Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know from house Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Speaker 1: Clark with me as always as Charles W. Zonkers Bryant's Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm always. I just sit here with wondering what you're
Speaker 1: gonna call me. How's it going? Great, sir? You pretty good?
Speaker 1: You look good. You're as good as you were ten
Speaker 1: minutes ago when he recorded that other podcast, Shack. Have
Speaker 1: you ever been to Mexico? I have been to Mexico.
Speaker 1: Have you been to t J. I've been to t J.
Speaker 1: You've been to Warez. No, just t J and like
Speaker 1: the Baja area. Okay, Well, had you gone a little
Speaker 1: further east along the border to Warez, you would have
Speaker 1: been in a narco state. Yes. And you know what
Speaker 1: I'm ashamed to say, Josh, that I did not know
Speaker 1: what anarco state was. Really. I've heard of it, but
Speaker 1: I didn't really know what it was. I can't remember
Speaker 1: if I pitched this win or if Channel did, but
Speaker 1: it's a well done. Thank you very much, thank you. Yeah. Um, well,
Speaker 1: Chuck and I are talking about narco states. As you
Speaker 1: probably were tipped off by the title of this podcast,
Speaker 1: and for those of you who don't know what a
Speaker 1: narco state it is, uh, Josh, I'm just gonna give
Speaker 1: my own definition, which is, it is a country where
Speaker 1: they sort of allow drug trafficking and in some cases
Speaker 1: even participate in the drug trafficking. Yeah. And it's it's
Speaker 1: very very rarely an entire country. Um. Most of the time.
Speaker 1: It's like a region of country, very small area city.
Speaker 1: Although there are cases where there have been narco states,
Speaker 1: like fully functioning countries that are run by drugs, like
Speaker 1: the their gross domestic product is almost fully funded by drugs.
Speaker 1: The government's in on it, military is in on it. Um.
Speaker 1: And right now, as far as I could tell, there's
Speaker 1: only one functioning narco state in the world. Afghanistan. No,
Speaker 1: it's close though, uh Guinea bissauth Oh yeah sure. In Africa, yeah,
Speaker 1: West of Africa. I can't wait to tell that story.
Speaker 1: It's a good one. So okay. So, narco state, as
Speaker 1: Chuck said, is basically any area where the government is
Speaker 1: either directly involved or turning a blind eye to drug trafficking. Yes,
Speaker 1: in the Central Mexico, Central America. South America always known
Speaker 1: as being rife with this kind of thing because chances
Speaker 1: are if you're doing drugs in the US, chances are
Speaker 1: it did not come from inside the United States. No,
Speaker 1: unless it was meth or pot. Yeah, and even then,
Speaker 1: chances are it probably didn't, although there was a lot
Speaker 1: of domestic uh meth labs and and pot farms and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Yeah, but yeah, the chances are it
Speaker 1: came through Mexico if not from Mexico. Mexico didn't used
Speaker 1: to be nearly as violent, you know. Warez, which we
Speaker 1: were talking about, Um had I think three hundred murders
Speaker 1: in two thousand seven, and then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: there was a drug war started. It's still going on now.
Speaker 1: And in two thousand and eight they had murders. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a heck of a stat Yeah. Yeah, Detroit had
Speaker 1: like less than three hundred murders in two thousand seven.
Speaker 1: To Detroit, safer than someplace. It's just safer than Warrez,
Speaker 1: believe it or not. Well, thank god for that. I
Speaker 1: didn't get the stats on Tempi though, so I can't say. Yeah. So, um.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons why uh, And we'll see that
Speaker 1: American intervention, one way or another, uh usually has an
Speaker 1: impact on the formation of anarcho state. But one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why Warez and some of the other border
Speaker 1: towns along Mexico have turned into narco states, uh, is
Speaker 1: because the Coast Guard in the d e A effectively
Speaker 1: shut down the Caribbean in the nineties. That was the
Speaker 1: main route from um South America to the US for coke.
Speaker 1: And Americans love coke. A lot of the world does.
Speaker 1: And one thing that I learned from reading this article
Speaker 1: and just by living as a human in the world
Speaker 1: is that drugs will find a way to get into
Speaker 1: the country. They definitely will. Like for example, when the
Speaker 1: crib Dow was shut down, they started moving in through
Speaker 1: Central American came another run way or another. And the
Speaker 1: reason why is um. Well, like I said, Americans love cocaine.
