NEWS AND VIEWS THAT IMPACT LIMITED CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT
"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with
power to endanger the public liberty." - - - - John Adams
Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll (born 2 February 1977), professionally known by the mononym Shakira, is a Colombian singer and songwriter. Born and raised in Barranquilla, she has been referred to as the "Queen of Latin Music".
With a catalog of 145 songs, Shakira has sold over 80 million records, making her one of the best-selling music artists of all time.Forbes Colombia reported that as of 2018, she is the top-selling female Latin artist of all time.
She has received numerous awards, including three Grammy Awards, twelve Latin Grammy Awards, four MTV Video Music Awards, seven Billboard Music Awards, thirty-nine Billboard Latin Music Awards, six Guinness World Records and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Sofía Vergara is a Colombian actress, comedian, television hostess, and model.
Vergara was widely known for co-hosting two television shows for Spanish-language television network Univisión in the late 1990s.
Vergara was discovered by a photographer while walking on a Colombian beach and was soon presented with offers of modeling and television work. Vergara was "apprehensive about doing her first television commercial—until her Catholic schoolteachers gave her their personal permission to take the assignment." Vergara made her first appearance as a performer at the age of 17 in a Pepsi commercial that was widely broadcast in Latin America.
Her first notable acting job in English was in the 2003 film Chasing Papi. Subsequently, she appeared in other films, including Four Brothers (2005) and two Tyler Perry films - Meet the Browns (2008) and Madea Goes to Jail (2009), receiving an ALMA Award nomination for the latter.
Vergara's success on television has earned her roles in recent films The Smurfs (2011), New Year's Eve (2011), Happy Feet Two (2011), The Three Stooges (2012), Escape From Planet Earth (2013), and Machete Kills (2013). In 2012 and 2013, she was the top-earning actress on US television.
Vergara stars on the ABC series Modern Family as Gloria Delgado-Pritchett, for which she has been nominated for four Golden Globe Awards, four Primetime Emmy Awards, and seven Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Drugs are Big Business for International Bankers. Wachovia Bank recently completed what amounted to a year-long probation arising from a settlement deal with Federal prosecutors who were pursuing criminal proceedings against Wachovia for its facilitating of illegal money transfers from Mexico totaling $378-billion…a staggering sum greater than half of the Pentagon's annual budget, which included billions of dollars traced directly to violent Mexican drug cartels.
The Insane Drug War - International banking interests make tons of money off a drug "war"
Follow the money Trail.
The drug "war" makes money for international bankers.
The drug "war" allows governments to spend billions more to grow a Police State in order to protect the helpless people from the drug gangs created by a government drug prohibition.
The vast profits made from drug production and trafficking are overwhelmingly reaped in rich "consuming" countries – principally across Europe and in the US – rather than war-torn "producing" nations such as Colombia and Mexico, new research has revealed. And its authors claim that financial regulators in the west are reluctant to go after western banks in pursuit of the massive amount of drug money being laundered through their systems.
The most far-reaching and detailed analysis to date of the drug economy in any country – in this case, Colombia – shows that 2.6% of the total street value of cocaine produced remains within the country, while a staggering 97.4% of profits are reaped by criminal syndicates, and laundered by banks, in first-world consuming countries reports the UK Guardian.
"The story of who makes the money from Colombian cocaine is a metaphor for the disproportionate burden placed in every way on 'producing' nations like Colombia as a result of the prohibition of drugs," said one of the authors of the study, Alejandro Gaviria, launching its English edition last week.
"Colombian society has suffered to almost no economic advantage from the drugs trade, while huge profits are made by criminal distribution networks in consuming countries, and recycled by banks which operate with nothing like the restrictions that Colombia's own banking system is subject to."
His co-author, Daniel Mejía, added: "The whole system operated by authorities in the consuming nations is based around going after the small guy, the weakest link in the chain, and never the big business or financial systems where the big money is.
"Themechanisms of laundering drug money were highlighted in theObserver last yearafter a rare settlement in Miami between US federal authorities and the Wachovia bank, which admitted to transferring $110m of drug money into the US, but failing to properly monitor a staggering $376 billion brought into the bank through small exchange houses in Mexico over four years. (Wachovia has since been taken over by Wells Fargo, which has co-operated with the investigation.)
But no one went to jail, and the bank is now in the clear. "Overall, there's great reluctance to go after the big money," said Mejía. "They don't target those parts of the chain where there's a large value added. In Europe and America the money is dispersed – once it reaches the consuming country it goes into the system, in every city and state. They'd rather go after the petty economy, the small people and coca crops in Colombia, even though the economy is tiny."
With Britain having overtaken the US and Spain as the world's biggest consumer of cocaine per capita, the Wachovia investigation showed much of the drug money is also laundered through the City of London.(UK Guardian)
The Pretend War on Drugs. A few cocaine fields are burned for the TV news audience to make the public think something is being done. In the meantime billions of dollars are laundered through huge international banks. Drugs are big business.(Borderland Beat) . Governments, banking interests and law enforcement oppose the re-legalization of drugs because they there is huge money to be made and expanded government power in a "war" on drugs.
