De War on Drugs in Mexico #4 - Hoe lossen we de oorlog op?

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Senate report: HSBC 'allowed drug money laundering'

A US Senate probe has disclosed how lax controls at Europe's largest bank left it vulnerable to being used to launder dirty money from around the world.

The report into HSBC, released ahead of a Senate hearing on Tuesday, says huge sums of Mexican drug money almost certainly passed through the bank.

Suspicious funds from Syria, the Cayman Islands, Iran and Saudi Arabia also passed through the British bank.

HSBC said it expected to be held accountable for what went wrong.

The report into HSBC was issued by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, a Congressional watchdog that looks at financial improprieties.

It also concluded that the US bank regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, failed to properly monitor HSBC.

Miami office

Many of HSBC's breaches of US anti-money laundering relate to its use of bearer share accounts. Under the rules for these accounts, ownership of shares and the income they incur can be passed from person to person in secrecy.

HSBC's US subsidiary HBUS had opened more than 2,550 accounts for bearer share corporations.

These businesses are commonly set up in tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands.

Most of the bearer share accounts - some 1,670 - were opened at the Miami office of HBUS.

At their peak, these Miami accounts held $2.6bn of assets and generated annual revenues of $26m.

The report highlights the case of Miami Beach hotel developers, Mauricio Cohen Assor and Leon Cohen Levy.

The father and son used HBUS accounts opened under the names Blue Ocean Finance Ltd. and Whitebury Shipping Time-Sharing Ltd. to help hide $150m in assets and $49m of income.

The pair were jailed for 10 years for criminal tax fraud and filing false tax returns in 2010.

'Held accountable'

The year-long inquiry, which included a review of 1.4 million documents and interviews with 75 HSBC officials and bank regulators, will be the focus of a hearing on Tuesday at which HSBC executives are scheduled to testify.

These will include HSBC's chief legal officer Stuart Levey, who joined the bank in January and was previously one of the top officials on terrorism and finance at the US Treasury Department.

In a memo released ahead of the hearing, HSBC chief executive Stuart Gulliver said: "It is right that we will be held accountable and that we take responsibility for fixing what went wrong.

"As well as answering the subcommittee's questions, we will explain the significant changes we have already made to strengthen our compliance and risk management infrastructure and culture," he said.

A separate HSBC statement said its executives will offer a formal apology at the hearing.

"We will apologise, acknowledge these mistakes, answer for our actions and give our absolute commitment to fixing what went wrong," the bank said.

Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the sub-committee, spoke of a "polluted" system that allowed black-market funds to move through the US banking system.

In 2010, Wachovia agreed to pay $160m as part of a Justice Department probe that examined Mexican transactions.

Last month, ING agreed to pay $619m to settle US government allegations that it violated US sanctions against Cuba and Iran.

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Douane vindt 150 kilo cocaïne tussen cacaobonen

De douane heeft in de Amsterdamse haven ongeveer 150 kilogram cocaïne gevonden, verstopt tussen een lading cacaobonen. De straatwaarde van de drugs is ongeveer 12 miljoen euro.

De container met de cacaobonen en de cocaïne kwam uit Peru, zo liet het ministerie van Financiën weten. Vermoedelijk had een criminele organisatie de drugs tijdens het transport uit de container moeten halen. De cocaïne is inmiddels vernietigd.

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Op vrijdag 20 juli 2012 00:37 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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Maar die andere 500 ton hebben ze niet gevonden.

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Trade minister Lord Green 'failed to halt flow of drugs cash' as HSBC boss

US Senate report shows that Lord Green was warned about money laundering linked to Mexican drugs cartels

Trade minister Lord Green is under intense scrutiny after it emerged that HSBC continued to operate hundreds of accounts with suspected links to Mexican drug cartels, even after Green and fellow executives were told by regulators that HSBC was one of the worst banks for money laundering.

The revelations, contained in a US Senate report, raise further questions about Green's stewardship of the bank and come as he prepares to play an important role at the Olympics by using the Games to secure contracts for British business.

Green, chief executive of HSBC between 2003 and 2006 and executive chairman from 2006 to 2010, has declined to comment on the report. Last night Labour shadow Treasury minister, Chris Leslie, wrote to Green, who is in the running to become the next governor of the Bank of England, demanding to know when he became aware of the problems raised in the report and the steps he took to remedy them.

Leslie writes: "It is a matter of significant public interest that you also have the opportunity to explain what, if anything, you were aware of during your time at the bank."

The Senate report quotes emails, copied to Green, that created alarm in the higher echelons of the bank. They show that in 2005 Green was alerted that HSBC had potentially breached sanctions relating to Burma and that its Mexico arm had fabricated its anti-money-laundering activity. More damningly, evidence is emerging that HSBC's lax controls continued to allow money laundering and other dubious transactions even after Green and his colleagues were made aware of the problems and pledged to take action.

In February 2008, Paul Thurston, HSBC Mexico's chief executive, warned the bank's group chief executive, Michael Geoghegan, that the country's banking regulator, CNBV, and its financial intelligence unit (FIU), had unearthed "multiple compliance concerns".

An email copied from Geoghegan to Green soon after noted: "This is most disturbing and we will need to have the most thorough of investigations." In a follow-up email, copied to Green, Thurston said that the FIU was deeply concerned about money laundering at the bank. "HSBC has historically, and continues to have, a worse record than the other banks, so we have become a focus of attention," Green was informed. "The new head of the FIU has told us that his staff have told him that HSBC has been the most difficult bank to obtain accurate and timely data from for the past four years."

Despite these concerns, all 675 HSBC accounts that the CNBV suspected of money laundering, and had demanded that the bank close, remained open months later, in December 2008. The Senate report also said Green was briefed personally on HSBC's role facilitating transactions for Iranian banks and companies. Such transactions were subject to strict regulations imposed by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control, which enforces American sanctions.

HSBC had installed a computer system to identify payments involving Iran so they could be vetted. But HSBC's US arm, HBUS, had concerns some of the Iranian transactions were not being identified. Green demanded action. On 20 June 2005, David Bagley, HSBC's head of compliance, who has now resigned, noted that Green wanted confirmation that the "agreed arrangements in relation to Iranian payments had been put in place". Bagley confided in a colleague that he was unable to give that confirmation and the Senate report found: "The vast majority of the Iranian transactions… were sent… without disclosing any connection to Iran."

In 2010, HSBC hired an outside auditor, Deloitte, to identify and review "Office of Foreign Assets Control sensitive transactions" at HBUS between 2001 and 2007. It identified that the bank had processed almost 25,000 transactions involving Iran and assets in excess of $19.4bn. The majority were undisclosed transactions that should have been identified and vetted. On 24 September 2007, HSBC group compliance issued a group circular letter announcing the bank's decision to exit Iran. But internal bank documents show that every month hundreds of Iranian transactions continued to surface at HBUS during 2008 and 2009.

Former Lib Dem Treasury spokesman, Lord Oakeshott, said: "Unlike Bob Diamond, Stephen Green was a thoughtful banker in holy orders. But if even he couldn't stop these scandals, banks like HSBC and Barclays aren't just too big to fail, they are clearly too big to control." HSBC has apologised and has said reforms have now been put in place.

