The Outcome Could Help Define A Path To A Peaceful End To the Drug War
A major turf war has erupted in the grand experiment to legalize marijuana in the state of Washington.
However, this battle is being waged with the tools of politics, the courts and organizing, unlike the drug war, where disputes over control of the drug plazas, or markets, normally are settled with bullets.
Agency Used Classified Information As Currency For Deception
The recently released Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report pillorying the CIA’s Bush-era detention and interrogation program is replete with lurid details of what would commonly be called torture, if those practices were carried out on you or me.
DoD Officials Claim Training is Part of the Solution, Not the Problem
The U.S. government has spent more than $62 million since fiscal year 2010 providing highly specialized training to Mexican security forces, including some $16.3 million in fiscal 2013, as part of an effort to help Mexico better prosecute its war on drugs, records made public under the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act show.
Effort to Overcome City Moratoriums on Cannabis Shops Could Spark an Unlikely Alliance
The great experiment in the state of Washington to legalize the sale of marijuana through a regulated and taxed market has hit a hitch at the local level that threatens to slow progress to a snail’s pace, even as more and more marijuana businesses obtain the state licensing needed to open their doors.
The United Food and Commercial Workers and other Unions Seek to Strengthen Protections for Cannabis Workers
But No One With the Power to Investigate Seems to Care
At least $20 million went missing from money seizures by law enforcers, critical evidence was destroyed by a federal agency, a key informant was outed by a US prosecutor — contributing to her being kidnapped and nearly killed — and at the end of the day not a single narco-trafficker was prosecuted in this four-year-long DEA undercover operation gone awry.
September 16, 2014
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In Memoriam: Gary Webb (1955-2004)
Dear Colleague,
"Lalo" Is A Man Who Knows Too Much
He has run afoul of the U.S. and Mexican governments — and the Juárez narco-trafficking organization. There’s a $500,000 contract on his life. By any bookmaker’s odds, he should be a dead man.
As one of the original authentic journalists, he trailblazed a path for others to follow
When I heard that he had passed, my eyes welled with tears. I’m of stoic Irish stock, so I don’t shed tears easily, but the news of Charles Bowden’s death (1945-2014) was not an easy thing to bear. He had been a mentor and a friend to me for a decade, and his leaving hurts.
Critics Argue Drug-War Money is Part of the Problem, Not the Solution
Some 58,000 migrant children, mostly Central Americans, have made the treacherous journey to the U.S. southern border alone over the past 10 months, but actions being considered by U.S. officials to combat the problem with more military and drug-war aid to their countries, critics warn, may worsen the violence that provokes this unprecedented exodus.
"Authenticity Is Not the Easiest Path ... But It's The Only Path That Leads Forward" — Al Giordano
Narco News on July 9 will celebrate its fourteenth anniversary at a bash in the Big Apple. For me, it also will be a tenth anniversary fiesta. I started reporting and writing for Narco News in 2004.
The Government of Enrique Peña Nieto Paid Time-Warner $44,000 Prior to a Recent Cover Story on Him Titled “Saving Mexico”
The kicker headline on TIME magazine’s most recent international edition cover says it all: “Saving Mexico.”