American Conspiracies: on Drugs
Jesse Ventura:
Banks & prison-industrial complex gets rich on the drug war
Federal law still considers marijuana a dangerous illegal drug, although 14 states have now enacted laws allowing for some use for medical purposes.Let me cite a few statistics that I find mind-boggling. According to NORML, an advocacy group for
legalizing marijuana, more than 700,000 of America's estimated 20 million pot-smokers got arrested in 2008. About HALF of the 200,000 inmates in our federal prisons are in there for drug-related offenses. Between 1970 and 2007, we saw a 547% increase in
our prison population, mainly because of our drug policies. Of course, that's just fine with the new prison-industrial complex, where corporations are now running the show. We as taxpayers shell out $68 billion every year for prisons, & a lot of that end
up going into private contractors' pockets!
Of course, they're not the only ones getting rich. Well-documented federal reports lead to the conclusion that American banks are "collectively the world's largest financial beneficiary of the drug trade."
Source: American Conspiracies, by Jesse Ventura, p.114
Mar 8, 2010
John Kerry:
1986: Nicaraguan Contras support network of drug trafficking
In 1986, an FBI information inside the Medellin cartel testified that she's seen the organization loading cocaine onto aircraft that belonged to Southern Air Transport, a company that used to be owned by the CIA and was flying supplies to the Contras.
There was strong corroboration for her story, but somehow the Justice Department rejected it as inconclusive. Senator John
Kerry started looking into all this and said at one closed-door committee meeting: "It is clear that there is a network of drug trafficking through the Contras. We can produce specific law enforcement officials who will tell you that they have been calle
off drug trafficking investigations because the CIA is involved or because it would threaten national security."All this, remember, while we're spending millions supposedly fighting the "war on drugs," a phrase first coined by Nixon in 1969.
Source: American Conspiracies, by Jesse Ventura, p.117
Mar 8, 2010
Richard Nixon:
Coined phrase "War on Drugs" in 1969
In 1986, an FBI information inside the Medellin cartel testified that she's seen the organization loading cocaine onto aircraft that belonged to Southern Air Transport, a company that used to be owned by the CIA and was flying supplies to the Contras.
There was strong corroboration for her story, but somehow the Justice Department rejected it as inconclusive. Senator John
Kerry started looking into all this and said at one closed-door committee meeting: "It is clear that there is a network of drug trafficking through the Contras. We can produce specific law enforcement officials who will tell you that they have been calle
off drug trafficking investigations because the CIA is involved or because it would threaten national security."All this, remember, while we're spending millions supposedly fighting the "war on drugs," a phrase first coined by Nixon in 1969.
Source: American Conspiracies, by Jesse Ventura, p.117
Mar 8, 2010
Ronald Reagan:
OpEd: supporting Contras supported drug-trade profits
The 1979 Sandinista revolution that overthrew Anastasio Somoza, one of our favorite Latin Dictators, was not looked upon fondly by Ronnie and his friends. He called the counterrevolutionary Contras "freedom fighters," and compared them to
America's founding fathers. In his attempt to get Congress to approve aid for the Contras, Reagan accused the Sandinista government of drug trafficking. After his administration tried to mine the Nicaraguan harbors and got a hand-slap from
Congress, it turned to secretly selling missiles to Iran and using the payments--along with profits from running drugs--to keep right on funding the Contras. 50,000 lost lives later, the World Court would order the U.S. to "cease and to refrain" from
unlawful use of force against Nicaragua and pay reparations. (We refused to comply.)The fact is, with most of the cocaine that flooded the country in the Eighties, almost every major drug network was using the Contras operations in some fashion.
Source: American Conspiracies, by Jesse Ventura, p.115
Mar 8, 2010
Page last updated: Dec 12, 2018