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Drugscriminelen uit Latijns-Amerika gebruiken de meest creatieve trucjes om drugs Europa binnen te smokkelen. Maar hun laatste truc is eigenlijk heel simpel. Ze smokkelen via West-Afrika. En dat kunnen ze vaak ongestraft doen. Over dit onderwerp hebben we West-Afrika correspondent Bram Posthumus aan de lijn in Radio 1 Sportzomer.

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Decriminalise it?

We look at Portugal's drug decriminalisation 10 years on.

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In 2001, Portugal became the first country in Europe to abolish criminal charges for the personal possession of drugs. Ten years later, Portugal has not become the "tourist drug haven" that many feared it would. In fact, not only did drug use decrease in certain age groups, but so did the number of drug-related deaths and HIV infections among users.

Several other countries are considering decriminalisation, and many Latin American leaders have begun to challenge the US-led “War on Drugs”. With many calling the US policy a failure, we examine if a similar model can be successfully implemented in the US.

In this episode of The Stream, we speak to Terry Nelson of the Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Dr. João Goulão, Portugal’s National Drugs Coordinator, and Roger Morgan of the Coalition for a Drug-Free California.

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'CIA regelt de drugshandel in Mexico'

De Amerikaanse inlichtingendienst CIA en andere internationale organisaties bestrijden de drugshandel niet, maar proberen die juist te 'managen'. Dat beweert een woordvoerder van de staat Chihuahua in Noord-Mexico.

Beschuldigingen over medeplichtigheid aan drugshandel zijn niet nieuw als ze uit de mond komen van activisten, academici of voormalige ambtenaren. Maar dat een woordvoerder van de autoriteiten zo'n uitspraak doet, is uniek.

Guillermo Terrazas Villanueva, woordvoerder van de staat Chihuahua, die grenst aan het Amerikaanse Texas deed zijn uitspraken onlangs tegenover een verslaggever van de Arabische nieuwszender Al Jazeera. Volgens de woordvoerder is het niet de bedoeling om de drugshandel daadwerkelijk uit te roeien, 'want dan zitten de bestrijders zonder werk.'

Onzin
De CIA in Washington wil niet rechtstreeks reageren op de beschuldigingen en verwijst naar een officiële website. Functionarissen uit Chihuahua, inclusief de burgemeester van Juarez, noemen de uitspraken van de woordvoerder onzin. Volgens de burgemeester wordt goed samengewerkt tussen Mexicaanse en Amerikaanse diensten. De VS voorzien Mexico onder meer van helikopters, wapens en trainingen om de drugshandel te bestrijden.

Kevin Sabet, een voormalig adviseur van het Witte Huis, stelt dat beschuldigingen aan het adres van de CIA gestaafd moeten worden met bewijs. De beweringen van Villanueva zijn misschien een manier om aandacht te vragen voor zijn regio, zegt Sabet. 'Dat is begrijpelijk maar niet productief of op de realiteit gebaseerd. Samenzweringstheorieën over de CIA hebben we zo langzamerhand al genoeg gehoord.'

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Drugskartel betaalde bewindsman

De Mexicaanse generaal Tomás Ángeles Dauahare kreeg in de tijd dat hij staatssecretaris van Defensie was maandelijks een half miljoen dollar van een drugskartel. In ruil daarvoor speelde hij geheime informatie door van de inlichtingendiensten over de strijd tegen de kartels.

Dat staat in de aanklacht van het Mexicaanse Openbaar Ministerie tegen de generaal, die in mei is gearresteerd.

Meest gezochte crimineel
Volgens het OM werd Dauahare betaald door het kartel van de broers Beltrán Leyva. Hij zou hen onder meer informatie hebben geleverd over de verblijfplaats van hun grootste concurrent Joaquín Guzmán El Chapo, de leider van het kartel van Sinaloa. El Chapo is al tien jaar de meest gezochte crimineel in Mexico en de Verenigde Staten.

Generaal Tomás Angeles Dauahare was van 2006 tot 2008 staatssecretaris in de regering van president Calderón. Daarnaast is hij militair attaché geweest op de Mexicaanse ambassade in Washington, belast met de coördinatie van de strijd tegen de drugskartels. Op het moment van zijn arrestatie was hij adviseur van Enrique Peña Nieto, die 1 juli de presidentsverkiezingen won.

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Fascinated US awaits trial of Mexican drug cartel's 'Queen of the Pacific'

Sandra Ávila Beltrán's expensive lifestyle is alleged to have been funded by drug activities of the Sinaloa gang

She is glamorous, sexy and has a taste for Botox and the high life – even while in prison. But the remarkable career of Sandra Ávila Beltrán, an alleged Mexican drug lord, looks set to end in an American jail.

Ávila was last week extradited to the United States, where she faces charges related to a vast network of drug trafficking and the shadowy power of the infamous Sinaloa cartel. She arrived in Miami at the end of last week destined for a Florida courtroom.

Dubbed the "Queen of the Pacific" due to her allegedly immense influence on drug supply routes, Ávila is one of the most colourful figures to emerge in recent years from Mexico's narcotics industry and the appalling violence that has cost as many as 60,000 lives there since a government offensive began in 2006. "She is a very interesting figure. She is the first really sexy drug capo to get media attention. She was glamorous and vain and there has been a fascination with her because she is female," said Howard Campbell, an expert on the Mexican drug trade at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Mexicans have long been fascinated with Ávila, who is the subject of a famous drug ballad, or narcocorrido, sung by a band called Los Tucanes de Tijuana. "The Queen of Queens" features the line: "The more beautiful the rose, the sharper the thorns."

Ávila is famed for her taste for fashionable clothes and is rumoured to have a doctor visit her in jail in Mexico to administer her Botox injections. She has complained that prison rules that stop her having food delivered to her cell from nearby restaurants are an infringement of her human rights. She is also believed to be the inspiration behind a popular Mexican TV soap opera, La Reina del Sur, about a beautiful young woman caught up in the dangerous world of the cartels.

However, the real life Ávila is not that young any more. Her exact age is uncertain – she is believed to be in her early 50s – but she has spent nearly all of her life in and around the murky world of the cartels. She is suspected to be a third-generation drug trafficker, having been born into a family with extensive connections to the drugs trade. She is the niece of Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, an infamous Mexican drug godfather currently serving a 40-year jail sentence.

Using family or marital connections and her feminine charms, Ávila is thought to have risen up the ranks of the Sinaloa cartel by specialising in money laundering. But it was a dangerous world – both of her husbands have been assassinated.

If falling for the Queen of the Pacific could be potentially lethal, it is also a lucrative career move. Investigators believe that her love affair with Colombian drug trafficker Juan Diego Espinosa provided a vital link between that South American country and the Sinaloa cartel. It also allegedly gave Ávila control of the narcotics flowing from Colombia to Mexico's Pacific coast ports, thus earning Ávila her now famous nickname and funding a lifestyle of luxury cars and dining in fine restaurants.