Speaker 1: We consume of the global supply of it every year.
Speaker 1: Europe does a lot of cocaine. Loves the junk too.
Speaker 1: Oh No, Europe is the heroine. Yeah, they have eleven
Speaker 1: percent of the global population in Europe, but they have
Speaker 1: one third of the world's heroin addict big deal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's weird how it's localized like that. It is, but
Speaker 1: think about it. I think about how much closer Europe
Speaker 1: is to the heroin producing countries of the South Asia,
Speaker 1: and think about how close we are to the cocaine
Speaker 1: producing countries of South America, which affects the price. Of
Speaker 1: course it definitely does. Um, you want to give them
Speaker 1: that stat josh, a kilogram of uncut cocaine, as you
Speaker 1: hear on the cop shows, as it goes for dollars,
Speaker 1: that same kilo fetches uh about a hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in Moscow. That's a big markup. It's a
Speaker 1: huge markup. Is that street value as they call it.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure those are way off. I'm sure you
Speaker 1: could get a kilo for a lot less or pay
Speaker 1: or whatever. But um, one of the things that FEDS
Speaker 1: like to do is pump up their numbers so that
Speaker 1: they can get more funding. But yeah, you can definitely
Speaker 1: get a kilo of cocaine in America a lot cheaper
Speaker 1: than you can, um in Russia. In Russia. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: so chuck um, all of that, all of those kilos
Speaker 1: add up pretty quickly. And the drug trade, the global
Speaker 1: drug trade, UM makes an estimated three hundred billion dollars
Speaker 1: a year. That's nuts. That is a lot of casts.
Speaker 1: You could bail out two A I G S for that.
Speaker 1: So Chuck, we talked about, um, the narco state being
Speaker 1: a an area where government's either looking the other way,
Speaker 1: or selling drugs directly or helping them out, maybe just
Speaker 1: hating them. Um, there's a big problem with this, I
Speaker 1: would say so, but well, I mean you just think
Speaker 1: about it. You're like, oh, the government's not supposed to
Speaker 1: do that. To stop and think why why that? Why
Speaker 1: the government's not supposed to do that? Yeah, Well, because
Speaker 1: they're supposed to protect their citizens. Yeah. There's something that
Speaker 1: um Thomas Hobbs called the social contract, right, and basically
Speaker 1: it said, like in exchange for certain freedoms, like we
Speaker 1: can't just do anything we want to write that we
Speaker 1: give to the government, We're going to give that power
Speaker 1: to the government. One of those things is the state violence,
Speaker 1: the state monopoly on violence, where like the government can
Speaker 1: put you in jail, the government can um kill you,
Speaker 1: execute you. But the government is supposed to be the
Speaker 1: only one who does that. So if somebody, you know,
Speaker 1: shoot your kid, you don't go shoot them in the head.
Speaker 1: You get the government to go after this guy and
Speaker 1: incarce rate or kill him. Right. Yeah, And in the
Speaker 1: civilized world. The social contract is kind of how we
Speaker 1: developed as nations of the world, and it works pretty
Speaker 1: well for the most part. We'll say, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: a whole other podcast right there. But in Narco States,
Speaker 1: it's a little different because that's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a sham. They kind of have that contract as long
Speaker 1: as it doesn't interfere with the drug trade. Right, the
Speaker 1: government's given it's uh, it's power to drug traffickers at
Speaker 1: the expense of the people they're supposed to be protecting
Speaker 1: and representing. So that's number one. Yeah, right, So how
Speaker 1: does this happen? Right? Well, one reason why that might happen.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of different ways that could happen, but
Speaker 1: one reason is if, um, let's say you're in Colombia
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, you've heard the term Columbian
Speaker 1: necktie I have. Yeah, all of a sudden, your judges
Speaker 1: in your council people, and your and your politicians are
Speaker 1: getting knife and executed in back alleys by the dozens.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, the government might say, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: we might want to not go after these drug traffickers, right,
Speaker 1: because if the state is doesn't have a monopoly on
Speaker 1: violence any longer. If you know paramilitary groups affiliated with
Speaker 1: drug traffickers do yeah, then yeah. Apparently in Colombia they
Speaker 1: came at the justice building with tanks. Yeah. This wasn't
Speaker 1: the military, this was a rebel faction. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: it was FARK that did it, right, Josh FARK. That
Speaker 1: is f a r C. That stands for the Revolutionary
Speaker 1: Armed Forces of Columbia translated into English. Uh. And they're
Speaker 1: actually a communist guerrilla group, they are. And um, they
Speaker 1: actually got into drug trafficking in the eighties, I think. Um.
