Wednesday, October 16, 2019

WHY PACIFIC GAS & ELECTRIC SHOULD BE NATIONALIZED - IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN A LOOTING, PLUNDERING CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE - Democrats are turning California into a third-world hellhole without electricity, water, and freedom.

“PG&E should be nationalized”: Berkeley students and residents denounce forced blackout in California

On Monday, members of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) at UC Berkeley spoke to students and Berkeley residents about the mass blackout imposed by Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) across Northern California last week. The power outage, which affected over two million people and businesses, lasted up to four days in some places and likely caused many premature deaths.
Jazmín, a senior studying Political Science, spoke at length about the shutoffs and PG&E’s history of corporate negligence. Having grown up in Santa Rosa, an hour north of the Bay Area, and experiencing firsthand the devastating 2017 Tubbs Fire, she had been profoundly impacted by the utility monopoly’s criminality.
Jazmín
Given her close personal connection to the events, Jazmín was compelled to research the history of PG&E and its lobbying efforts. The results of this effort were published in an article last spring in the University of Southern California’s Journal of Law and Society .
“For a long time, PG&E has been accused, charged, and convicted of not fulfilling their responsibility to the public of maintaining their utility lines,” Jazmín noted. “As a privately owned utility that serves the public, that’s their obligation. They’ve been fined, they’ve been criminalized, and they’re still allowed to continue in operation, and it’s wrong.”
Jazmín read a quote from her article, which explains: “In 1997, PG&E was convicted of 739 counts of criminal negligence for failing to trim trees near its power lines after the corporation diverted $80 million from maintenance programs into shareholder profits.” Commenting on this conviction over 20 years ago, Jazmín noted, “they’ve been doing this for a long time, and causing disaster after disaster, catastrophe after catastrophe. Destruction, deaths, people losing their homes, their jobs.”
“I was in Santa Rosa and was in a neighborhood that was evacuated. We could hear the breakers popping everywhere. We evacuated and saw my former partner’s house burn down. I was evacuated for about a week, our power was turned off, and my case was best case scenario. It was terrible,” Jazmín explained, relaying her experience during the Tubbs Fire.
“My cousin lost her home. A lot of people lost their jobs because several hotels burned down, senior homes burned down, fast food restaurants, a K-Mart. People lost so much in the fires, family heirlooms and things that can’t be replaced.
“People who lost their jobs, including a lot of undocumented folks, had nowhere to turn. So our community had to start fundraising. We started Undocufund, which basically was a direct financial help for families that were undocumented that needed financial assistance. But this had to come from our community. PG&E gave no support to us whatsoever, they just went on their advertising campaign.
“Our entire community suffered major trauma, half the town burned down. So now, when the shutoffs happened, people were going crazy, people were panicking. They were going to get gas in lines around the block. It was very chaotic, very traumatic for the entire community. And the utility company doesn’t care. They’ll do whatever it takes to reduce their own liability, promoting it as a way to keep people safe, but really, it’s disrupting operations, it’s disrupting people’s jobs. Because those same people that didn’t have the money or resources to get help after the fires, they still don’t. So, when the power lines get cut, people that work in restaurants or at hotels will not be protected and won’t get paid for those days of missed work.
“The people that suffer the most are working class families that are living paycheck to paycheck. In Santa Rosa, the fires created a huge housing crisis. People that are renters were affected so much because rates increased dramatically as we lost 15 percent of our housing. It continues to have these massive effects, and with these shutoffs it’s just continuing.”
Commenting on the party that PG&E hosted at a Sonoma County winery on the day of the shutoff announcement and exactly two years after the Tubbs Fire, Jazmín stated, “It’s disgusting. I got messages from local PG&E employees in Sonoma County asking whether I’m okay after the blackouts. They do these campaigns to make themselves look good, meanwhile they’re over here fundraising at expensive parties at wineries. It’s absolutely disgusting and insulting. The sad part too is that people who are winery owners are part of the same network and group as the PG&E executives, and they support each other, and don’t care about anyone else’s well-being.”
She also denounced the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the ostensible “regulatory” agency that oversees the utility monopolies in California. She noted, “the last time that PG&E got convicted for criminal behavior, federal officials actually criticized the close relationship between CPUC and PG&E. They don’t do their job and are a huge waste of resources, so the judge actually had to appoint someone else to oversee the company. They ended up not doing anything either.”
“These shutoffs are what they’re going to keep doing. It’s just our government facilitating business as usual for these companies. I think that our declining climate conditions and the increased frequency of extreme weather conditions, it’s bringing these issues to light more and causing greater consequences, when these utilities are mismanaged. They’ve been mismanaged for decades, and now it’s coming to light.”
When asked for her thoughts on the way forward, Jazmín immediately replied, “I think PG&E should be nationalized. I think that their efforts to make a profit are continuing to hurt people, massive amounts of people. They don’t have a functioning, fair or just business model, and I think the service is something that needs to be taken over.”
She elaborated, “It’s not profitable to keep people safe, and so long as that’s true people will keep suffering. It’s causing us untold harm. Once under public control, we need to start with the basics by maintaining the power lines that have decades and decades of backlogs on maintenance. We start with education, and making sure that operations are safe. We can’t cut corners on these things, and keep extracting from this kind of service. This shouldn’t be meant for profit.
“When we follow industry under capitalism, each industry completely extracts as much profit as possible until it crashes and dies. We’re at wit’s end with this. We cannot continue to extract profit from energy, especially utilities, and keep putting people at risk. We have to evolve as a country, as a world, in terms of how we provide for people’s needs.”
Misa
Misa, a resident of Berkeley, was also disturbed by the mass power shutoffs. She commented, “It doesn’t seem like a good plan going forward. It was not very well planned out at all, and a lot of people think PG&E was only worried about their own liability over what happens to the community.”
“I think what bothers me most is when you hear that there are executives getting bonuses instead of investing in their infrastructure. That doesn’t make any sense. It’s just like the banks after the 2008 financial crisis. It makes no sense, they already have their salaries which are pretty high. Use that money to reinvest in the business and infrastructure.”
Harman
Harman, a South Asian Studies major, commented on the forced blackout, “It’s disgusting. The reason they decided to do this was because it’s cheaper to just pay the fines and not upgrade their infrastructure like they’re supposed to. That’s absolutely disgusting.”
“One person died within 15 minutes because his breathing machine was turned off, I heard that on the news. PG&E did that on purpose and no one’s going to jail for that. They literally killed people and they’re not going to go to jail for that, just because they can afford to pay the fines? They burned down the whole town of Paradise! It’s insane.”