Much of the fascination with Ávila is because of her sex. The drugs trade is often seen as being dominated by macho men and fuelled by testosterone, but experts say women have always played a key role in the Mexican drugs business.

Last year Mexican media reported that Enedina Arellano Félix had become the country's first female cartel leader by taking charge of the Tijuana organisation. That phenomenon is seeping into popular culture too. In the latest Oliver Stone movie, Savages, glamorous Mexican actress Salma Hayek plays a ruthless female drug lord.

Ávila has everyone's attention now. After years on the run, she was arrested in Mexico in 2007 and eventually convicted on money laundering charges, despite claiming that she was just a simple housewife who sold clothes to make money and dabbled in real estate. However, the court ruled that there was insufficient evidence for a drug trafficking conviction.

The American authorities have sought her extradition ever since. Ávila battled hard against the move, not least through a vociferous media campaign. She has written a book and even gave an interview in 2009 to an American TV journalist, Anderson Cooper, when she blamed the Mexican government for allowing the drugs trade to flourish. "It's obvious and logical. The government has to be involved in everything that is corrupt," she said.

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...as much as 1/3 or more of the US economy is now illicit drug money...

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'Breaking' DOJ and CIA dealing drugs in America

After decades of almost total silence, certain aspects of the national media have finally started to report on the fact that various aspects of the government have been the majority source for illicit drug dealing in the US.

Thursday was host to bombshell, “breaking” news as TheBlaze journalist Jason Howerton decided to take credit for a story that is neither breaking, nor surprising. At least, not for those of us that have been following this and closely related stories for quite some time.

According to Howerton, the situation formerly spun as a “botched” gun running scandal, known as Fast & Furious, that has since seen 5 ATF agents take the fall for, “isn’t what you think it is.” Instead, according to the journalist, “It wasn’t about tracking guns, it was about supplying them — all part of an elaborate agreement between the U.S. government and Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa Cartel to take down rival cartels.”

For those of you that happened to have caught the daily Glenn Beck radio program Friday morning, fill-in host Joe “Pags” Pagliarulo decided to parade Mr. Howerton and his story as if it were the biggest thing since sliced bread, for the entire first hour of the show. Despite the fact that this exact story had already been reported on over a year ago by InfoWars.com. Not to mention the fact that investigators and journalists have been reporting on various aspects of these and similar circumstances, quite frankly, since at least the 80's, even seeing Pulitzer Prizes emerging over the circumstances.

The real problem is, nothing about these circumstances are truly new, despite decades of charades by the totally controlled mainstream media and more recently with Joe “Pags” desperate attempt to sell his Glenn Beck audience the laughable notion that this issue does not transcend the Obama administration. In addition to the fact that they failed to mention why the “government” is arming one cartel over another. In addition to the obvious attempt at demonizing American gun ownership, the answer there also happens to be just as old as the rest. All you have to do is ask Wall Street.

Even emerging mainstream truth-telling hero Ben Swann of KXIX FOX 19 Cincinnati immediately ran a local piece Thursday evening, (shown in the attached video) after potentially being fooled into giving credit to TheBlaze for breaking the horrifying and devastating news in the so-called national press. One has to give credit, nonetheless, to Mr. Swann for having the courage to report on this and so many other stories few in the press dare touch.

Despite the establishment prompted misconception that much of what can be found on the internet is questionable and can be chalked-up to mere conspiracy “theory,” although one does have to have a reasonable sense of discernment, knowledgeable and credible investigators, including various officials, have been able to put the pieces together over the last few decades. This includes figuring out much more than just the history of government funded drug dealing and they've added their findings, documents and documentaries to the internet, fully implicating high-ranking members of the federal government, Justice Department and the CIA for various and notable drug related epidemics that have sprung up over the years. Unfortunately, in some cases, this has gone even as high as the President and/or Vice President of the United States itself.

Since even prior to the 50's, marijuana, LSD, cocaine, heroine, then more recently crack and methamphetamine related drugs, including many others, can all be attributed in various ways to government funded programs and covert operations, leading to Thursday's bombshell information.

Surprisingly to many, if it weren't for “government” (aka “elite” family) backed and/or funded operations like these, the vast majority of illicit drug related epidemics throughout the years wouldn't have even existed. In some instances including the very drugs themselves.

One epidemic in particular, the infamous crack-cocaine epidemic of the 80's is now known to have been almost solely devised, funded and operated by the CIA and its assets as a tool to, not only fund CIA covert operations, but also to infiltrate and devastate the inner-city, African-American and minority populations of the US. A widely-known elite family goal since at least the abolition of slavery.

Perhaps one of the more sinister aspects of this self-perpetuating war on the poor and minority populous has to do with the fact that many of the same individuals and so-called elite families making these decisions also happen to have ties or ownership rights to the private prison industry that houses most of the individuals that happen to get caught up in this elaborate, official game of cat and mouse. One that funnels billions of dollars per year into the hands of its owners, as they rake in the goods from all sides of the game, aka the totally fraudulent “War on Drugs.” An operation that has witnessed more blacks convicted and imprisoned in the US than was imprisoned in South Africa during, what's known as, “Apartheid.” It really boils down to modern day slavery.

Quite possibly the most shocking aspect of the so-called War on Drugs, however, has to do with the fact that crack-cocaine scandal in particular does stretch all the way to the White House. First, with then Vice President George H.W. Bush, then in conjunction with Bill Clinton, both working together during Iran-Contra to smuggle hundreds of tons of cocaine into the Unites States through Mena, Arkansas, via CIA asset Manuel Noriega in Panama, while Clinton was still Governor of Arkansas. An incredible situation that is so grand and such a tough pill to swallow that most will blindly dismiss these totally proven circumstances as just a conspiracy theory to avoid having to come to terms with what this actually means. Something that starts to only scratch the surface of a problem that becomes almost too large and too frightening to wrap people's minds around.

Some investigators have gone as far as saying the situation has gotten so far out of hand that as much as 1/3 or more of the US economy is now illicit drug money that is mostly laundered through the Wall Street banking system, with certain banking hierarchy making business decisions while having full knowledge of the circumstances and actually being behind much of the operation themselves. The kingpins, if you will. Our politicians are merely the pawns.

Because of this America's politicians have become more important to the real ruling elite than ever, a large reason “President” Barack Obama enjoyed the first-ever billion dollar campaign in 2008, with massive amounts of Wall Street money pouring into his campaign coffers. Unfortunately for America, even if Obama doesn't win reelection in 2012, the “presumed” GOP nominee, Mitt Romney, is also enjoying the very same situation, but now starting to emerge as the new Wall Street favorite. This also gives credence to why no banking institution has seen justice for obvious violations that led to an economic crash Americans likely still have yet to see come to full fruition.

Once the so-called War on Drugs hit full stride in the late 80's and into the 90's it became the third largest industry in the US, with many major corporations still getting rich off the fake and very lucrative war today. In 2011 Reason.com reported Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitting that “legalization is “not likely to work” because “there is just too much money in it.” In fact, more money is spent in America on housing drug offenders and other non-violent “criminals” in prisons than what gets spent on education.

The average starting salary for a prison guard, for instance, is more than the average starting salary for a US university professor.

