........
Asked by Denise Maerker of Televisa what she thought of drug legalization, Hillary Clinton said it was unlikely to work.“There is just too much money in it,”Clinton said.
Raw Story
.........................
Obviously just the quote below from the U.S. and Israeli propaganda agency CNN, (re U.S.government protecting corrupt Venezuelan judge from arrest by Interpol) ,even with its strong anti-Chavez bias CNN couldn't deny the obvious truth about Venezuelan judge who was working for the U.S.to try once again to set Hugo Chavez up on false drug trafficking accusations just as they have been particularly trying to do so with the very DC-9 of the Florida penny stock fraud Skyway Communications with its CIA and Israaeli,(Israeli-American attorney Miachal Farkas incorporated it),and criminal Titan Corp connections that even DEA Chief Michele Leonhart is linked to !http://interamericansecuritywatch.com/interpol-notice-tests-u-s-venezuela-relations/
Interpol notice tests U.S.-Venezuela relations
IASW | Thursday, May 3rd, 2012 |
A former Venezuelan judge — a fugitive in his home country who was last known to be in the United States — stands to become a source of contention between the two nations.
Interpol issued a Red Notice for Eladio Aponte Aponte, Venezuelan Justice Minister Tareck El Aissami said Wednesday night. The notice is an international alert that asks any country with information about his whereabouts to arrest him with a view to his extradition.
But Aponte Aponte counts on support from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, for whom he purportedly works as a source. The former Supreme Court justice fled to Costa Rica, and last month was transported from there to the United States in a DEA aircraft, officials of the Central American country said.
Venezuelan officials removed Aponte Aponte from his post in March, accusing him of providing a government credential to a man authorities allege was one of the world’s top drug lords.
Aponte Aponte, who has not confirmed or denied that accusation, left Venezuela the day he was supposed to face questioning in the Venezuelan National Assembly.
The U.S. Justice Department did not immediately comment on whether it would honor the Interpol notice...
.....................................
Note that DEA Czarina Michele Leonhart,who is nothing more or less than a Titan Corp prostitute a,(U.S. government 'contractors' Titan Corp are Abu Graibe,Iraq torturers and known drug traffickers by way of the Florida penny stock fraud Skyway Communications whose DC-9 WAS CAUGHT IN CIUDAD DEL CARMEN, CAMPECHE,MEXICO in 2006 WITH 5.5 TONS OF COCAINE ON BOARD !), has been trying to ram rod through a kangaroo court in the U.S.the lie that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is somehow connected to the very same DC-9 that the CIA and Russian-Israeli-Jewish mafia and her own pals at Titan Corp are linked to and that was exposed EVEN before the Skyway Communications DC-9 was captured by the Mexican army at Ciudad Del Carmen,Campeche,Mexico with 5.5 tons of cocaine neatly packaged in suit cases on the passenger seats in April 2006 ! No one said a word about Hugo Chavez at that time ans with reason because it would be absurd to claim he was trafficking cocaine with the CIA and DEA Chief Michele Leionhart's friends and fellow criminals at Titan Corp in the first place ! How Michele Leonhart and her DEA who generally pass their times torturing university students caught with a joint in San Diego or shooting poor pregnant women in Honduras plans to convict Hugo Chavez for involvenment in a cocaine plane she is much more closely connected to is beyond me.But when you control the U.S.court system as the fascists who have taken over our government do,anything is possible I guess.
And yet now it comes out that her own and W Bush's and Barack Obama's and no doubt Mitt Romney's ally ex President of Colombia Alvaro Uribe's neice who existence he has tried to deny,is in fact involved in and with that CIA and Russian Jewish mafia Gulfstream II cocaine plane that crashed in Yucatan,Mexico in 2007 and the plane WAS NOT loaded up with cocaine in Venezuela but in Colombia that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe had complete control of and NOT Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez who as President of Venezuela has no control of what U.S.ally Uribe does in Colombia !
DEA and Michele Leonhart's and Hillary Clinton ally in drug trafficking terrorism against Latin American citizens.:
http://www.madcowprod.com/2012/08/16/queen-pacific-sister-alvaro-uribe/
Drug Lords, Drug ‘Ladies,’ & Alvaro Uribe’s sister-in-law
August 16, 2012 
In the noise and confusion attending the extradition to the US on the same day last week of three women involved in cocaine trafficking from South America, questions raised by the family connection of one to the former President of Colombia went unanswered.
In the noise and confusion attending the extradition to the US on the same day last week of three women involved in cocaine trafficking from South America, questions raised by the family connection of one to the former President of Colombia went unanswered.
Did Alvaro Uribe okay the loading of 3.6 tons of cocaine at an airport he controlled in Rio Negro Colombia onto a “former” CIA Gulfstream (N987SA) jet from St. Petersburg Florida that crashed in the Yucatan in 2007?
Why did two successive U.S. Administrations lavish billions of dollars to stop drug trafficking on a President of Colombia who was himself involved in the drug trade?......
Why did two successive U.S. Administrations lavish billions of dollars to stop drug trafficking on a President of Colombia who was himself involved in the drug trade?......
....................................
http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/
Dolly Cifuentes Villa was arrested last year after a request from a US
federal court for alleged ties to the head of Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel,
Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán. Her daughter Ana Maria Uribe Cifuentes was
recently placed on the US Treasury's list of people identified as
acting on behalf of drug trafficking or terrorist organizations.
According to an investigation published by the Nuevo Arco Iris
political research centre in Bogotá, Uribe Cifuentes is the daughter
of former president Álvaro Uribe's brother Jaime, who died of throat
cancer in 2001.
Both women are alleged to belong to the Cifuentes Villa clan which,
according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, trafficked at least
30 tonnes of cocaine to the US between 2009 and 2011, and laundered
the proceeds in several Latin American countries including Colombia.
On Friday, Colombian police announced they had seized US$15m (£10m) in
assets from the Sinaloa cartel, owned by Cifuentes Villa and two of
her brothers on behalf of El Chapo.
On Sunday, Álvaro Uribe denied any knowledge of Jaime's relationship
with Cifuentes Villa, or the existence of his niece, despite the fact
the investigation has a fax of a birth certificate declaring Jaime
Uribe as her father.
"My brother Jaime died in 2001, married to Astrid Velez, they had two
children ... Any other romantic relationship that my brother may have
had was part of his personal life and is unknown to me," Álvaro Uribe
tweeted on Sunday. He denied Jaime was ever linked to the drug lord
Pablo Escobar.
