WEBVTT - How Narco States Work 0:00:01.080 --> 0:00:04.520 Welcome to Stuff you should know from house Stuff Works 0:00:04.559 --> 0:00:13.039 dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh 0:00:13.080 --> 0:00:18.840 Clark with me as always as Charles W. Zonkers Bryant's Yeah, 0:00:19.440 --> 0:00:21.600 I'm always. I just sit here with wondering what you're 0:00:21.600 --> 0:00:25.360 gonna call me. How's it going? Great, sir? You pretty good? 0:00:25.840 --> 0:00:27.520 You look good. You're as good as you were ten 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:30.280 minutes ago when he recorded that other podcast, Shack. Have 0:00:30.360 --> 0:00:33.080 you ever been to Mexico? I have been to Mexico. 0:00:33.320 --> 0:00:35.720 Have you been to t J. I've been to t J. 0:00:35.880 --> 0:00:38.640 You've been to Warez. No, just t J and like 0:00:38.760 --> 0:00:42.320 the Baja area. Okay, Well, had you gone a little 0:00:42.560 --> 0:00:46.800 further east along the border to Warez, you would have 0:00:47.120 --> 0:00:51.040 been in a narco state. Yes. And you know what 0:00:51.080 --> 0:00:52.800 I'm ashamed to say, Josh, that I did not know 0:00:52.840 --> 0:00:55.640 what anarco state was. Really. I've heard of it, but 0:00:55.680 --> 0:00:58.080 I didn't really know what it was. I can't remember 0:00:58.120 --> 0:01:00.120 if I pitched this win or if Channel did, but 0:01:00.200 --> 0:01:05.880 it's a well done. Thank you very much, thank you. Yeah. Um, well, 0:01:05.959 --> 0:01:07.840 Chuck and I are talking about narco states. As you 0:01:07.920 --> 0:01:10.800 probably were tipped off by the title of this podcast, 0:01:11.360 --> 0:01:12.960 and for those of you who don't know what a 0:01:13.040 --> 0:01:17.120 narco state it is, uh, Josh, I'm just gonna give 0:01:17.160 --> 0:01:21.080 my own definition, which is, it is a country where 0:01:21.120 --> 0:01:25.440 they sort of allow drug trafficking and in some cases 0:01:25.520 --> 0:01:29.320 even participate in the drug trafficking. Yeah. And it's it's 0:01:29.440 --> 0:01:34.400 very very rarely an entire country. Um. Most of the time. 0:01:34.400 --> 0:01:37.920 It's like a region of country, very small area city. 0:01:38.319 --> 0:01:41.800 Although there are cases where there have been narco states, 0:01:41.840 --> 0:01:45.560 like fully functioning countries that are run by drugs, like 0:01:45.640 --> 0:01:49.240 the their gross domestic product is almost fully funded by drugs. 0:01:49.600 --> 0:01:53.120 The government's in on it, military is in on it. Um. 0:01:53.160 --> 0:01:56.440 And right now, as far as I could tell, there's 0:01:56.440 --> 0:02:00.400 only one functioning narco state in the world. Afghanistan. No, 0:02:00.600 --> 0:02:05.160 it's close though, uh Guinea bissauth Oh yeah sure. In Africa, yeah, 0:02:05.200 --> 0:02:07.440 West of Africa. I can't wait to tell that story. 0:02:07.560 --> 0:02:10.680 It's a good one. So okay. So, narco state, as 0:02:10.760 --> 0:02:14.960 Chuck said, is basically any area where the government is 0:02:15.000 --> 0:02:19.480 either directly involved or turning a blind eye to drug trafficking. Yes, 0:02:19.639 --> 0:02:24.160 in the Central Mexico, Central America. South America always known 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:27.360 as being rife with this kind of thing because chances 0:02:27.360 --> 0:02:30.119 are if you're doing drugs in the US, chances are 0:02:30.360 --> 0:02:32.720 it did not come from inside the United States. No, 0:02:32.919 --> 0:02:36.119 unless it was meth or pot. Yeah, and even then, 0:02:36.360 --> 0:02:39.080 chances are it probably didn't, although there was a lot 0:02:39.160 --> 0:02:42.360 of domestic uh meth labs and and pot farms and 0:02:42.360 --> 0:02:45.000 stuff like that. Yeah, but yeah, the chances are it 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:48.799 came through Mexico if not from Mexico. Mexico didn't used 0:02:48.840 --> 0:02:51.800 to be nearly as violent, you know. Warez, which we 0:02:51.800 --> 0:02:55.080 were talking about, Um had I think three hundred murders 0:02:55.080 --> 0:02:57.960 in two thousand seven, and then all of a sudden 0:02:58.000 --> 0:03:01.200 there was a drug war started. It's still going on now. 0:03:01.760 --> 0:03:04.400 And in two thousand and eight they had murders. Yeah, 0:03:04.440 --> 0:03:07.200 that's a heck of a stat Yeah. Yeah, Detroit had 0:03:07.240 --> 0:03:10.080 like less than three hundred murders in two thousand seven. 