lewrockwell | I have argued in this column and elsewhere that the Biden
administration sanctions imposed on Russian and American persons and
businesses are profoundly unconstitutional because they are imposed by
executive fiat rather than by legislation and because the sanctions
constitute either the seizure of property without a warrant or the
taking of property without due process.
When the feds seize a yacht from a person whom they claim may have
financed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rise to power, they are
doing so in direct violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth
Amendment.
Similarly, when they freeze Russian assets in American banks, they
engage in a seizure, and seizures can only constitutionally be done with
a search warrant based on probable cause of crime.
As well, when the feds interfere with contract rights by prohibiting
compliance with lawful contracts, that, too, implicates due process and
can only be done constitutionally after a jury verdict in the
government’s favor, at a trial at which the feds have proved fault.
As if to anticipate these constitutional roadblocks to its
interference with free commercial choices, Congress enacted the
International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 and the Magnitsky
Act of 2016. These constitutional monstrosities purport to give the
president the power to declare persons and entities to be violators of
human rights and, by that mere executive declaration alone, to punish
them without trial.
These laws turn the Fourth and Fifth Amendments on their heads by
punishing first and engaging in a perverse variant of due process later.
How perverse? These laws require that if you want your seized property
back, you must prove that you are not a human rights violator.
As if to run even further away from constitutional norms, a group of
legal academics began arguing last week that the property seized from
Russians is not really owned by human beings, but by the Russian
government. And, this crazy argument goes, since the Russian government
is not a person, there is no warrant or due process requirement;
therefore, the feds can convert the assets they have seized and frozen
to their own use.
To these academics — who reject property ownership as a moral right
and exalt government aggression as a moral good — the argument devolves
around the meaning of the word “person.” The Fourth and Fifth Amendments
protect every “person” and all “people,” not just Americans.
And in American jurisprudence, “person” means both human beings and
artificial persons — corporations and governments capable of owning
property. Property ownership is defined by the right to use, alienate
and exclude. Only persons can exercise those rights.
Madison and his colleagues clearly sought to protect property rights
from government aggression, no matter the legal status of the owner. We
know this from the judicial opinions involving foreign property that
preceded and followed the ratification of the Fifth Amendment. If this
were not so, then nothing could prevent the feds from seizing and
converting the property of states or local governments or international
religious institutions to federal use.
War is the health of the state and the graveyard of liberty. The drug
war was a disaster for freedom. The war in Ukraine will be so as well,
only if we permit it.
here is the text conversation between Hunter & Joe Biden. Natalie is Joe’s granddaughter/Hunter’s niece. Rudy Gulianni who viewed the laptop told us about it before the election- but of course we made him out to be an idiot. Our president is a pedo protector. 💔 pic.twitter.com/FqfoEJu0s7
— She Was A Stunner ✌🏼❤️🉑 (@Idontbelievey13) March 18, 2022
“The White House can’t just wash away the stink of Hunter Biden’s laptop” [New York Post]. “[A]s a grand jury in Delaware moves closer to potentially indicting Hunter, 52, over alleged tax evasion, money laundering and violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, pressure is mounting on the president finally to explain his role in the international influence-peddling scheme run by his son and his brother Jim Biden while he was vice president. The laptop, along with evidence provided by Hunter’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski, and Treasury documents provided to a Senate inquiry, reveal millions of dollars flowing to the Biden family and associates from dubious foreign sources, including three flashpoint countries vital to US national security: Russia, Ukraine and China. Evidence also exists showing that Joe Biden financially benefited from his then-drug-addicted son’s overseas business dealings — perhaps by several million dollars. White House press secretary Jen Psaki played dumb last week and refused to answer questions from The Post’s Steven Nelson about how the president is navigating conflicts of interest during the Ukraine-Russia war when it comes to sanctioning people who have done business with his family. Specifically, Nelson asked about Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina, who has not been sanctioned, but who allegedly wired $3.5 million on Feb. 14, 2014, to a firm associated with Hunter’s former business partner Devon Archer. That wire was flagged in a suspicious activity report provided by the Treasury Department to a Senate Republican inquiry, chaired by Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson. Now, new evidence has emerged via the laptop showing that Baturina wired as much as $118 million to various offshoots of Rosemont Seneca Partners, the consulting firm co-founded by Hunter, Archer and John Kerry’s stepson, Chris Heinz.” • Hmm. I haven’t followed the detail on this. However, I believe The Bidens would say that the Biden family has form, and this is what it is.
statnews |A
patient who has taught me a lot about how to best care for people who
use drugs floored me one afternoon while she was in the clinic when I
asked her thoughts on getting vaccinated against Covid-19.
“I know this sounds crazy,” she said, casting her gaze to the floor,
“but I trust my drug dealer more than I trust this vaccine.”
I was stunned. Curious how anyone could trust putting something from
the current fentanyl-contaminated heroin supply in their arm over a
highly vetted vaccine, I had to ask, “What makes you trust your dealer?”
Here’s the gist of what she told me: When she speaks to her dealer,
they listen to her concerns without judgment and accept her for who she
is. When she feels bad, they are attentive to her. They will not sell
her drugs if they know she is in a bad place because they have known
each other for a long time. They are highly accessible, often by text or
phone at all hours. They deliver a tangible, immediate response to the
needs she expresses. They have time for her and treat her like they
would any other human.
To be sure, not all people who sell drugs operate in the best
interest of their consumers. After all, we are currently enduring the
fourth wave of the opioid overdose epidemic
due to illicitly-manufactured fentanyl that has been contaminating the
drug supply. Although this phenomenon should be analyzed as a potential
result of the war on drugs, some sellers in the drug market clearly
prioritize profits over the lives of their customers. This is
highlighted by the fact that people who use drugs are more likely to die
of a drug overdose than Covid-19.
Yet my patient isn’t alone having this kind of experience with the person who sells her drugs. Other people who use drugs trust their drug dealers, especially those they have established relationships with over longer periods of time. In these sorts of relationships,
people who use drugs trust that their dealer communicates openly about
the drug supply. As one person told British of Columbia researchers about their dealer: “I guess we’ve known each other for a long time and they’ve always had a good supply and treat me with respect.”
Contrast this with how the health care system treats people who use drugs.
NYTimes | Who
should get vaccine booster shots and when? Can vaccinated people with a
breakthrough infection transmit the virus as easily as unvaccinated
people? How many people with breakthrough infections die or get
seriously ill, broken down by age and underlying health conditions?
Confused?
It’s not you. It’s the fog of pandemic, in which inadequate data
hinders a clear understanding of how to fight a stealthy enemy.