The US now houses the largest prison population on the planet, with over 2.5 million behind bars, the vast majority of which are in for non-violent, drug related offenses. Additionally, 1 in 3 black men will see the inside of a prison during their lifetimes. A 2011 Huffington Post article came to the conclusion that “African Americans make up 13.6 percent of the U.S. population according to census data, but reportedly make up 40.2 percent of all prison inmates.”

The majority of the population, however, is made to believe that the drug war is merely a mostly random act of society. Politicians get to grandstand by acting tough by speaking tough on the war on drugs. At the same time the prison industrial complex is sold as a guaranteed growth industry and a solid investment platform, with a growing base of millions making their livings working within the system.

As just one example, British owned “G4S,” formerly known as “Wackenhut,” happens to be the worlds largest security and prison development and management organization, operating in the US and providing permanent guarding service, security officers, manned security, disaster response, emergency services, control room monitoring, armed security, unarmed security, special event security, security patrols, reception/concierge service, access control, emergency medical technicians (EMT) service and ambassador service.

Prior to the 2010 merger between American owned Wackenhut and G4S, the corporation had over 38,000 employees and enjoyed a 135% increase in profitability to a healthy 12% to 14% range, thanks to the War on Drugs.

To make matters worse, just as the War on Drugs began to hit its stride in the 80's, politicians were coerced into changing the laws surrounding drug offenses, especially stretching crack related sentences to surpass even rape and murder, in some cases. Federal laws were changed for even first time offenders to a mandatory ten year sentence, amazingly, without parole. Many thousands however receiving double or triple that, even if only accomplices. Despite hundreds of judges themselves around the country literally calling the situation unjust and inhumane and demanding the laws be changed, but powerless to do anything about it until they actually are. Sadly, most members of Congress don't even really know what the drug laws are, however.

Because of all this almost one million, mostly minority, children born to single mothers, now incarcerated due to the war on drugs, are being raised in foster care and state run facilities. This also serves to perpetuate the problem due to these children now being statistically higher risk individuals, themselves far more likely to fall prey to these and other criminal related circumstances than children raised in households with parents.

All these things combine to insure the money keeps rolling in from all angles, the minority population in the US continues to be demonized and victimized and that elite-owned, for-profit prisons remain full and profitable for a many years and seemingly decades to come.

Many would agree the most honest words ever uttered by former President George H.W. Bush was when he was quoted in December of 1992 telling journalist Sarah McClendon that “If the people knew what we had done, they would chase us down the street and lynch us."

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Op maandag 13 augustus 2012 16:01 schreef El_Matador het volgende:
ranzig fearmongering stuk.

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Op maandag 13 augustus 2012 16:14 schreef El_Matador het volgende:

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Het taalgebruik, de opmerkingen over "arme zwarten", de "president" enzo...

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Op maandag 13 augustus 2012 16:50 schreef El_Matador het volgende:

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Exact wat het zo dom en hypocriet maakt van deze website.

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Op maandag 13 augustus 2012 16:59 schreef El_Matador het volgende:

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Je schuldig maken aan dezelfde onzin waar je je vijanden -terecht- van beschuldigd is natuurlijk erg hypocriet. En dom, want je bereikt meer met objectievere neutralere met gedegen feiten onderbouwde repliek.

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Op maandag 13 augustus 2012 16:59 schreef El_Matador het volgende:

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Je schuldig maken aan dezelfde onzin waar je je vijanden -terecht- van beschuldigd is natuurlijk erg hypocriet. En dom, want je bereikt meer met objectievere neutralere met gedegen feiten onderbouwde repliek.

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Mexican drug cartel suspect seized

Juan Carlos Hernández Pulido captured with ID cards of newspaper employee killed in May, navy claims

Mexican marines have captured a drug cartel suspect carrying the ID cards of a newspaper employee who was killed in May along with three photographers, the country's navy has said.

Juan Carlos Hernández Pulido, allegedly a local chief of informers for the Jalisco Nueva Generación drug gang, was detained on Friday in the Gulf coast port city of Veracruz as he handed out packets of drugs to a group of men, the navy claimed.

It said Hernández Pulido was carrying the ID cards of Irasema Becerra, an administrative worker at a local newspaper and the girlfriend of one of the dead photographers. Five other journalists have been killed in Veracruz state this year.

At the time, the killings had been thought to bear the hallmarks of the Zetas cartel; the victims were killed, dismembered and their bodies stuffed into black plastic bags dumped into a waste canal.

However, Hernández Pulido is allegedly linked to a gang allied with the Sinaloa cartel, which is fighting the Zetas for control of Veracruz and other states.

Elsewhere in Veracruz, the state prosecutors' office said seven members of a family, three adults and four children, were found dead at their home with their throats slit. The children were reportedly aged between three and 12 years old.

The bodies were found Friday in the rural hamlet of Manlio Fabio Altamirano, on the Gulf coast, by neighbours who smelled strange odours coming from the house. The family had been dead for about three days, prosecutors said.

Federal police announced on Monday they have sent 600 additional officers and 20 bulletproof patrol vehicles to the western state of Michoacán, where suspected drug cartel gunmen have attacked police and hijacked and burned trucks to block highways in recent days. Police said the units would be used in anti-drug operations, to set up checkpoints and prevent road blockades.

On Friday, five gunmen were killed when they opened fire on police from the hills around the city of Apatzingán.

In the northern Mexican state of San Luis Potosi, state police said the gunmen who killed the mayor-elect of the city of Matehuala on Sunday used assault rifles of the kind frequently wielded by drug gangs.

Edgar Morales Perez, of the Institutional Revolutionary party died in the attack along with an adviser who was travelling with him, but the adviser's wife survived. His party, known as the PRI, issued a statement on Sunday calling on authorities to investigate the killings and punish those responsible.

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Verdrievoudiging moorden Mexico sinds 2005

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Het aantal moorden in Mexico is sinds 2005 bijna verdrievoudigd. Dat blijkt uit cijfers van het bureau voor de statistiek die de regering heeft vrijgegeven.


Het is niet duidelijk hoeveel moorden te wijten zijn aan de oorlog tegen de drugs die president Felipe Calderón in 2006 afkondigde. Hij gaf toen de strijdkrachten opdracht met alle middelen een einde te maken aan de macht van de drugskartels.

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Mexican authorities find 11 corpses north-west of Acapulco

Reports in local media that messages signed by Knights Templar drugs cartel discovered alongside bodies

Eleven corpses showing signs of torture and execution-style gunshot wounds were found in south-western Mexico on Sunday, according to local authorities.

Ricardo Monreal, an official with the Guerrero state prosecutor's office, said the bodies were recovered in three different locations along the costal road north-west of the Pacific resort city of Acapulco.

He declined to confirm which cartel was believed to be responsible for the deaths, but local media reported that two "narco messages" signed by the Knights Templar cartel were found alongside the bodies.

The cartel, based in Michoacan state north of Guerrero, is the most bizarre cult-like group to have emerged since President Felipe Calderón declared war against Mexico's drug cartels in 2006.

The conflict has triggered a series of turf wars that have claimed more than 55,000 lives.

