Chanting Down Babylon: The CIA & The Death of Bob Marley

Courtesy of Alex Constantine @ High Times:

Marley knew the drill – in Jamaica, at the height of his success, when music and politics were still one, before the fog of censorship rolled into the island, old wounds were opened by a wave of destabilization politics. Stories appeared in the local, regional and international press downsizing the achievements of the quasi-socialist Jamaican government under Prime Minister Michael Manley. In the late 1970s, the island was flooded with cheap guns, heroin, cocaine, right-wing propaganda, death squad rule and, as Grenada’s Prime Minister Maurice Bishop described it three years later, the CIA’s “pernicious attempts [to] wreck the economy.”

“Destabilization,” Bishop told the emergent New Jewel Party, “is the name given the most recently developed method of controlling and exploiting the lives and resources of a country and its people by a bigger and more powerful country through bullying, intimidation and violence.”

In response to the fascistic machinations of the CIA, Marley wove his lyrics into a revolutionary crucifix to ward off the cloak-and-dagger “vampires” descending upon the island. June 1976: Then-Governor-General Florizel Glasspole placed Jamaica under martial law to stanch the bloody pre-election violence. Prime Minister Manley’s People’s National Party asked the Wailers to play at the Smile Jamaica concert in December. Despite the rising political mayhem, Marley agreed to perform.

In late November, a death squad slipped beneath the gates of Marley’s home on Hope Road in Kingston. As biographer Timothy White tells it, at about 9 PM, “the torpor of the quiet tropical night was interrupted by a queer noise that was not quite like a firecracker.” Marley was in the kitchen at the rear of the house eating a grapefruit when he heard the bursts of automatic gunfire. Don Taylor, Marley’s manager, had been talking to the musician when the bullets ripped through the back of his legs. The men were “peppering the house with a barrage of rifle and pistol fire, shattering windows and splintering plaster and woodwork on the first floor.” Rita Marley, trying to escape with her children and a reporter from the Jamaica Daily News, was shot by one of the men in the front yard. The bullet caught her in the head, lifting her off her feet as it burrowed between scalp and skull.

UK Debt Is Actually £100 Billion Higher Than We Thought, Official Stats Body To Say

Courtesy of Huff Po:

George Osborne’s austerity message is set to be dented by the government’s own statistics body, as it prepares to adopt new calculations that mean the UK’s public sector debt will be £100 billion greater than estimated.

The Office for National Statistics will bring in the new calculation this autumn as part of sweeping changes that include estimating illegal activities like prostitution and drug dealing as worth £10 billion to the country’s national wealth.

The UK’s debt will effectively increase from well over £1 trillion by more than £100 billion, or 7.3% of GDP, as the ONS attempts to improve its accounting standards changes introduced by the US, Canada and Australia.

The ONS will bring Network Rail’s debt onto the UK’s books and also stop classifying the state’s stakes in the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds as liquid assets that can be sold off quickly.

But in good news for the coalition, the ONS will give the UK’s GDP a boost of up to 5% (£75 billion) by reclassifying research and development as capital spending rather than a cost of production

Newly Released Documents Confirm DEA Involved in Cocaine Smuggling

Courtesy of Freedom Outpost:

Newly released documents and testimony from Justice Department and Drug Enforcement Agency officials now confirm the stories that the federal government has been smuggling cocaine are true. This should come as no shock to many of us who were convinced it has been going on for some time, which is why we’ve been calling for an end to the “War on Drugs.”

Business Insider reported, “An investigation by El Universal found that between the years 2000 and 2012, the U.S. government had an arrangement with Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel that allowed the organization to smuggle billions of dollars of drugs while Sinaloa provided information on rival cartels.

There have long been rumors that the federal government was engaged in drug running. One can recall the allegations against former President Bill Clinton and his cocaine trafficking in Arkansas. The feds have always denied this was going on.

However, newly released documents refute those claims.

According to a recent Next news report, an investigation conducted in Mexico found the American government allowed that country’s largest drug cartel, Sinaloa, to operate without fear of persecution. That groups is estimated to be responsible for 80 percent of the cocaine coming into the country through Chicago. In exchange, the leaders of Sinaloa provided the DEA information on rival gangs.

The drug cartel working with the federal government is run by Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán . He is considered to be the world’s most powerful drug trafficker. In addition to Chicago, his group also maintains cocaine operations in several major cities around the country.

Written statements were provided to a U.S. District Court in Chicago, confirming the alliance between the DEA and Mexico’s largest cocaine cartel. The written testimony, combined with other evidence, shows DEA officials met with leaders of the Sinaloa cartel more than 50 times between 2000 and 2012. This would mean DEA-authorized drug smuggling goes back to at least the beginning of the George W. Bush administration, and continued for year under Barack Obama.

One of the group’s leaders, Vincente Zambada-Niebla, claims the American government also sent military-grade weapons to Sinaloa. According to the latest revelations, it was these weapons which were part of the Fast-and-Furious scandal. Automatic firearms which disappeared during that operation, led by Eric Holder, were used to kill U.S. Border agents.

