Feb 2017 22:38:05 GMT

Big Pharma & Health Care Companies Ignored Obvious Red Flags to Profit from America's Opioid Addiction Crisis

Two of America’s largest drug distributors, McKesson and Cardinal Health, recently entered into civil settlement agreements for not properly monitoring and reporting suspicious sales of prescription drugs. Naturally, these cases provided the DOJ and DEA with good PR. In fact, Lee Bentley, the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Florida, wrote an op-ed column, “The U.S. Attorney’s office is fighting opioid abuse.” However, let’s review the facts and decide if these cases should be a source of pride for the law enforcement community.

Knuckles’ article about opioid overdose drug is very good news

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 22:45:09 GMT

The War on Drugs Should Not Block Access to a Life-Saving Medication, Naloxone

Trent Knuckle’s recent article, “Opioid overdose drug will soon be available without a prescription,” was a breath of fresh air. The state of Kentucky owes a debt of gratitude to Dr. Shawn Ryan of the University of Cincinnati Medical Center for providing access to this overdose-prevention medication, naloxone.

This type of article reminds us that common sense solutions can still prevail during a crisis. Indeed, there is a crisis. As mentioned in Knuckle’s column, there were 885 opioid-related deaths in Kentucky in 2015.

For those who are unfamiliar, naloxone will reverse an opioid overdose roughly 99% of the time as long as the drug is administered in time. Hence, everyone should be able to acquire this medication, not just medical professionals. Granted, someone needs to be trained to use naloxone properly, but that is easy to do.

Father of Most Unethical Gambling Law, Bob Goodlatte, Wanted to Gut Ethics Committee

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 22:48:23 GMT

Goodlatte Crossed Ethical Lines While Claiming the Moral High Ground to Ban Internet Gambling

Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) kicked off the New Year with a proposal that would have nullified the independent nature of the Office of Congressional Ethics. Brian Saady has a piece below you will not want to skip over.

Goodlatte's amendment banned the Office of Congressional Ethics from accepting anonymous tips about members of Congress. It was passed that same evening, January 2nd. However, there was an immediate and adverse bipartisan reaction. The hashtag (#ethics) was a trending topic on Twitter and even President-elect Trump criticized this decision the next morning with a tweet. Later that afternoon, the House Republicans overturned Goodlatte’s amendment. Suffice it to say, this was a victory for common sense and the democratic process.

Drug diversion program is the right step

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Sat, 14 Jan 2017 02:40:00 GMT

The "Lock Them Up and Throw Away the Key" Approach Isn't the Right Way to Reduce America's Drug Addiction Problem

After reading this recent article, “Beaver Falls piloting new drug diversion program,” it is clear that Police Chief John DeLuca and the late Judge William R. Livingston II need to be commended for making changes towards long-term progress.

You can’t overstate the importance of this decision. After all, there were as many as 27 overdoses during a five-day span in Beaver County last August. This diversion program is a proactive approach that directly addresses the problem, rather than punishing someone after the act.

Beware of License Plate Reader Program

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Sun, 01 Jan 2017 02:49:07 GMT

There's a fine line between proper law enforcement and violating our basic civil liberties.

Florida needs to expand, fund needle exchange program

183:853863261 (Brian Saady) — Mon, 19 Dec 2016 02:56:41 GMT

Harm Reduction Practices Reduce the Secondary Negative Effects on Society from Drug Abuse

The Florida Legislature passed the Infectious Disease Elimination Act (the IDEA bill) in the last session. This was the culmination of four years from primarily one persistent activist, Dr. Hansel Tookes, of the University of Miami. The IDEA bill authorized our state’s first official needle exchange program, which began operating Nov. 30. This program provides drug addicts with sterile syringes in order to reduce the spread of diseases, in particular, HIV and hepatitis.

Rackets Blog

The Drug War's Death Count is Higher Than Many Conventional Wars

Statistics, Charts, and Maps Illustrating the Murders Tied to the War on Drugs

America Taking Advantage of a Color Revolution in Bangladesh

D.C. Pushed for Regime Change to "Promote Democracy" as a Pretext to Improve America's Geopolitical Interests

What is a Color Revolution?

﻿

The Same U.S.-Led, Regime-Change Playbook in Bangladesh

A U.S. Military Base in Bangladesh?

America’s Deserved but Hypocritical Criticism of Sheikh Hasina

U.S. Ally Installed

Have Human Rights and Democracy Been Restored?

﻿

Shift Towards American Energy Policy

﻿

Ex-Paraguay prez finds himself on wrong side of US power

As a former leader, he is no longer useful to Washington, which can now act virtuous and punitive with sanctions

Accused financier of Moise assassination apparently advised by US intelligence

Court Documents Show that the Defendants Had Contact with the US Government Before the Assassination

America's Long History of Supporting Cuban Exile Terrorists

Miami was the epicenter of Cuban American terrorists who were once trained/armed by the CIA for anti-Castro operations

Terrorists Live Freely on U.S. Soil

Freedom Fighters or Terrorists

Is the Threat of Cuban Exile Terrorism Still Present?