To
overcome the fog of war, the Prussian general and military theorist
Carl von Clausewitz called for “a sensitive and discriminating judgment”
as well as “skilled intelligence to scent out the truth.” He knew that
since decisions will have to be made with whatever information is
available in the face of an immediate threat, it’s crucial to acquire as
much systematic evidence as possible, as soon as possible.
In the current crisis, that has often been difficult.
Why
this stumbling in the fog? It may seem like we’re drowning in data:
Dashboards and charts are everywhere. However, not all data is equal in
its power to illuminate, and worse, sometimes it can even be misleading.
Few
things have been as lacking in clarity as the risks for children.
Testing in schools is haphazard, follow-up reporting is poor and data on
hospitalization of children appears to be unreliable, even if those
cases are rare. The Food and Drug Administration has asked that vaccine trials for children aged 5 to 11 be expanded, which is wise, but why weren’t they bigger to begin with?
While
the pandemic has produced many fine examples of research and meticulous
data collection, we are still lacking in detailed and systematic data
on cases, contact tracing, breakthrough infections and vaccine efficacy
over time, as well as randomized trials of interventions like boosters.
This has left us playing catch-up with emerging threats like the Delta
variant and has left policymakers struggling to make timely decisions in
a manner that inspires confidence.
To
see the dangers of insufficient data and the powers of appropriate
data, consider the case of dexamethasone, an inexpensive generic
corticosteroid drug.
In the early days of the pandemic, doctors were warnedagainst using it to treat Covid patients.
The limited literature from SARS and MERS — illnesses related to Covid —
suggested that steroids, which suppress the immune system, would harm rather than help Covid patients.
That assessment changed on June 16, 2020, when the results of a large-scale randomized clinical trial from Britain, one of all too few such efforts
during the pandemic, demonstrated that dexamethasone was able to reduce
deaths by one-fifth among patients needing supplemental oxygen and an
astonishing one-third among those on ventilators.
The
study also explained the earlier findings: Given too early, before
patients needed supplemental oxygen, steroids could harm patients. But
comprehensive data from the randomized trial showed that when given
later, as the disease progressed in severity, dexamethasone was
immensely helpful.
Dexamethasone has since become a workhorse of Covid treatment, saving perhaps millions of lives
at little cost or fanfare. Without that trial, though, it might never
have been noticed because of a problem called confounding: when causal
effects of different elements can’t be considered separately. If doctors
give multiple drugs to patients at the same time, who knows which drug
works and which one does not? Or, if they choose which drug to give to
whom, those more ill may be getting effective drugs, but the severity of
their illness could end up masking the positive effect of the drug.
Trials allow us to sort through all of this.
Randomized
trials are not the only source of useful data. For example, it would
have been difficult to quickly determine how transmissible the Delta
variant is — a crucial question — without the data collected from close
and systematic observation.
If a
variant is spreading quickly somewhere, it might be more transmissible,
or it could have simply arrived in that area early and gotten a head
start. Or it might have just hit a few superspreader events. We’ve had
variants appear, generating alarming headlines, that were later shown to
be no more threatening than previous ones.
antiwar | Has the government become any more humane, any more respectful of the rights
of the citizenry?
Has it become any more transparent or willing to abide by the rule of law?
Has it become any more truthful about its activities? Has it become any more
cognizant of its appointed role as a guardian of our rights?
Or has the government simply hunkered down and hidden its nefarious acts and
dastardly experiments under layers of secrecy, legalism and obfuscations? Has
it not become wilier, more slippery, more difficult to pin down?
Having mastered the Orwellian art of Doublespeak and followed the Huxleyan
blueprint for distraction and diversion, are we not dealing with a government
that is simply craftier and more conniving that it used to be?
In Guatemala, prisoners and patients at a mental hospital were infected with
syphilis, “apparently to test whether penicillin could prevent some sexually
transmitted disease.” In Uganda, U.S.-funded doctors “failed
to give the AIDS drug AZT to all the HIV-infected pregnant women in a study…
even though it would have protected their newborns.” Meanwhile, in Nigeria,
children with meningitis were used to test an antibiotic named Trovan. Eleven
children died and many others were left disabled.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The government insisted that the gases released into the subways by the DHS
were nontoxic and did not pose a health risk. It’s in our best interests, they
said, to understand how quickly a chemical or biological terrorist attack might
spread. And look how cool the technology is – said the government cheerleaders – that
scientists can use something called DNATrax
to track the movement of microscopic substances in air and food. (Imagine the
kinds of surveillance
that could be carried out by the government using trackable
airborne microscopic substances you breathe in or ingest.)
In 1953, government operatives staged
“mock” anthrax attacks on St. Louis, Minneapolis, and Winnipeg using generators
placed on top of cars. Local governments were reportedly told that “‘invisible
smokescreen[s]’ were being deployed to mask the city on enemy radar.” Later
experiments covered territory as wide-ranging as Ohio to Texas and Michigan
to Kansas.
And this is the same government that has taken every bit of technology sold
to us as being in our best interests – GPS devices, surveillance, nonlethal weapons,
etc. – and used it against us, to track, control and trap us.
So, no, I don’t think the government’s ethics have changed much over the years.
It’s just taken its nefarious programs undercover.
The question remains: why is the government doing this? The answer is always
the same: money, power and total domination.
It’s the same answer no matter which totalitarian regime is in power.
The mindset driving these programs has, appropriately, been likened
to that of Nazi doctors experimenting on Jews. As the Holocaust Museum recounts,
Nazi physicians “conducted painful and often deadly experiments on thousands
of concentration camp prisoners without their consent.”
The Nazi’s unethical
experiments ran the gamut from freezing experiments using prisoners to find
an effective treatment for hypothermia, tests to determine the maximum altitude
for parachuting out of a plane, injecting prisoners with malaria, typhus, tuberculosis,
typhoid fever, yellow fever, and infectious hepatitis, exposing prisoners to
phosgene and mustard gas, and mass sterilization experiments.
The horrors being meted out against the American people can be traced back,
in a direct line, to the horrors meted out in Nazi laboratories. In fact, following
the second World War, the US government recruited many of Hitler’s employees,
adopted his protocols, embraced his mindset about law and order and experimentation,
and implemented his tactics in incremental steps.
Commenter at Naked Capitalism called Amfortas the Hippie dropped this today, I'm copying it here apropos of nothing in particular....,
Anecdote on the vibe in north houston 2-3-2021…feels very germane to this part of the zeitgeist: cousin calls, and says he’s coming up…same worry in his voice as a year ago, when he came out here to hide from the pandemic and correlated uncertainty. (he stayed til late april).
This time, his worry is civil unrest, violence, insurrection.