According to the Nuevo Arco Iris investigation, Jaime Uribe was
arrested and interrogated by the army in 1986 after detectives
discovered calls had been made from his carphone to Escobar, leader of
the Medellín cartel.
Álvaro Uribe acknowledged that his brother had been arrested but said
he had been released and charges were dropped, claiming Jaime was
recovering from throat surgery in a local hospital at the time the
calls were made. "His car phone was cloned by criminals," Alvaro Uribe
tweeted.
The Uribe family has long faced accusations of ties to drug
trafficking. A US intelligence report from 1991, declassified in 2004,
identified Álvaro Uribe as a "close friend" of Escobar, who was
"dedicated to collaboration with the Medellín cartel". It also says
Uribe's father was murdered "for his connection with the narcotic
(sic) traffickers". Officially Uribe's father died while trying to
resist being kidnapped by leftist guerrillas in 1983.
...................................
And if that ain't bad enough it appears that just about every U.S. ally in the war on drugs is a drug trafficker or frirnd or relative to drug traffickers.But then if even I know that Guantanamo has been used as a base for Russian Jewish mafia cocaine trafficking under guise of fighting Islamic terrorists then many Latin American politicos must surely know as well.They've just learned to be polite and keep their mouths shut or because you can't beat U.S.government connected AND PROTECTED drug traffickers -to join them.
http://www.madcowprod.com/2012/08/12/mexicos-ruling-party-caught-rain-spain/
Spain Drug Bust Links Chapo Guzman, Mexico’s new President
August 12, 2012 
When a lieutenant for the Sinaloa Cartel was arrested this week in Spain for drug trafficking, it became a major scandal in Mexico for a curious reason.
When a lieutenant for the Sinaloa Cartel was arrested this week in Spain for drug trafficking, it became a major scandal in Mexico for a curious reason.
Until several days ago no one had ever heard of someone from a drug cartel posting pictures of a drug trafficking operation-in-progress on Facebook.
Yet that’s just what one “narco-junior" with better connections than brains was caught doing last week. He even had time for sightseeing while he waited for the load to arrive.
The result is turning into a perfect storm for new Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and his party, the PRI.
It was bad enough that low-level PRI functionary Rafael Celaya Valenzuela (known as “Rafa”) got himself busted along with three other
men this week in Madrid when their shipment of 337 kilos of cocaine arrived in the Spanish port of Algeciras.
Things got even worse when the leader of Rafa Celaya’s drug ring, Jesus Gutierrez Guzman, turned out to be a cousin of the most infamous Drug Lord since Pablo Escobar, El Chapo Guzman.
Yet that’s just what one “narco-junior" with better connections than brains was caught doing last week. He even had time for sightseeing while he waited for the load to arrive.
The result is turning into a perfect storm for new Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and his party, the PRI.
It was bad enough that low-level PRI functionary Rafael Celaya Valenzuela (known as “Rafa”) got himself busted along with three other
men this week in Madrid when their shipment of 337 kilos of cocaine arrived in the Spanish port of Algeciras.Things got even worse when the leader of Rafa Celaya’s drug ring, Jesus Gutierrez Guzman, turned out to be a cousin of the most infamous Drug Lord since Pablo Escobar, El Chapo Guzman.
...................................
Below is Michele Leonhart-DEA false propaganda or lies trying illogically to 'connect' Venezuela President Hugo Chavez to the very DC-9 that was bought through SEC or U.S. Securities Exchange Commission sanctioned stock fraud against American investors who were conned into buying worthless shares of Skyway Communications that DEA Chief Michele Leonhart's own drug trafficking and sadistic war criminals friends of Titan have their prints and signatures on ! Even Zionist Chicago Mercantile stock fraudster Jimbo Wales Wikipedia acknowledges that fact !
Titan Corp. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Corp.Cached
Titan specialized in providing information and communications products, ... Titan Corp briefly partnered with SkyWay Communications and owned stock in ...
http://interamericansecuritywatch.com/trial-of-the-turk-one-of-the-worlds-top-drug-lords-threatens-to-expose-chavez-regimes-involvement-in-cocaine-trafficking/
Trial of ‘The Turk’, one of the world’s top drug lords, threatens to expose Chavez regime’s involvement in cocaine trafficking
IASW | Monday, April 30th, 2012 | No Comments »
Walid “The Turk” Makled, a portly Venezuelan of Syrian descent described as “the king of kingpins” by US officials, went on trial in Venezuelan earlier this month, where he faces indictment over a $1.4 billion (£1 billion) drug empire that he claims was built with help from Chavez officials.
A part-owner in a Venezuelan airline, “Aeropostal”, Mr Makled, 48, is said to have pioneered the use of passenger airliners to export cocaine out of Latin America, a bigger, faster shipping method than the small private jets and boats traditionally used by smugglers.One of his planes, a DC-9 nicknamed “Cocaine One” by drug enforcement officials, had nearly six tonnes of the drug on board when it was searched by police in Mexico; the drug was stashed in 120 suitcases scattered across the 90 passenger seats, according to a separate indictment brought in New York....
...........................
As I've said above and elsewhere for years - investigate the first reports on the bust of that DC-9 and you will find that DEA Michele Leonhart's criminal friends at Titan Corp San Diego have their prints and SIGNATURES ALL OVER THE PAPER WORK ! Hugo Chavez signature will be found no where nor any reason to believe he had any connection whatsoever anymore than Saddam Husdsein or Iraq had anything to do with 9/11 !
..........................
As you can read below from mainstream media McClatchy News service that unlike most main stream media happens to be doing its job very well on September 2007 - the plane that crashed with at least 3.5 acknowledged tons of cocaine in the Yuactan in Mexico is not only a CIA connected Gulfstream plane but a 'Guantanamo rendition' plane meaning that Hillary Clinton's corrupt drug trafficking State Department is culpable as well as our own military that controls Guantanamo and Americans should have been demanding answers years ago.Instead we are force fed lies by Leonhart's and Barack Obama's DEA WHO HAVE BEEN COVERING UP,EVER SINCE,FOR THE W BUSH ADMINISTATION WHOSE 'WATCH' IT OCCURED ON ! Not surprising when ione considers just how close the Clintons and the Bush crime family really is and has been at least since Arkansas under Governor Bill Clinton colluded in Iran-Contraa drug running there in the 1980s.