Speaker 1: So okay, So you have a huge armed guerrilla army
Speaker 1: attacking your justice department in the country's capital. That's a
Speaker 1: good way to get a narco state started, right. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you're bribed into it. That's another one too. All of
Speaker 1: a sudden, if your coffers are being filled, a lot
Speaker 1: of politicians are willing to look the other way. Um.
Speaker 1: And also, if your intelligence services become compromised by drug traffickers,
Speaker 1: you're in big trouble. Those are corrupted, you're finished. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Because the intelligence services are usually toward the top of
Speaker 1: the military hierarchy, and if they're corrupted, they can turn
Speaker 1: the entire military against you know, the government, which there
Speaker 1: is a division. Um, and after that happens again, you're
Speaker 1: in big trouble. In a narco state conform yeah, plus state.
Speaker 1: They know a lot about smuggling, the intelligence community, and
Speaker 1: if all of a sudden they're on your side, then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you know a lot about smuggling, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's uh. You have to know how to get
Speaker 1: people or arms or something in and out of countries
Speaker 1: without being detected. So you know where all the airfields are,
Speaker 1: you have access to planes and boats and stuff. You
Speaker 1: just start throwing kila's a coke in there, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you're a drug smuggler. Yeah. Um. And
Speaker 1: it's kind of tough for us to think about this
Speaker 1: in the United States because we've had a pretty stable
Speaker 1: government for the last couple of hundred years. But uh,
Speaker 1: in in areas in countries where there's been high government
Speaker 1: turnover and lots of internal conflict. Um, let's say, infrastructure
Speaker 1: like roads, bridges, water, electricity, these things have been cut
Speaker 1: throughout these civil wars and the government's too poor to
Speaker 1: fix them. All of a sudden, the government's delegitimized. And
Speaker 1: another like a rebel faction can step in and say, hey,
Speaker 1: we're taken over. And by the way, we love drug traffic.
Speaker 1: I got a couple of stats for you along those lines.
Speaker 1: Guatemala endured a thirty six year long civil war, El
Speaker 1: Salvador in a twelve year long civil war. In Nicaragua
Speaker 1: had one that lasted nineteen years. And so what this
Speaker 1: means is it's a very unstable region, easily swayed by
Speaker 1: whoever has the power, drug traffickers or the government. And
Speaker 1: it also means there's a lot of guns, yeah, and
Speaker 1: a lot of former veterans that are out of work,
Speaker 1: but you know how to use those guns and can
Speaker 1: serve as a guerrilla army. Yeah. And a lot of
Speaker 1: times these are poor countries too. So in fact, I
Speaker 1: would say almost every time, it's a poor country, and
Speaker 1: it's it's you don't have to be genius to figure
Speaker 1: out you got guns, you got these former military guys,
Speaker 1: you've got really poor people, and you have loads of drugs.
Speaker 1: It's worth a lot of money. It's really not too
Speaker 1: hard to devolve into a narco state. No, it's not. Uh,
Speaker 1: And of course the root of all narco states is money. Either,
Speaker 1: like Chuck said, bribes that kind of thing. Or Um,
Speaker 1: the GDP Afghanistan. Um, Apparently their g d P is
Speaker 1: like six billion annually, which what's the United States that
Speaker 1: think has fourteen trillion GDP something like that. Um, So
Speaker 1: it's kind of like, holy cow, how do you live
Speaker 1: like that? They've been doing pretty good, but half of
Speaker 1: that has been through Heroin So cars I how may
Speaker 1: car I who was Um, I'm gonna make air quotes
Speaker 1: elected president of Afghanistan twice and made air quotes again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: re elected. Um. He has is well known for turning
Speaker 1: a blind eye while saying we need to get rid
Speaker 1: of these poppies. Um. And the US is like, okay,
Speaker 1: well let us spray and he's like, no, no, we
Speaker 1: have to do it all by hand. Um. And apparently
Speaker 1: the American forces over there, um I have to well,
Speaker 1: the d e as over there as well, but the
Speaker 1: American commanders of the armed forces in Afghanistan don't let
Speaker 1: the d e A in at all, and they're frustrated
Speaker 1: pulling their hair out because they're not getting any support whatsoever.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of one of those things like everybody
Speaker 1: knows that Afghanistan produces poppies. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: in two thousand and six they produced the highest poppy
Speaker 1: harvest in recorded human history just a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: It was double what it had been the year before.