He’s a self-described “manwhore”…never nailed down…having numerous women all over texas that he breezes though and stays with for a while when work brings him near(he’s a roofer and tree expert and heavy equipment operator…with ample talent in all of them). The women in question are all divorcees, and seem happy with the arrangement: playing happy married to a hot guy who leaves before he becomes a chore.
Anyway…lately, he’s been hanging around north houston…where we’re both from. Woodlands, magnolia, tomball, etc.
He lives in his truck on a spread of pineywoods he inherited…and gets a hotel room off and on, for a week at a time. He spends a lot of time in bars, beer joints, dancehalls and clubs. It is this part of his life where we find the Doom: he says the clubs, etc are at best ¼ populated…and that the ratio of men to women is, at best, 3 to 1. of course this is the pandemic, and all…we both understand that…although he chafes at the mandates more than I do.
The scary part is the sentiments of the remaining men in these stag halls: “f&&k it…i ain’t doing this any more…they’ve screwed us all…” etc.
the way he puts it:”they’re tired of everything…the pandemic, the half-assed attempts at mitigating the pandemic, the economic results of those half-assed attempts, the lack of material support to mitigate the half-assed mitigations…and on and on in that vein…”
I interject: “so…blue balls, combined with hopelessness and angst”
him:”exactly!”
so I ask what he thinks will become of this mood/vibe…
gatestoneinstitute |According
to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Over 81,000 drug
overdose deaths occurred in the United States in the 12 months ending in
May 2020, the highest number of overdose deaths ever recorded in a
12-month period..." That is equal to one-third of the total number of
deaths supposedly attributed to the COVID pandemic.
Deaths equal to one-third of the pandemic? From another cause? Where
is the wall-to-wall news reporting on that public health crisis? Why
aren't people marching in the streets demanding action and justice for
that threat to human life? Since Joe Biden was elected president, we
have not heard a peep from Antifa and BLM -- maybe they can take up the
drug overdose cause?
In October, federal law enforcement officials arrested Mexican
General Salvador Cienfuegos as he arrived in Los Angeles for a family
vacation. Cienfuegos was accused of taking bribes and protecting cartel
leaders when he served as defense minister from 2012 to 2018. A month
later, the U.S. dropped charges and returned Cienfuegos to Mexico.
"Foreign policy considerations" was the official lie covering for the
reversal of what might have been an incremental step forward towards
legitimate justice in America's decades-long, losing "War on Drugs."
Every thinking person who has contemplated the drug corruption crisis
confronting America knows that absolutely nothing will happen to
Cienfuegos now that he is back in Mexico. He gets off Scot-free, other
than having to vacation in places other than the United States.
The Wall Street Journal, reporting on the Cienfuegos debacle, noted:
"Gen. Cienfuegos's return puts an uncomfortable spotlight
on Mexico's judicial system. More than nine in 10 crimes are never
reported or punished, according to the country's statistics agency."
Let us look more deeply at the drug crisis we face at the level of
families and communities. We can get lost looking at national overdose
numbers and corrupt foreign generals. Dirty cops are killing Americans,
directly and indirectly. In a border community like El Paso, the Mexican
cartels have an insidious, silent and powerful control that few people
wish to acknowledge or accept -- that includes a largely compliant news
media who usually report what happens, but rarely, if ever, ask "Why?"
or "How can this go on, decade after decade, without accountability or
resolution?"
More than seven years of ongoing investigation by Judicial Watch in
that region has revealed law enforcement corruption that ranges on a
scale from merely turning a blind eye; to marked law enforcement
vehicles being used to move burlap bales of marijuana; all the way up to
senior officials communicating with and tipping-off cartel members
about planned operations. That is what some of the supposedly "good
guys" are doing.
This is a dark, dangerous and threatening side of life in American
communities across the country. The drugs do not just materialize out of
thin air in Dayton, OH, or Rockville Centre, NY, or Whitefish, MT. If a
population is dying from overdoses that is one-third as large as the
COVID pandemic -- and we don't see, don't hear about it, and apparently
don't really care about it -- what does that say about us?
Tens of thousands of law enforcement officers, billions of taxpayer
dollars, nearly fifty years -- and the highest overdose rate in history?
It is terribly unpopular to blame law enforcement, especially when they
are being unfairly attacked by the militant fringe elements like Antifa
and various lunatic municipal officials seeking to defund them -- but
cleaning house within various agencies and increasing police pay would
go a long way towards thwarting our greatest domestic threat.
A year ago, President Donald J. Trump declared he would name Mexican
Cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. He paused his decision, and
then tabled it, based on assurances from Mexican President Andrés Manuel
López Obrador and a reported wave of resistance from his own cabinet.
The incoming Biden administration has the cartels virtually
"high-fiving" each other -- they know a Biden administration will do
nothing to stop cartel dominance and control of the US-Mexico border.
What law enforcement officer is going to put his life on the line for a
Biden administration policy? None. Unless there is an unforeseen and
dramatic positive change in law enforcement at the federal, state and
municipal levels, expect more of our dirtiest little secret for years to
come and a continuation of the United States' longest war.
newyorker | Before
dawn on January 23, 2019, Mark McConnell arrived at the Key West
headquarters of the military and civilian task force that monitors drugs
headed to the United States from the Southern Hemisphere. McConnell, a
prosecutor at the Department of Justice and a former marine, left his
phone in a box designed to block electronic transmissions, and passed
through a metal detector and a key-card-protected air lock to enter the
building. On the second floor, he punched in the code for his office
door, then locked it behind him. On a computer approved for the handling
of classified information, he loaded a series of screenshots he had
taken, showing entries in a database called Helios, which federal law
enforcement uses to track drug smugglers. McConnell e-mailed the images
to a classified government hotline for whistle-blowers. Then he printed
backup copies and, following government procedures for handling
classified information, sealed them in an envelope that he placed in
another envelope, marked “SECRET.” He hid the material behind a piece of furniture.
McConnell
had uncovered what he described as a “criminal conspiracy” perpetrated
by the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. Every year, entries in the Helios database
lead to hundreds of drug busts, which lead to prosecutions in American
courts. The entries are typically submitted to Helios by the Drug
Enforcement Administration, the F.B.I., and a division of the Department
of Homeland Security. But McConnell had learned that more than a
hundred entries in the database that were labelled as originating from
F.B.I. investigations were actually from a secret C.I.A. surveillance
program. He realized that C.I.A. officers and F.B.I. agents, in
violation of federal law and Department of Justice guidelines, had
concealed the information’s origins from federal prosecutors, leaving
judges and defense lawyers in the dark. Critics call such concealment
“intelligence laundering.” In the nineteen-seventies, after C.I.A.
agents were found to have performed experiments with LSD on unwitting
Americans and investigated Vietnam War protesters, restrictions were
imposed that bar the agency from being involved in domestic
law-enforcement activities. Since the country’s founding, judges,
jurors, and defendants have generally had the right to know how evidence
used in a trial was gathered. “This was undisclosed information, from
an agency working internationally with different rules and standards,”
Nancy Gertner, a retired federal district judge and a senior lecturer at
Harvard Law School, told me. “This should worry Trump voters who talk
about a ‘deep state.’ This is the quintessential deep state. This is
activities beyond your view, fundamentally affecting what happens in
American courts.”