However what to me is even more shocking than a CIA connection to the cocaine planes,(while the U.S.military in charge of Guantanamo pretends to look the other way), is the Jewish Russian mafia connections that I and others have reiterated as well for years !And these Jewish Russian mafioi billionaires 'coincidentally' happen tio be bribers or 'campaign contributers to Hillary Clinton as well ex NYC Mayor Rudy Giulialini who both covered Isaeli involvement in 9/11/01 that besides 300 victims at the WTC that day led to many more Americans killed and xcrippled for life in Iraq and Afghanistan and no doubt billions of dollars in war profits for their 'friends'.
And it would appear that the 4 Mexican generals were prostitutes to al of the above named criminals and more.......
http://www.narconews.com/Issue67/article4621.html
US, Mexican Officials Brokering Deals with Drug “Cartels,” WikiLeaks Documents Show
Revelation Exposed in Email Correspondence Between
Private Intelligence Firm and Mexican Diplomat
By Bill Conroy
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
August 20, 2012
A high-ranking Sinaloa narco-trafficking organization member’s claim that US officials have struck a deal with the leadership of the Mexican “cartel” appears to be corroborated in large part by the statements of a Mexican diplomat in email correspondence made public recently by the nonprofit media group WikiLeaks.......
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2007/09/27/20060/who-owned-drug-plane-that-crashed.html
Who owned drug plane that crashed in Mexico?
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Jay Root and Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers
MEXICO CITY — U.S. authorities are assisting the Mexican government in the investigation of an American business jet that crashed near Cancun this week with four tons of cocaine on board, officials said Thursday.
One of the men listed as the registered owners of the plane, Joao Luiz Malago, said in a telephone interview from Brazil that his Florida-based company sold the aircraft for $2 million on Sept. 16 to a Lakeland, Fla., man and his partner, who Malago believed was from Miami.
Malago said he feared the man was dead because he hasn't been picking up the phone.
Officials at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico had no information on any American citizens being killed or arrested in connection with the aircraft, a 1975 model Gulfstream II.
"We're in the process of a judicial investigation that the Mexican government is conducting and we are providing information,'' said an embassy official, who wasn't authorized to speak on the record. "Part of that investigation is to find out more about where this plane came from and who had it before.''
Some news reports have linked the plane to the transport of terrorist suspects to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but those reports cite logs that indicate only that the plane flew twice between Washington, D.C., and Guantanamo and once between Oxford, Conn., and Guantanamo. No terrorist suspects are known to have been transferred to Guantanamo directly from the United States.
The jet, carrying the tail number N987SA, changed hands twice in recent weeks. But how it ended up in the hands of suspected drug traffickers remains a mystery.
The Mexican attorney general's office said the blue and white Gulfstream II crashed on Monday in a remote jungle area on the Yucatan Peninsula. Authorities seized 132 bags of cocaine weighing four tons. Two men were arrested and jailed on drug trafficking charges in Merida, officials said. They declined to identify the men, however.
The aircraft was sold on Aug. 30 to Donna Blue Aircraft, owned by two Brazilians: Malago and his partner Eduardo Dias Guimaraes. In separate telephone interviews from different parts of Brazil, both men said they'd sold the aircraft to two Florida men on Sept. 16.
"We are not the owners of the plane," said Guimaraes, reached in Goiania in central Brazil.
He deferred most questions to his partner, Malago, who said from Sao Paulo that Donna Blue purchased the aircraft in July from a company that had owned it for 10 years, and then flipped it quickly to two Florida businessmen who paid for it in full.
McClatchy is withholding the names of the alleged new owners of the plane because they couldn't be reached for confirmation.
The Gulfstream was awaiting documentation when it departed on Sept. 18 at 5:10 pm from Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport to Toluca, outside Mexico City, Malago said. He said he learned of Monday's crash after receiving a call from an insurance company, but had been unable to reach the new owner by phone and feared he was dead.
He said he knew nothing of the plane's history or what use it had been put to previously. He said he'd been a pilot for 25 years and had bought and sold planes throughout Latin America. "Generally you don't know the history of the plane," he said.
At the time of the Guantanamo flights, the plane's operation was managed by Air Rutter International, a California-based air charter service, but was owned by someone else. Air Rutter's owner, Bill Cripe, refused to identify that owner, except to say he was a reputable businessman. Cripe also said he didn't know about any flights to Guantanamo.
(Root, of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, reported from Mexico City. Hall reported from Washington.)
McClatchy Newspapers 2007
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2007/09/27/20060/who-owned-drug-plane-that-crashed.html#storylink=cpy
........................
http://www.madcowprod.com/2012/08/09/investigation-arrest-4-mexican-generals-began-downed-cia-drug-plane/#more-1407
Arrest of 4 Mexican Generals linked to downed CIA drug plane
Posted on August 9, 2012 by Daniel Hopsicker
The investigation and recent arrest of four prominent Generals in the Mexican Army on charges of protecting cocaine flights for Mexican drug cartels began with a series of seismic shifts in the drug trade that were set in motion more than five years ago by two American-registered planes from St Petersburg Florida —a DC9 airliner (N900SA) and a Gulfstream business jet(N987SA)—caught carrying almost 10 tens of cocaine on Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula.....
.......................
http://extrados.mforos.com/606888/6391401-avion-cia-con-coca-mafia-ruso-judia-giuliani-cardoen/
[cia-drugs] Hillary Clinton flew on plane owned by company linked to CIA renditions and Russian Jewish organized crime
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20071015 Hillary Clinton flew on plane owned by company linked to CIA renditions and organized crime publication date: Oct 15, 2007 Previous | Next October 15, 2007 -- Hillary Clinton flew on plane owned by company linked to CIA renditions and organized crime On September 24, 2007, a Gulfstream II (tail number N987SA) crashed landed in Yucatan, Mexico with 3.3 metric tons (3.7 tons) of cocaine on board.
The plane had recently been sold to Donna Blue Aircraft, Inc. of Coconut Creek, Florida, a firm owned by two Brazilians, and re-sold, shortly before the crash, to two Florida businessmen. N987SA had also flown patterns to and from Guantanamo Bay similar to those flown by CIA rendition aircraft Before being sold to Donna Blue, the Gulfstream had been owned by Air Rutter International, a firm with offices in Garden City, New York; Long Beach and Irvine, California, whose owner is Arik Kislin, the son of Sam Kislin. N987SA was owned by Kislin's business partner, William Achenbaum, an owner, along with Arik Kislin, of Manhattan's Hotel Gansevoort.
