This article originally appeared on VICE Spain. On March 22, a Lithuanian man landed in Barcelona and boarded metro line 9 with his luggage, but without a ticket. Witnesses describe how he started behaving weirdly, and when security guards came up to him and asked for a ticket, he fell on the ground and started…
Category: Drugs
Modern Crime: A Bloody Gang War is Raging in Amsterdam
On March 10, a 23-year-old man’s severed head was displayed at the entrance of a hookah lounge in Amsterdam where drug dealers are known to gather. The rest of the victim’s body was found in a burned-out car on the other side of the city. It was the latest grisly episode in a conflict between…
Modern Crime: Meth, Murder and Mercs
The mercenaries had gathered in Phuket, a tropical resort island off the west coast of Thailand, to discuss a job. They were supposed to safeguard 300 kilos of Colombian cocaine on its way from the Bahamas to New York and kill two people: One a DEA agent, the other his snitch, a ship’s captain who…
Cartel Corner #75: Cuban Ship Busted Hauling 900 lbs. of Cocaine
Castro has had his hands in narco-trafficking since the early days as a means to both fill his coffers and arm Communist left wing guerilla insurgencies in latin america and around the world. But Obama supports and recognizes him anyway. -SF Nearly 900 pounds of cocaine was found Thursday on a Cuban ship in Panama…
Cartel Corner #74: How Pablo Escobar, The Medellin Cartel and Jeb Bush Became “Associates”
In the late 1980s, Pablo Escobar’s Medellin cartel was the most powerful drug-trafficking organization in the world. As such, Escobar and his associates had attracted the attention of Colombian authorities. Violence in Colombia had increased throughout the decade, and by 1988, Escobar and the Colombian government had entered into “indirect” negotiations, during which the cartel…
Modern Crime: China Suppliers Flood U.S. with Dangerous Opiates
China at this very moment is waging war on the United States on several fronts without ever deploying a military unit. This is the essence of Fourth Generation Warfare folks. Weaken your enemy from the inside.-SF The dozen packages were shipped from China to mail centers and residences in Southern California. One box was…
Espionage Files: The Strange Trip Surrounding MK-Ultra
Ten scientists, some from the CIA, gathered in a cabin in Maryland for their semiannual review and conference in November 1953. On day two, a bottle of Cointreau — spiked with LSD — appeared; after it was emptied, Sidney Gottlieb, a CIA program director, informed his colleagues that they were in for a wild ride….
Cartel Corner #72: 2015 Cartel Movie “Sicario” Will have A Sequel
Last year’s critically-acclaimed thriller, “Sicario,” starring Emily Blunt as an FBI agent who is thrust into the dirty war on drugs at the border between the US and Mexico, is going to get a sequel. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, upstart production company Black Label Media, which has had an impressive start with…
Modern Crime: Fed’s Try To Unlock Phones Because of Drugs NOT Terrorism
UNTIL THE FBI backed down from its battle with Apple over accessing the iPhone 5c of San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook, it seemed the agency had chosen a near-perfect case on which to make its stand against encryption. By refusing to write software to help law enforcement crack Farook’s phone, Apple was made to…
Cartel Corner #71: The CJNG (Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel) Expanding into Baja, California
The Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel — one of Mexico’s strongest and fastest-growing criminal organizations — is moving into Baja California, just across the border from the US, according to an official from the Mexican attorney general’s office. It seems increasingly likely that the CJNG, as the cartel is known, is challenging the powerful Sinaloa cartel…