But
the scheme benefitted the C.I.A. and the F.B.I.: the former received
information obtained during operations, and the latter reported
increased arrests and was able to secure additional federal funding as a
result. The scope of the scheme was corroborated in hundreds of pages
of e-mails, transcripts, and other documents obtained by The New Yorker.
For
weeks, C.I.A. officials had been trying to stop McConnell from
revealing the agency’s activities. They sent a lawyer to Key West with
nondisclosure agreements, but McConnell refused to sign. A day before
his early arrival at the office, McConnell had learned of an order to
delete the screenshots on his computer. “I knew that I had to get the
electronic evidence to outside investigators,” he told me. “There was no
doubt about what I needed to do, and there was no doubt retaliation
against me would follow.” He worked quickly, not knowing when security
officers would arrive. Later that day, they came to McConnell’s office
and deleted the images.
A little more than a month later, after
C.I.A. officials accused McConnell of “spilling” classified information,
the director of the task force suspended him. Soon, the C.I.A.
director, Gina Haspel, visited the task force and was briefed on the
matter. According to a sworn affidavit that McConnell filed with the
Senate Intelligence Committee, and to a source with knowledge of the
meeting, Haspel said that there needed to be repercussions for
McConnell. (A C.I.A. spokesperson, Timothy Barrett, called the
allegation “inaccurate and a gross mischaracterization.”) The military
leadership of the task force ignored McConnell’s appeal of his
suspension, and discussions about future assignments came to an abrupt
halt. Six officials said that they believed the C.I.A. had retaliated
against McConnell, leaving him nominally employed but unable to find a
new post after decades of public service.
theamericanconservative | While American policymakers focus intently on developments in Europe,
the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific, trouble is brewing much closer
to home. Under growing stress from drug-related violence and systemic
corruption, Mexico is exhibiting worrisome signs of governmental
dysfunction. The latest shock occurred on October 16, when U.S.
authorities arrested
Mexico’s former defense secretary, General Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda,
at Los Angeles International Airport on drug trafficking and money
laundering charges. Cienfuegos Zepeda was a major player in Mexico’s
military and political affairs, leading the country’s armed forces for
six years under former president Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018).
His
disgrace is especially important because the military has been in
charge of waging the war on illegal drugs since President Felipe
Calderon made it the lead agency
for that mission in 2006. Allegations that Cienfuegos Zepeda was on a
drug cartel payroll, therefore, were especially embarrassing and
demoralizing. As the Associated Press reporters Christopher Sherman and
Maria Verza point out,
Mexico’s reliance on its military has grown under current president
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador: “He has entrusted it with not only leading
the government’s ongoing fight with drug cartels, but also with stopping
rampant fuel pipeline theft, building major infrastructure projects and
being the backbone of the new, ostensibly civilian, National Guard.”
Moreover, the military has long occupied a special status in Mexico’s
political hierarchy. An ironclad agreement has been in place for
decades that the army doesn’t interfere in politics, and civilian
political leaders, including the president, do not interfere in the
army’s internal operations. The appointment process for defense
secretary highlights the extent of the military’s clout. In contrast to
all other cabinet posts, the president does not have the latitude of
making a personal choice for defense secretary; he or she chooses from a
list of acceptable candidates that the generals submit.
The
incident with Cienfuegos Zepeda was hardly the first time that scandal
has rocked Mexico’s military and drug-fighting establishments. Genaro
García Luna, who served as Mexico’s secretary of public security from
2006 to 2012 under President Calderon, was arrested
last year in Texas on drug trafficking charges. U.S. prosecutors allege
that he took tens of millions of dollars in bribes to protect Joaquin
“El Chapo” Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel. Another notorious incident occurred
even earlier. In 1996, the Mexican government appointed
General Jesus Gutierrez Rebello, who had overseen military operations
for the previous seven years in the narcotics-infested region of
Guadalajara, to head the National Institute for the Combat of Drugs.
U.S. officials hailed the appointment and how it symbolized the growing
role of the country’s military in the drug war. Just months later, he
was arrested for drug trafficking.
NCHV | The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) states that the nation’s
homeless veterans are predominantly male, with roughly 9% being female.
The majority are single; live in urban areas; and suffer from mental
illness, alcohol and/or substance abuse, or co-occurring disorders.
About 11% of the adult homeless population are veterans.
Roughly 45% of all homeless veterans are African American or Hispanic,
despite only accounting for 10.4% and 3.4% of the U.S. veteran
population, respectively.
Homeless veterans are younger on average than the total veteran
population. Approximately 9% are between the ages of 18 and 30, and 41%
are between the ages of 31 and 50. Conversely, only 5% of all veterans
are between the ages of 18 and 30, and less than 23% are between 31 and
50.
America’s homeless veterans have served in World War II, the Korean
War, Cold War, Vietnam War, Grenada, Panama, Lebanon, Persian Gulf War,
Afghanistan and Iraq (OEF/OIF), and the military’s anti-drug cultivation
efforts in South America. Nearly half of homeless veterans served
during the Vietnam era. Two-thirds served our country for at least three
years, and one-third were stationed in a war zone.
About 1.4 million other veterans, meanwhile, are considered at risk of
homelessness due to poverty, lack of support networks, and dismal living
conditions in overcrowded or substandard housing.
Approximately 12,700 veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF),
Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation New Dawn (OND) were homeless
in 2010. The number of young homeless veterans is increasing, but only
constitutes 8.8% of the overall homeless veteran population.
Why are veterans homeless?
In addition to the complex set of factors influencing all homelessness –
extreme shortage of affordable housing, livable income and access to
health care – a large number of displaced and at-risk veterans live with
lingering effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and
substance abuse, which are compounded by a lack of family and social
support networks. Additionally, military occupations and training are
not always transferable to the civilian workforce, placing some veterans
at a disadvantage when competing for employment.
theatlantic |I drove from Kentucky
into the mountains of Carroll County, Virginia, and, in a field along a
winding road, parked at the end of a long row of pickup trucks and SUVs.
A hundred people, most of them armed, were looking up at a man giving a
speech from the back of a flatbed truck that was painted in camouflage.
Between the crowd and me were two young men with semiautomatic rifles.
