CounterPunch | The big thing I learned was that poor people have zero access to justice.
Nor do the middle class.
After the June 21st debacle, a semi-retired lawyer friend
advised me to file a Motion for Reconsideration, a request to the judge
to take another look and perhaps realize that he made some mistakes. The
law gives you 10 days to file.
My Motion for Reconsideration was one of numerous motions I would have to draft and file myself while pro se.
It was incredibly expensive, wildly burdensome and so daunting I bet
99% of people without a lawyer would throw up their hands and give up.
I’m the 1%.
I’m a writer. I went to an Ivy League school; I was a history major
so I’m good at research. I used to work at a bank, where I worked on
legal documents so I’m familiar with legalese. So I researched what
works and doesn’t work in a Motion for Reconsideration. I crafted an
argument. I deployed the proper tone using the right words and phrases.
Most people, not having the necessary skills or educational
attainment, wouldn’t stand a prayer of writing a legal brief like this
motion. Mine may fail — but the judge might read it and take it
seriously because it’s written correctly.
I called the court clerk to ask how to file my motion. She was
incredibly curt and mean. I’m a New Yorker so I persisted, but I could
imagine other callers being put off and forgetting the whole thing.
Schedule a date for your hearing on the court’s website, the clerk
told me. Good luck! The site had an outdated interface, was loaded with
arcane bureaucratic jargon and a design that’s byzantine and hard to
navigate. If English is your second language, forget it.
Eventually I found the place to reserve a hearing date — where I learned about the $540 filing fee.
Payable only by credit card.
No debit cards.
No Amex.
Protracted litigation against a well-funded adversary like the
Times/Tronc could easily require dozens of $540 filing fees. The poor
need not apply. Most Americans don’t have that kind of money. And what
about people who scrape up the dough but don’t have plastic?
$10 would be too much. $540 is frigging obscene.
I paid the fee, printed out the receipt as required, stapled it to
the back of my multiple required copies of the motion and went to the
Stanley Mosk Courthouse to file it. As I waited in Room 102 to have my
motions stamped by a clerk, I studied the many working-class people
waiting in the same line.
Here too, there is no consideration for the people. The clerk’s office is open Monday
to Friday 8:30 to 4:30. Most people work during those hours. Gotta file
something? You have to take time off.
Parking? Expensive and far away.
I have a dream.
I dream of a court system dedicated to equal justice before the law —
where anyone can file a motion, where there are no filing fees, where
the courthouse is open on weekends, where you can file motions by
uploading them online and there’s free parking for citizens conducting
business in the people’s house.
LATimes | In USC’s lecture halls, labs and executive offices,
Dr. Carmen A. Puliafito was a towering figure. The dean of the Keck
School of Medicine was a renowned eye surgeon whose skill in the
operating room was matched by a gift for attracting money and talent to
the university.
There was another side to the Harvard-educated physician.
During
his tenure as dean, Puliafito kept company with a circle of criminals
and drug users who said he used methamphetamine and other drugs with
them, a Los Angeles Times investigation found.
Puliafito,
66, and these much younger acquaintances captured their exploits in
photos and videos. The Times reviewed dozens of the images.
Shot
in 2015 and 2016, they show Puliafito and the others partying in hotel
rooms, cars, apartments and the dean’s office at USC.
In
one video, a tuxedo-clad Puliafito displays an orange pill on his
tongue and says into the camera, “Thought I’d take an ecstasy before the
ball.” Then he swallows the pill.
In
another, Puliafito uses a butane torch to heat a large glass pipe
outfitted for methamphetamine use. He inhales and then unleashes a thick
plume of white smoke. Seated next to him on a sofa, a young woman
smokes heroin from a piece of heated foil.
As
dean, Puliafito oversaw hundreds of medical students, thousands of
professors and clinicians, and research grants totaling more than $200
million. He was a key fundraiser for USC, bringing in more than $1
billion in donations, by his estimation.
theatlantic | Epidemics are hard to cover. Navigating the gaps between the private,
personal, and societal and managing to be relatable while also true to
science is a tough part of health reporting, generally. Doing those
things in the middle of public panic—and its attendant
misinformation—requires deftness. And performing them while also minding
the social issues that accompany every epidemic means reporters have to
dig deep, both into multiple disciplines and into ethics. With multiple
competing narratives, politics, and the sheer scale of disease, it’s
often easy to forget the individuals who suffer.
That’s why I was struck by a recent article in the New York Times
by Catherine Saint Louis that chronicles approaches for caring for
newborns born to mothers who are addicted to opioids. The article is
remarkable in its command and explanation of the medical and policy
issues at play in the ongoing epidemic, but its success derives from
something more than that. Saint Louis expertly captures the human
stories at the intersection of the wonder of childbirth and the grip of
drug dependency in a Kentucky hospital, all while keeping the epidemic
in view.