Propaganda from the Knights Templar blends a mix of Michoacan regionalism, Christianity and revolutionary slogans. It is one of the biggest traffickers of crystal meth to the United States and has an army of about 1,200 gunmen, according to a report by Mexico's military intelligence.

It is blamed for the worst attack on a multinational company in Mexico in recent years. In May, assailants torched more than 30 trucks and two Michoacan warehouses belonging to PepsiCo's Sabritas, a leading potato chip brand.

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French government under pressure over Marseille gun deaths

Marseille senator and mayor calls for army to deal with drug gangs after 19th gun-related death in the region this year

The French government is under growing pressure to contain Marseille's deadly drug wars after the 19th gun-related death in the region this year.

The latest casualty prompted a Socialist senator to call for the army to be sent in to control estates in the city.

As Marseille prepares to become European capital of culture next year, the growing problem of drug dealers setting scores with AK-47s has blighted its public relations drive. On Wednesday, a 25-year-old known to police over drug-trafficking, was hit with Kalashnikov-fire as he travelled in the passenger seat of a Renault Twingo in the north of the city. It was the 14th gun-related death connected to drug gangs in Marseille since the start of this year, the 19th in the region. A few weeks earlier another 25-year-old who had recently been released from prison died in hospital after he was shot in the south of the city. This year's Marseille gang deaths already exceed the figures for the whole of 2011.

The Socialist senator and mayor of two Marseille districts, Samia Ghali, warned: "It's now useless sending a coach of riot police to stop the dealers. When one is stopped, 10 more take up the flame. It's like fighting an ants' nest." She said faced with the heavy weapons used by the gangs, "only the army can intervene".

Her comments embarrassed the Socialist government, which is already under pressure over how to handle security on France's most restive estates. Manuel Valls, the interior minister, dismissed Ghali's comments: "Its out of the question for the army to respond to these dramas and crimes." He said there was no "enemy within" against whom the French army would go to war on its own territory.

The president François Hollande said: "The army has no place controlling neighbourhoods in the republic." He said it was up to the police to deal with the problem and promised reinforcements.

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Mexico, before and after Calderon's drug war

We all know that Mexico’s drug war has taken a horrific toll – an estimated 50,000 deaths since President Felipe Calderón launched the effort in late 2006. But how much did Calderón’s declaration change the crime rate? And now that president-elect Enrique Peña Nieto is set to take over in December, how much is likely to change?

Travelers might want to dip into “Drug Violence in Mexico,” a recent report by The Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego. Though good statistics are often hard to come by in Mexico, authors Cory Molzahn, Viridiana Ríos and David A. Shirk have gathered a boatload of numbers, and they raise the idea that drug-related killings accelerated before Calderón declared war.

As the report notes, the Mexican government counted 12,903 drug-war killings (a.k.a. organized-crime homicides) in the first nine months of 2011, which brought the official total to 47,515 since Dec. 1, 2006.

If you add the 2,624 drug-related homicides reported by the Mexican daily Reforma from October through December 2011, that makes an estimated 50,139 drug-war deaths in five years and one month. (And there are all the killings of this year yet to be officially counted.)

Looking back, the TBI report suggests that drug-related violence may have begun to surge two years before Calderón took office.

To reach that conclusion, Ríos did some estimating, combining available crime figures with “a multiple imputation algorithm and Bayesian statistics” as part of her Ph.D. dissertation.

She found that in the calmer days between 2000 and 2004, drug-related killings were “probably limited to 3,000 to 4,000 cases annually” and that violence was in decline. But in about 2004, while Vicente Fox was still president, Ríos found, violence began to rapidly increase, especially in the states of Chihuahua and Michoacán.

In the state of Baja California (which includes Tijuana and the northern portion of the Baja peninsula), Ríos estimated between 284 and 350 drug-related killings per year from 2000-2006, compared with 250 officially tallied drug-war deaths in the first nine months of 2011.

In the state of Baja California Sur (which includes Los Cabos and the southern portion of the Baja peninsula), Ríos estimated fewer than 10 drug-related killings per year from 2000-2006. The official figure was 10 such killings for the first nine months of 2011.

As for Mexico’s president-elect, Peña Nieto, he does come with baggage. His party, PRI, was voted out of the presidency in 2000 after seven decades of uninterrupted rule, including allegations of deal-making with major drug traffickers in exchange for peace and payoffs. In a July interview with the L.A. Times, he disdained details, but said that “we will widen the fight on organized crime, fighting drug trafficking, but also put a special emphasis on the crimes that generate violence in society.… Sadly, what people today feel is fear, they feel frustration, they feel an absence of results."

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Miljonair worden in de drugsindustrie? 50 Cent en Eminem geven tips

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“They say: let me help you help yourself. I’m gonna give you two and half grams. If you know what to do with this, you’re gonna be alright.”- 50 Cent.

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De Trailer van de documentaire How to Make Money on Drugs is deze week gelanceerd, en de film gaat op het Filmfestival van Toronto in première, debuterend regisseur Matthew Cooke is nog op zoek naar verdere distributeurs. Het belooft een aantrekkelijke eye-opener te worden, met heldere uitleg over de aantrekkingskracht van een industrie die teert op een voortwoekerende economische crisis. Een plekje op IDFA 2012 zou me niets verbazen.

How to Make Money Selling Drugs Official Trailer #1 (2012) - Documentary Movie HD

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‘Gedupeerde coffeeshopeigenaren achter bedreiging Wolfsen’

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Een dag voor het binnenkomen van de bedreiging zou het faillissement over een coffeeshop zijn uitgesproken. De twee eigenaren gingen ook persoonlijk failliet. Hun zaak werd eerder dit jaar op last van Wolfsen gesloten, nadat bleek dat ze een te grote voorraad softdrugs in huis hadden.

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Op maandag 3 september 2012 10:09 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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Mexicaanse toestanden

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'Godmother of cocaine' shot dead in Colombia

Griselda Blanco, thought to have ordered scores of murders in Miami's drug wars, is killed outside butcher's shop

She lived as the "godmother of cocaine", ruthlessly ordering scores of bloody murders and violent revenge attacks as she plotted the course of Miami's infamous drug wars.

So it seemed only fitting that the manner of Griselda Blanco's death on Monday reflected the brutality for which she became notorious – gunned down in the street by a killer on a motorcycle as she left a butcher's shop in her hometown of Medellin, Colombia.

Blanco, 69, was credited with inventing the motorcycle ride-by killing during her years controlling southern Florida's fledgling cocaine trade in the late 70s and early 80s, an era in which she pocketed billions of dollars before being convicted of three murders, including that of a two-year-old boy. Detectives suspected her of dozens more.

"It's some kind of poetic justice that she met an end that she delivered to so many others," said Prof Bruce Bagley, head of the University of Miami's department of international studies and author of the book Drug Trafficking in the Americas.

"Here is a woman who made a lot of enemies on her rise and was responsible for the deaths of untold numbers of people.

"She might have retired to Colombia and wasn't anything like the kind of player she was in her early days, but she had lingering enemies almost everywhere you look. What goes around comes around."