They stopped me in a manner—neither friendly nor unfriendly—that I’d
encountered at checkpoints in other parts of the world.
So-called
militia musters like this one had been quietly happening all over the
state. The legislature was still pushing ahead with gun-control
measures, and people were preparing for the possibility of more riots,
and for the election. Rhodes was scheduled to give remarks but, as
usual, he was late.
One of the young men said something into a
walkie-talkie, and a muscular Iraq War veteran named Will joined me and
explained the reason for the guards and the men posted in the woods on
the far side of the field. They weren’t worried about law enforcement—a
deputy from the sheriff’s department stood not far from me, leaning
against his cruiser. It was leftists, antifa, who might record your
license plate, dox you, show up at your home.
This was a different
kind of crowd than Rhodes had drawn to the VFW hall. Many were in their
20s and 30s and had come in uniforms—some Three Percenters wore black
T‑shirts and camouflage pants, and members of another group stood
together in matching woodland fatigues. From the latter, a man climbed
onto the flatbed and introduced himself as Joe Klemm, the leader of a
new militia called the Ridge Runners.
He was a 29-year-old former
marine and spoke with a boom that brought the crowd to attention. “I’ve
seen this coming since I was in the military,” he said. “For far too
long, we’ve given a little bit here and there in the interest of peace.
But I will tell you that peace is not that sweet. Life is not that dear.
I’d rather die than not live free.”
“Hoo-ah,” some people cheered.
“It’s
going to change in November,” Klemm continued. “I follow the
Constitution. We demand that the rest of you do the same. We demand that
our police officers do the same. We’re going to make these people fear
us again. We should have been shooting a long time ago instead of
standing off to the side.”
“Are you willing to lose your lives?”
he asked. “Are you willing to lose the lives of your loved ones—maybe
see one of your loved ones ripped apart right next to you?”
After
he finished, Rhodes rolled up in his rented Dodge Ram and parked in the
grass beside me. He walked to the flatbed but didn’t climb it. Then he
turned and faced the crowd. His speech meandered back to revolutionary
times, evoking the traditions of a country founded in bloodshed. He
urged them to build a militia for their community.
Rhodes stayed
at the muster long after most people had left, meeting every last
person, his history lessons stretching on and on. Eventually the
conversation turned to the problems in the area—the drug overdoses and
mental-health crises and the desperate state of the local economy. The
people there seemed to believe that taking up arms would somehow stave
off the country’s unraveling rather than speed it along.
When the
protests erupted in Kenosha a month later, many of the demonstrators
brought guns, and vigilante groups quickly formed on the other side.
They called themselves the Kenosha Guard. There was a confrontation near
a gas station like the one at Pepperoni Bill’s, and a teenager
allegedly opened fire and killed two people. A man affiliated with
antifa allegedly gunned down a Trump supporter in Portland later that
week, and Rhodes declared that “the first shot has been fired.”
By
then, some writers popular on the militant right had been warning that
wars don’t always start with a clear, decisive event—an attack, a coup,
an invasion—and that you might not realize you’re in one until it’s
under way. Civil conflict is gradual. The path to it, I thought, might
begin with brooding over it. It could start with opening your mind.
Counterpunch | Entitled Future Strategic Issues/Future Warfare [Circa 2025],
the PowerPoint presentation anticipates: a) scenarios created by U.S.
forces and agencies and b) scenarios to which they might have to
respond. The projection is contingent on the use of hi-technology. According to the report
there are/will be six Technological Ages of Humankind: “Hunter/killer
groups (sic) [million BC-10K BC]; Agriculture [10K BC-1800 AD];
Industrial [1800-1950]; IT [1950-2020]; Bio/Nano [2020-?]; Virtual.”
In the past, “Hunter/gatherer” groups fought over “hunting grounds”
against other “tribal bands” and used “handheld/thrown” weapons. In the
agricultural era, “professional armies” also used “handheld/thrown”
weapons to fight over “farm lands.” In the industrial era, conscripted
armies fought over “natural resources,” using “mechanical and chemical”
weapons. In our time, “IT/Bio/Bots” (robots) are used to prevent
“societal disruption.” The new enemy is “everyone.” “Everyone.”
Similarly, a British Ministry of Defence projection to the year 2050 states: “Warfare could become ever more personalised with individuals and their families being targeted in novel ways.”
“KNOWLEDGE DOMINANCE”
The war on you is the militarization of everyday life with the
express goal of controlling society, including your thoughts and
actions.
A U.S. Army document
on information operations from 2003 specifically cites activists as
potential threats to elite interests. “Nonstate actors, ranging from
drug cartels to social activists, are taking advantage of the
possibilities the information environment offers,” particularly with the
commercialization of the internet. “Info dominance” as the Space
Command calls it can counter these threats: “these actors use the
international news media to attempt to influence global public opinion
and shape decision-maker perceptions.” Founded in 1977, the U.S. Army
Intelligence and Security Command featured an Information Dominance Center, itself founded in 1999 by the private, veteran-owned company, IIT.
“Information Operations in support of civil-military interactions is
becoming increasingly more important as non-kinetic courses-of-action
are required,” wrote two researchers for the military in 1999. They also
said
that information operations, as defined by the Joint Chiefs of Staff JP
3-13 (1998) publication, “are aimed at influencing the information and
information systems of an adversary.” They also confirm that “[s]uch
operations require the continuous and close integration of offensive and
defensive activities … and may involve public and civil affairs-related
actions.” They conclude: “This capability begins the transition from
Information Dominance to Knowledge Dominance.”
“ATTUNED TO DISPARITIES”
The lines between law enforcement and militarism are blurred, as are
the lines between military technology and civilian technology. Some
police forces carry military-grade weapons. The same satellites that
enable us to use smartphones enable the armed forces to operate.
In a projection out to the year 2036, the British Ministry of Defence says that “[t]he clear distinction between combatants and non-combatants will be increasingly difficult to discern,” as “the urban poor will be employed in the informal sector and will
be highly vulnerable to externally-derived economic shocks and illicit
exploitation” (emphasize in original). This comes as Boris Johnson
threatens to criminalize Extinction Rebellion and Donald Trump labels
Black Lives Matter domestic terrorists.
In 2017, the U.S. Army published The Operational Environment and the Changing Character of Future Warfare. The report reads:
“The convergence of more information and more people with fewer state
resources will constrain governments’ efforts to address rampant
poverty, violence, and pollution, and create a breeding ground for
dissatisfaction among increasingly aware, yet still disempowered
populations.”
Forbes | Mexican drug cartels are using weaponized consumer drones in their latest gang war, according to reports in El Universal and other local news media.