0:03:11.040 --> 0:03:14.200 To Detroit, safer than someplace. It's just safer than Warrez, 0:03:14.240 --> 0:03:16.760 believe it or not. Well, thank god for that. I 0:03:16.800 --> 0:03:21.200 didn't get the stats on Tempi though, so I can't say. Yeah. So, um. 0:03:21.240 --> 0:03:24.320 One of the reasons why uh, And we'll see that 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:28.280 American intervention, one way or another, uh usually has an 0:03:28.280 --> 0:03:30.480 impact on the formation of anarcho state. But one of 0:03:30.520 --> 0:03:33.519 the reasons why Warez and some of the other border 0:03:33.520 --> 0:03:36.960 towns along Mexico have turned into narco states, uh, is 0:03:37.000 --> 0:03:40.240 because the Coast Guard in the d e A effectively 0:03:40.320 --> 0:03:43.280 shut down the Caribbean in the nineties. That was the 0:03:43.360 --> 0:03:48.280 main route from um South America to the US for coke. 0:03:48.800 --> 0:03:53.240 And Americans love coke. A lot of the world does. 0:03:53.440 --> 0:03:55.640 And one thing that I learned from reading this article 0:03:55.720 --> 0:03:58.280 and just by living as a human in the world 0:03:58.480 --> 0:04:01.680 is that drugs will find a way to get into 0:04:01.680 --> 0:04:04.080 the country. They definitely will. Like for example, when the 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:06.520 crib Dow was shut down, they started moving in through 0:04:06.520 --> 0:04:09.840 Central American came another run way or another. And the 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:13.320 reason why is um. Well, like I said, Americans love cocaine. 0:04:13.440 --> 0:04:16.599 We consume of the global supply of it every year. 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:20.120 Europe does a lot of cocaine. Loves the junk too. 0:04:20.360 --> 0:04:23.560 Oh No, Europe is the heroine. Yeah, they have eleven 0:04:23.680 --> 0:04:27.680 percent of the global population in Europe, but they have 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:31.800 one third of the world's heroin addict big deal. Yeah, 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:33.640 it's weird how it's localized like that. It is, but 0:04:33.680 --> 0:04:35.720 think about it. I think about how much closer Europe 0:04:35.760 --> 0:04:38.600 is to the heroin producing countries of the South Asia, 0:04:38.839 --> 0:04:41.359 and think about how close we are to the cocaine 0:04:41.360 --> 0:04:44.800 producing countries of South America, which affects the price. Of 0:04:44.839 --> 0:04:47.200 course it definitely does. Um, you want to give them 0:04:47.240 --> 0:04:51.400 that stat josh, a kilogram of uncut cocaine, as you 0:04:51.480 --> 0:04:56.400 hear on the cop shows, as it goes for dollars, 0:04:56.440 --> 0:04:59.839 that same kilo fetches uh about a hundred and twenty 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:03.479 thousand dollars in Moscow. That's a big markup. It's a 0:05:03.560 --> 0:05:06.000 huge markup. Is that street value as they call it. 0:05:06.120 --> 0:05:07.919 And I'm sure those are way off. I'm sure you 0:05:07.920 --> 0:05:09.880 could get a kilo for a lot less or pay 0:05:10.320 --> 0:05:13.599 or whatever. But um, one of the things that FEDS 0:05:13.640 --> 0:05:16.200 like to do is pump up their numbers so that 0:05:16.279 --> 0:05:20.040 they can get more funding. But yeah, you can definitely 0:05:20.080 --> 0:05:22.480 get a kilo of cocaine in America a lot cheaper 0:05:22.520 --> 0:05:25.880 than you can, um in Russia. In Russia. Yeah yeah, 0:05:26.279 --> 0:05:29.360 so chuck um, all of that, all of those kilos 0:05:29.440 --> 0:05:32.560 add up pretty quickly. And the drug trade, the global 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:37.279 drug trade, UM makes an estimated three hundred billion dollars 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:40.279 a year. That's nuts. That is a lot of casts. 