Blanco, who was deported from the US in 2004 after serving almost two decades in jail in New York and Florida for racketeering and murder, became one of Miami's original drugs gangsters as tidal waves of smuggled cocaine swept aside marijuana as the dealers' most profitable commodity.

She set up a distribution network across the US that netted her tens of millions of dollars a month, making shipments of more than 1,500kg, and maintained her dominance by building an empire staffed with violent enforcers, who were well rewarded for following her orders to execute rivals at the drop of a hat and make sure they left no witnesses.

She was also personally involved in developing creative methods to get cocaine into the US, even setting up a lingerie shop in Colombia that produced underwear for export with secret compartments.

Her colourful story, as featured in the 2008 documentary Cocaine Cowboys: Hustlin' with the Godmother, showed that her love of the underworld was not limited to just her drugs activities. A son with her third husband, Dario Sepulveda, was christened Michael Corleone Blanco after the central figure in the Godfather trilogy of mafia movies.

Meanwhile, two of her three other sons by her first husband were murdered after entering the family business.

Blanco also lost three husbands, and remained under suspicion for the deaths of them all. In one memorable 1975 episode that saw a level of violence remarkable even among Colombia's hardened drugs criminals, she confronted her husband and business partner Alberto Bravo in a Bogota nightclub car park over millions of dollars missing from the profits of the cartel they built together.

Blanco, then 32, pulled out a pistol, Bravo responded by producing an Uzi submachine gun and after a blazing gun battle he and six bodyguards lay dead. Blanco, who suffered only a minor gunshot wound to the stomach, recovered and soon afterwards moved to Miami, where her body count – and reputation for ruthlessness – continued to climb.

During her reign of terror in Florida she was suspected of responsibility in anywhere between 40 and 200 murders, yet was convicted of only three – two drug dealers who crossed her and a two-year-old boy, Johnny Castro, the son of a former Blanco enforcer, who was shot twice in the head by hitmen as he travelled in his father's car.

"At first she was real mad because we missed the father, but when she heard we had gotten the son by accident, she said she was glad, that they were even," Blanco's former lieutenant, Jorge Ayala, told police.

She escaped the death penalty on a technicality when Ayala was discredited as a witness after being caught having phone sex with secretaries in the prosecutors' office.

Bagley said Blanco, who was shot twice in the head, was likely to become the subject of books or a Hollywood movie.

"She was a pioneer in the sense that she helped to forge and carve out the drugs trade in south Florida and used bloody tactics to do so," he said.

"The danger is she will be remembered not for her cold-heartedness and brutality but for being a woman entrepreneur in an emerging field dominated by men."

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Op dinsdag 4 september 2012 19:52 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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Decriminalise cannabis, ecstasy to curb addiction: report

A national report into illicit drugs has recommended decriminalising ecstasy and cannabis under a government-controlled program to help curb addiction.

It comes as Australian Federal Police reveal there has been a massive increase in the amount of illegal drugs and criminal assets seized in the past year.

The 52-page report on alternatives to prohibition, by the Australia 21 group, was released in Adelaide today.

Read the report here

One of the report's proposals is to establish a government supplier for cannabis and ecstasy.

The drugs would be available to people over 16, who would then be supported by counselling and treatment programs.

The report also recommends similar programs for heroin and cannabis use.

Co-author Professor Bob Douglas says it is clear prohibition is not working, and Australia needs to have a serious debate about legalising controlled drug use.

"It's been a political benefit for people to pretend they're tough on drugs, but lots of politicians in Australia recognise now that this has to be changed," he said.

Professor Douglas says similar programs are being used in Europe with proven positive results.

He says criminal gangs have a monopoly on the black market, but a government regulated drug program could help to safely curb usage.

"Government just stands by and says 'well we'll criminalise the people who use drugs and we'll try and catch the people who are distributing them', but they're not doing very well," he said.

"The report makes clear despite the good work that Australian police are doing, they're not making a serious mark on the markets."

The Federal Government says it will consider holding a national summit on drugs, but it does not support decriminalisation.

Mental Health Minister Mark Butler says the Government balances health responses with law enforcement.

But Greens Senator Richard di Natale says it is short-sighted to ignore the recommendations of experts.

"It's very clear that many experts, not just here in Australia but right around the world, support treating this issue as a law and order issue," he said.

"What's very very clear is the evidence says if we want to save people's lives, if we want to have more money for intervention then we have to start treating this as a health issue rather than a law and order issue."

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Hennepkwekerij in huis dode politieman Kekerdom

Een team van ruim 20 rechercheurs onderzoekt de zaak rond de vondst van drie dode mensen in een huis in het Gelderse Kekerdom. De lichamen zijn zondagmiddag aangetroffen in een woning aan de Weverstraat nadat buurtbewoners de politie hadden gealarmeerd.

Een van hen is een 59-jarige politieman die werkte bij de politie Gelderland-Zuid. In zijn huis heeft de politie een hennepkwekerij ontdekt. Of de hennepkwekerij verband houdt met de zaak wordt onderzocht.

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Under the mask of the war on drugs

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Oliver Villar is a lecturer in politics at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst, Australia, a country where he has lived for most of his life. He was born in Mendoza, Argentina. In 2008 he completed his PhD on the political economy of contemporary Colombia in the context of the cocaine drug trade at the UWS Latin American Research Group (LARG). Whilst completing his PhD, Villar's research interests in political economy, Latin America and the global drug trade followed teaching positions in politics at UWS and Macquarie University.

For the past decade his research has been devoted to the book (co-written with Drew Cottle)
'"Cocaine, Death Squads, and the War on Terror: US Imperialism and Class Struggle in Colombia" (Monthly Review Press. He has published broadly on the Inter-American cocaine drug trade, the US War on Drugs and Terror in Colombia, and US-Colombian relations. This abiding interest extends across economic thought, economic development and the development of social and political relationships between the First World and Third World (in particular between the United States and Latin America) and the impact of neoliberal economic globalization.

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LS: From my perspective as a financial journalist it is remarkable to see that you treat cocaine as just another capitalist commodity, like copper, soy beans or coffee, but then again as a uniquely imperial commodity. [1] Can you explain this approach, please?

OV:Again drawing upon past empires or great powers, it becomes an imperial commodity because it is primarily serving the interests of that imperial state. If we look at the United States for instance, it becomes an imperial commodity just as much as opium became a British imperial commodity in a way it related to the Chinese. It means the imperial state is there to gain from the wealth, the United States in this case, but it also means that it serves as a political instrument to harness and maintain a political economy which is favorable to imperial interests.

We had the "War on Drugs", for example. It is a way how an imperial power can intervene and also penetrate a society much like the British were able to do with China in many respects. So it is an imperial commodity because it does serve that profit mechanism, but it is also an instrument for social control and repression.

We see this continuity with examples where this takes place. And Colombia, I think, was the most outstanding and unique example which I have made into an investigative case study itself.

Another thing worth mentioning is what actually makes the largest sectors of global trade, what are they? It's oil, arms, and drugs - the difference being that because drugs are seen as an illegal product, economists don't study it as just another capitalist commodity - but it is a commodity. If you look at it from a market perspective, it works pretty much the same way as other commodities in the global financial system.

