The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan required major shifts in national resources from civilian to military purposes and contributed to the growth of the budget deficit and public debt. Through FY 2018, the direct costs of the wars will have totaled more than $1.9 trillion, according to US Government figures. Pollution is a serious issue.
This episode covers the US government’s and law enforcement’s active role in global drug trafficking.
Doug Valentine is the author of The Strength of the Wolf and The Strength of the Pack. These are two of the most important books ever written on the drug trade. Doug’s research comes mostly from first hand accounts of FBN, DEA and CIA officers who tell a tale never before heard by the world.
Both of my parents were assassinated by death squads in our country. My siblings and I fled because we were afraid. We entered the U.S illegally. We crossed the river, and once inside the U.S., we applied for asylum. We were among the very few who were granted asylum. In 1988 I graduated from Bowie and studied at UTEP, receiving a bachelor’s of science.
You all know how the saying goes: “Poor Mexico – too far from God, too close to the United States”.
This proud, beautiful and deep part of the world has been plundered, ravished and humiliated for many centuries, first by the Europeans (both the Spaniards and French), then by the Norteamericanos.
The vulgarity and brutality of the conquest had often been unbelievably grotesque, unreal, insane – to the point that I decided to name it a “magical imperialism” (or call it ‘magical colonialism’ if you wish).
If I Don’t Feel It, The Problem Doesn’t Exist
You know we are cooked when the middling middle class, with educations from Duke, USC, Vanderbilt, Princeton, Columbia, and gobs of money in the bank, and an east coast upbringing, now California dreaming, are astonished that there are actually homeless veterans.
Through the metal detectors, past the indoor basketball court dotted with men in orange, and into a small, whitewashed room with six telephones, New Jersey’s resident marijuana activist sat behind a window. He sat at the fourth phone, his face framed by a thick border of blue paint around the polycarbonate glass, chipped in some areas. His dreadlocks were tied back and his calm, gray-colored eyes were underlined by dark bags. He was tired.
We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds: we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straightforward men.
Let it Fall: L.A. 1982-1992 (2017), a documentary film written and directed by John Ridley and released on Netflix, has participants in the ’92 L.A. riot give a history of police brutality and racist attitudes towards Black people by the South Central store owners and cops, along with recounting events of the riot, and, of course, the police give their version. I found it dubious that the official position of the police blamed the massive destruction, arson, and deaths of 48 people on the decision of the precinct/district lieutenant to retreat in order to save their own lives.