Speaker 1: So clearly they're not pulling enough by hand. No, because cars,
Speaker 1: I won't let them spray overhead. Yeah, which is I
Speaker 1: should explain that that's a common method to uh, like
Speaker 1: you crop dust fields to to put chemicals on them.
Speaker 1: You do the same thing if you want to eradicate
Speaker 1: and kill them, right, And it is very effective. It's
Speaker 1: worked in Colombia. Columbia, Uh finally has a president. I
Speaker 1: shouldn't say finally, but Columbia as a president is very
Speaker 1: sympathetic and friendly to the US, and he's let the
Speaker 1: d e A in there and they have eradicated a
Speaker 1: lot of um cocoa fields using that that method. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it does work. But cards I was like no.
Speaker 1: And apparently there's been more and more and more reports
Speaker 1: of the people who are involved in the central government
Speaker 1: are all drug lords or most of them are drug
Speaker 1: lords too. So Afghanistan is teetering right on the edge
Speaker 1: of being a narco state, if it's not already. So
Speaker 1: contributing to half of your GDP. That's another reason for
Speaker 1: a narco state to develop. Yeah. And well, since we're
Speaker 1: on money, another thing that money brings is uh, bribes
Speaker 1: and corruption like we were talking about. And I have
Speaker 1: to mention this because you uncovered this great fact from Guatemala.
Speaker 1: The federal judge that's just hard to believe. The federal
Speaker 1: judge was accused of accepting thousands of dollars in bribes
Speaker 1: to dismiss a drug trafficking case and at the end
Speaker 1: of the seed dismissed the case. At the end of
Speaker 1: this trial. Uh, this judge was seen driving the defendant
Speaker 1: from court. Yeah, so it goes pretty deep. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: Guatemala is UM is a de facto narco state right now.
Speaker 1: UM and in Central America itself, which is, like we said,
Speaker 1: since the UM, since the Caribbean has been shut down,
Speaker 1: Central America started to play a really key role as
Speaker 1: a as a supply line between South America and North America. UM.
Speaker 1: And actually, because of all those conflicts that you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: there's now a ratio of five to one illegal unregistered
Speaker 1: guns to guns held by UM legitimate police and armed forces.
Speaker 1: Not good. So let's keep an eye on in Central America.
Speaker 1: That means trouble is coming. Okay, So Central America, UM, again,
Speaker 1: we talked about how it's been destabilized by conflict. There's
Speaker 1: tons of guns, there's terrible infrastructure, but there's plenty of
Speaker 1: drugs and narco states and you know what else. Dide
Speaker 1: in Guatemala, they have corrupt government officials there have drafted
Speaker 1: legislation that prevents UM extradition. And as we know, extradition
Speaker 1: is a really valuable tool for us when we're trying
Speaker 1: to prosecute these drug lords. And they said, he can't
Speaker 1: do it. No, So that kind of says, right there,
Speaker 1: let us make our money. Yeah, us stay out of
Speaker 1: her hair. Once you have the Congress, in the judiciary
Speaker 1: in your pocket, that's even more valuable. In the military,
Speaker 1: although the military is a really good first step. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. UM. Alright, So Chuck, one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why you might notice that UM Central and South America
Speaker 1: keep popping up. One of the reasons why is because
Speaker 1: UM Central America specifically was a Cold War battleground where
Speaker 1: the U S and the USSR fought one another in
Speaker 1: proxy wars UM through throughout the Cold War. Basically both
Speaker 1: countries just completely used nations in Central and South America
Speaker 1: to fight, fight one another, try to bleed one another out.