0:05:40.320 --> 0:05:42.240 You could bail out two A I G S for that. 0:05:42.680 --> 0:05:46.240 So Chuck, we talked about, um, the narco state being 0:05:46.360 --> 0:05:49.320 a an area where government's either looking the other way, 0:05:49.400 --> 0:05:52.400 or selling drugs directly or helping them out, maybe just 0:05:52.520 --> 0:05:55.880 hating them. Um, there's a big problem with this, I 0:05:55.880 --> 0:05:58.080 would say so, but well, I mean you just think 0:05:58.080 --> 0:05:59.880 about it. You're like, oh, the government's not supposed to 0:05:59.880 --> 0:06:03.160 do that. To stop and think why why that? Why 0:06:03.200 --> 0:06:05.480 the government's not supposed to do that? Yeah, Well, because 0:06:05.480 --> 0:06:08.120 they're supposed to protect their citizens. Yeah. There's something that 0:06:08.360 --> 0:06:11.680 um Thomas Hobbs called the social contract, right, and basically 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:13.800 it said, like in exchange for certain freedoms, like we 0:06:13.839 --> 0:06:16.560 can't just do anything we want to write that we 0:06:16.640 --> 0:06:18.640 give to the government, We're going to give that power 0:06:18.680 --> 0:06:21.160 to the government. One of those things is the state violence, 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:25.000 the state monopoly on violence, where like the government can 0:06:25.120 --> 0:06:28.760 put you in jail, the government can um kill you, 0:06:28.800 --> 0:06:31.320 execute you. But the government is supposed to be the 0:06:31.360 --> 0:06:33.240 only one who does that. So if somebody, you know, 0:06:33.520 --> 0:06:36.000 shoot your kid, you don't go shoot them in the head. 0:06:36.400 --> 0:06:38.240 You get the government to go after this guy and 0:06:38.240 --> 0:06:40.719 incarce rate or kill him. Right. Yeah, And in the 0:06:40.760 --> 0:06:43.000 civilized world. The social contract is kind of how we 0:06:43.160 --> 0:06:46.559 developed as nations of the world, and it works pretty 0:06:46.560 --> 0:06:48.680 well for the most part. We'll say, I mean, that's 0:06:48.680 --> 0:06:51.279 a whole other podcast right there. But in Narco States, 0:06:51.320 --> 0:06:53.200 it's a little different because that's a little bit of 0:06:53.200 --> 0:06:56.280 a sham. They kind of have that contract as long 0:06:56.320 --> 0:06:58.599 as it doesn't interfere with the drug trade. Right, the 0:06:58.680 --> 0:07:03.800 government's given it's uh, it's power to drug traffickers at 0:07:03.800 --> 0:07:06.279 the expense of the people they're supposed to be protecting 0:07:06.279 --> 0:07:09.640 and representing. So that's number one. Yeah, right, So how 0:07:09.640 --> 0:07:13.880 does this happen? Right? Well, one reason why that might happen. 0:07:14.240 --> 0:07:16.240 There's a bunch of different ways that could happen, but 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:20.760 one reason is if, um, let's say you're in Colombia 0:07:20.880 --> 0:07:23.560 and all of a sudden, you've heard the term Columbian 0:07:23.640 --> 0:07:26.440 necktie I have. Yeah, all of a sudden, your judges 0:07:26.560 --> 0:07:30.160 in your council people, and your and your politicians are 0:07:30.200 --> 0:07:34.760 getting knife and executed in back alleys by the dozens. 0:07:34.760 --> 0:07:37.360 All of a sudden, the government might say, wait a minute, 0:07:37.400 --> 0:07:40.640 we might want to not go after these drug traffickers, right, 0:07:40.680 --> 0:07:43.360 because if the state is doesn't have a monopoly on 0:07:43.440 --> 0:07:46.760 violence any longer. If you know paramilitary groups affiliated with 0:07:46.800 --> 0:07:50.480 drug traffickers do yeah, then yeah. Apparently in Colombia they 0:07:50.720 --> 0:07:54.200 came at the justice building with tanks. Yeah. This wasn't 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:57.680 the military, this was a rebel faction. Yeah. I think 0:07:57.720 --> 0:08:00.160 it was FARK that did it, right, Josh FARK. That 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:02.840 is f a r C. That stands for the Revolutionary 0:08:02.960 --> 0:08:07.560 Armed Forces of Columbia translated into English. Uh. And they're 0:08:07.560 --> 0:08:13.360 actually a communist guerrilla group, they are. And um, they 0:08:13.440 --> 0:08:18.640 actually got into drug trafficking in the eighties, I think. Um. 