Declan Hayes
A country like America that is hopelessly addicted to opioids cannot be long for this world. And, though that is a story worth telling, it is not one Hollywood wants to consider.
Escreva para nós: infostrategic-culture.su
A recent Sunday World global exclusive claimed that NATO's leading drug cartels have aligned "with Putin and Iran" because they have run out of other options. NATO's cocaine cartel chiefs, the exclusive claims, "have become bed-fellows with the Russian and Iranian regimes - offering up their transport routes and South American cocaine suppliers in exchange for sanctuary."
Because the cartel leaders are gradually losing their safe haven in the United Arab Emirates, the exclusive claims that there is now "a black-hearted triangle of terror between cocaine cartels and forces in Russia and Iran intent on destroying the West".
Russia, "Putin's homeland", the Sunday World claims, might offer these ruthless, two timing gangsters "a final sanctuary from Europe and the U.S., who have joined forces to eliminate them."
As things currently stand, these gangsters "are actively moving tonnes of cocaine across the globe on behalf of the mafia states [of Russia, Iran et al], who have been exploiting their transport routes and contacts as they raise funds to fight their wars".
These gangsters "are so deeply embedded with both regimes [Russia and Iran] that they are now enemies of the Western World", not least because they work closely with "agents within the Soviet Military Intelligence wing, the GRU" in co-ordinating their nefarious activities.
The Syrian and Venezuelan Connections
The exclusive goes on to tell us that "for years, the GRU had used a Syrian drug lord based in Marbella, Monzer Al Kassar, as an arms and cocaine dealer to supply both them and Iran" and that "the Kinahan organisation has been participating in drug deliveries with the GRU since at least 2019" and that many of the cocaine shipments set sail from sanctioned Venezuela. As the Kinahans had also occasionally tweeted against "U.S. President Joe Biden and his son Hunter", it seems to be case closed, all the more so as, according to the exclusive, Hezbollah are also in on the act.
Although Italy's National anti-Mafia prosecutor Gianni Melillo is correct to state that "the connections between drug trafficking, money laundering and terrorism financing processes are visible at various latitudes; from Latin America to the Middle East, from Pakistan to Afghanistan to the Balkans, from Libya to Western and Sub Saharan Africa," that is no proof or indication that Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Hezbollah or Syria have any hand, act or part in this gigantic business, which would expose them to considerable reputational and other risks without the sort of NATO protection Italy's Giulio Andreotti long enjoyed.
To begin with Syria, not only have I already covered NATO's drug smears against them in my earlier article but, because Monzer al-Kassar has been incarcerated from 2009 in Marion Medium Security Prison in Illinois, with a 2033 release date, he is innocent of the collusion charges this garbage article concerns itself with.
Not that al-Kassar is squeaky clean as this so-called Prince of Marbella played a pivotal role in the Pentagon's arms for hostages scandal, where the American and not the Soviet government was shown to be up to its eyeballs in cocaine deals with Latin American terrorists and where the CIA hounded Gary Webb, a good, great and heroic American journalist, to his death for exposing to the world their collusion with criminal cocaine cartels.
Moving on to Russia, although the GRU still exists, the Soviet Union is no longer with us and, though the Sunday World might be forgiven for not knowing that, conflating the Soviet Union and Russia is just indicative of the poor CIA sources that leaked this James Bond type story to them.
For, make no mistake, this is all James Bond nonsense, with more holes in it than a fisherman's net. Were GRU agents facilitating these NATO-based gangsters, those agents should, at a minimum, be recalled to Russia and sent to Siberian prison camps for the rest of their lives. That is because these cartels are totally untrustworthy and would most definitely shop them out to their CIA handlers as was the case, for example, with Panama's General Noriega, who got 40 years from a Yankee judge for no longer playing ball with Uncle Sam.
As for Venezuela, it would make no sense to ship cocaine out of its ports, all of which are blockaded and closely monitored from air, sea and space. And, as regards running NATO's cartel rings from either Iran or Russia, that is James Bond fantasy land for these cartel mobsters and their molls.
Leaving Iran to one side for the sake of brevity, the Russians would have to monitor these gangsters 24/7 and for what? For Russia to immerse itself in a NATO-based dirty industry it is almost totally ill-equipped for in exchange for a cut that would be small beans compared to the reputational damage other industries more central to Russia's future such as oil, nitrates and precious metals would suffer once the cartels, as they would, let the cat out of the bag.
As for the cartel bosses themselves, were they playing footsie with both Russia and Iran, the Yanks would have made the UAE surrender them in a heartbeat so that they could "persuade" them by whatever inducements necessary to spill their guts out.
As regards Hezbollah and the hawala system, that is more James Bond poppycock. Although all sanctioned Arabs use that system, few would use it to the extent that the cocaine cartels would need and, if they did, it would show up on the CIA's financial radars in a flash. If Hezbollah are going to put their own networks at risk for a couple of cocaine dealing bums, they need their heads examined and best surrender pronto to the Israelis, who most likely take more than a passing interest in what these cartels get up to and how they can be leveraged.
And though the Sunday World forgot to throw China into the mix, China has been accused of flooding the United States with fentanyl, whose effects on the consumer belong more in a horror movie than the James Bond tripe this Sunday World article concerns itself with.
And though the ongoing saga of these cocaine and fentanyl gangs is manna from heaven for Hollywood and NATO's red tops, the solution to the problems they cause does not lie in Venezuela, Iran or Russia but in NATO's own countries cleaning up their own backyards, where cocaine and the cartels, politicians, judges and barristers who thrive off it are out of control.
NATO may as well delight in this Sunday World tripe which, unlike the late and great Gary Webb's work, points the finger of blame in the wrong direction. Their delight will, in the grander order of things, be relatively short lived because a country like America that is hopelessly addicted to opioids cannot be long for this world. And, though that is a story worth telling, it is, as Gary Webb might have told us were he still alive, not one Hollywood wants to consider, or the Sunday World or any of the rest of NATO's media wants to write or that NATO's leaders wants its vassals to hear. Better, from NATO's viewpoint, to publish half-cocked smears like this instead.