Speaker 1: And you know what that means. What that means that
Speaker 1: these people that live there being trained by either Russian
Speaker 1: or American military. They're being supplied with guns and ammunition
Speaker 1: and all the things that you need. Once you stop
Speaker 1: and say cold wars, over all those guns and trained
Speaker 1: dudes are still there and they're like, well, what should
Speaker 1: we do with all this stuff? Yeah, it's from throughout
Speaker 1: and not only that, we are not getting funding from
Speaker 1: the Soviets of the Americans anymore, but we still the
Speaker 1: war didn't end for them. The conflict didn't end for them.
Speaker 1: The power struggle didn't end for them just because the
Speaker 1: Americans and the Soviets suddenly lost interest. It's still going
Speaker 1: on and there they are funding it through drugs right
Speaker 1: um and also uh the US backed right wing paramilitary
Speaker 1: groups or right wing um dictatorships, and the Soviets of
Speaker 1: course backed left wing groups like farc Um and farc
Speaker 1: has a reputation for being extremely brutal. They used child soldiers,
Speaker 1: they engaging kidnappings, bombings, um kill their own people. Sure
Speaker 1: at one point, Um, they offered a thousand dollars to
Speaker 1: anybody who killed the government official. So they were outsourcing
Speaker 1: their terrorism and their communists, and they were supported by
Speaker 1: the Soviets. So of course they're horrible. The US supported
Speaker 1: equally brutal regimes and groups like lack of Frida. You
Speaker 1: know about them, they're Guatemala. Yes, they were very much
Speaker 1: supported by the US and they helped kill as many
Speaker 1: as two hundred thousand of their own people during that
Speaker 1: civil war. Josh, lacka Frida wasn't the only one, right,
Speaker 1: Remember the nineteen eighties when President Reagan launched the War
Speaker 1: on drugs. You know what was going on At the
Speaker 1: same time, we were providing funding and weapons for the
Speaker 1: same anti communist paramilitary groups that were producing and distributing
Speaker 1: this cocaine. Yeah, right, at the same time. Yea, yet
Speaker 1: we were fighting a war on drugs. Yeah, doesn't add up,
Speaker 1: doesn't Not only that, you remember Manuel Noriega and we
Speaker 1: went down to Panama in nine Delta Force was there,
Speaker 1: Special Forces was there, um, and we captured him and
Speaker 1: then put him in prison in Miami for a couple
Speaker 1: of decades. Yeah, he was a CIA asset for eight years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was operating a narco state under our supervision. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could say, yep uh. And then once news leaked
Speaker 1: out to the general public that he was a drug dealer, um,
Speaker 1: we went down and immroved him from power, right and
Speaker 1: gave I believe he's still in prison, right, No, he
Speaker 1: just got out really yeah, okay, like a year ago
Speaker 1: or something like that. Good for him. And again, this
Speaker 1: is the same thing that's going on right now in Afghanistan. Um.
Speaker 1: We're well aware that cars I is totally cool with
Speaker 1: the heroin production in that nation, which by the way
Speaker 1: is far and away the the largest producer of heroin
Speaker 1: or b um poppies um in the world. So it's
Speaker 1: still going on. Although we we donated a lot of
Speaker 1: are donated. I guess that's not the right word, but
Speaker 1: we gave them close to eight hundred million dollars for
Speaker 1: counter narcotics operations and measures. I'm sure every penny went
Speaker 1: to that thing. Um. So it's still going on. But
Speaker 1: we the reason why it's really disturbing that this is
Speaker 1: still going on is because we haven't learned a very
Speaker 1: clear lesson from this, and that's when we support groups
Speaker 1: that engage in drug trafficking. It invariably comes back to
Speaker 1: bite us in the ass um. Like I mentioned Laco
Speaker 1: Frida in Guatemala. The two guys who are running that show,
Speaker 1: running Guatemala as a narco state, we're both trained by
Speaker 1: the United States at the School of the America's Fort Benning,
Speaker 1: I think, kay, right here in Georgia. Yeah, that's where
Speaker 1: they trained foreign people, no specifically South Latin America, Latin
Speaker 1: Americans specifically to train them pretty controversial, Yeah, because they
Speaker 1: trained them in assassination, in assembling guerilla armies and destabilizing
Speaker 1: central governments, that kind of stuff. So we're training these
Speaker 1: guys to go fight the serviews. But then again, after
Speaker 1: the Cold Wars over, these guys are still going. They're
Speaker 1: still around. Yea Um. The Mexican Gulf Cartel, which has
Speaker 1: become hugely violent and kind of big um, is run
Speaker 1: by a couple of guys who were also trained at
Speaker 1: the School of the America's. So basically the world's biggest
Speaker 1: drug dealers were trained by the United States and the