The plane had recently been sold to Donna Blue Aircraft, Inc. of Coconut Creek, Florida, a firm owned by two Brazilians, and re-sold, shortly before the crash, to two Florida businessmen. N987SA had also flown patterns to and from Guantanamo Bay similar to those flown by CIA rendition aircraft Before being sold to Donna Blue, the Gulfstream had been owned by Air Rutter International, a firm with offices in Garden City, New York; Long Beach and Irvine, California, whose owner is Arik Kislin, the son of Sam Kislin. N987SA was owned by Kislin's business partner, William Achenbaum, an owner, along with Arik Kislin, of Manhattan's Hotel Gansevoort.
Air Rutter leased out the aircraft. WMR has learned that another Air Rutter Gulfstream II (tail number N216RR) has flown presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, including a January 2007 stop in Des Moines, Iowa. The plane, which has a crew of 3, including a jump seat for a flight attendant, and can handle up to 13 passengers, has a fully galley, a private lavatory, plush leather seats, conference seats and table, CD/DVD entertainment system, a 21 inch monitor, satellite telephone system, and even an espresso machine.
On October 9, 2007, WMR reported: Arik's uncle, Semyon (Sam) Kislin, a member of the New York City Economic Development Board and immigrant from Odessa, has poured substantial political donations into the past campaigns in New York of Hillary Clinton and [Rudolph] Giuliani. He has also contributed to past campaigns of New York Senator Charles Schumer, former Republican Senator Alphonse D'Amato, and President Bill Clinton. The Center for Public Integrity has previously reported that a 1996 Interpol report connected Sam Kislin's Trans Commodities, Inc. to two reputed Uzbek mobsters, Lev and Mikhail Chernoy.
The Interpol connected Kislin's firm to the Chernoys' fraud and embezzlement schemes. Kislin confirmed that Mikhail Chernoy had been employed by his Trans Commodities firm. The Chernoy brothers are citizens of Israel. [The Chenoys have been linked to a worldwide empire of front companies and corporate shells in Monaco, the Bahamas, Cyprus, Switzerland, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Israel, the Cayman Islands, Western Samoa, London, Isle of Man, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Brighton Beach (Brooklyn), Liechtenstein, and Vanuatu].
Between 1994 and 1997, Sam Kislin and his wife Ludmila, gave Giuliani $14,250 in contributions. In 1997, after Giuliani maxed out on his GOP contributions, $9.7 million, Kislin donated $30,000 to Giuliani through the Liberal Party, the other ticket on which Giuliani was running for re-election as mayor. In May 1999, Sam Kislin co-chaired a Giuliani Senate race fundraiser at the Sheraton Hotel and Towers in New York. The gathering raised $2.1 million for Giuliani's aborted senate campaign. Arik Kislin contributed $1000 to Giuliani's 1995 mayoral campaign and his Blonde Management shared office space with Sam Kislin's Trans Commodities. Sam Kislin, his wife Ludmila, their son David, and daughter Regina gave $2000 to Schumer's 1998 Senate campaign.
Sam also gave Schumer's opponent, D'Amato, $1000. Sam Kislin is also a prominent supporter of the United Jewish Appeal and Israel. Arik Kislin gave Hillary Clinton $4000 in 2006, specifically on Sept. 12, 2006. That same day an Olya Kislin also donated $4000 to Hillary Clinton. On October 1, 2007, the New York Post reported that an ex-employee of Air Rutter, Mark Billey, subsequently arrested on federal child sex charges, said he noted a number of armed U.S. Marshals at Air Rutter's facilities in Long Beach, however, given the connection between the firm and Clinton, the federal agents may have been part of Senator Clinton's Secret Service detail.
Clinton has made several fundraising visits to the Los Angeles area over the past year. On October 9, WMR also reported that Arik Kislin is associated with another airline company, Skookum Air, Inc. Government records indicate that Clinton's N216RR was owned by Skookum Air, as well as Air Rutter International, with the actual registered owner listed as GS-II Holdings, LLC, a firm registered in Delaware with offices listed at 35 E. 21st St. Suite 500, New York, NY. On October 4, 2007, when Senator Clinton visited Chicago to attend a "Republicans for Hillary" fundraiser at the Hyatt Regency, N216RR was parked at Chicago Midway Airport.
Recently, N216RR has been put up for sale.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/11/colombian-president-uribe-extradition-drug
Ex-Colombian president's family face US extradition over drugs charges
Álvaro Uribe's niece and her mother are accused of having ties to
Sinaloa cartel drug lord, Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán
Sibylla Brodzinsky in Bogotá
guardian.co.uk, Monday 11 June 2012 11.36 BST
Ex-Colombian president Álvaro Uribe. His niece and her mother are
accused of having ties to the head of Mexico's Sinaloa drugs cartel.
Photograph: Fernando Vergara/AP
A niece of the former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe has been
singled out by US officials as having ties to a drug trafficking clan
while her mother awaits extradition to the US over claims she worked
together with the world most wanted drug trafficker.
Dolly Cifuentes Villa was arrested last year after a request from a US
federal court for alleged ties to the head of Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel,
Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán. Her daughter Ana Maria Uribe Cifuentes was
recently placed on the US Treasury's list of people identified as
acting on behalf of drug trafficking or terrorist organizations.
According to an investigation published by the Nuevo Arco Iris
political research centre in Bogotá, Uribe Cifuentes is the daughter
of former president Álvaro Uribe's brother Jaime, who died of throat
cancer in 2001.
Both women are alleged to belong to the Cifuentes Villa clan which,
according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, trafficked at least
30 tonnes of cocaine to the US between 2009 and 2011, and laundered
the proceeds in several Latin American countries including Colombia.
On Friday, Colombian police announced they had seized US$15m (£10m) in
assets from the Sinaloa cartel, owned by Cifuentes Villa and two of
her brothers on behalf of El Chapo.
On Sunday, Álvaro Uribe denied any knowledge of Jaime's relationship
with Cifuentes Villa, or the existence of his niece, despite the fact
the investigation has a fax of a birth certificate declaring Jaime
Uribe as her father.
"My brother Jaime died in 2001, married to Astrid Velez, they had two
children ... Any other romantic relationship that my brother may have
had was part of his personal life and is unknown to me," Álvaro Uribe
tweeted on Sunday. He denied Jaime was ever linked to the drug lord
Pablo Escobar.
According to the Nuevo Arco Iris investigation, Jaime Uribe was
arrested and interrogated by the army in 1986 after detectives
discovered calls had been made from his carphone to Escobar, leader of
the Medellín cartel.
