Category: drugs
03/14/09 01:23 - 35ºF - ID#48049
TV Article on Drugs
TV confessions unveil Guinea's narcostate identity
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI, Associated Press Writer Rukmini Callimachi, Associated Press Writer - 41 mins ago
Ousmane Conte, son of Guinea Conakry's late president Lasante Conte, sits in AP - Ousmane Conte, son of Guinea Conakry's late president Lasante Conte, sits in detention at the gendarmerie ...
CONAKRY, Guinea - When planes loaded with cocaine arrived, Guinea's presidential guard secured the cargo. Drug deals were conducted inside the first lady's private residence and in the president's VIP salon at the airport. To avoid detection, cocaine was sent to Europe in the country's diplomatic pouch.
As the people of Guinea sit transfixed before their TV sets, top government officials one after another are confessing to their role in a lucrative international cocaine trade. Organized by a military junta that seized power three months ago, the confessions offer unprecedented insight into an exploding drug trade in West Africa, one that connects coca leaves grown in South American fields to cocaine in European discos.
The confessions paint a picture of an illicit trade conducted with total impunity, with the help of officials, members of the president's family and security forces. They also show the large role Guinea and other West African countries are playing as drug hubs, and how vulnerable they are to the corrupting influence of drug dollars.
A recent United Nations report found that at least 46 tons of cocaine have been seized en route to Europe via West Africa since 2005, bringing profits that sometimes exceed the entire defense budgets of countries it passes through. Before that time, less than a ton a year was seized from the entire continent.
"The vast majority of cocaine that is destined for Europe is now going through West Africa," said Michael Braun, who was the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency's operations chief when he retired in October.
___
For years, the drug trade was an open secret in Guinea. The inner circle of former dictator Lansana Conte, who ruled Guinea for 24 years until his death, was deeply corrupt, with officials driving opulent SUVs in a capital where most people live without electricity.
Conte died in December. A day later, Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara, a junior army officer, grabbed power in a coup and promised to crack down on corruption, including on the flagrant drug trade. So far, more than a dozen people have been arrested, but Dadis has failed to arrest well-known members of his own military junta who are believed to deal in drugs.
The confessions began two weeks ago on state television in what is now known in Guinea as "The Dadis Show," broadcasts that have caused a spike in TV viewership and are the constant topic at lunch and over coffee.
First up was Ousmane Conte, the feared eldest son of the deceased dictator, who was untouchable under the previous regime. He admitted what everyone in Guinea knew but did not dare say.
"I acknowledge that I was in the drug business - and I regret it," said Conte, whose confession was taped inside his detention cell.
In a jailhouse interview this week with The Associated Press, Conte explained how he did it. He said a friend brought in "medicine" for his humanitarian foundation, using a Red Cross plane that landed at night at the international airport in the capital, Conakry. When the plane arrived, his friend called to wake him. Conte then went to the airport accompanied by the presidential guard to secure the cargo, he said.
Conte claimed he did not know at first that the cargo contained cocaine. But his friend later told him, he said, and Conte accepted a $300,000 bribe.
Other officials confessed to equally bold behavior.
The late president's brother-in-law said he met with Latin American drug dealers inside a villa owned by his sister, the former first lady. The head of the country's intelligence unit said he personally accompanied a convoy of trucks containing drugs to the capital. The former head of the police force was challenged to account for the source of funds for a university he is building.
Even the former head of the country's anti-drug unit was interrogated on state TV for his alleged role. The unit was in charge of seizing drugs when a cache was found. But instead of securing and destroying the drugs, the cocaine was often "recycled," said top police officials and foreign diplomats.
A junior police officer said that on one raid, they discovered a 40-foot container filled with cocaine wrapped in plastic. There was so much that the police could not load it all into the two pickup trucks they had brought, said the officer, who asked not to be named because he was committing a crime.
In the confusion, he said, he hid one of the plastic-wrapped sachets of cocaine inside his uniform. He sold it to a buyer at the port, who gave him $15,000. He bought a used car, a TV set and the latest generation Nokia cellphone. He also paid to send his mother, a Muslim, to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
He's not proud of what he did, he said. But he pointed out that his theft was miniscule compared to that of his superiors, several of whom stole enough to buy themselves newly-imported Toyota SUVs.
"Eighty percent of the men in uniform lived off of this - it wasn't just me," he said. "It was everyone."
The anti-drug unit eventually gained such a reputation as a place for easy money that it began to receive transfer applications from other police departments, said current director Moussa Sakho Camara, who was brought in late last year after the former director was sacked.
Camara said that when he took over, a large number of officers drove imported SUVs - $50,000 cars that would have taken over 50 years to buy on an officer's $100-a-month salary. So, in an effort to stop officers from driving their drug trophies to work, Camara ruled that only he could park in the anti-drug unit's parking lot.