Speaker 1: art of smuggling and all sorts of other stuff. They
Speaker 1: were trained in their craft, and I think the Russians
Speaker 1: used Escobar right, Yeah, to to help guard their poppy fields,
Speaker 1: is that right. Yeah. Farc actually started out um guarding
Speaker 1: Escobar's coco fields in Colombia for the Median cartel. Right,
Speaker 1: and then apparently they're like, wow, this guy is making
Speaker 1: a bunch of money. We're gonna go out on our own,
Speaker 1: and they became rivals. And then again Delta Force goes
Speaker 1: down there and over ever sees the assassination of um Escobar. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I don't mean to sound paranoid, like I really
Speaker 1: researched this article and all this is fact. Yeah, everything
Speaker 1: that is in fact. I've made like verbal air quotes
Speaker 1: with like this is this is documented stuff and so
Speaker 1: much money and legitimate publication. You know, it's all about
Speaker 1: the green backs. Yes, so much money at stake. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about Africa, man, that's the place to be
Speaker 1: these days. Well, if you're in the narco state, Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Africa has really risen since the mid eighties. That was
Speaker 1: the first sign of a drug presence in Africa and Zombia,
Speaker 1: although it was marijuana in uh in Zombia at the time.
Speaker 1: That's how it started out, at least the gateway drug.
Speaker 1: Even when you're talking narco states. Sure, yeah, it's funny.
Speaker 1: So Zambia goes um is exposes a narco state. Apparently
Speaker 1: the government wasn't aware of this one, but a group
Speaker 1: of prominent citizens were operating like a sub state. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sub narco state, just under the noses of the functioning government.
Speaker 1: And again very poor people, which is key. That's yeah.
Speaker 1: If people don't have any money, and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden people come and give them gobs of money. They'll
Speaker 1: you know, you want to be a drug mule, We'll
Speaker 1: give you this much money. Problem. Um. So Zambie was
Speaker 1: the first to start in Africa and then the nineties. UM.
Speaker 1: The reason why it picked up speed in the nineties
Speaker 1: because it was the end of colonialism and just ended
Speaker 1: within the last decade or so. UM. And this European
Speaker 1: influence and influx of money and exploitation UM left a
Speaker 1: vacuum economically, financially. Uh. And oftentimes with central governments there's
Speaker 1: just a vacuum and nobody's doing any there's no way
Speaker 1: to make any money or anything. So narco states are
Speaker 1: setting up. Synegal was another one in the nineties that
Speaker 1: believe heroin and cocaine really were on the rise, and
Speaker 1: here's the stat that you you dug up. It was
Speaker 1: pretty good. In two thousand and eight, the Telegraph newspaper
Speaker 1: in England reported that the cost of a bribe to
Speaker 1: look the other way at the airport when you're flying
Speaker 1: in at into car with drugs nine grand per kilo
Speaker 1: of cocaine. Right, and Chuck just mentioned a little funny
Speaker 1: little word, and it was cocaine. You know, associate Africa
Speaker 1: with cocaine normally, Well, yeah, that's true. You do now though, yeah,
Speaker 1: big time. And one of the reasons why um, it's
Speaker 1: popped up in Africa's because West Africa is a perfect
Speaker 1: stop for cocaine en route to Europe. Or we talked
Speaker 1: about Europe having a huge problem with heroin. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons they didn't have a big problem with cocaine's
Speaker 1: because the Colombians and other South Americans hadn't figured out
Speaker 1: how to get it to them. Now, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: West Africa's devolving into narco states because they finally figured
Speaker 1: out we need a port and West Africa's right, specifically
Speaker 1: Guinea Bissaal. This is this is, like we said earlier,
Speaker 1: the one true functioning narco state right now, Yeah, a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million dollars worth of cocaine passes through
Speaker 1: the borders of Guinea Bissau each month, and that was
Speaker 1: in two thousand seven. And what is a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty million dollars times two to them? Uh, they're gross
Speaker 1: domestic product. It's half of their gross domestic product. So
Speaker 1: the entire nation, all of the goods and services produced
Speaker 1: in Guinea Bissau and above the boards, equals three hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars a year and they have half of that
Speaker 1: coming through their country in cocaine cocaine a month. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Tell the story of how this started there is so
Speaker 1: interesting it is, Uh, what year was it, Chuck? Two thousands?