The lower House of the Congress of Columbia wants to legalize growing drug crops.
Decriminalization - Congressional bill legalizes the growing of plants such as coca, marijuana and opium poppies
Get Big Government out of the way and end gang violence.
The Colombian House of Representatives Wednesday passed the first draft of a
bill that seeks to legalize illicit crops.
The initiative calls for the decriminalization of growing plants such as
coca, marijuana and opium poppies in the country.
Representative Hugo Velasquez Jaramillo, who proposed the bill, explained
that although the cultivation of plants would be legal under the new
legislation, the processing and trafficking of drugs would remain subject to
criminal sentencing.
According to Velazquez, congress cannot move forward with the “failed drug
policy pursued by the governments of Colombia and the United
States.”
“The important thing is that we have the opportunity to listen to congressmen
from [drug] producing regions and hear from different government officials, not
just those in opposition [of the bill] with Minister of Justice Juan Carlos
Esguerra,” he said.
Velazquez also reminded the government that drug crop legalization is an
agricultural issue as well as a legal matter.
President of Columbia favors drug legalization.
An indigenous Bolivian woman drops petals on the head of Colombian President
Juan Manuel Santos at a meeting associated with the Summit of the Americas in
Cartagena, Colombia.
The Failed Drug War "We cannot eradicate global drug markets, but we can certainly regulate them as we have done with alcohol and tobacco markets." - - - Otto Perez Molina, President of Guatemala
Over 20,000 people have been murdered in Central American drug wars.
48,000 drug war deaths in Mexico.
Comrade President Obama will get an earful from Latin American leaders at a regional summit in Colombia this weekend. Nations in Central and South America leaders are pushing to legalize marijuana and other drugs in a bid to stem
rampant trafficking and end violence.
Obama, who opposes decriminalization, is expected to
face a rocky reception in Columbia. The American demand for illegal drugs has caused fierce bloodshed,
plus political and economic turmoil, across much of the
region.
Colombia's president, Juan Manuel Santos, wants the 33 leaders at
the Summit of the Americas to consider whether the solution should include
regulating marijuana, and perhaps cocaine, the way alcohol and tobacco are.
Other member states also are calling for that dialogue despite the political
discomfort it may cause Obama back home says the L.A. Times.
The call for change comes from front-line veterans of the drug wars, including Colombia. Santos says he has the moral authority to seek new solutions because his country's citizens and security forces have spilled so much blood fighting drug traffickers.
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Also leading the charge is Guatemala's President, Otto
Perez Molina. After a pre-summit meeting with leaders of Costa Rica and Panama,
he called for a "realistic and responsible" discussion of decriminalization in
Cartagena.
"We cannot eradicate global drug markets, but we can certainly
regulate them as we have done with alcohol and tobacco markets," he wrote in the
British newspaper the Observer on April 7.
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Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina said the US-led regional war against drug
trafficking is being lost and requires a change in strategy, including
decriminalizing drug consumption.
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"The war we have waged over the past 40 years has not yielded results. It's a
war which, to speak frankly, we are losing," he said in an interview with AFP on
the sidelines of the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia.
"Meanwhile, the black market continues to exist and dollars and weapons
continued to flow in from the United States. The way we are fight this war, we
cannot win," he added.
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Marijuana use in America has increased by 15% since 2006, but cocaine use has
dropped by 40% in that time, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services. Experts say the global market for cocaine is unchanged because use in
Europe more than doubled in the last decade.
President Juan Manuel Santos said legalizing marijuana would help reduce the power of the Drug Cartels.
Drug trafficking is what finances the violence in Columbia and in other nations
Juan Manuel Santos, the President of Columbia, has called for the global legalization of marijuana to help combat the violence of the Drug Cartels.
Santos added his voice to a growing list of influential figures in Latin America demanding a rethink of the policies that have been used for decades to fight the drugs trade, reports the UK Telegraph.
He said legalizing softer drugs such as marijuana worldwide could help improve international efforts to deal with harder drugs such as cocaine and heroin.
"The world needs to discuss new approaches ... we are basically still thinking within the same framework as we have done for the last 40 years," he said.
Asked if making marijuana legal could offer a way forward, Mr Santos said it could and that he would support it "provided everyone does it at the same time". But he emphasised that other countries needed to take the lead, saying the issue was "a matter of national security" for Colombia, whereas "in other countries this is mainly a health and crime issue".
"Drug trafficking is what finances the violence and the irregular groups in our country. I would be crucified if I took the first step," he said in an interview with Metro, the global free daily newspaper chain.
Last month Felipe Calderón, the Mexican president, used a speech in New York to warn the US that as the world's "largest consumer of drugs" it may have to consider legalisation "to reduce the astronomical earnings of criminal organisations".