Álvaro Uribe acknowledged that his brother had been arrested but said
he had been released and charges were dropped, claiming Jaime was
recovering from throat surgery in a local hospital at the time the
calls were made. "His car phone was cloned by criminals," Alvaro Uribe
tweeted.
The Uribe family has long faced accusations of ties to drug
trafficking. A US intelligence report from 1991, declassified in 2004,
identified Álvaro Uribe as a "close friend" of Escobar, who was
"dedicated to collaboration with the Medellín cartel". It also says
Uribe's father was murdered "for his connection with the narcotic
(sic) traffickers". Officially Uribe's father died while trying to
resist being kidnapped by leftist guerrillas in 1983.
The US state department disavowed the intelligence report when it was
published, during Uribe's second year in office, saying it had "no
credible information" to substantiate the information.
Another Uribe brother, Santiago, isbeing investigated over the alleged
founding and leadership of a rightwing paramilitary group, while
Uribe's cousin Mario lost his seat in the senate and was jailed for
seven and a half years over ties to paramilitaries, main players in
Colombia's drug trade.
• This article was amended on 22 June 2012 because the original said
Ana Maria Uribe Cifuentes is awaiting extradition to the US. While her
mother, Dolly Cifuentes Villa, is in jail awaiting extradition, Uribe
Cifuentes has no charges against her beyond being designated as having
links to the Cifuentes Villa clan by the US Treasury. This has been
corrected.
................
http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/
Friday, June 15, 2012
American Narcos: The Real 'Masters of Paradise'
As the body count climbs across Mexico, the drugs continue flowing
across the border by the ton.
Despite the evident disconnect--a "war" on drugs that increases the
supply while lowering the price, in the best tradition of our reigning
"free market" ideology--the American media regales the public with
fairy tales of heroic "warriors" doing battle with murderous gangsters
named "Joaquín," "Jorge" and "Amado."
The fact is, more likely than not, the real narcos taking the biggest
cut from deep inside the reeking abattoir of the grisly trade have far
less prosaic names like "Brett," "Ethan" or "Jason."
'The Only Liquid Investment Capital'
Earlier this month, The Observer reported that "The vast profits made
from drug production and trafficking are overwhelmingly reaped in rich
'consuming' countries--principally across Europe and in the US--rather
than war-torn 'producing' nations such as Colombia and Mexico, new
research has revealed."
Journalist Ed Vulliamy informed us that the authors of that report
provide compelling evidence that "financial regulators in the west are
reluctant to go after western banks in pursuit of the massive amount
of drug money being laundered through their systems."
Indeed, at the height of the global financial crisis Antonio Maria
Costa, then the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime told The
Observer "he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime
were 'the only liquid investment capital' available to some banks on
the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn
(£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a
result."
"In many instances," Costa said, "the money from drugs was the only
liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was
the banking system's main problem and hence liquid capital became an
important factor."
"Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs
trade and other illegal activities... There were signs that some banks
were rescued that way." While Costa "declined to identify countries or
banks that may have received any drugs money, he said the money is now
a part of the official system and had been effectively laundered."
In other words, for dodgy bankers it was "accounts balanced" and an
excuse to buy a new Armani suit or two, a case of 20-year-old single
malt or that vacation home for the trophy wife, no questions asked.
Selective Prosecutions
In stark contrast to the impunity enjoyed by our capitalist overlords,
The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Treasury Department
"slapped sanctions on two key operatives of the Sinaloa drug cartel"
last Thursday.
The Journal informed us that "Kingpin Act sanctions were placed on
Maria Alajandrina Salazar Hernandez and Jesus Alfredo Guzmán Salazar,
the wife and son of Joaquín "Chapo" Guzmán, the fugitive drug lord who
heads the Sinaloa Cartel."
Also last week, the Associated Press reported that Sandra Ávila
Beltrán, whom the media dubbed "La Reina del Pacífico" (The Queen of
the Pacific), can be extradited to the United States "where she faces
cocaine-related charges." Ávila was arrested in Mexico City in 2007
and awaits prosecution on money laundering charges.
A third-generation drug trafficker, Ávila is the niece of of Miguel
Ángel Félix Gallardo, onetime godfather of the Guadalajara Cartel now
serving a 40-year prison term for the 1984 murder of DEA agent Enrique
Camarena. Camarena was kidnapped and tortured to death after he
uncovered evidence linking the CIA and Oliver North's sordid
"Enterprise" to drug trafficking Nicaraguan Contras during the Reagan
administration.
And just this week, The Guardian reported that two relatives of former
Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, "are awaiting extradition to the US
over claims they had ties to the world's most wanted drug lord."
"Ana Maria Uribe Cifuentes and her mother, Dolly Cifuentes Villa, were
arrested last year after a request from a US federal court for alleged
ties to the head of Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquín 'El Chapo'
Guzmán."
According to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), "both women
are alleged to belong to the Cifuentes Villa clan," which DEA claims
"trafficked at least 30 tonnes of cocaine to the US between 2009 and
2011, and laundered the proceeds in several Latin American countries
including Colombia."
Drug trafficking allegations have long swirled around the Uribe
family. A 1991 Defense Intelligence Agency report published by The
National Security Archive pointedly stated that during his tenure in
the Colombian Senate, Uribe was a "close personal friend of Pablo
Escobar" and was "dedicated to collaboration with the Medellín [drug]
cartel at high government levels."
The document went on to assert that before becoming a key U.S.
"partner in the drug war," and rewarded with some $3 billion under
Plan Colombia to "fight drugs," Uribe "was linked to a business
involved in narcotics activities in the United States" and "has worked
for the Medellín cartel."
Although the U.S. government disavowed that report, for purely
political reasons I might add, several members of Uribe's family,
including the president's cousin, Mario Uribe Escobar, the former
President of the Colombian Congress, was convicted and removed from
office over his close ties to the far-right, drug trafficking
paramilitary death squad, the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, or AUC.
In announcing sanctions against the Guzmán clan, Adam Szubin, the
director of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, said in a
statement: "This action builds on Treasury's aggressive efforts,
alongside its law enforcement partners, to target individuals who
facilitate Chapo Guzmán's drug trafficking operations and to pursue
the eventual dismantlement of his organization, which is culpable in
untold violence."
While Chapo, Inc. earned honorable mention at No. 1153 on Forbes
"World's Billionaires List," and may very well be responsible for the
estimated 25% of illegal drugs trafficked into the United States as
the DEA alleges, his place at No. 55 on Forbes list of "The World's
Most Powerful People," sandwiched between PIMCO founder and "Bond
King" Bill Gross and Ahmed Shuja Pasha, Director-General of Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence agency, speak volumes about the rather
interesting juxtapositions (parapolitically speaking, that is!)
between the worlds of finance, crime and covert operations.