One particular passage stands out:
Jay’la Cy’anne was born
with a head of raven hair and a dependence on buprenorphine. Ms. Clay
took the drug under the supervision of Dr. Barton to help reduce her
oxycodone cravings and keep her off illicit drugs.
“Dr. Barton saved my
life, and he saved my baby’s life,” Ms. Clay said. She also used cocaine
on occasion in the first trimester, she said, but quit with his
encouragement.
[...]
For months, Ms. Clay
had stayed sober, expecting that she’d be allowed to take her baby home.
Standing in the hospital corridor, her dark hair up in a loose
ponytail, she said, “I’m torn up in my heart.”
Generally, treatment
for drug-dependent babies is expensive and can go on for months.
Nationally, hospitalization costs rose to $1.5 billion in 2012, from
$732 million in 2009, according to researchers at Vanderbilt University.
In the space of a few paragraphs, the
story introduces a mother and child and the drug dependency with which
they both struggle, and also expands its scope outwards to note the
nature of the epidemic in which they are snared. It doesn’t ignore the
personal choices involved in drug abuse, but—as is typical for reporting
on other health problems—it considers those choices among a
constellation of etiologies. In a word, the article is humanizing, and
as any public health official will attest, humanization and the empathy
it allows are critical in combating any epidemic.
The
article is an exemplar in a field of public-health-oriented writing
about the opioid crisis—the most deadly and pervasive drug epidemic in
American history—that has shaped popular and policy attitudes about the
crisis. But the wisdom of that field has not been applied equally in
recent history. The story of Jamie Clay and Jay’la Cy’anne stood out to
me because it is so incongruous with the stories of “crack babies” and
their mothers that I’d grown up reading and watching.
nbcboston | "We started seeing it last year here
and there. But now, it's just raining needles everywhere we go," said
Morrison, a burly, tattooed construction worker whose Clean River
Project has six boats working parts of the 117-mile (188-kilometer)
river.
Among the oldest tracking
programs is in Santa Cruz, California, where the community group Take
Back Santa Cruz has reported finding more than 14,500 needles in the
county over the past 4 1/2 years. It says it has gotten reports of 12
people getting stuck, half of them children.
"It's
become pretty commonplace to find them. We call it a rite of passage
for a child to find their first needle," said Gabrielle Korte, a member
of the group's needle team. "It's very depressing. It's infuriating.
It's just gross."
Some experts say the problem will ease only when more users get treatment and more funding is directed to treatment programs.
Others
are counting on needle exchange programs, now present in more than 30
states, or the creation of safe spaces to shoot up — already introduced
in Canada and proposed by U.S. state and city officials from New York to
Seattle.
Studies have found that
needle exchange programs can reduce pollution, said Don Des Jarlais, a
researcher at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai hospital in
New York.
But Morrison and Korte complain poor
supervision at needle exchanges will simply put more syringes in the
hands of people who may not dispose of them properly.
After
complaints of discarded needles, Santa Cruz County took over its
exchange from a nonprofit in 2013 and implemented changes. It did away
with mobile exchanges and stopped allowing drug users to get needles
without turning in an equal number of used ones, said Jason Hoppin, a
spokesman for the Santa Cruz County.
Forbes | According to an insider account,
the Clinton team, put together the Russia Gate narrative within 24
hours of her defeat. The Clinton account explained that Russian hacking
and election meddling caused her unexpected loss. Her opponent, Donald
Trump, was a puppet
of Putin. Trump, they said, “encourages espionage against our people.”
The scurrilous Trump dossier, prepared by a London opposition research
firm, Orbis, and paid for by unidentified Democrat donors, formed a key
part of the Clinton narrative: Trump’s sexual and business escapades in
Russia had made him a hostage of the Kremlin, ready to do its bidding.
That was Hillary's way to say that Trump is really not President of the
United States—a siren call adopted by the Democratic party and media.
Hillary and the Orbis Dossier
The most under covered story of Russia Gate is the interconnection
between the Clinton campaign, an unregistered foreign agent of Russia
headquartered in DC (Fusion GPS), and the Christopher Steele Orbis dossier.
This connection has raised the question of whether Kremlin prepared the
dossier as part of a disinformation campaign to sow chaos in the US
political system. If ordered and paid for by Hillary Clinton associates,
Russia Gate is turned on its head as collusion between Clinton
operatives (not Trump’s) and Russian intelligence. Russia Gate becomes
Hillary Gate.
Neither the New York Times, Washington Post, nor CNN has covered this explosive story. Two op-eds have appeared in the Wall Street Journal (Holman Jenkins and David Satter).
The possible Russian-intelligence origins of the Steele dossier have
been raised only in conservative publications, such as in The Federalist and National Review.