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:22.160 So okay, So you have a huge armed guerrilla army 0:08:22.280 --> 0:08:27.440 attacking your justice department in the country's capital. That's a 0:08:27.440 --> 0:08:30.000 good way to get a narco state started, right. Sometimes 0:08:30.040 --> 0:08:33.199 you're bribed into it. That's another one too. All of 0:08:33.240 --> 0:08:36.160 a sudden, if your coffers are being filled, a lot 0:08:36.160 --> 0:08:38.840 of politicians are willing to look the other way. Um. 0:08:38.920 --> 0:08:45.640 And also, if your intelligence services become compromised by drug traffickers, 0:08:45.679 --> 0:08:48.240 you're in big trouble. Those are corrupted, you're finished. Yeah, 0:08:48.320 --> 0:08:51.280 Because the intelligence services are usually toward the top of 0:08:51.280 --> 0:08:54.760 the military hierarchy, and if they're corrupted, they can turn 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:59.120 the entire military against you know, the government, which there 0:08:59.200 --> 0:09:04.160 is a division. Um, and after that happens again, you're 0:09:04.160 --> 0:09:06.800 in big trouble. In a narco state conform yeah, plus state. 0:09:06.840 --> 0:09:10.800 They know a lot about smuggling, the intelligence community, and 0:09:10.960 --> 0:09:12.760 if all of a sudden they're on your side, then 0:09:12.800 --> 0:09:15.560 all of a sudden, you know a lot about smuggling, right, Yeah, 0:09:15.600 --> 0:09:18.000 it's it's uh. You have to know how to get 0:09:18.080 --> 0:09:20.760 people or arms or something in and out of countries 0:09:20.840 --> 0:09:23.600 without being detected. So you know where all the airfields are, 0:09:23.920 --> 0:09:25.920 you have access to planes and boats and stuff. You 0:09:26.000 --> 0:09:28.200 just start throwing kila's a coke in there, and all 0:09:28.240 --> 0:09:31.760 of a sudden, you're a drug smuggler. Yeah. Um. And 0:09:31.840 --> 0:09:33.440 it's kind of tough for us to think about this 0:09:33.480 --> 0:09:36.520 in the United States because we've had a pretty stable 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:40.600 government for the last couple of hundred years. But uh, 0:09:40.640 --> 0:09:43.959 in in areas in countries where there's been high government 0:09:43.960 --> 0:09:49.719 turnover and lots of internal conflict. Um, let's say, infrastructure 0:09:49.760 --> 0:09:53.600 like roads, bridges, water, electricity, these things have been cut 0:09:53.640 --> 0:09:56.560 throughout these civil wars and the government's too poor to 0:09:56.880 --> 0:10:00.320 fix them. All of a sudden, the government's delegitimized. And 0:10:00.880 --> 0:10:04.880 another like a rebel faction can step in and say, hey, 0:10:05.200 --> 0:10:08.160 we're taken over. And by the way, we love drug traffic. 0:10:39.080 --> 0:10:41.319 I got a couple of stats for you along those lines. 0:10:41.880 --> 0:10:46.160 Guatemala endured a thirty six year long civil war, El 0:10:46.200 --> 0:10:49.720 Salvador in a twelve year long civil war. In Nicaragua 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:52.440 had one that lasted nineteen years. And so what this 0:10:52.520 --> 0:10:56.720 means is it's a very unstable region, easily swayed by 0:10:56.880 --> 0:11:00.240 whoever has the power, drug traffickers or the government. And 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:03.560 it also means there's a lot of guns, yeah, and 0:11:03.600 --> 0:11:06.880 a lot of former veterans that are out of work, 0:11:06.960 --> 0:11:09.760 but you know how to use those guns and can 0:11:09.840 --> 0:11:11.839 serve as a guerrilla army. Yeah. And a lot of 0:11:11.840 --> 0:11:13.920 times these are poor countries too. So in fact, I 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:16.880 would say almost every time, it's a poor country, and 0:11:17.000 --> 0:11:18.880 it's it's you don't have to be genius to figure 0:11:18.880 --> 0:11:21.800 out you got guns, you got these former military guys, 0:11:21.840 --> 0:11:24.160 you've got really poor people, and you have loads of drugs. 