Citing findings by two Colombian academics, Alejandro Gaviria and
Daniel Mejía in their study, Anti-Drugs Policies In Colombia:
Successes, Failures And Wrong Turns, Ed Vulliamy disclosed "that 2.6%
of the total street value of cocaine produced remains within the
country, while a staggering 97.4% of profits are reaped by criminal
syndicates, and laundered by banks, in first-world consuming
countries."
Gaviria told The Observer, "Colombian society has suffered to almost
no economic advantage from the drugs trade, while huge profits are
made by criminal distribution networks in consuming countries, and
recycled by banks which operate with nothing like the restrictions
that Colombia's own banking system is subject to."
Co-author Daniel Mejía added: "The whole system operated by
authorities in the consuming nations is based around going after the
small guy, the weakest link in the chain, and never the big business
or financial systems where the big money is."
Where, inquiring minds can't help but wonder, are Treasury's
"aggressive efforts" when it comes to those simple, yet readily
demonstrable facts?
But like drug cartels, banks and the "old boy" networks who run them
have names. I'll give you a hint: they're not self-styled "Lords of
the Heavens," though they just might think of themselves as proverbial
"Masters of the Universe."
A case in point. Back in 2000 when Narco News publisher Al Giordano
and Mario Menéndez, a reporter for the Mexican newspaper Por Esto!
were sued in a New York court for libel by Banamex-Citigroup, Giordano
wrote that "The true bosses of the illegal drug trade do not appear on
the FBI 'Most Wanted' list."
No, Giordano averred, "The Chief Operating Officers of drug
trafficking are not Mexicans, nor Colombians: they are US and European
bankers, those who launder the illicit proceeds of drug trafficking.
Institutions like Citibank of New York--as this report documents--are
the true beneficiaries of the prohibition on drugs and its illegal
profits."
While Chapo Guzmán's family are now targets of Treasury Department
sanctions, what can we learn from recent reporting on Justice
Department inaction when it came to prosecuting officers of America's
fourth largest bank, Wachovia, bought by Wells Fargo & Co. in 2008 at
the height of the capitalist financial meltdown?
Charlotte: The World's Narco Capital?
In landmark exposés of corporate greed, criminality and corruption,
Bloomberg Markets Magazine and The Observer revealed in 2010 and 2011
respectively, that Wachovia was up to its eyeballs in laundering hot
money for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels.
As I reported in 2010 on Wachovia's foray into money-laundering for
Chapo Guzmán's Sinaloa Cartel (see: "All in the 'Family.' Global Drug
Trade Fueled by Capitalist Elites," Antifascist Calling, July 20,
2010) then-CEO, G. Kennedy "Ken" Thompson, a former president of the
Federal Reserve Board's Advisory Committee and Bush Ranger who raised
some $200,000 for W's 2004 presidential campaign, was buying up
competing banks faster than you can say "credit default swaps."
By the time Wells Fargo bought Wachovia at the fire-sale price of
$12.8 billion, the bank and Thompson, who had "retired at the request
of the board," were in deep trouble.
Prior to the takeover, Wachovia had embarked on a veritable shopping
spree. After the firm's 2001 merger with First Union Bank, Wachovia
merged with the Prudential Securities division of Prudential
Financial, Inc., with Wachovia controlling the lion's share of that
firm's $532.1 billion in assets. Following this coup, the bank then
bought-out Metropolitan West Securities, adding a $50 billion
portfolio of securities and loans to their Lending division. In 2004,
Wachovia followed-up with the $14.3 billion acquisition of SouthTrust
Corporation.
Apparently flush with cash and new market clout, Wachovia set it
sights on acquiring California-based Golden West Financial. Golden
West operated branches under the name World Savings Bank and was the
nation's second largest savings and loan. At the time of the buy-out,
Golden West had over $125 billion in assets. For Wachovia and
Thompson, it was a deal too far.
A cash-crunch soon followed. Now exposed to risky loans, including
toxic adjustable rate mortgages acquired as a result of the Golden
West deal, which Thompson had described as Wachovia's "crown jewel,"
the firm's loan portfolios were hammered by heavy losses during the
subprime mortgage meltdown.
While the bank had reported some $2.3 billion in earnings during the
first quarter of 2007, by 2008 they were reporting heavy losses that
topped $8.9 billion by the fourth quarter. It was panic time in
Charlotte.
And where did some of that "liquid capital" come from which enabled
Wachovia's reckless expansion?
"One customer that Wachovia took on in 2004 was Casa de Cambio Puebla
SA," Bloomberg Markets reported. The Puebla, Mexico currency exchange
was the brainchild of Pedro Alatorre Damy, a "businessman" who "had
created front companies for cartels."
Alatorre, and 70 others connected to his network were arrested in 2007
by Mexican law enforcement officials. Authorities discovered that the
accused money launderer and airline broker for the Sinaloa Cartel
controlled 23 accounts at the Wachovia Bank branch in Miami and that
it held some $11 million, subsequently frozen by U.S. regulators.
In 2008, a Miami federal grand jury indicted Alatorre, now awaiting
trial in Mexico along with three other executives, charging them with
drug trafficking and money laundering, accusing the company of using
"shell firms to launder $720 million through U.S. banks." The Justice
Department is currently seeking Alatorre's extradition from Mexico.
Despite the fact that Wachovia's Miami office had been designated by
federal investigators a "high-intensity money laundering and related
financial crime area," in a "high-intensity drug trafficking area,"
The Observer reported that even in the face of internal warnings from
their own anti-money laundering investigators, Wachovia did nothing to
stop the illicit flow of hot funds.
With America's housing bubble now fully-inflated, and warning signs
that the speculative boom would soon go bust, one can only surmise
that the need for liquidity at any price, had driven Wachovia to play
dumb where shady, yet highly-profitable "arrangements" with Casa de
Cambio Puebla SA were concerned.
Bleeding cash faster than you can say "mortgage backed securities,"
Wachovia was on the hook for their 2006 $26 billion buy-out of Golden
West Financial at the peak of the bubble, a move that Bloomberg
Businessweek reported generated "resistance from his own management
team" but ignored by Thompson.
Why? "Because no one outside of Thompson and Golden West CEO Herb
Sandler seemed to like the deal from the moment it was announced," a
company insider told Businessweek.