The Fusion story has been known since Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) sent a heavily-footnoted letter
to the Justice Department on March 31, 2017 demanding for his Judiciary
Committee all relevant documents on Fusion GPS, the company that
managed the Steele dossier against then-candidate Donald Trump. Grassley
writes to justify his demand for documents that: “The issue is of particular concern to the Committee given that when Fusion GPS reportedly was acting as an unregistered agent of Russian interests, it appears to have been simultaneously overseeing the creation of the unsubstantiated dossier of allegations of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians.” (Emphasis added.)
Former FBI director, James Comey, refused to answer questions about
Fusion and the Steele dossier in his May 3 testimony before the Senate
Intelligence Committee. Comey responded
to Lindsey Graham’s questions about Fusion GPS’s involvement “in
preparing a dossier against Donald Trump that would be interfering in
our election by the Russians?” with “I don’t want to say.” Perhaps he
will be called on to answer in a forum where he cannot refuse to answer.
WND | Eberwein was due to appear next Tuesday before the Haitian Senate
Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission where he was widely expected to
testify that the Clinton Foundation misappropriated Haiti earthquake
donations from international donors.
He had served as director general of the Haitian government’s
economic development agency, Fonds d’assistance économique et social,
for three years.
According to Eberwein, a paltry 0.6 percent of donations granted by
international donors to the Clinton Foundation with the express purpose
of directly assisting Haitians actually ended up in the hands of Haitian
organizations. A further 9.6 percent ended up with the Haitian
government. The remaining 89.8 percent – or $5.4 billion – was funneled
to non-Haitian organizations.
“The Clinton Foundation, they are criminals, they are thieves, they
are liars, they are a disgrace,” Eberwein said at a protest outside the
Clinton Foundation headquarters in Manhattan last year.
According to the Haiti Libre newspaper, Eberwein was said to be in
“good spirits,” with plans for the future. His close friends and
business partners are shocked by the idea he may have committed suicide.
“It’s really shocking,” said friend Gilbert Bailly. “We grew up together; he was like family.”
The Haitian government issued an official notice thanking Eberwein for his service and mourning his untimely death.
miamiherald |Klaus Eberwein,
a former Haitian government official, was found dead Tuesday in a South
Dade motel room in what the Miami-Dade medical examiner’s office is
ruling a suicide.
“He shot himself in the head,” said
Veronica Lamar, Miami-Dade medical examiner records supervisor. She
listed his time of death at 12:19 p.m.
The address where Eberwein’s body was discovered according to police, 14501 S. Dixie Hwy., is a Quality Inn.
A supporter of former Haitian
President Michel Martelly, Eberwein served as director general of the
government’s economic development agency, Fonds d’assistance économique et social,
better known as FAES. He held the position from May 2012 until February
2015 when he was replaced. He was also a partner in a popular pizza
restaurant in Haiti, Muncheez, and has a pizza — the Klaus Special —
named after him.
“It’s really shocking,” said Muncheez’s owner Gilbert Bailly. “We grew up together; he was like family.”
Bailly said he last spoke to
Eberwein, 50, two weeks ago and he was in good spirits. They were
working on opening a Muncheez restaurant in Sunrise, he said.
But it appears that Eberwein had
fallen on hard times. An Uber spokesperson confirmed that he worked as a
driver for awhile in South Florida.
During and after his government
tenure, Eberwein faced allegations of fraud and corruption on how the
agency he headed administered funds. Among the issues was FAES’
oversight of shoddy construction of several schools built after Haiti’s
devastating Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake.
Eberwein was scheduled to appear
Tuesday before the Haitian Senate’s Ethics and Anti-Corruption
Commission, the head of the commission, Sen. Evalière Beauplan
confirmed. The commission is investigating the management of PetroCaribe
funds, the money Haiti receives from Venezuela’s discounted oil
program.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article160983614.html#storylink=cpy
theconspiracyblog | How many people have died under very unusual circumstances ( ARKANCIDE )
that stood in the way of the Clinton Crime Family’s rise to wealth and
power? The deaths connected to the Clintons are so numerous and so
suspicious that there is even a term for it… ARKANCIDE (Don Adams / Died
January 7, 1997)
recode | Elon Musk doesn’t scare easily — he wants to send people
to Mars and believes that all cars will be driving themselves in the
next ten years. He’s excited about it!
But there is something that really scares Musk:
Artificial Intelligence, and the idea of software and machines taking
over their human creators.
He’s been warning people about AI for years,
and today called it the “biggest risk we face as a civilization” when
he spoke at the National Governors Association Summer Meeting in Rhode
Island.
Musk then called on the government to proactively regulate artificial intelligence before things advance too far.
“Until people see robots going down the street killing
people, they don’t know how to react because it seems so ethereal,” he
said. “AI is a rare case where I think we need to be proactive in
regulation instead of reactive. Because I think by the time we are
reactive in AI regulation, it’s too late.”