LS: Cocaine has become one more means for extracting surplus value on which to realize profits and thus accumulate capital. But isn't it the criminalized status of drugs that makes this whole business possible in the first place?

OV: We have to think about what would happen if it was decriminalized? It would actually be a bad thing if you were a drug lord or someone to a large extent gaining from the drug trade. What happens if it is criminalized is that you are able to gain wealth and profit from something that is very harmful to society. First of all, it will never be politically acceptable for politicians to say: You know, we think that the war on drugs is failing, so we decriminalize it. That would be almost political suicide.

We know it is very harmful to society, and by keeping it criminalized it leaves a very grey area, not only in the studies and investigations that I've noticed on the drug trade, but it also leaves a very grey area in terms of how the state actually tackles the drug problem.

In many ways for law enforcement it allows a grey area in order to fight it. For instance, we can look for example at the financial center, which gains predominantly from it. But it also allows the criminal elements, which are so key to making it work, flourish.

And by not touching that, by largely ignoring the main criminal operation to take form and to operate, then what you are doing by criminalizing drugs is that you are actually stimulating that demand. So there is also that financial element to the whole issue as well. That's why this business is actually possible by that criminalized status.

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OV: We know that the estimated value of the global drug trade - and this is also debated by analysts - is worth something between US$300 billion to $500 billion a year. Half of that, something between $250-$300 billion and over actually goes to the United States. So what does this say if you use that imperial political economy approach I've talked about? It means that the imperial center, the financial center, is getting the most, and so it is in no interest for any great power (or state) to stop this if great amounts of the profits are flowing to the imperial center.

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Op maandag 10 september 2012 06:40 schreef El_Matador het volgende:
Gracias voor deze interessante artikelen, Papierversnipperaar.

Hot news hier de afgelopen dagen waren de onderhandelingen met de FARC, waar president Santos -in mijn ogen helaas- toe heeft opgeroepen. De dode drugspaisa heb ik niets van gehoord hier. Maar ik kijk ook nauwelijks tv.

Wel zag ik "Tanja's dagboek" (dat ik hier in het NLs heb liggen) voor 41.000 (~ 18 euro) in de supermarkt liggen.

Die PhD lijkt me interessant; hoe is het toch mogelijk dat een land dat 15 jaar geleden in een bloedige oorlog leefde, zo veilig kan zijn. Wat is er met al die drugsbazen gebeurd? Ze hebben voetbalclubs, corrupte lui om zich heen en meer van dat soort gein. Maar hoe is dat zo gekomen, die ontwapening en pacificatie (op de paramilitairen na) van niet minder machtig gemaakte baronnetjes. En baronesjes, blijkbaar.

De grote drugstransporten lopen volgens mij voornamelijk via de Pacifische kust (Chocó). Een ondoordringbare jungle waar bij de grootste stad niet eens een vliegveld is. Er wonen Colombianen van Oost-Afrikaanse afkomst.

Colombiaanse vriendin vertelde me van een gringo die daar had gereisd. Hem was niks overkomen, maar ja. Door drugstransportland reizen.... heftig.

Hoe is die oorlog zo verschoven naar Mexico en daar nog veul bloediger geworden dan in Colombia? Welke rol heeft de verkeerde keuze van Calderon daarin gespeeld?

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Mexican drug boss El Coss captured by authorities

Mexican navy says it has detained the head of the Gulf Cartel, one of the country's most wanted drug bosses

The Mexican navy has said it has captured one of Mexico's most wanted drug bosses, the head of the Gulf Cartel, in what would mark a major victory in President Felipe Calderón's crackdown on organised crime.

The navy said it would give more details about the arrest of the man it believed to be Jorge Costilla, alias El Coss, when it parades him in front of the media early on Thursday.

A government security official said the man was detained in Tampico in northeastern Mexico without resistance. The US state department has a reward of up to $5m (£3m) for his capture.

The arrest comes barely a week after the Mexican navy captured senior Gulf Cartel member Mario Cárdenas, alias Fatso.

The Gulf Cartel has been weakened by a violent turf war with the Zetas, a gang formed by army deserters which acted as enforcers for the cartel before 2010.

It could also have political implications because top officials in the cartel's stronghold, the state of Tamaulipas, have been accused of taking money from local drug gangs.

"All these politicians who were getting money from the Gulf Cartel ought to be very worried now because this information is going to come to light," said Alberto Islas, a security expert at consultancy Risk Evaluation.

He said he expected Costilla to be extradited to the US, and that his testimony could prove damaging to officials in Tamaulipas and neighbouring Veracruz state, which has also been dogged by allegations of corruption.

Tomás Yarrington, a governor of Tamaulipas between 1999 and 2005 for the Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI), which will retake the national presidency in December, is wanted in Mexico for aiding drug gangs.

The FBI said Costilla is believed to have taken over the daily operations of the cartel after his former boss Osiel Cárdenas was arrested and jailed in Mexico in 2003.

He features prominently on a wanted list of 37 kingpins the Mexican government published in 2009. Well over 20 on that list have now been captured or killed.

Costilla's apparent capture could however lead to more violence with the weakening of the Gulf Cartel intensifying turf wars for control of Mexico's northeastern border with Texas between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Zetas.

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Half of drugs prescribed in France useless or dangerous, say leading doctors

The doctors claim that the state wastes money on unnecessary medicine that they blame for up to 20,000 deaths annually

Half of all medicines being prescribed by doctors in France are either useless or potentially dangerous for patients, according to two eminent medical specialists. They blame the powerful pharmaceutical companies for keeping these drugs on sale at huge expense to the health system and the taxpayer.

Professor Philippe Even, director of the prestigious Necker Institute, and Bernard Debré, a doctor and member of parliament, say removing what they describe as superfluous and hazardous drugs from the list of those paid for by the French health service would save up to ¤10bn (£8bn) a year. It would also prevent up to 20,000 deaths linked to the medication and reduce hospital admissions by up to 100,000, they claim.

In their 900-page book The Guide to the 4,000 Useful, Useless or Dangerous Medicines, Even and Debré examined the effectiveness, risks and cost of pharmaceutical drugs available in France. Among those that they alleged were "completely useless" were statins, widely taken to lower cholesterol. The blacklist of 58 drugs the doctors claimed are dangerous included anti-inflammatories and drugs prescribed for cardiovascular conditions, diabetes, osteoporosis, contraception, muscular cramps and nicotine addiction.

The Professional Federation of Medical Industrialists denounced the doctors' views as full of "confusions and approximations".

"This book is helping to alarm those who are sick needlessly and risks leading them to stop treatments," it saidin a statement.

Christian Lajoux, the federation's president said: "It is dangerous and irresponsible … hundreds of their examples are neither precise nor properly documented. We must not forget that the state exercises strict controls on drugs. France has specialist agencies responsible for the health of patients and of controlling what information is given to them."

Professor Even told the Guardian most of the drugs criticised in the book are produced by French laboratories. He accused the pharmaceutical industry of pushing medicines at doctors who then push them on to patients. "The pharmaceutical industry is the most lucrative, the most cynical and the least ethical of all the industries," he said. "It is like an octopus with tentacles that has infiltrated all the decision making bodies, world health organisations, governments, parliaments, high administrations in health and hospitals and the medical profession.