___
The drug business in Guinea feeds into a much larger trade that brings cocaine from South America into Spain and Portugal to serve a booming European market.
As the cocaine market in the United States matured, drug traffickers turned to Europe instead, according to a U.N. report released in October. Over the past decade, cocaine use in Spain and the United Kingdom has grown three and four-fold. One kilogram of cocaine in Europe now sells for twice as much as in the United States, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.
To get the cocaine to Europe, traffickers first smuggle it to Africa's west coast, located directly across the ocean from Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, home to the world's entire crop of coca leaves. They bring it in freighter ships and in small, two-engine planes that land at night on deserted air strips. Once ashore, it is parceled out to hundreds of drug dealers, who smuggle it north on boats, in planes and in their own intestines.
In a report earlier this month, the U.S. State Department said cocaine smuggling through Venezuela alone has shot up fivefold since 2002, from 50 metric tons to an estimated 250 metric tons in 2007. It said a rapidly increasing percentage of the flow has begun to be shipped and flown to West Africa, notably to Guinea and Guinea Bissau, and then on toward Europe.
The countries dotting Africa's Atlantic Coast are so mired in poverty that their people - including the governing elite - are often tempted into the drug trade. Guinea alone was the embarkation point for 221 couriers detected since 2006, the single largest national total in the region, according to the U.N. report.
"Africa is under attack," says Antonio Maria Costa, who heads the Vienna-based U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.
The biggest entry points in Europe are Spain, Portugal and the United Kingdom, but the trade is widespread. In Switzerland alone, the U.N. report noted, 60 percent of foreign drug traffickers arrested were West African.
It's unclear if the crackdown in Guinea will succeed in dislodging the cartels. Even if it does, experts say, the trade will simply move to neighboring countries.
Next door is Sierra Leone, where last June a Cessna piloted by a three-man crew from Latin America was stopped with 700 kilograms of cocaine. To the north is Guinea-Bissau, from where in 2006, 32 people carrying cocaine boarded the same flight for Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport.
But already, the people of Guinea are realizing how much their economy depends on drugs.
Nigerians who acted as go-betweens in the drug trade used to spend freely in Guinea, but they are now gone. Business is down at the capital's discos, where the Nigerians used to order multiple rounds of drinks. For Guineans, a bottle of champagne is worth three months' salary.
Their apparent departure is also being felt at a downtown intersection, where a 14-year-old boy sells telephone charge cards. "Before, selling cards worked. The Nigerians would buy 10 at a time," said Mamadou Diallo. "Now I'm hardly selling any."
There are fewer SUVs, and those who drive expensive cars feel they have been put on notice.
The police officer who admitted to stealing cocaine said he now takes public transport to work. He answers his calls on a beat-up Nokia, and handed over the new one he bought with the cocaine money to his girlfriend.
"Everyone knows that a Guinean can't afford these things," he explained, his knees twitching under the table. "Everybody is afraid. No one could have imagined that they could arrest these people."
____
Associated Press Writers Veronika Oleksyn and Bill Kole in Vienna, Frank Bajak in Bogota, Paul Haven in Madrid, Barry Hatton in Lisbon and Clarence Roy-Macaulay in Freetown, Sierra Leone, contributed to this report.
Permalink: TV_Article_on_Drugs.html
Words: 1772
Location: Buffalo, NY
Category: tv
03/12/09 07:27 - 25ºF - ID#48036
New South Park
Permalink: New_South_Park.html
Words: 231
Location: Buffalo, NY
Category: nhl
03/08/09 04:18 - 39ºF - ID#47988
Sabres Vs. Coyotes
I decided not to put up pictures of The AUD because to me they look the same as the ones from last week. I mean I know they did more work but to me the progress looks about the same.
Sabres wise I thought it was a great game and it looked like Lalime made a bunch of great saves to me. Here are some random pictures from the sabres game vs. Coyotes.
Hope people who read this enjoyed the pictures. I just wish I had juicy stuff for you all and myself. On top of that I wish that some juicy stuff happened to me. I really need to think about seeing if I can move downtown. I know there is no way I could, I think it is to costly. Well unless of course you want to live in the part that is called Downtown but isn't.
Permalink: Sabres_Vs_Coyotes.html
Words: 407
Location: Buffalo, NY
Category: movies
03/07/09 05:31 - 44ºF - ID#47977
Watchmen
Permalink: Watchmen.html
Words: 456
Location: Buffalo, NY
Category: peterazzi
03/05/09 05:53 - 51ºF - ID#47963
Having and Orgy to these bands
Peterazzi has gone to a lot of concerts and seen a lot of bands. But there are a lot of bands he has never seen. There are a few reasons for that. One when the band was really big he was to young or not able to go to shows yet. Two a lot of bands didn't used to come to Buffalo. Three during the summer bands like to play at places out side of cities at amusement parks. Fourth is an odd one in that sometimes a great band comes but you don't hear about it or don't know who they are yet and then you hear their music and go dam I missed them.