“Normally the way regulations are set up is a while bunch
of bad things happen, there’s a public outcry, and after many years a
regulatory agency is set up to regulate that industry,” he continued.
“It takes forever. That, in the past, has been bad but not something
which represented a fundamental risk to the existence of civilization.
AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization.”
ieee | Artificial intelligence software could generate highly realistic fake
videos of former president Barack Obama using existing audio and video
clips of him, a new study [PDF] finds.
Such work could one day help generate digital models of a person for
virtual reality or augmented reality applications, researchers say.
Computer scientists at the University of Washington previously revealed they could generate digital doppelgängers
of anyone by analyzing images of them collected from the Internet, from
celebrities such as Tom Hanks and Arnold Schwarzenegger to public
figures such as George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Such work suggested it
could one day be relatively easy to create such models of anybody, when
there are untold numbers of digital photos of everyone on the Internet.
The researchers chose Obama for their latest work because there were
hours of high-definition video of him available online in the public
domain. The research team had a neural net analyze millions of frames of
video to determine how elements of Obama's face moved as he talked,
such as his lips and teeth and wrinkles around his mouth and chin.
In an artificial neural network, components known as artificial
neurons are fed data, and work together to solve a problem such as
identifying faces or recognizing speech. The neural net can then alter
the pattern of connections among those neurons to change the way they
interact, and the network tries solving the problem again. Over time,
the neural net learns which patterns are best at computing solutions, an
AI strategy that mimics the human brain.
In the new study, the neural net learned what mouth shapes were
linked to various sounds. The researchers took audio clips and dubbed
them over the original sound files of a video. They next took mouth
shapes that matched the new audio clips and grafted and blended them
onto the video. Essentially, the researchers synthesized videos where
Obama lip-synched words he said up to decades beforehand.
The researchers note that similar previous research involved
filming people saying sentences over and over again to map what mouth
shapes were linked to various sounds, which is expensive, tedious and
time-consuming. In contrast, this new work can learn from millions of
hours of video that already exist on the Internet or elsewhere.
BostonGlobe | Even AI giants like Google can’t escape the impact of bias. In 2015, the company’s facial recognition software tagged dark skinned people as gorillas. Executives at FaceApp, a photo editing program, recently apologized for building an algorithm that whitened the users’ skin in their pictures. The company had dubbed it the “hotness” filter.
In
these cases, the error grew from data sets that didn’t have enough
dark-skinned people, which limited the machine’s ability to learn
variation within darker skin tones. Typically, a programmer instructs a
machine with a series of commands, and the computer follows along. But
if the programmer tests the design on his peer group, coworkers, and
family, he’s limited what the machine can learn and imbues it with
whichever biases shape his own life.
Photo apps are one thing,
but when their foundational algorithms creep into other areas of human
interaction, the impacts can be as profound as they are lasting.
The faces of one in two
adult Americans have been processed through facial recognition
software. Law enforcement agencies across the country are using this
gathered data with little oversight. Commercial facial-recognition
algorithms have generally done a better job of telling white men apart
than they do with women and people of other races, and law enforcement
agencies offer few details indicating that their systems work
substantially better. Our justice system has not decided if these
sweeping programs constitute a search, which would restrict them under
the Fourth Amendment. Law enforcement may end up making life-altering
decisions based on biased investigatory tools with minimal safeguards.
Meanwhile, judges in almost every state are using algorithms to assist in decisions about
bail, probation, sentencing, and parole. Massachusetts was sued several years ago
because an algorithm it uses to predict recidivism among sex offenders
didn’t consider a convict’s gender. Since women are less likely to
reoffend, an algorithm that did not consider gender likely overestimated
recidivism by female sex offenders. The intent of the scores was to
replace human bias and increase efficiency in an overburdened judicial
system. But, as mathematician Julia Angwin reported in ProPublica, these algorithms are using biased questionnaires to come to their determinations and yielding flawed results.
A
ProPublica study of the recidivism algorithm used in Fort Lauderdale
found that 23.5 percent of white men were labeled as being at an
elevated risk for getting into trouble again, but didn’t re-offend.
Meanwhile, 44.9 percent of black men were labeled higher risk for future
offenses, but didn’t re-offend, showing how these scores are inaccurate
and favor white men.
While the questionnaires don’t ask
specifically about skin color, data scientists say they “back into race”
by asking questions like: When was your first encounter with police?
The
assumption is that someone who comes in contact with police as a young
teenager is more prone to criminal activity than someone who doesn’t.