(An alert reader pointed out when my piece appeared in 2010, that Herb
Sandler, who sold Golden West at the top of the market saying he
wanted to devote himself to "philanthropy," "now owns ProPublica, a
Left gatekeeper that goes after easy targets like racist cops ... but
which will not examine Sandler's wing of the power elite. Michael
Barker wrote a great series on this outfit and its Establishment
handlers called "Investigating the Investigators--A Critical Look at
ProPublica.")
While the buy-out may have given Thompson "the beachhead in California
he had long desired ... the ink was barely dry on the Golden West deal
in late 2006 when the housing bubble in markets including California
and Florida began to deflate."
Hammered by the housing bust, Wachovia's share price, which had risen
to $70.51 per share when the Golden West deal was announced had slid
to $5.71 per share by October 2008. In other words Wachovia, along
with the rest of the world's economy was circling the proverbial
drain.
In their Deferred Prosecution Agreement with the Justice Department,
Wells Fargo agreed not to contest charges brought against Wachovia in
the federal indictment.
Banking giant Wells was forced to admit: "On numerous occasions,
monies were deposited into a CDC [Casa de Cambio] by a drug
trafficking organization. Using false identities, the CDC then wired
that money through its Wachovia correspondent bank accounts for the
purchase of airplanes for drug trafficking organizations. On various
dates between 2004 and 2007, at least four of those airplanes were
seized by foreign law enforcement agencies cooperating with the United
States and were found to contain large quantities of cocaine."
As Ed Vulliamy reported in The Observer, although investigators from
DEA and the IRS uncovered evidence that Wachovia had laundered as much
as $378.4 billion, "a sum equivalent to one-third of Mexico's gross
national product--into dollar accounts from so-called casas de cambio
(CDCs) in Mexico," and later paid federal authorities $110 million in
forfeiture, including a $50 million fine "for failing to monitor cash
used to ship 22 tons of cocaine," no criminal proceedings were ever
brought against bank officers.
"The conclusion to the case," Vulliamy wrote, "was only the tip of an
iceberg, demonstrating the role of the 'legal' banking sector in
swilling hundreds of billions of dollars--the blood money from the
murderous drug trade in Mexico and other places in the world--around
their global operations, now bailed out by the taxpayer."
While Chapo Guzmán and other leaders of Mexican drug trafficking
organizations face federal charges that could land them in prison for
the rest of their lives, contrast the kid gloves approach taken by the
government when it comes to American narcos.
Despite serious federal money-laundering charges against Wachovia,
"smartest guy in the room" Thompson was paid $15.6 million in total
compensation by the board in 2007, fully a year after that fatal
Golden West deal went south. Nor did subsequent losses, and an
impending criminal indictment (against the bank, not its officers),
stop Wachovia from showering Thompson with a severance package worth
nearly $8 million.
Now that's juice!
'Air Cocaine'
Following extensive, years' long reporting in the trenches by MadCow
Morning News investigative journalist Daniel Hopsicker and Narco News'
Bill Conroy into the origins of two aircraft seized in Mexico with
some ten tons of cocaine on board, we learned that as many as 100
planes had been purchased with hot money laundered through Wachovia
Bank.
And when "mainstream" journalists Michael Smith and Ed Vulliamy picked
up the trail of breadcrumbs assiduously laid out by Hopsicker and
Conroy (always without attribution, mind you), they did however,
advance some previously unknown facts surrounding this sordid case.
"Just before sunset on April 10, 2006," Bloomberg's Michael Smith
reported, "a DC-9 jet landed at the international airport in the port
city of Ciudad del Carmen, 500 miles east of Mexico City."
When Army troops grew suspicious after the crew tried to "shoo them
away, saying there was a dangerous oil leak," they did what good law
enforcement officials should do: they searched the plane.
On board, they found 128 identical black suitcases "packed with 5.7
tons of cocaine, valued at $100 million. The stash was supposed to
have been delivered from Caracas to drug traffickers in Toluca, near
Mexico City, Mexican prosecutors later found. Law enforcement
officials also discovered something else."
"The smugglers," Smith wrote, "had bought the DC-9 with laundered
funds they transferred through two of the biggest banks in the U.S.:
Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America Corp."
But in breaking that story six years ago, (long before Bloomberg and
The Observer joined the hunt), Hopsicker revealed that "One of the two
owners of the DC-9 (tail number N900SA) busted at an airport in Ciudad
del Carmen in the state of Campeche, Mexico last week freighted 5.5
tons of cocaine had been appointed in 2003 to the Business Advisory
Council of the National Republican Congressional Committee by
then-Congressional Majority Leader Tom Delay, The MadCow Morning News
can exclusively report."
That plane, Hopsicker disclosed, was tricked-out by owner Brent Kovar
to impersonate a jet flown by the U.S. Transportation Security
Administration. An official-looking seal read "Sky Way Aircraft,
Protection of America's Skies," complete with the "image of a federal
eagle clutching the familiar olive branch in its talons."
And when he searched FAA and corporate records, Hopsicker learned that
"A close look at [shell company] Royal Sons reveals evidence
indicating that the firm is part of a cluster of related air charter
firms being used as dummy front companies to provide 'cover' for CIA
flights."
"The companies involved," Hopsicker averred, "include Royal Sons,
Express One International, Genesis Aviation and United Flite Inc."
"All four companies appear to be engaged in an interlocking and
time-honored Agency scheme going back 50 years: using frequent
cosmetic transfers of aircraft title to make positively identifying
the ownership of any one plane at any given time as difficult as
finding the pea under the shell in a game of three-card Monte."
Subsequent reporting by Hopsicker revealed that the second plane, a
Gulfstream II business jet (N987SA) which crash landed on the Yucatán
peninsula in 2007 with four tons of coke on board, was registered to a
"Donna Blue Aircraft, Inc." (DBA, or "doing business as") and was
previously employed as a "private charter" that did "terrorist"
rendition flights for, who else, the CIA!
As Narco News journalist Bill Conroy revealed in 2008, "At the center
of that controversy are allegations that the downed cocaine jet was
part of a CIA-backed narco-trafficking operation."
According to Conroy, the "key to the ill-fated Gulfstream II cocaine
shipment is a prolific Colombian narco-trafficker and U.S. government
informant named Jose Nelson Urrego Cardenas--who was recently arrested
by police in Panama. Urrego allegedly played a major role in
organizing the cocaine shipment as part of [Immigration and Customs
Enforcement's] Mayan Express operation."