0:11:24.160 --> 0:11:26.480 It's worth a lot of money. It's really not too 0:11:26.480 --> 0:11:29.360 hard to devolve into a narco state. No, it's not. Uh, 0:11:29.360 --> 0:11:33.320 And of course the root of all narco states is money. Either, 0:11:33.440 --> 0:11:37.319 like Chuck said, bribes that kind of thing. Or Um, 0:11:37.440 --> 0:11:41.880 the GDP Afghanistan. Um, Apparently their g d P is 0:11:41.920 --> 0:11:45.880 like six billion annually, which what's the United States that 0:11:45.920 --> 0:11:49.520 think has fourteen trillion GDP something like that. Um, So 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:51.520 it's kind of like, holy cow, how do you live 0:11:51.559 --> 0:11:54.480 like that? They've been doing pretty good, but half of 0:11:54.520 --> 0:11:59.720 that has been through Heroin So cars I how may 0:11:59.760 --> 0:12:02.920 car I who was Um, I'm gonna make air quotes 0:12:03.000 --> 0:12:09.079 elected president of Afghanistan twice and made air quotes again. Yeah, 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:14.319 re elected. Um. He has is well known for turning 0:12:14.320 --> 0:12:15.880 a blind eye while saying we need to get rid 0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:19.000 of these poppies. Um. And the US is like, okay, 0:12:19.000 --> 0:12:20.480 well let us spray and he's like, no, no, we 0:12:20.520 --> 0:12:23.480 have to do it all by hand. Um. And apparently 0:12:23.559 --> 0:12:29.160 the American forces over there, um I have to well, 0:12:29.200 --> 0:12:31.640 the d e as over there as well, but the 0:12:31.679 --> 0:12:36.199 American commanders of the armed forces in Afghanistan don't let 0:12:36.200 --> 0:12:38.640 the d e A in at all, and they're frustrated 0:12:38.679 --> 0:12:42.280 pulling their hair out because they're not getting any support whatsoever. 0:12:42.760 --> 0:12:46.000 And it's kind of one of those things like everybody 0:12:46.040 --> 0:12:48.600 knows that Afghanistan produces poppies. As a matter of fact, 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:54.760 in two thousand and six they produced the highest poppy 0:12:54.800 --> 0:12:58.360 harvest in recorded human history just a couple of years ago. 0:12:58.640 --> 0:13:01.320 It was double what it had been the year before. 0:13:01.600 --> 0:13:05.680 So clearly they're not pulling enough by hand. No, because cars, 0:13:05.720 --> 0:13:07.920 I won't let them spray overhead. Yeah, which is I 0:13:07.960 --> 0:13:10.600 should explain that that's a common method to uh, like 0:13:10.679 --> 0:13:13.320 you crop dust fields to to put chemicals on them. 0:13:13.440 --> 0:13:15.040 You do the same thing if you want to eradicate 0:13:15.080 --> 0:13:17.280 and kill them, right, And it is very effective. It's 0:13:17.320 --> 0:13:21.480 worked in Colombia. Columbia, Uh finally has a president. I 0:13:21.480 --> 0:13:24.199 shouldn't say finally, but Columbia as a president is very 0:13:24.200 --> 0:13:26.599 sympathetic and friendly to the US, and he's let the 0:13:26.640 --> 0:13:29.200 d e A in there and they have eradicated a 0:13:29.200 --> 0:13:34.240 lot of um cocoa fields using that that method. Yeah, 0:13:34.280 --> 0:13:35.880 so it does work. But cards I was like no. 0:13:36.040 --> 0:13:39.160 And apparently there's been more and more and more reports 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:42.080 of the people who are involved in the central government 0:13:42.520 --> 0:13:44.760 are all drug lords or most of them are drug 0:13:44.800 --> 0:13:47.840 lords too. So Afghanistan is teetering right on the edge 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:51.640 of being a narco state, if it's not already. So 0:13:52.200 --> 0:13:54.880 contributing to half of your GDP. That's another reason for 0:13:54.920 --> 0:13:57.240 a narco state to develop. Yeah. And well, since we're 0:13:57.240 --> 0:14:00.480 on money, another thing that money brings is uh, bribes 0:14:00.480 --> 0:14:02.840 and corruption like we were talking about. And I have 0:14:02.920 --> 0:14:06.720 to mention this because you uncovered this great fact from Guatemala. 