A citizens’ militia group
in Tepalcatepec, Michoacán, formed to protect farmers from the cartel,
found two drones in a car used by gunmen belonging to the Jalisco New
Generation Cartel (CJNG), a group estimated to control a third of the drugs consumed
in the U.S. The drones had plastic containers taped to them filled with
C4 explosive and ball bearing shrapnel. The militias say that they have
heard explosions, and believe that the drones are the latest weapons an
ongoing gang war.
“The CJNG has been involved with such devices since late 2017 in
various regions of Mexico,” says analyst Dr. Robert J. Bunker, Director
of Research and Analysis at C/O Futures, LLC.
“This cartel is well on its way to institutionalizing the use of
weaponized drones. None of the other cartels appear to presently even be
experimenting with the weaponization of these devices.”
In 2017, Bunker reported on the arrest of four CJNG members with a drone carrying a ‘papa bomba’ (potato bomb) , an improvised hand grenade. In 2018 an armed drone attacked the residence
of a senior official in Baja, California. The official was not at home,
and the attack seems to have been intended as a warning. Three CNJG drones with explosive were recovered this year , part of an arsenal for use against the rival Rosa de Lima cartel.
Bunker says that suitable consumer drones are now easy to acquire and use, but that the challenge is weaponizing them.
“The limiting factor is not so much the availability of military
grade explosives—commercial or homemade explosives can be
substituted—but the basic technical knowledge necessary to create
improvised explosive devices or IEDs,” says Bunker.
nakedcapitalism | The
racial categories of white and black were developed around 1600.
Probably a little after by wealthy Americans who used it to keep divided
Black slaves, poor often indentured Whites, and the often enslaved
Indians. These people were
not disposable because they were useful as workers, but who often
worked and even socialized frequently. As a group they had potentially
considerable political power during the 1600s. This was deliberately
dealt with. The Blacks were brutally suppress with
(the category of Black indentured was eliminated. There was no Southern
style chattel slavery for Blacks at first). The Whites were placated
with some very modest reforms. The Indians (labeled as savages) were
just driven off at gunpoint. This is also where
the Southern Slave Patrols started to terrorize and keep down the slave
population as well as keep down any poor whites. Where they started
asking for people’s papers.
When my Irish great whatever grandfather stepped off the Coffin Ship around 1850, he was barely considered human, never mind white, and about on par with the black community. This was true for decades as were the “Irish need not
apply signs” and the creation of the Paddy Wagons. Would you consider him having White Privilege?
It was only after the development of political
power over multiple generations that the Irish-Americans were given the
status of being both human and white, which only really happened during
the early 20th century. Similarly with the Italians,
Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Italians, Greeks, and so on.
Then there are the
Jews. The Italians only finally became real whites after the Second
World War although I do not think that they were quite as abused
as the Irish. Going up to an individual in these
groups at anytime before the 1960s and saying that they have White
Privilege would have had them laugh at you in your very face. Today,
they have been giving the category of White with its very real privilege
of being treated like a human being, so long as
you are not poor. But in the past?
During the Antebellum South and after
Reconstruction when a poor white farmer or laborer even got friendly
with a black person, the local wealthy white landowner and his hired
goons would often beat up the offending white man. After Reconstruction,
the allied white and black reformists in the South were literally
extirpated via guns and the rope. If they were lucky and in the
government, they were merely deposed, and run out of town by armed white
supremacists during actual coups. Much like the American
led coups in the Americas and elsewhere.
When a leader, especially a black one, becomes
successful in his leadership and starts to bring up class and poverty,
to suggest crossing class and race as well as mentioning our common
humanity they often wind up dead like MLK and Fred
Hampton. Working just on racism is much less dangerous.
Actually in the South and Southwest during the 19th
century Blacks, Hispanics, and the very, very occasional White who were
too successful as business owners were sometimes lynched for just that
reason. To destroy the opposition.
There are a number of ways to destroy reformists
movements besides murder especially those that threaten the power and
money of the elites. Hell, you can find elite co-option, police and goon
squad assassinations in the labor movement,
equal rights movement, even in feminism (no murders, but plenty of
false arrests and beatings). All of these movements were captured by
elitists who expunged first the non-whites, then the socialists, then
the working class from what became their movement.
Any economic benefits from these “reforms” only accrued to the Upper
Class Whites.
Why do cries of racism become so strident and the
very real problem of racism become something that must be solves right
now, today when cries of poverty and want are also raised. Every single
time? Do you think that the current debates
about racism just happened right after Bernie Sanders near success and
the rise of an actual American Left fifty years after it was destroyed
is a coincidence? Really?
If this was really and truly about racism or even
poverty, why are the Native Americans, trapped on their Reservations
with the highest poverty, drug use, rape and murder statistics of any
group of Americans, bar none, not mentioned. They
have the most police brutality as well and some of the reservations,
due to legal loopholes, are happy hunting grounds for rapists coming
from outside of some of the reservations. Their leaders usually do not
have political power and wealth and they are isolated
and beaten down at least compared to the national political leadership.
So just under three million people are ignored and targeted.]
People are finally taking some notice of the
shrinking middle class and of the increasing homeless population. If you
wanted, I can take to some of the skosh less then fifteen thousand
homeless in San Francisco. Or the over one hundred
thousand throughout the state. At least half of whom are White. Are
there any real protest over them? We can look at the millions wasted
every year by San Francisco with cushy jobs being created, but not much
progress. However, there are fine demonstrations
on racism, which is good because racism and also police brutality with
no mention of the increasing poverty in this country. Even now large
sums of cash are used to “deal” with the problems, nationally. Problems
that always get worse.
So cui bono? At least half of any negative
statistic one could name, with the possible exception of prison, which
IIRC only one-third are White. Unemployment, poverty, drug use, police
brutality and police murders. Poor and struggling people
are much easier to manipulate, aren’t they?
However, when there are protests about those issues
it very often morphs into one about just racism. Let’s tear down some
statues. Yah! When ever there is smart, hardworking, talented, and
dedicated reformist or a successful non-profit
making progress dealing with those issues, including racism, money from
somewhere drops from the sky like manna. So long as small concessions
are made. Or a slick person applies for a job there. Always has money
somehow and eventually takes over or at least
co-opts the organization. Or cushy jobs are offered elsewhere to
certain people. In the old days like the 1960s and before, if that
didn’t work s*** would happen, sometimes fatally. Sometimes nothing
needs be done because often college educated are already
brainwashed into uselessness by Neoliberal propaganda. The wealth and
power of the Haves remain protected.
As an aside, Social Darwinism and Eugenics were
created and spread by very wealthy people and foundations in the United
States. Much like racism. If one doubts this, I can recommend some books
I have. A good start would be War Against
the Weak by Edwin Black.