But this hypothesis doesn’t take into consideration that policing
practices vary and therefore so does the police’s interaction with
youth. If someone lives in an area where the police routinely stop and
frisk people,
he will be statistically more likely to have had an early encounter with
the police. Stop-and-frisk is more common in urban areas
where African-Americans are more likely to live than whites.This
measure doesn’t calculate guilt or criminal tendencies, but becomes a
penalty when AI calculates risk. In this example, the AI is not just
computing for the individual’s behavior, it is also considering the
police’s behavior.
“I’ve talked to prosecutors who say, ‘Well,
it’s actually really handy to have these risk scores because you don’t
have to take responsibility if someone gets out on bail and they shoot
someone. It’s the machine, right?’” says Joi Ito, director of the Media
Lab at MIT.
gfintegrity | My name is Jack Blum. I am a Washington attorney specializing in money laundering compliance and issues of offshore tax evasion. I am appearing on behalf the Tax Justice Network-USA and Global Financial Integrity. Both organizations endorse the bill sponsored by Senator Levin, S. 569, the Incorporation Transparency and Law Enforcement Assistance Act.
The single most important tool in the toolkit of people trying to hide money from law enforcement and tax collection is the anonymous shell corporation. These shell corporations have no physical place of business, use nominee officers and directors, and as a rule do no business in the place of incorporation. Their sole purpose is hiding where money is, who controls it, and where it is moving, from law enforcement and tax collectors. These shell companies should not be allowed remain anonymous.
States that offer corporations to individuals without insisting on information on beneficial ownership are undermining the efforts of law enforcement to prevent crime, recover stolen assets and collect tax. They are also putting the United States out of compliance with international standards for customer identification. From our perspective gathering basic information about ownership for government use is essential to protect national security and to limit financial crime and tax evasion.
Anti-money laundering compliance is dependent on 'know your customer .' Without that knowledge financial institutions cannot evaluate the legitimacy of a transaction. Knowing that one shell corporation is owned by another shell corporation is not helpful. Having the details of the "owner's" directors who are usually professional directors who work for a corporate service company in another jurisdiction is useless. Financial institutions need to know who is behind a company to judge whether the transactions they monitor are suspicious. They need to know whether the beneficial owner is on the OFAC list, the other sanctions lists is a politically exposed person.
The proposed legislation would end the all too frequent use of loopholes in State incorporation laws to hide money. Fist tap Bro. Makheru
WaPo | Not everyone in the public health community is convinced the new DARE is any better than the old DARE. A peer-reviewed study published last year found that the specific versions of the keepin’ it REAL curriculum used by DARE haven’t been tested for efficacy.
“The
systematic review revealed major shortfalls in the evidence basis for
the KiR D.A.R.E. programme,” that study’s authors conclude. "Without
empirical evidence, we cannot conclusively confirm or deny the
effectiveness of the programme. However, we can conclude that the
evidence basis for the D.A.R.E. version of KiR is weak, and that there
is substantial reason to believe that KiR D.A.R.E. may not be suited for
nationwide implementation."
There’s no doubt, however, that DARE
is currently making an effort to adopt more of an evidence-based
approach than in prior years, when the program’s practices were largely
driven by the belief that they were "pure as the driven snow." This
brings us back to the central irony of Jeff Sessions’s remarks on Tuesday, when he yearned for a return to the DARE of “the 1980s and the 1990s.”
Decades
of research are unequivocal: The DARE of yesteryear didn’t work, and it
may have actually made the drug problem worse. Instead of embracing
DARE’s new evidence-based practices, Sessions offered up a return to the
bad old days of drug policy, when decisions were driven by gut feeling
and political expediency.
theantimedia | Already, the Department of Defense has created the Sentient World Simulation, a real-time “synthetic
mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with
respect to current real-world information, such as major events, opinion
polls, demographic statistics, economic reports, and shifts in trends,” according to a working paper on the system.
In recent years, other scientists have conducted research and even
experimentation in attempts to show actual evidence of the Simulation.
Heads turned last year when theoretical physicist S. James Gate
announced he had found strange computer code in
his String Theory research. Bound inside the equations we use to
describe our universe, he says, is peculiar self-dual linear binary
error-correcting block code.
A team of German physicists has
also set out to show that the numerical constraints we see in our
universe are consistent with the kinds of limitations we would see in a
simulated universe. These physicists have invoked a non-perturbative
approach known as lattice quantum chromodynamics to try to discover whether there is an underlying grid to the space/time continuum.
So far their efforts have recreated a minuscule region of the known
universe, a sliver of a corner that is but a few femtometers across. But
this corner simulates the hypothetical lattice of the universal grid,
and their search for a corresponding physical restraint turned up a
theoretical upper limit on high-energy particles known as the
Greisen–Zatsepin–Kuzmin, or GZK cut off. In other words, there are aspects of our universe that look and behave as a simulation might.