TikTok ban is not to protect Americans. It’s a tactic directly from China’s playbook

The US Government Has No Credibility with the American People on This Issue, But There are Legitamate Concerns

Edward Snowden leaks

Was the TikTok Ban Legal?

Is TikTok a Chinese Company?

Personal Freedom Issue

Notorious Drug Kingpin Assassinates Political Dissidents for Iran

This Notorious Criminal Seemingly Has a Quid Pro Quo Relationship with the Iranian Regime

Timeline of Jeffrey Epstein: Espionage, Blackmail, & Depravity

A Detailed Timeline of Jeffrey Epstein's Life Showing the Extent of His Crimes and His Extraordinary Protection from the Government

Move over Afghanistan, Myanmar is Now the World’s Top Opium Producer

With US Troops out of Afghanistan, it is No Longer the Epicenter of Opium Production. Drug Trafficking is Fueling a Civil War in Myanmar.

American Foreign Policy Helped Manufacture the World's Refugee Crisis

Decisions by US Lawmakers Have Fueled so much Suffering and Bloodshed Throughout these Regions

Did a Narco-Linked Former Haitian Leader Have President Moïse Assassinated? (Part II)

Former Haitian President Michel Martelly Has Links with the Suspected Assassins

Honduran President Hernandez was Washington’s man, until he wasn’t

The former leader spent years stealing, defrauding, trafficking drugs and worse. When he wasn’t useful anymore, the US indicted him.

Suspects for Haitian Leader's Assassination Don't Belong in a U.S. Courtroom (Part I)

A Deep Look at the Assassination of Haiti's President and the Links to the U.S. Government

‘Otoniel’ is no mere kingpin. He’s a creature of bad US-Colombia policy.

Otoniel is one of Thousands of Right-Wing Terrorists whom the Colombian Government Enabled to Fight Communist Rebels with US Weaponry & Intelligence

Is Tesla’s Supply Chain Linked to Blood Diamonds, Bribery, Child Labor, & Sanctions Evasions?

Several Corporations are Looking the Other Way at Vast Human Rights Violations all for the Sake of Profits

Honduras Is A Bonafide Narco State, Yet Trump Praises Its Useful Leader

Welcome to your Drug War: Corrupt Latin American governments favored by Washington get tons of aid and yes, U.S. troops.

The Supreme Court At Last Moves To Curb Civil Asset Forfeiture

It's a narrow victory but an important one in the fight for the right to property.

El Chapo: Another Case For Ending The Drug War

The sordid details of his trial only show that prohibition will enable another kingpin after him.

A Real Killing: How Greedy Corporate Pushers Caused The Opioid Crisis

An Upcoming Court Battle Can't Levy a Penalty Large Enough for the Enablers of Thousands of Deaths

Trump Kicking Out Salvadorans Could Be A Boon For MS-13

Prepare yourself for the next wave of violence-driven migration, and as usual, U.S. policy will have a hand in it.

Fighting Corruption in the U.S. Criminal Justice System

When Forensic Evidence Goes Bad

A whole cottage industry has been built around hair, blood, and bite-mark analyses—but what happens when it puts the wrong people in jail?

Throwing Children Away: The School-To-Prison Pipeline

Zero tolerance and the proliferation of cops on campus are sending more kids into a life of incarceration than ever.

Malaysia’s Top Intelligence Official Sought Support From the CIA Before Election

Would the U.S. Government Look the Other Way if Evidence of Election Fraud Were to Come to Light?

Argentina Militarizes the Drug War

Pro-Western Leader Taking Steps Towards Authoritarian Rule

Trump Is Backing His Scandalous Ally In Guatemala

Trump Enabling the Corruption of Guatemalan President, Jimmy Morales, Who Shares Several Similarities

The Unreal Scope Of China’s Intellectual Property Theft

Keeping Cops’ Hands Out Of Your Pockets

Finally, a case that might put a real crimp into civil asset forfeiture abuse.

To Ted Cruz: Further Militarizing Mexico’s Drug War Is a Horrible Idea

America Has a Disastrous Track Record of Militarizing the War on Drugs in Foreign Countries

America’s Gulf Ally: A Hub For Terrorist Money Laundering

We claim to be fighting terrorism. So why don't we get tougher on the United Arab Emirates?

Narco Terrorists in Peru Mimicking the FARC

A Splinter Group of the Shining Path emerges in Peru

Former State Dept Anti-Trafficking Chief Admits Efforts Are Overly Focused On Sex Trafficking

Politics Can Even Sway an Issue as Important as Combating Human Trafficking

With US Troops out of Afghanistan, it is No Longer the Epicenter of Opium Production.
Drug Trafficking is Fueling a Civil War in Myanmar.