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:10.240 The federal judge that's just hard to believe. The federal 0:14:10.320 --> 0:14:14.160 judge was accused of accepting thousands of dollars in bribes 0:14:14.559 --> 0:14:17.920 to dismiss a drug trafficking case and at the end 0:14:17.960 --> 0:14:19.720 of the seed dismissed the case. At the end of 0:14:19.760 --> 0:14:22.760 this trial. Uh, this judge was seen driving the defendant 0:14:22.760 --> 0:14:26.280 from court. Yeah, so it goes pretty deep. Yeah, and 0:14:26.280 --> 0:14:30.320 Guatemala is UM is a de facto narco state right now. 0:14:31.160 --> 0:14:34.360 UM and in Central America itself, which is, like we said, 0:14:34.400 --> 0:14:37.480 since the UM, since the Caribbean has been shut down, 0:14:37.600 --> 0:14:40.560 Central America started to play a really key role as 0:14:40.640 --> 0:14:45.520 a as a supply line between South America and North America. UM. 0:14:45.960 --> 0:14:49.160 And actually, because of all those conflicts that you mentioned earlier, 0:14:49.640 --> 0:14:55.000 there's now a ratio of five to one illegal unregistered 0:14:55.040 --> 0:14:58.880 guns to guns held by UM legitimate police and armed forces. 0:14:59.200 --> 0:15:02.400 Not good. So let's keep an eye on in Central America. 0:15:02.440 --> 0:15:05.880 That means trouble is coming. Okay, So Central America, UM, again, 0:15:06.360 --> 0:15:10.080 we talked about how it's been destabilized by conflict. There's 0:15:10.160 --> 0:15:14.200 tons of guns, there's terrible infrastructure, but there's plenty of 0:15:14.280 --> 0:15:17.600 drugs and narco states and you know what else. Dide 0:15:17.840 --> 0:15:22.320 in Guatemala, they have corrupt government officials there have drafted 0:15:22.360 --> 0:15:27.080 legislation that prevents UM extradition. And as we know, extradition 0:15:27.200 --> 0:15:30.000 is a really valuable tool for us when we're trying 0:15:30.000 --> 0:15:33.280 to prosecute these drug lords. And they said, he can't 0:15:33.280 --> 0:15:35.880 do it. No, So that kind of says, right there, 0:15:36.280 --> 0:15:39.440 let us make our money. Yeah, us stay out of 0:15:39.440 --> 0:15:42.040 her hair. Once you have the Congress, in the judiciary 0:15:42.120 --> 0:15:45.520 in your pocket, that's even more valuable. In the military, 0:15:45.840 --> 0:15:48.000 although the military is a really good first step. Yeah, 0:15:48.000 --> 0:15:51.360 that's true. UM. Alright, So Chuck, one of the reasons 0:15:51.400 --> 0:15:54.840 why you might notice that UM Central and South America 0:15:54.960 --> 0:15:57.600 keep popping up. One of the reasons why is because 0:15:57.880 --> 0:16:03.520 UM Central America specifically was a Cold War battleground where 0:16:03.560 --> 0:16:05.880 the U S and the USSR fought one another in 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:10.560 proxy wars UM through throughout the Cold War. Basically both 0:16:10.560 --> 0:16:15.080 countries just completely used nations in Central and South America 0:16:15.160 --> 0:16:18.080 to fight, fight one another, try to bleed one another out. 0:16:18.280 --> 0:16:20.680 And you know what that means. What that means that 0:16:21.160 --> 0:16:24.360 these people that live there being trained by either Russian 0:16:24.520 --> 0:16:29.080 or American military. They're being supplied with guns and ammunition 0:16:29.720 --> 0:16:32.120 and all the things that you need. Once you stop 0:16:32.200 --> 0:16:35.000 and say cold wars, over all those guns and trained 0:16:35.040 --> 0:16:37.520 dudes are still there and they're like, well, what should 0:16:37.520 --> 0:16:39.800 we do with all this stuff? Yeah, it's from throughout 0:16:39.840 --> 0:16:42.000 and not only that, we are not getting funding from 0:16:42.040 --> 0:16:45.640 the Soviets of the Americans anymore, but we still the 0:16:45.720 --> 0:16:48.640 war didn't end for them. The conflict didn't end for them. 0:16:48.640 --> 0:16:50.640 The power struggle didn't end for them just because the 0:16:50.680 --> 0:16:53.680 Americans and the Soviets suddenly lost interest. It's still going 0:16:53.720 --> 0:16:57.000 on and there they are funding it through drugs right 0:16:57.600 --> 0:17:02.120 um and also uh the US backed right wing paramilitary 0:17:02.160 --> 0:17:06.480 groups or right wing um dictatorships, and the Soviets of 0:17:06.480 --> 0:17:10.160 course backed left wing groups like farc Um and farc 0:17:10.440 --> 0:17:14.760 has a reputation for being