With news that there are two anonymous tech billionaires working on a secret project to
break us out of the Matrix, it’s hard to know whether we should laugh
or scream in horror. Simulation talk is great epistemological fun and
metaphysical amusement of the highest order, but it may speak to an
underlying anxiety regarding the merging of our reality with machines,
or an underlying existential loneliness. It’s even been posited as a
solution to the Fermi Paradox. Why haven’t we met aliens? Well, because we live inside a world they built.
The drug-connected crime problem isn't all about the junkies - it's about the dealers. Especially the violent crime problem. The key to
dealing with drug crime is drying up the profits of the illegal market.
Reliance on incarceration has only made the power of organized criminal gangs stronger. It hasn't broken a single gang. A lawless marketplace staffed entirely by criminals who protect their inventory and personal safety with arsenals of weaponry and enforce and regulate business disputes with gunfire is a pretty unique business model. A global business that ranks third in revenues after arms and oil and hides its profits with sophisticated money laundering techniques that allow the top players access into corridors of political power while providing unparalleled liquidity advantages in business competition is a pretty unique business model.
Nixon's early 1970s globalization of the War on Drugs was ostensibly aimed at enlisting all UN members in a united effort to shut down drug supplies at their source. What resulted instead was much closer to a U.S. imperial protection racket for drug kingpins, with the US holding the power to confer a status of impunity on politically favored players overseas. In return, those who benefited were able to target internal law enforcement efforts at culling their business competition, which typically worked to produce results sufficient to bolster their anti-drug credibility.
In Dark Alliance the late investigative journalist Gary Webb documented connections that led through multiple Latin American countries- El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, Mexico- to drug rings operating in several regions in the US. He wasn't alone in his investigations, either.
The big picture that results when that research is reviewed is that the political and military leaders of a great many Central American and Caribbean nations during the Cold War era were provided with protected status in the transshipment of cocaine in return for maintaining pro-US policies in their countries.
General Bueso Rosa in Honduras; Hugo Banzer in Bolivia; the Salinas brothers in Mexico, and other Mexican governments before and since; Sandoval Alarcon in Guatemala; Trujillo and Noriega in Panama; the Somoza regime in Nicaragua, in the 1970s; Uribe in Colombia, Cedras/Emmanuel Constant FRAPH junta in Haiti; the JLP in Jamaica - this US policy is blatantly in effect right now in Afghanistan, the top source nation for opium and heroin in the world. It has been in effect from the outset of US intervention in Central Asia. It has become standard U.S. necropolitical operating procedure.
But back to Dark Alliance, Danilo Blandon, the Contra-connected supplier who furnished most of Rick Ross's cocaine, offered him an unprecedented deal soon after establishing that he could move large retail quantities on the street: consignment, no money down, at a kilo price that worked out to less than $20/gram.
Ross was able to move 200 kilos a month. That's over 2 tons a year, at a time when the DEA was estimating the annual US supply at 70 tons. Blandon was a true drug kingpin. Up until the Blandon-Ross connection was dismantled, with the help of Danilo Blandon, who received immunity from prosecution and earned around $200,000 as a paid FBI informant for providing testimony to take down a huge LA cocaine ring that he.was instrumental in enabling to boom to an unprecedented level.
Danilo Blandon's supplier was Norwin Meneses, who had been identified as an even bigger kingpin by US Federal law enforcement since the 1970s. Meneses was the brother of the Somoza-era chief of police, and at least one other general in Somoza's Guardia Nacionale, which eventually became the largest Contra faction, the FDN, under military commander Enrique Bermudez. Meneses also benefited from some sort of arrangement with US authorities, remaining free of prosecution, residing in the US and traveling back and forth between there and Central America without interference.
Blandon was not Meneses' only wholesaler and Meneses was not the only person involved with Contra resupply who had a long history as a major drug supplier and transporter into the USA. The Contra effort made use of a network of long-time Cold War era US intelligence/covert operations agents including a nucleus of Cuban exiles drawn from the ranks of Bay of Pigs battle veterans.
Some 8% of the 1500 Bay of Pigs veterans, about 120 of them, had been identified as kingpins as early on as the late 1960s. Mostly heroin, at that point- supplying the NYC market out of Union City, NJ. They later showed up everywhere from Southeast Asia to the Argentine Dirty War, and eventually as field operators in the Contra effort.
Speaking of the neofascist junta-era Argentine military, they became the first overseas liason to the formation of the Contras in the Reagan era, offering them a safe haven and working to train and equip the Somocista Guardia Nacionale in exile in 1981.
In the previous year, the Argentines had provided the principal base of support for the military coup in Bolivia that put the Cocaine Junta into power, in July 1980. DEA agent Michael Levine, the top field agent in the Southern Cone of Latin America at the time, contends that this was done in collaboration with the local CIA faction down there, who were bitterly opposed to Jimmy Carter's "human rights" foreign policy, which had brought pressure to bear on right-wing President Col. Hugo Banzer Suarez to relinquish his martial law "autogolpe" rule and hold elections. The Cocaine Coup successfully derailed the ascension of a civilian government to power.