This latest evidence and testimony points toward a massive scandal, involving both Republican and Democratic administrations. At the very least, this provides the best evidence so far that the Federal government was sponsoring the smuggling of billions of dollars of cocaine into the United States. Worse still, weapons purchased for the U.S. military may have been sent to the cartel, and used to kill American agents.

You may recall in August of 2012, we reported on Vincente Zambada- Niebla’s claim following his extradition to Chicago to face federal drug charges. Isn’t it interesting that these drugs were being run through Chicago, the very place that gave us Barack Obama?

The question now arises: How can these people not be brought to justice under the law? Where is the outrage among the people, especially those being put away fro years for simple possession of illegal substances? Where is the outrage of the Congress? So far, all I’m hearing are crickets. Perhaps that is because it is damning to a Republican administration as well.

‘It is time to end the war on drugs’, says top UK police chief

The UK needs to have a sensible and well balanced debate, not just on cannabis but all drugs, legal and illegal. Professor Nutt stood up for what he believed in and was fired, the country needs to know the full costs and benefits of all policies and all drugs. I do not need to be told by a group of so called experts who’s expertise does not lie in fairness, impartiality, drugs or common sense, what I can and can’t do. Courtesy of the Guardian:

One of England’s most senior police officers has called for class-A drugs to be decriminalised and for the policy of outright prohibition to be radically revised.

In a dramatic move that will reignite the debate over the so-called war on drugs, Mike Barton, Durham’s chief constable, has suggested that the NHS could supply drugs to addicts, breaking the monopoly and income stream of criminal gangs.

Comparing drugs prohibition to the ban on alcohol in 1920s America that gave rise to Al Capone and the mafia, Barton argues that criminalising the trade in drugs has put billions of pounds into the pockets of criminal gangs.

Drug policy reformers have praised Barton’s challenge to the status quo as sensible and courageous.

Writing in the Observer, Barton said: “If an addict were able to access drugs via the NHS or something similar, then they would not have to go out and buy illegal drugs. Buying or being treated with, say, diamorphine is cheap. It’s cheap to produce it therapeutically.

“Not all crime gangs raise income through selling drugs, but most of them do in my experience. So offering an alternative route of supply to users cuts their income stream off.

“What I am saying is that drugs should be controlled. They should not, of course, be freely available,” Barton wrote.

“I think addiction to anything – drugs, alcohol, gambling, etc – is not a good thing, but outright prohibition hands revenue streams to villains.

“Since 1971 [the Misuse of Drugs Act] prohibition has put billions into the hands of villains who sell adulterated drugs on the streets.

“If you started to give a heroin addict the drug therapeutically, then we would not have the scourge of hepatitis C and Aids spreading among needle users, for instance. I am calling for a controlled environment, not a free-for-all.”

Unlike the criminals who supply drugs, Barton said that addicts “must be treated and cared for and encouraged to break the cycle of addiction. They do not need to be criminalised.”

Barton contends that decriminalisation and offering an alternative, controlled legal supply would also deal a mortal blow to criminal gangs and dent their image among some young people as glamorous gangsters.

“In my force area we have 43 organised crime groups on our radar. Most have their primary source of income in illicit drug supply, all of them are involved in some way. These criminals are often local heroes and role models for young people who covet their wealth. Decriminalising their commodity will immediately cut off their income stream and destroy their power,” Barton said.

“If the ‘war on drugs’ means stopping every street corner turning into an opium den and discouraging the mass consumption of laudanum, as was the case in the 19th century, then it has succeeded. But if the ‘war on drugs’ means trying to reduce the illicit supply of drugs, then it has failed.”

Barton is one of the north of England’s most experienced crimefighters and has pioneered initiatives to break up criminal networks in County Durham via his force’s “Operation Sledgehammer”. He also holds the national intelligence portfolio for the Association of Chief Police Officers across the UK. Under his watch as assistant chief constable of Durham prior to his appointment to the top post earlier this year, there was a recorded 14% drop in total crime figures for his region.

Barton joins a small band of senior UK police officers who have demanded a major rethink on drugs prohibition. They, in turn, are joined by the likes of Guatemala’s president, Otto Pérez Molina, the entrepreneur Richard Branson, 500 top leading US business figures, the Economist magazine and the Observer in calling for an alternative, including an end to outright prohibition. It is estimated that some $100bn is spent fighting the “war on drugs” each year across the world.

The drugs policy reform group Transform Drugs Policy Foundation praised Barton’s stance. Danny Kuschlick of Transform said: “We are delighted to see a serving chief constable who is willing to stand up and tell the truth – prohibition doesn’t work. Chief constable Barton demonstrates a responsible attitude to drugs that is so often absent among professionals and political leaders.

“He is that all too rare thing, a man who serves on the frontline, with principles and courage, who supports effective reform that best meets the needs of the communities that he serves. We must hope that this time more of his peers follow his lead.”

Ron Paul, on point again

Afghanistan, Land of the free for Opium Production

The criminal cartel, that is the US government, has done a sterling job of getting heroin back onto our streets since 2001.

This goes hand in hand with their cocaine smuggling from South America and the Iran Contra affair. April 25th 2012 a CIA plane crashes in Mexico with 4 tons of coke…some wars are not meant to be won, only continued for profit.