extremely brutal. They used child soldiers, 0:17:14.800 --> 0:17:18.879 they engaging kidnappings, bombings, um kill their own people. Sure 0:17:19.240 --> 0:17:23.080 at one point, Um, they offered a thousand dollars to 0:17:23.160 --> 0:17:26.119 anybody who killed the government official. So they were outsourcing 0:17:26.160 --> 0:17:28.879 their terrorism and their communists, and they were supported by 0:17:28.880 --> 0:17:31.640 the Soviets. So of course they're horrible. The US supported 0:17:31.720 --> 0:17:36.639 equally brutal regimes and groups like lack of Frida. You 0:17:36.680 --> 0:17:40.640 know about them, they're Guatemala. Yes, they were very much 0:17:40.640 --> 0:17:43.560 supported by the US and they helped kill as many 0:17:43.600 --> 0:17:46.040 as two hundred thousand of their own people during that 0:17:46.280 --> 0:17:50.040 civil war. Josh, lacka Frida wasn't the only one, right, 0:17:50.359 --> 0:17:53.520 Remember the nineteen eighties when President Reagan launched the War 0:17:53.560 --> 0:17:55.760 on drugs. You know what was going on At the 0:17:55.800 --> 0:17:59.280 same time, we were providing funding and weapons for the 0:17:59.320 --> 0:18:04.720 same anti communist paramilitary groups that were producing and distributing 0:18:04.760 --> 0:18:07.680 this cocaine. Yeah, right, at the same time. Yea, yet 0:18:07.760 --> 0:18:09.959 we were fighting a war on drugs. Yeah, doesn't add up, 0:18:09.960 --> 0:18:12.960 doesn't Not only that, you remember Manuel Noriega and we 0:18:13.000 --> 0:18:16.920 went down to Panama in nine Delta Force was there, 0:18:17.280 --> 0:18:21.399 Special Forces was there, um, and we captured him and 0:18:21.440 --> 0:18:23.639 then put him in prison in Miami for a couple 0:18:23.640 --> 0:18:27.200 of decades. Yeah, he was a CIA asset for eight years. Yeah, 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:30.880 he was operating a narco state under our supervision. Yeah, 0:18:30.960 --> 0:18:33.800 you could say, yep uh. And then once news leaked 0:18:33.800 --> 0:18:37.200 out to the general public that he was a drug dealer, um, 0:18:37.280 --> 0:18:39.639 we went down and immroved him from power, right and 0:18:39.680 --> 0:18:41.879 gave I believe he's still in prison, right, No, he 0:18:42.040 --> 0:18:44.360 just got out really yeah, okay, like a year ago 0:18:44.520 --> 0:18:46.720 or something like that. Good for him. And again, this 0:18:46.800 --> 0:18:50.120 is the same thing that's going on right now in Afghanistan. Um. 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:53.199 We're well aware that cars I is totally cool with 0:18:53.280 --> 0:18:56.760 the heroin production in that nation, which by the way 0:18:56.840 --> 0:18:59.400 is far and away the the largest producer of heroin 0:18:59.720 --> 0:19:03.840 or b um poppies um in the world. So it's 0:19:03.840 --> 0:19:06.600 still going on. Although we we donated a lot of 0:19:06.720 --> 0:19:08.600 are donated. I guess that's not the right word, but 0:19:08.640 --> 0:19:11.320 we gave them close to eight hundred million dollars for 0:19:11.600 --> 0:19:15.199 counter narcotics operations and measures. I'm sure every penny went 0:19:15.240 --> 0:19:18.080 to that thing. Um. So it's still going on. But 0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:22.240 we the reason why it's really disturbing that this is 0:19:22.240 --> 0:19:24.720 still going on is because we haven't learned a very 0:19:24.760 --> 0:19:28.080 clear lesson from this, and that's when we support groups 0:19:28.320 --> 0:19:31.720 that engage in drug trafficking. It invariably comes back to 0:19:31.760 --> 0:19:35.680 bite us in the ass um. Like I mentioned Laco 0:19:35.800 --> 0:19:41.320 Frida in Guatemala. The two guys who are running that show, 0:19:41.640 --> 0:19:45.080 running Guatemala as a narco state, we're both trained by 0:19:45.119 --> 0:19:49.600 the United States at the School of the America's Fort Benning, 0:19:49.640 --> 0:19:52.120 I think, kay, right here in Georgia. Yeah, that's where 0:19:52.119 --> 0:19:57.200 they trained foreign people, no specifically South Latin America, Latin 0:19:57.240 --> 0:20:02.160 Americans specifically to train them pretty controversial, Yeah, because they 0:20:02.200 --> 