Here are Bands the Peterazzi would like to see Live and never has:
1. U2
2. Aerosmith
3. Black Sabbath (with Ozzy Singing)
4. Rammstein
5. System Of A Down
6. Blink 182
7. Rush
8. Coldplay
9. Korn
10. Red Hot Chilli Pepers
11. Motley Crue
12. Disturbed
13. Pink Flyodd (don't think they will get back together though)
14. Led Zepplin (with Plant not who ever replaced him but won't happen)
15. Velvet Revolver
Sure there are other bands but those are the ones that cum to mind quickly.
Permalink: Having_and_Orgy_to_these_bands.html
Words: 309
Location: Buffalo, NY
Category: peterazzi
03/04/09 07:17 - 27ºF - ID#47948
Buffalo& Bandits lose Peterazzi update
For those who may not know the AUD is being torn down. Here are the pictures form the Peterazzi from the AUD and from around that general area before the Bandits game. You might be able to see the inside of the AUD.
One thing that the Peterazzi noticed last week was the tagging way up there. He wonders how did someone get all the way up there and how long has it been up there.
Yeah the Bandits lost a tough game. Yes it was a good game and a tight game with lots of hits and lots of shooting and the bandits where out shot. The Bandits had a lead and let it slide away or maybe the Swarm wanted it more or played better not sure but in the end they won, here are some random pictures from the game and the warm ups and I'm sure some Bandettes will make it in as well in the random selection.
Well the Peterazzi hopes you enjoyed this post about pictures and about the Camera issues and that you have learned that it isn't all ways easy being the Peterazzi. The Peterazzi also hopes that things go well on Saturday so that there are some great pictures to be shared. On a side note if you go in fetish gear it is cheaper to get in, hey we shall see what happens.
Permalink: Buffalo_amp_Bandits_lose_Peterazzi_update.html
Words: 671
Location: Buffalo, NY
Category: sports
02/28/09 01:31 - 15ºF - ID#47908
Sabres Pictures and Bandits
The way I wrote at the begging it sounds like I'm a ducks fan and that I wanted them to win. That isn't true even though there where some ducks fans near where I was sitting I was there wanting the Sabres to win, they had their chances but lost. If for any reason this isn't enough sabres pictures here is a link that should take you to them all , ops for some reason the paste/copy won't work on firefox/(e:strip) for some reason but I know I do have a link to my webshots page on here. If you want to see the Bandits game from Valentines day with the 3rd uniform those are up also.
Permalink: Sabres_Pictures_and_Bandits.html
Words: 414
Location: Buffalo, NY
Category: entertainment
02/23/09 06:51 - 21ºF - ID#47873
Bill Maher Part 2
It was interesting to see him pimp his movie last night at the Oscars. I think he did a good job presenting. It must be tough to present in a category that you think your movie should have been at least thought of to be nominated in. On his latest show he did mention that he would be on the Oscars . The Buffalo Area was also mentioned twice. One of them was mentioning the plane crash is some point of his about if it would have been terrorism. But the story that he talked with someone about was the Beheading in Orchard Park. I find it Ironic that this guy forms a TV Station to show how Islam isn't violent and then he calls and brags to the Police about how he cut off his Wife's head. That discussion was pretty interesting I thought. To me that kinda ties back to his movie. On a side note he also talked with Ron Paul and I was surprised that I kinda agreed with some of the stuff Ron was saying.
I guess before I forget I should mention the other movie I saw. It was called Coraline. I thought it was a pretty good animated movie. It kinda follows The Night Mare Before Christmas style of Animation. I liked the story and thought the Animation was amazing. I think it really would have looked great If I could have seen it in 3D. Oh yeah Lets go Buffalo (hope the sabres play a good game since I'm going to see them play the ducks).
So to sum up it was a good Bill Maher weekend, and I don't agree with all his politics and beliefs but he is funny and entertaining.
Permalink: Bill_Maher_Part_2.html
Words: 369
Location: Buffalo, NY
Category: entertainment
02/20/09 07:24 - 25ºF - ID#47837
Funny Video 2nd post of the day
Permalink: Funny_Video_2nd_post_of_the_day.html
Words: 118
Location: Buffalo, NY
Category: entertainment
02/20/09 06:16 - 25ºF - ID#47835
Bill Maher Part 1
Permalink: Bill_Maher_Part_1.html
Words: 227
Location: Buffalo, NY
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