So, in two part harmony, the Black Misleadership
Class starts it latest performance along with the Backup of the White
Misleadership Class (what else should I label Pelosi, Schumer, and
McConnell? Or the leaders of the entire state of California?).
Racism, the horror! And the police, oh my! Screaming, shouting (a
whisper about poverty, homelessness, hunger, unemployment.) Perhaps
Obama pops out and says some soaring nonsense or some very poor white
fool is interviewed. A fantastic tempest in a teapot
with nothing every actually getting done.
Then some Alt-Right creeps pop out and start saying
you are White or not, and that’s all that matters! There is no American
nationalism, only White Nationalism. White Power! Join us! (and don’t
forget the Jews!) Finally, lies like the 1619
Project or propaganda like White Fragility are published.
Yes, racism does exist, and as a percentage of all
the ills of our American nation, Blacks get it the worse excepting the
Native Americans, of course. White Privilege is a real thing. But just
as the categories of White and Black, of racism
were deliberately created in the 17th century, for benefiting the
powers that be, I wonder about Identity Politics and Cancelling. That
blend of Nazi racialism and Maoist thought control. I wonder how racism
and its pernicious child Identity Politics has been
created, nurtured, fed a steady diet of hate, and then used as a weapon
upon those who would care about everyone regardless of there supposed
identity. I also wonder what would happen if I approached the man
sleeping on cardboard, perhaps in the usually three
month rainy season, or that family living in their car/van/RV on some
out of the way road, that the do have White Privilege, which the do and
usually means being treated as a human being. I also wonder about my
nose.
commondreams | After the FBI took to Twitter Monday with a message that allegedly
aimed to honor "the life and work" of Martin Luther King Jr., a chorus
of critics promptly urged the bureau to "sit this one out," pointing to its history of spying on King and trying to convince the civil rights leader to kill himself.
Each year on the national holiday dedicated to King, progressives criticize and work to counter
the whitewashed public narrative of a man who, particularly in the
years leading up to his April 1968 assassination, passionately condemned
the "evils" of capitalism, militarism, and racism.
The FBI, during both the Obama and Trump administrations, has
provoked a wave of criticism for posting shoutouts to King on social
media, given the bureau's past treatment of him. Monday was no
different.
Some critics expressed anger and disbelief. Rewire.News senior legal analyst Imani Gandy wrote in response to the FBI, "You've got to be fucking kidding me."
Journalist David Corn posed "a sincere question," asking:
"Has the FBI ever apologized to King's family for wiretapping King,
blackmailing him, and trying to get him to commit suicide?"
Crawford also noted that "the FBI's surveillance of black Americans
isn't just history. [In 2018], we learned the FBI has been spying on
black activists, labeling them 'Black Identity Extremists.' The feds also use powers obtained through national security laws like the Patriot Act to target people in the racially biased drug war."
"More disturbing: The FBI that spied on King and today classifies
Black civil rights activists as 'extremists,'" Crockford continued, "is
now partnering with Big Tech to amass unprecedented surveillance powers
that history has taught us will be used to target communities of color,
religious minorities, dissidents, and immigrants."
FBI director Christopher Wray testified
before Congress in July 2019 that the bureau has stopped using the term
"black identity extremism." However, some groups and individuals on
Monday shared critiques of the FBI's current practices alongside
denunciations of the bureau's past behavior.
The London-based advocacy group CAGE, which works to empower communities impacted by the War on Terror, tweeted
Monday that the FBI still tries "to suppress dissent" and uses "dirty
tactics that would make Edgar Hoover proud. But [is] happy now to co-opt
MLK to try to cover up the above."
thegrayzone | AMLO’s left-wing policies have caused shockwaves in Washington, which
has long relied on neoliberal Mexican leaders ensuring a steady cheap
exploitable labor base and maintaining a reliable market for US goods
and open borders for US capital and corporations.
On November 27 — a day after declaring Nicaragua a “national security
threat” — Trump announced that the US government will be designating
Mexican drug cartels as “terrorist organizations.”
Such a designation could pave the way for direct US military intervention in Mexico.
The designation was particularly ironic considering some top drug
cartel leaders in Mexico have long-standing ties to the US government.
The leaders of the notoriously brutal cartel the Zetas, for instance,
were originally trained in counter-insurgency tactics by the US military.
Throughout the Cold War, the US government armed, trained, and funded right-wing death squads
throughout Latin America, many of which were involved in drug
trafficking. The CIA also used drug money to fund far-right
counter-insurgency paramilitary groups in Central America.
These tactics were also employed in the Middle East and South Asia. The United States armed, trained, and funded far-right Islamist extremists
in Afghanistan in the 1980s in order to fight the Soviet Union. These
same US-backed Salafi-jihadists then founded al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
This strategy was later repeated in the US wars on Libya and Syria. ISIS commander Omar al-Shishani,
to take one example, had been trained by the US military and enjoyed
direct support from Washington when he was fighting against Russia.
The Barack Obama administration also oversaw a campaign called Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious, in which the US government helped send thousands of guns to cartels in Mexico.
Mexican journalist Alina Duarte explained that, with the Trump
administration’s designation of cartels as terrorists, “They are
creating the idea that Mexico represents a threat to their national security.”
“Should we start talking about the possibility of a coup against Lopez Obrador in Mexico?” Duarte asked.
townhall | Donald Trump is talking about labeling the Mexican drug cartels that
own our failed state neighbor as “terrorist groups,” and this is yet
another step toward what is increasingly looking to be an inevitable
confrontation. They just butchered several American citizens, including kids, which cannot go unanswered. They
murder thousands of Americans a year here with their poison, which
cannot go unanswered. But are we Americans even able to answer a bunch
of pipsqueak thugs anymore? Let’s put aside the question of if we should use our military against Mexico (I discussed it here in 2018, to the consternation of liberals and Fredocon sissies) and look at what might happen if we did escalate.
None of it is good.
It’s
not a matter of the prowess of our warriors. Our warriors, unleashed,
would lay waste to anything we point them at. But the question is,
“Would we ever unleash them? Would we let them do what it takes to
achieve the goal of eliminating the cartels?"
Of course not. We
haven’t decisively won a real war since World War II (except the Gulf
War, unless you accept the arguable premise that it was an early
campaign in a still-continuing Iraq conflict). And there’s a reason we
don’t win. We don’t truly want to, as demonstrated by our
unwillingness to do the hard things required to win. Could you imagine
the Democrats siding with America in a war on Mexican drug cartels? If
you can, you’re higher than Hoover Biden at a strip club on a Saturday
night.