"For those who might wonder why ICE would pursue an operation like the
Mayan Express," Conroy wrote, "it pays to keep in mind that Charles E.
Allen, under-secretary for the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), also happens to be a
veteran of the CIA and was a major player in the Iran/Contra scandal
that played out during the Reagan administration."
"One facet of Iran/Contra, as you might recall, allegedly involved the
use of CIA resources to run drugs in order to raise money to fund the
purchase of arms for the Contra rebels who were seeking to overthrow
the Sandinista government in Nicaragua."
"For ICE to be cleared to operate a high-profile overseas mission like
the Mayan Express, which allegedly involved coordination with the CIA,
it is very likely that Allen, DHS' chief intelligence guru, had to be
clued into the operation--since ICE is part of DHS."
More recently, in keeping with the dirty history of the CIA's role in
managing, not eliminating, the global drug trade, Narco News disclosed
that the Agency had a "quid-pro-quo" arrangement with Chapo Guzmán's
Sinaloa Corporation's "leadership and US government agencies seeking
to obtain information on rival narco-trafficking organizations."
In fact, as Narco News revealed last April, the federal indictment
against Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla claims "he served as the
'logistical coordinator' for the 'cartel,' helping to oversee an
operation that imported into the U.S. 'multi-ton quantities of cocaine
... using various means, including but not limited to, Boeing 747
cargo aircraft, private aircraft ... buses, rail cars, tractor
trailers, and automobiles'."
Indeed, one of the "private aircraft" used in Chapo Guzmán's drug
importation schemes was none other than that ill-fated Gulfstream II
(N987SA) which crash-landed in the Yucatán in 2007. Purchased with
funds laundered through Wachovia Bank, the business jet was
subsequently linked by Council of Europe investigators to CIA ghost
flights.
Despite facts laid out in Zambada's federal indictment "the alleged
deal," Conroy wrote, "assured protection for the Sinaloa Cartel's
business operations while also undermining its competition--such as
the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization out of Juárez, Mexico, the
murder capital of the world."
"At the same time," Narco News reported, "the information provided by
the Sinaloa Cartel to US agencies against its rivals assures a steady
flow of drug busts and media victory headlines for US agencies and for
the Mexican government."
Conroy pointed out, "That propaganda is necessary for hoodwinking
their citizens into believing that progress is being made in the drug
war and thereby assuring the continued funding of bloated drug-war
budgets and support for failed policies that have cost the lives of
some 50,000 Mexican citizens since late 2006 and ended any hope of a
productive life for hundreds of thousands of US citizens--most wasting
away in US prisons and not a small number the victims of street
homicides linked to drug deals gone bad."
Call it business as usual in "God's country," that "shining city upon a hill."
Past as Prologue
If history is a guide to current practices, the CIA has long-relied on
financing black Agency operations through dodgy banks and the bankers
who run them.
Amongst the swindlers who have profited from cosy relations with the
Agency, readers no doubt are reminded of Paul Helliwell's Castle Bank
Bank & Trust; Michael Hand, Frank Nugan and Bernie Houghton's
Nugan-Hand Bank; Agha Hasan Abedi's Bank of Credit and Commerce
International (BCCI); or more recently, as Antifascist Calling
disclosed two years ago, convicted fraudster R. Allen Stanford's
multibillion dollar Ponzi scheme disguised as a "full-service bank,"
Stanford International.
That all four banks collapsed in ignominy and scandal as investors
were bilked out of billions of dollars in deposits amid charges that
these financial black holes were little more than conduits for
organized crime and intelligence operations, only underscores the
inescapable fact that for secret state outfits like the CIA, crime
pays.
Two years after the Wachovia scandal broke amid deafening media
silence in the U.S., Daniel Mejía told The Observer: "Overall, there's
great reluctance to go after the big money. They don't target those
parts of the chain where there's a large value added. In Europe and
America the money is dispersed--once it reaches the consuming country
it goes into the system, in every city and state. They'd rather go
after the petty economy, the small people and coca crops in Colombia,
even though the economy is tiny."
"It's an extension of the way they operate at home," Mejía said. "Go
after the lower classes, the weak link in the chain--the little guy,
to show results. Again, transferring the cost of the drug war on to
the poorest, but not the financial system and the big business that
moves all this along."
Given the corrupt trajectory of the "War on Drugs," this should not
surprise anyone. As Peter Dale Scott wrote in Deep Events and the
CIA's Global Drug Connection: "The global drug connection is not just
a lateral connection between CIA field operatives and their
drug-trafficking contacts. It is more significantly a global financial
complex of hot money uniting prominent business, financial and
government as well as underworld figures."
According to Scott, this global criminal-elite nexus "maintains its
own political influence by the systematic supply of illicit finances,
favors and even sex to politicians around the world, including leaders
of both parties in the United States. The result is a system that
might be called indirect empire, one that, in its search for foreign
markets and resources, is satisfied to subvert existing governance
without imposing a progressive alternative."
Scott's analysis has certainly been borne out by honest law
enforcement officials.
Martin Woods, a former senior detective with London's Metropolitan
police anti-drugs squad joined Wachovia in 2005 as the bank's chief
anti-money laundering investigator and paid a steep price for his
diligence.
Hounded out of his position when he refused to stop filing suspicious
activity reports to headquarters in Charlotte over dubious deposit
practices by Wachovia branches in London and Miami, Woods told The
Observer: "New York and London have become the world's two biggest
laundries of criminal and drug money, and offshore tax havens. Not the
Cayman Islands, not the Isle of Man or Jersey. The big laundering is
right through the City of London and Wall Street."
"Meanwhile," Woods said, "the drug industry has two products: money
and suffering. On one hand, you have massive profits and enrichment.
On the other, you have massive suffering, misery and death. You cannot
separate one from the other."
With hundreds of billions of dollars washing through the system each
and every year, there aren't many incentives to collar the big boys.
And you can take that to the bank...
(Image courtesy of Daniel Hopsicker's MadCow Morning News)
Posted by Antifascist at 9:10 AM 1 comment: Labels: CIA, Colombia,
Corporate Corruption, Crime, Managed Drug Trade, Mexico, War on Drugs
........................
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2012/07/mexico-s-pe-nieto-hires-us-propaganda-firm
Mexico’s Peña Nieto hires US propaganda firm
CLSA is same media-spin company used by Honduran coup regime
By Bill Conroy
Via The Narcosphere
en español... Enrique Peña Nieto contrata compañía propagandística de EEUU
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