Speaker 1: There are a group of Guinea Bissau and fishermen who
Speaker 1: were out um in their boats and there was a
Speaker 1: big old package floating or maybe several small our packages
Speaker 1: is floating there. So they hauled them in with their
Speaker 1: nets and they took them back to land. They opened
Speaker 1: them up and there was this white powder inside that
Speaker 1: they've never seen before. They didn't know what to do
Speaker 1: with it, so they actually used it as fertilizer on
Speaker 1: their crops, which they killed their crops very really yeah.
Speaker 1: And then finally, one day, while they're still puzzling over
Speaker 1: this stuff, god knows what else they did with it,
Speaker 1: a man, a South American man, shows up and says, hey, um,
Speaker 1: I believe you have something that belongs to us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, that's cocaine. That's our cocaine. Will give you
Speaker 1: a million dollars for it, which is one of the
Speaker 1: entire gross domestic product, remember of Guinea Bissau. And so
Speaker 1: they say okay, and by the way, can we do
Speaker 1: this again? And that was the birth of the Guinea
Speaker 1: Bissau and narcos. It completely happened by accident, it did,
Speaker 1: I mean, can you imagine that? And Guinea Bissau is
Speaker 1: a perfect narco state. The cops literally in this in
Speaker 1: the capital Um Bissau, it's the capital city of the country.
Speaker 1: The cops have five cop cars and they almost never
Speaker 1: have gasoline to fuel them. And they have a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty million dollars worth of cocaine going through the
Speaker 1: borders with five cop cars. Right. It was a former
Speaker 1: Portuguese colony, the Portuguese left um And getting into how
Speaker 1: there's not an airplane associated with that country, but they
Speaker 1: have air fields out on like barrier islands that are
Speaker 1: just totally unused, unpatrolled. UM. And what's more, the military
Speaker 1: is completely in the pockets of the UM. I think
Speaker 1: they're mostly Colombians that took the place. Over built stucco mansions.
Speaker 1: They have UM direct TV antennas on their roofs. In
Speaker 1: this incredibly poverty stricken country, they stick out like sore thumbs.
Speaker 1: They don't care. One of the reasons why is, like
Speaker 1: I said, the military is on their side. How did
Speaker 1: how do we know that, Chuck Josh. In September of
Speaker 1: two thousand six, Uh, cops, they are arrested to Colombian
Speaker 1: guys in a house with seven hundred kilos of cocaine,
Speaker 1: and the soldiers came. They showed up the police station,
Speaker 1: surrounded it and said give me the cocaine and the
Speaker 1: men and uh they did so, and they got in
Speaker 1: their cars, loaded up the coke and drove away. The
Speaker 1: cops watched the military load up the coke and just
Speaker 1: leave with the guys, said thank you for your time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that was it. That was UM. That was the
Speaker 1: beginning of the end. The military engaged in an all
Speaker 1: out war with the government and ended up assassinating the
Speaker 1: president after laying siege to his mansion for several hours. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just this year, right, March. Huh he was he was
Speaker 1: assassinated in March. Yeah. So there's no central government in
Speaker 1: Guinea Bissau. The Colombians are they're selling drugs, uh, using
Speaker 1: it as Actually they're not selling it in Guinea Bissau
Speaker 1: as far as I know. They're using Guinea Bissions as mules.
Speaker 1: Who they're even more perfect because it was a Portuguese colony.