0:20:06.879 trained them in assassination, in assembling guerilla armies and destabilizing 0:20:06.920 --> 0:20:09.320 central governments, that kind of stuff. So we're training these 0:20:09.320 --> 0:20:11.480 guys to go fight the serviews. But then again, after 0:20:11.520 --> 0:20:13.560 the Cold Wars over, these guys are still going. They're 0:20:13.560 --> 0:20:17.520 still around. Yea Um. The Mexican Gulf Cartel, which has 0:20:17.560 --> 0:20:22.520 become hugely violent and kind of big um, is run 0:20:22.520 --> 0:20:24.679 by a couple of guys who were also trained at 0:20:24.680 --> 0:20:27.960 the School of the America's. So basically the world's biggest 0:20:28.080 --> 0:20:31.320 drug dealers were trained by the United States and the 0:20:31.400 --> 0:20:33.840 art of smuggling and all sorts of other stuff. They 0:20:33.840 --> 0:20:36.400 were trained in their craft, and I think the Russians 0:20:36.720 --> 0:20:41.720 used Escobar right, Yeah, to to help guard their poppy fields, 0:20:41.720 --> 0:20:45.960 is that right. Yeah. Farc actually started out um guarding 0:20:46.400 --> 0:20:50.159 Escobar's coco fields in Colombia for the Median cartel. Right, 0:20:51.040 --> 0:20:53.080 and then apparently they're like, wow, this guy is making 0:20:53.119 --> 0:20:55.000 a bunch of money. We're gonna go out on our own, 0:20:55.040 --> 0:20:58.760 and they became rivals. And then again Delta Force goes 0:20:58.760 --> 0:21:04.240 down there and over ever sees the assassination of um Escobar. Yeah. 0:21:04.280 --> 0:21:06.359 So I don't mean to sound paranoid, like I really 0:21:06.400 --> 0:21:10.320 researched this article and all this is fact. Yeah, everything 0:21:10.359 --> 0:21:13.119 that is in fact. I've made like verbal air quotes 0:21:13.119 --> 0:21:16.320 with like this is this is documented stuff and so 0:21:16.400 --> 0:21:19.880 much money and legitimate publication. You know, it's all about 0:21:19.920 --> 0:21:22.439 the green backs. Yes, so much money at stake. So 0:21:22.520 --> 0:21:24.679 let's talk about Africa, man, that's the place to be 0:21:24.720 --> 0:21:29.080 these days. Well, if you're in the narco state, Yeah, exactly. Yeah, 0:21:29.119 --> 0:21:31.680 Africa has really risen since the mid eighties. That was 0:21:31.720 --> 0:21:35.840 the first sign of a drug presence in Africa and Zombia, 0:21:36.000 --> 0:21:39.360 although it was marijuana in uh in Zombia at the time. 0:21:39.400 --> 0:21:41.960 That's how it started out, at least the gateway drug. 0:21:42.119 --> 0:21:44.760 Even when you're talking narco states. Sure, yeah, it's funny. 0:21:45.119 --> 0:21:50.240 So Zambia goes um is exposes a narco state. Apparently 0:21:50.240 --> 0:21:52.520 the government wasn't aware of this one, but a group 0:21:52.560 --> 0:21:56.400 of prominent citizens were operating like a sub state. Yeah, 0:21:56.520 --> 0:22:00.000 sub narco state, just under the noses of the functioning government. 0:22:00.240 --> 0:22:03.520 And again very poor people, which is key. That's yeah. 0:22:03.760 --> 0:22:05.200 If people don't have any money, and all of a 0:22:05.200 --> 0:22:07.320 sudden people come and give them gobs of money. They'll 0:22:07.560 --> 0:22:10.000 you know, you want to be a drug mule, We'll 0:22:10.000 --> 0:22:35.399 give you this much money. Problem. Um. So Zambie was 0:22:35.440 --> 0:22:38.840 the first to start in Africa and then the nineties. UM. 0:22:39.520 --> 0:22:41.840 The reason why it picked up speed in the nineties 0:22:41.920 --> 0:22:44.879 because it was the end of colonialism and just ended 0:22:45.040 --> 0:22:48.400 within the last decade or so. UM. And this European 0:22:48.480 --> 0:22:52.680 influence and influx of money and exploitation UM left a 0:22:52.800 --> 0:22:58.400 vacuum economically, financially. Uh. And oftentimes with central governments there's 0:22:58.440 --> 0:23:01.080 just a vacuum and nobody's doing any there's no way 0:23:01.119 --> 0:23:03.119 to make any money or anything. So narco states are 0:23:03.160 --> 0:23:06.080 setting up. Synegal was another one in the nineties that 0:23:06.119 --> 0:23:09.280 believe heroin and cocaine really were on the rise, and 0:23:09.320 --> 0:23:10.960 here's the stat that you you dug up. It was 0:23:11.000 --> 0:23:14.960