A question, in keeping with the present emphasis on conjecture and speculation, as opposed to patiently waiting for the incontrovertible facts. As outlined here previously, this will be an ongoing attempt to describe, not so much theories, as conjectured theories, and to contemplate the pertinent aspects of those conjectured theories.
Given that, as Jo Revill has it, in the Observer, Sunday, May 23, 2004, cocaine use is up dramatically among young people, and the price, contrary to simplistic "supply and demand" formulae, has gone down by nearly half in Britain, and, we can assume in the other civilized nations of the world, we can ask, "What events have recently transpired that may be linked to this phenomenon?"
Keeping in mind that this is only conjecture, let's do a quick geographical overview.
Britain - over there in the north-eastern Atlantic; cocaine - over there in the south-western Atlantic. So, how's it get from one to the other?
Possibility #1 is "staging areas". As opposed to possibility #2, direct export.
Let's review some recent events in the Caribbean. One anyway. The recent plucking of a duly-elected leader from his home, his forced abdication, and his replacement with known criminals and thugs, with known ties to drug smugglers. The ton-ton macoutes being, among other things, heavily invested in the international drug trade, as middlemen/expediters. Overseeing a lawless land ruled by raw power, when you have that raw power, can be richly rewarding even when you are not very sophisticated in the ways of the world.
So, short form:
Haiti is the major staging area for the international cocaine trade.
You would expect a fall in prices, and a rise in availability if this were the case and Haiti had suddenly gone from an anti-drug democratically-elected President, Aristide, to a pro-business thug, whoever.
And this is the case.
Which doesn't mean this is what's happened, it means it could be. Conjecture.
The next area is darker.
Who controls the international cocaine trade?
Possible agencies are:
The Russian mafia, just because I don't like them, and because they're ruthless. Possible but my instincts, which are all I'm working with in this, say no.
The American mafia, or Cosa Nostra, or those Italian guys from New York and Vegas. Unlikely. Maybe a little local wholesale/retail, like the Russians, but we're looking for who's got it locked up.
The CIA. This has precedent, Gary Webb being a good place to start on that. It's possible, but I'm wondering lately if the old CIA even exists as a vibrant covert entity. It seems more likely that the agents in the field and the bureaucrats in D.C. are there, but being deployed for a less red-white-and-blue purpose, like the troops in Iraq.
Which leads us to our 4th possibility, the-very-difficult-to-name gang of thugs who now run pretty much all of the economic institutions of the world. There's an ethnicity involved. And there's a lot of almost overt activity that seems to be the result of an estimation of the powerlessness of anyone who might be able to see and comprehend those activities.
We're going to leave them dangling there sort of namelessly for now, saying only in closing that the conjecture here is that the same people who placed George Bush in the White House put American troops in Iraq, and did so for purposes of a long term plan of world dominance that is neck and neck with world destruction. And as a tangential but just as seriously proffered conjecture, that the current situation in Iraq, including the world-wide broadcast of images of degraded Arab men in humiliating poses, is a form of bragging and triumphant crowing masked as the exposure of crime. That it is the exposure of a crime, or of a criminal atmosphere in which a multitude of crimes have occurred doesn't contradict that assertion. Yes they're crimes, yes it's evidence, and yes it's bragging.
And yes those same guys want a destabilized Iraq, which they have, and they want al-Sadr neutralized before the US leaves taking all the blame for what's happened with it, even though the only national entity that has benefited from the carnage in Iraq has left no fingerprints of its presence there.
And yes those guys are running the cocaine trade internationally, just like they're running the Russian oil industry, and most of the weight of the Russian mafia is theirs.
This is of course, as I've taken great pains to make clear, merely conjecture. Ideas that need to be tried on, possibly refuted, or set aside for later, as more evidence unfolds, but increasingly now it will be important to think the unthinkable, regardless of how unlikely it is, or how dangerous.
It's time to admit that there's more going on than incompetent doofus George Bush and his wheezing ventriloquist Mr. Cheney.
And somewhere in here I wish someone would take the time to explain in simple clear language exactly why Tony Blair was so rabidly keen on invading and occupying Iraq.
I haven't seen much that would, not so much justify, as make sense of his almost adolescent enthusiasm. So I'm conjecturing pressure behind the scenes.
I'm thinking the richest man in England might be a place to begin that part of the investigation.