"It has done this with the connivance, and occasionally the corruption of the medical profession. I am not just talking about medicines but the whole of medicine. It is the pharmaceutical industry that now outlines the entire medical landscape in our country."

The French consume medication worth ¤36bn every year, about ¤532 for each citizen who has an average 47 boxes of medicine in cupboards every year. The state covers 77% of the cost, amounting to 12% of GDP; in Britain spending on medicines is 9.6% of GDP. "Yet in the UK people have the same life expectancy of around 80 years and are no less healthy," said Even.

The authors were commissioned by former President Nicolas Sarkozy to write a report over the Mediator affair, a drug developed for diabetes patients but prescribed as a slimming aid, that has been linked to the deaths of hundreds of patients who developed heart problems.

However, Even accused the industry of having a get-rich-quick attitude to making medicines and said it was interested in chasing only easy profits. "They haven't discovered very much new for the last 30 years, but have multiplied production, using tricks and lies.

"Sadly, none of them is interested in making drugs for rare conditions or, say, for an infectious disease in countries with no money, because it's not a big market. Nor are they interested in developing drugs for conditions like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease because it too difficult and there's not money to be made quickly.

"It has become interested only in the immediate, in short term gains. On Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry is third after petrol and banking, and each year it increases by 20%. It's more profitable than mining for diamonds."

Asked to explain French people's apparent dependence on medication, Even said: "For the last 40 years patients have been told that medicines are necessary for them, so they ask for them. Today we have doctors who want to give people medicines and sick people asking for medicines. There's nothing objective or realistic about this."

He added: "There is nothing revolutionary in this book. This has all been known for some time."

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Towards revision of the UN drug control conventions

The logic and dilemmas of Like-Minded Groups

_{Series on Legislative Reform of Drug Policies Nr. 19
March 2012}

Recent years have seen a growing unwillingness among increasing numbers of States parties to fully adhere to a strictly prohibitionist reading of the UN drug control conventions; the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (as amended by the 1972 Protocol), the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances; and the 1988 Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.

application-pdfDownload the briefing (PDF)

Such behaviour has been driven by a belief that non-punitive and pragmatic health oriented domestic policy approaches that are in line with fundamental human rights standards better address the complexities surrounding illicit drug use than the zero-tolerance approach privileged by the present international treaties.

Those treaties were negotiated and adopted in an era when both the illicit market and understanding of its operation bore little resemblance to those of today. Since this stance runs counter to the rigid interpretative positions held by some parts of the UN drug control apparatus, and many other States Parties, tensions within the international treaty system, or what has usefully been called the global drug prohibition regime, are currently pronounced.

What can be called ‘soft defecting’ states, those choosing to deviate from the prohibitive ethos of the conventions whilst remaining within what they deem to be the confines of their treaty commitments, are regularly criticized by the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) for engagement, in some cases at a subnational level, with a range of tolerant policy approaches.

Prominent among these are harm reduction interventions aiming to reduce the link between injecting drug use and HIV/AIDS (particularly drug consumption rooms/safe injection facilities), medical marijuana schemes and the ‘decriminalization’ of drug possession for personal use. Despite the positions of the Board, the detailed and robust legal justifications put forward by many states demonstrate that the policy choices are defensible within the boundaries of the existing treaty framework.

Moreover, they are further justified, and in some cases required, by national constitutional guarantees and concurrent obligations in international law. That national constitutional principles should operate as the locus for determining the appropriateness of certain policies (such as the criminalisation of personal possession of illicit substances) is specifically written into the drug control conventions.

Although revealing their considerable flexibility, the process of soft defection also inevitably highlights the limited plasticity of the conventions – they can only bend so far. The very act of justifying the legality of various policy options relative to the treaty framework emphasises an inescapable fact. Should they wish to do so, states already pushing at the limits of the regime would only be able to expand further national policy space, particularly in relation to production and supply, via an alteration in their relationship to the conventions and the prohibitive norm at the regime’s core.

Within such a context, growing and much needed attention is being devoted to the legal technicalities of treaty revision. There remains, however, a deficiency of analysis and discussion of the political and geopolitical practicalities of moving beyond the prohibitive confines of the current treaty framework.

This discussion paper aims to go some way to fill this space. Mindful of the recent experiences of the Plurinational State of Bolivia in the first formal challenge to the prohibitive norm at the heart of the regime, it focuses specifically on the possible benefits and dilemmas of the formation and operation of a like-minded group (LMG), or groups, of revisionist nations.

The paper suggests that, while substantive changes in the structure of international regimes in general is not uncommon, the varied nature of dissatisfaction with different aspects of the current drug control regime, the relatively few States parties openly expressing such dissatisfaction, and the character of drug policy itself combine to make the issue more problematic than it might be in other areas of multilateral cooperation. As will be discussed, the history of the issue area and the current mechanisms of regime compliance point to the use of an LMG approach to expand domestic policy freedom via some form of treaty revision. Yet, the inter-related issues of specific and often shifting national interest are likely to make such a process complex and multifaceted.

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Ontvoering legt drugshandel bloot

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De 29-jarige man deed 2 weken geleden aangifte van ontvoering van zijn vrouw. De ontvoering, die anderhalve dag duurde, zou zijn gevolgd op de diefstal van cocaïne uit een container. Politie en justitie denken dat de man daar zelf achter zit, aldus een woordvoerder van het Openbaar Ministerie in Rotterdam vrijdag.

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Op zaterdag 22 september 2012 22:09 schreef DS4 het volgende:

Maar zwakke punten... daar kun je aan werken. Mocht het echt volstrekt niet mogelijk zijn, dan moet je er wellicht van af zien, want wat je niet kan handhaven moet je niet verbieden. Dat is zinloos.

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Op zaterdag 22 september 2012 22:40 schreef DS4 het volgende:
Ja, "volstrekt niet mogelijk" is voor mensen die teveel snuiven kennelijk niet goed te begrijpen.

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Op zaterdag 22 september 2012 22:41 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

Of voor mensen die te veel zuipen of geilen op propaganda.

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Hoofdrolspeler Mexicaanse drugsoorlog gepakt

Een van de hoofdrolspelers in de drugsoorlog in Mexico is woensdag gearresteerd. Dat liet de Mexicaanse marine weten.

Het gaat om Ivan Velazquez, een van de leiders van het drugskartel Los Zetas. Velazquez staat ook wel bekend als Z-50 of El Taliban. Hij werd gearresteerd in de staat San Luis Potosi in het midden van Mexico, waar Los Zetas de afgelopen weken een interne strijd heeft uitgevochten.

Mexico heeft in 2006 het leger ingezet om de drugsoorlog onder controle te krijgen, maar sindsdien is het geweld juist uit de hand gelopen. Ongeveer 55.000 mensen zijn vermoord.

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Op donderdag 27 september 2012 22:07 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:
Nieuwsuur: Aandacht voor de War on Drugs op de Algemene Vergadering VN.