Again, this is not to say whether a war on the Mexican drug cartels is a
good or bad idea. Nor is it to say we do not have the combat power to
do it – we do. It’s just to say that America is culturally and
politically unwilling to do what it takes to win, or to accept the
losses that would come with a military campaign against the drug
cartels.
unz |I
suppose that by now everyone has heard of Trump’s offer to send the
American military to “wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them off the
face of the earth,” which he asserts can be done “quickly and
effectively. “
Trump
phrased this as an offer to help, not a threat to invade, which is
reassuring. AMLO, Mexico’s president, wisely declined the offer.
While
the President seems to have made the offer in good faith, he has little
idea of Mexico, the military, or the cartels. The American military
could not come close to wiping them off the face of the earth, much less
effectively and quickly. Such an incursion would be a political and
military disaster. The President needs to do some reading.
If
AMLO were to invite the Americans into Mexico, he would be lynched. Few
Americans are aware of how much the United States is hated in Latin
America, and for that matter in most of the world. They don’t know of
the long series of military interventions, brutal dictators imposed and
supported, and economic rapine. Somoza, Pinochet, the Mexican-American
War, detachment of Panama from Colombia, bombardment of Veracruz,
Patton’s incursion–the list could go on for pages. The Mexican public
would look upon American troops not as saviors but as invaders. Which
they would be.
The
incursion would not defeat the cartels, for several reasons that trump
would do well to ponder. To begin with, America starts its wars by
overestimating its own powers, underestimating the enemy, and
misunderstanding the kind of war on which it is embarking. The is
exactly what Trump seems to be doing.
He
probably thinks of Mexicans as just gardeners and rapists and we have
all these beautiful advanced weapons and beautiful drones and things
with blinking lights. A pack of rapists armed with garden trowels
couldn’t possibly be difficult to defeat by the US. I mean, get serious:
Dope dealers against the Marines? A cakewalk.
You
know, like Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. That
sort of cakewalk. Let’s think what an expedition against the narcos
would entail, what it would face.
To
begin with, Mexico is a huge country of 127 million souls with the
narcos spread unevenly across it. You can’t police a nation that size
with a small force, or even with a large force. A (preposterous) million
soldiers would be well under one percent of the population. Success
would be impossible even if that population helped you. Which it
wouldn’t.
ronpaulinstitute | Tuesday morning, President Donald Trump, who has the unilateral power to
send the United States military to bomb and invade other countries, as
several of his predecessors have done, stated at Twitter that he is
ready to send the US military to Mexico to defeat drug cartels.
This is the time for Mexico, with the help of the United
States, to wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of
the earth. We merely await a call from your great new president!
Making clear he is talking about a US military action, Trump declared in
another Tuesday morning tweet that “the cartels have become so large
and powerful that you sometimes need an army to defeat an army!”.
The
truth, however, is that the drug war waged by the Mexico government,
with the help of the US government, ensures the continued existence of
powerful and dangerous drug cartels in Mexico. Similarly, when the US
had alcohol prohibition, there were dangerous criminal enterprises that
thrived from satisfying people’s demand for prohibited products.
Eliminating
drug cartels can best be accomplished by ending, not growing, the drug
war. Indeed, this is the course of action the Mexico government seems
poised to pursue. Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who
Trump referenced at Twitter, released this year a plan for Mexico to end its drug war. And the Mexico legislature appears to be preparing to take a major step toward ending the drug war — approving legislation to legalize marijuana countrywide.
I
am guessing Obrador will not make the phone call Trump suggests.
Obrador has available another, better avenue for dealing with drug
cartels.
courier-journal | Somewhere deep in Mexico's remote wilderness, the
world’s most dangerous and wanted drug lord is hiding. If someone you
love dies from an overdose tonight, he may very well be to blame.
And though few Americans know his name, authorities promise they soon will.
Rubén "Nemesio" Oseguera Cervantes is the leader of Cártel Jalisco
Nueva Generación, better known as CJNG. With a $10 million reward on his
head, he’s on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s Most Wanted
list.
El Mencho’s powerful international syndicate is flooding the U.S.
with thousands of kilos of methamphetamines, heroin, cocaine and
fentanyl every year — despite being targeted repeatedly by undercover
stings, busts and lengthy investigations.
The unending stream of narcotics has contributed to this country’s
unprecedented addiction crisis, devastating families and killing more
than 300,000 people since 2013.
CJNG’s rapid rise heralds the latest chapter in a generations-old
drug war in which Mexican cartels are battling to supply Americans’
insatiable demand for narcotics.
A nine-month Courier Journal investigation reveals
how CJNG's reach has spread across the U.S. in the past five years,
overwhelming cities and small towns with massive amounts of drugs.
kctv5 | As the officer in charge of COMBAT, Jackson County’s Drug Trafficking
Task Force Dan Cumming deals with a lot of dangerous people.
“About
100% of what we recover, if you follow it back far enough up the drug
train so to speak, comes from Mexico and is cartel related,” Cummings
said.
Just last week, COMBAT worked a case at the request of Independence police.
A tip led them to a Kansas City, Missouri street where a search warrant led to the seizure of tires filled with meth.
“My guess is that’s the way it was shipped from Mexico to Kansas City,” Cummings said.
Cartels get creative when smuggling drugs in customs and border protection has a few recent examples.
Fentanyl in a vehicle transmission, heroine in a gas tank, marijuana inside a car door and cocaine in clay figurines.
Cummings says he’s seeing more cartel related drug busts in Kansas City now than he has in his 35 plus years in law enforcement.
“We switched from meth labs to Mexican cartels,” Cummings said.
kmbc | Two Mexican nationals have been sentenced in federal court for their
roles in a conspiracy that distributed more than 14 kilograms of heroin
in the Kansas City metropolitan area, some of which is believed to have
resulted in overdoses and deaths.
Julian Felix-Aguirre, 46, and
Martin Missael Puerta-Navarro, 38, were sentenced in separate hearings
before U.S. District Judge Gary A. Fenner on Wednesday. Felix-Aguirre
was sentenced to 24 years and seven months in federal prison without
parole. Pueta-Navarro was sentenced to 14 years and eight months in
federal prison without parole.
fox4kc | "No where is immune," said Erik Smith with the Drug Enforcement
Administration. "There are people who become dependent on controlled
substances and have need to satisfy that addiction, and any place there
is a consumer, an addict or user, somebody will supply that drug for
that."
The DEA special agent in charge said feeding the demand for drugs in Johnson County goes well beyond teenage drug dealers.
Smith said Mexican cartels really are living here in Johnson County.
"Historically, a decade ago, two decades ago, a lot of cartels would
limit themselves to the inner city," he said. "But as they become more
established and they become more wealthy, it's quite common to see them
branching out into suburban areas including Johnson County."
A Foundation of Joy
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Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
-
4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
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...
New Travels
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Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
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 ...