Banzer had long-standing connections to the US, having been trained at the School of the Americas, Ft. Hood's armored cavalry school, and as a US diplomatic liason in DC. He was also affiliated with the Falange Socialista Boliviana, and the Latin American Anti-Communist League affiliated with WACL; with the international right-wing assassination program known as Operation Condor, along with his ideological allies in Pinochet's Chile and the Argentina junta. Banzer's family relations and associates were also busted repeatedly in the US and Canada for smuggling cocaine; one case involved his son-in-law and another his chauffeur, iirc. And one of Banzer's cousins was Luis Arce Gomez, one of the chief plotters of the Cocaine Coup.
theantimedia | Oregon’s state legislature just reduced penalties for drug possession
in a bill also intended to reduce racial profiling by law enforcement
agencies.
H.B. 2355 passed
both the House and Senate last week and reduces possession of illegal
drugs to misdemeanors rather than felonies as long as the person in
possession does not have prior drug convictions. According to a press release issued on July 7 by Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, the bill provides for “the
reduction of penalties for lower level drug offenders. The bill also
reduces the maximum penalty for Class A misdemeanors by one day to avoid
mandatory deportation for misdemeanants.”
According to the text of
the bill, drugs like LSD, MDMA, cocaine, meth, oxycodone, and heroin
are essentially decriminalized in small amounts. Each drug listed is
accompanied by the following text, indicating possession is only a
felony if:
“(a) The person possesses a usable quantity of the controlled
substance and: (A) At the time of the possession, the person has a prior
felony conviction; (B) At the time of the possession, the person has
two or more prior convictions for unlawful possession of a usable
quantity of a controlled substance.”
The “misdemeanor” title applies for varying amounts of different
drugs. For example, the maximum allowable amount of acid is up to “40
units,” while individuals may have up to five MDMA pills or less than
one gram before their “offense” crosses the line into a felony. Less
than two grams of cocaine constitutes a misdemeanor.
As Rep. Mitch Greenlick, a Democrat representing Portland, told Portland-based health outlet the Lund Report:
“We’ve got to treat people, not put them in prison. It
would be like putting them in the state penitentiary for having
diabetes… This is a chronic brain disorder and it needs to be treated
this way.”
“When you put people in prison and given them a felony conviction, you make it very hard for them to succeed,” he added.
mondoweiss | Clinton lost the battleground states of Wisconsin,
Pennsylvania, and Michigan in last year’s presidential election because
they had some of the highest casualty rates during the Iraq and
Afghanistan wars and voters there saw Clinton as the pro-war candidate.
By contrast, her pro-war positions did not hurt her
in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and California, the study says;
because those states were relatively unscathed by the Middle East wars.
The study is titled “Battlefield
Casualties and Ballot Box Defeat: Did the Bush-Obama Wars Cost Clinton
the White House?” Authors Francis Shen, associate professor at the
University of Minnesota Law School, and Dougas Kriner, a political
science professor at Boston University, strike a populist note:
With so much post-election analysis, it
is surprising that no one has pointed to the possibility that
inequalities in wartime sacrifice might have tipped the election. Put
simply:
perhaps the small slice of America that is fighting and dying for the
nation’s security is tired of its political leaders ignoring this
disproportionate burden.
Their study argues that there is a direct
relationship between those states that gained Republican votes from
Romney’s defeat in 2012 to Trump’s win in 2016 and those states that
have higher casualty rates in Middle East wars.
A new study attributes Donald Trump’s
victory last year to communities hit hardest by military casualties and
angry about being ignored. These voters, the authors suggest, saw Trump
as an “opportunity to express that anger at both political parties.”
Krayewski summarizes the data behind the conclusion:
The study… found a “significant and
meaningful relationship between a community’s rate of military sacrifice
and its support for Trump.” The statistical model it used suggested
that if Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin had suffered “even a
modestly lower casualty rate,” all three could have flipped to Hillary
Clinton, making her the president. The study controlled for party
identification, comparing Trump’s performance in the communities
selected to Mitt Romney’s performance in 2012. It also controlled for
other relevant factors, including median family income, college
education, race, the percentage of a community that is rural, and even
how many veterans there were.
And here are the authors themselves on the moral hazard at work here. The people who decide are not suffering as much.
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions is probably the single greatest disappointment for me with 45's administration. His anti-drug stance is retrograde cover for reinstituting the prosecutorial savagery which resulted in mass incarceration over the past forty years. AG support for harsh or mandatory minimum sentences, coupled with the claim that it provides a vital service in making cases as leverage to flip people to inform on their associates, was the essential recipe for transforming America into the incarceration nation.