Speaker 1: They don't have to have visas to get into Europe. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like it's like Pablo Escobar went, God,
Speaker 1: I need you to do me a favor. I got
Speaker 1: some friends back there on Earth, and they need a
Speaker 1: place in West Africa, need a perfect narco state that's
Speaker 1: a perfect narco state. And God's like getting miss And
Speaker 1: I think you said the average annual income there is
Speaker 1: like five bucks a year for a civil servants job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's clear that if you start waving just small
Speaker 1: amounts of money under their nose, that they're gonna be
Speaker 1: at your beck and call. So getting Missau on your watch,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just insane right there. Sure, it's not
Speaker 1: a safe place to be. No, Nope, so that's Narco States. Um,
Speaker 1: I have a headache just from talking about it. How
Speaker 1: about you, Chuck? I do kind of dance and it is.
Speaker 1: It was a really good article though. Thanks man. If
Speaker 1: you want to read the article that I wrote, um
Speaker 1: and pour my blood, sweat and tears into you can
Speaker 1: type Narco States. That's two words in the handy search
Speaker 1: bar at how stuff Works dot com. And uh that
Speaker 1: means it's time for listener mail. Yeah, you know it's funny?
Speaker 1: Is this morning? Emily asked me while we were getting
Speaker 1: ready for a day what we're gonna podcast on and
Speaker 1: I said Narco State. She said, what's a Narco state? Not?
Speaker 1: I don't know. And here, like eight hours later, my
Speaker 1: mind is or at least enough to talk about it
Speaker 1: for twenty five minutes? Has it only been twenty five minutes? Minute?
Speaker 1: Cherries is thirty five? Josh, I'm gonna call this um
Speaker 1: d NA database London Email. Hello, Josh and Chuck love
Speaker 1: your show. I thought you may be interested in little
Speaker 1: story in regards to the podcast about crime databases. I
Speaker 1: am from Yakima, Washington, but I've lived in the UK
Speaker 1: for the last decade. I'm a train driver engineer. Lisa
Speaker 1: is thirty. She's an American train engineer living in England.
Speaker 1: That interesting. So a friend of mine, who was also
Speaker 1: a conductor, had a recent experience with the British Transport
Speaker 1: Police in regards to this. He was spat on by
Speaker 1: a member of the public who was abusive while carrying
Speaker 1: out ticket duties, so the police were called on the day,
Speaker 1: and for weeks after, my friend was pretty much harassed
Speaker 1: by the police because they wanted a DNA sample from
Speaker 1: him for quote exclusion purposes. He steadfastly declined each request,
Speaker 1: to the point where he put it in writing to
Speaker 1: the police that he would get a solicitor involved to
Speaker 1: ensure he never had to submit a sample. The outcome
Speaker 1: is basically that he the offender, went unpunished because the
Speaker 1: police won't follow it up anymore because the guy who
Speaker 1: was attacked and spit upon won't surrender his DNA for
Speaker 1: exclusion purposes. So I just thought you may want to
Speaker 1: know here in England even victims of crime are being
Speaker 1: coerced into giving samples. Keep up the great work from
Speaker 1: Lisa x x X from Lisa, Wow not an x
Speaker 1: O buddy, triple X. That's from Lisa and Stoke, Hammond, Buckinghamshire.
Speaker 1: And I guess that's a place. Yeah, you know, I've
Speaker 1: can spit on the floor and spit back. Did you
Speaker 1: get spit on by cab driver? And nice? Really obvious?
Speaker 1: Such a rick and try to charge me twenty bucks
Speaker 1: for like an eight block cab ride. I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm not giving you that much, and he was like,
Speaker 1: just you will further and I I just like blinked
Speaker 1: and like put my hand on my face and sure
Speaker 1: enough there was a spit and I just spit right
Speaker 1: back in his pace. This is France. I thought he
Speaker 1: was going to explode, not even in a narco state.
Speaker 1: It was a nice Did you pay him? I paid him,
Speaker 1: so I didn't pay him twenty bucks? What a jerk
Speaker 1: spit on Josh, no doubt. Yeah, he's got a meeting
Speaker 1: with me scheduled. Thanks buddy, I'm gonna go find this guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's go to Nice, all right? All right? Well, if
Speaker 1: you have any stories about spitting on or being spit upon, um,
Speaker 1: you can send in an email to Stuff Podcast at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Because it how stuff works dot Com.
Speaker 1: Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
Speaker 1: the house stuff works dot Com home page