Even when it's used as prosecutors claim it is intended to convict ringleaders, the threat of harsh or mandatory minimum sentences to intimidate people into betraying their friends and family members is ethically suspect and legally corrupt. Claiming that it's used to dismantle illegal drug networks is at best historically suspect. In terms of practical results, this policy is has wreaked havoc and proven corrosive in terms of breaking down any pre-existing structures of social trust, community, and friendship that might have been built over time. The explicit message of this policy is that treachery and betrayal is an act worthy of reward. The worst punishment is reserved for those who demonstrate loyalty and integrity. Drug Warriors justify this policy by asserting that Drug Dealers are already lower than murderers or violent rapists, and thus have no integrity to preserve, because they deal Drugs. But that isn’t the worst of it. What’s really ethically indefensible is the difference between the way the policy is described by politicians and prosecutors to the general public, and the way that it’s actually employed.
Prosecutors routinely tout their use of the tactic as the use of informants to “bust up the ladder”- that is - to flip low-level retailers to snitch on the people above them in the hierarchy. That's what's always depicted in the movies and on the teevee crime procedurals. Using snitches this way, the prosecutor claims he is working his way toward the “kingpin” at the top of the hierarchy. The "kingpin" is finally made vulnerable to criminal conviction through informant testimony, or by having a snitch facilitate a transaction with government agents, as if there’s an ultimate "kingpin" whose conviction will lead to final victory in the Drug War.
This simple plot line may hold a deep psychological appeal to children, buybull buddies, or people addicted to purely fictional crime procedurals - but there's no practical or historical reason to believe it's ever really happened, ever. Too many cases show that drug selling organizations were dismantled in exactly the opposite manner. The "kingpin" is the one who gets caught right up front and then receives lenient sentencing for informing on all his subordinates.
Nicky Barnes is a name which comes to mind for buying leniency for himself and/or close relatives by ratting out everyone beneath him in his organization. Rayful Edmond is another prime example of the top-down snitching effect.
Examining the stories of prisoners documented by FAMM and the Marshall Project shows cases where the heaviest time landed on the people at the bottom - people who literally had no one available to betray, no “substantial information” to provide to aid prosecutors. So all the time landed on the lowest underlings.. This is fine from the perspective of the harsh prosecutions system, because that System requires someone as a sacrifice to keep the numbers looking good and providing the image of an effective law enforcement campaign. (not to mention the profit motivation for the private for-profit prison-industrial complex itself)
People have been subjected to mandatory minimum sentences simply as a result of having once provided their residence or business as the location for a drug transaction. Mandatory minimums have been handed down for driving buyers and/or sellers to and from a transaction. One instance of driving a buyer to the home of a seller is formally an overt act in furtherance of an illegal drug sale, and therefore all that’s required to convict someone of one count of “felony drug conspiracy.”
Strictly speaking, millions of Americans have committed at least one felony in their lives. Anyone who’s gotten far enough into illegal drug use to purchase their own stash of weed and have acquaintances involved in the same activity has done the above at least once. From the prosecutor's perspective, conspiracy is conspiracy, no matter how minor.
Driving a friend over to a dealer’s apartment to buy a $15 bag of weed is taking part in a drug sales conspiracy, and conspiracy is a felony. Of course rendezvous like these take place daily in the underground marketplace. Most of the time the risk of getting arrested is negligible. In the event that someone is swept up in a raid and busted for that participation, felony conspiracy offers a lever for the prosecutor seeking people to snitch for them. This, notwithstanding the fact that someone who simply drives their friend over to a house and waits outside in the car while they do a deal may have no information of value to bargain with.
Meanwhile, those same ball-busting prosecutors reward those who have risen high enough in the hierarchy of a drug conspiracy to have detailed knowledge of its working and who can offer critical testimony against their companions with reduced sentences, comfortable confinement settings, or witness protection.
Celebrating 113 years of Mama Rosa McCauley Parks
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*February 4, 1913 -- February 4, 2026*
*Some notes: The life of the courageous activist Mama Rosa McCauley Parks*
Mama Rosa's grandfather Sylvester Ed...
Monsters are people too
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Comet 3I/Atlas is on its way out on a hyberbolic course to, I don't know
where. I do know that 1I/Oumuamua is heading for the constellation Pegasus,
and ...
Remembering the Spanish Civil War
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This year marks the 90th anniversary of the launch of the Spanish Civil
War, an epoch-defining event for the international working class, whose
close study...
Return of the Magi
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Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
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(Damn, has it been THAT long? I don't even know which prompts to use to
post this)
SeeNew
Can't get on your site because you've gone 'invite only'?
Man, ...
First Member of Chumph Cartel Goes to Jail
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With the profligate racism of the Chumph Cartel, I don’t imagine any of
them convicted and jailed is going to do too much better than your run of
the mill ...