Democrats turning California into a third-


world hellhole: Going without electricity 


edition



Democrats are turning California into a third-world hellhole without electricity, water, and freedom.
Due to Democrats' love for trees, at least 800,000 Californians will be without power for several days.  Instead of properly managing California forests to reduce the chances of big fires, Democrats are saying Californians have to go without lights, refrigerators, and air-conditioning.  Democrats could also avoid this by not making the power company financially liable for all forest fire damages, but since PG&E is a company, not an illegal alien, the Democrats couldn't care less about doing what's best for California.
While they try to blame climate change and the infrastructure, the reality is that neither of those has caused any significant changes in the last ten years — but now, suddenly, due to Democrat policies, Californians have to start living in the 18th century.
The Democrats who run California also refuse to build more water storage capacity even though the state's population has dramatically increased, ensuring that water has to be rationed during droughts.
Democrats are turning California into a third-world country economically.  The income inequality between the über-rich Silicon Valley workers and the rest of Californians is huge, just like in third-world countries, while the elites live in luxury and the rest live in squalor. 
Democrats are doing a great job manufacturing poverty and homelessness even as they fail to instill hope in Californians.
California has four times more homeless per capita and three times more poor per capita than the rest of America.  Half the homeless in America are in California, even though California has only 12% of the U.S. population.  Also, blacks are six times more prevalent in the San Francisco homeless population than they are in California in general.
The homeless explosion has brought the return of third-world diseases like typhus to California — not to mention streets littered with human feces.
Democrats are trying to keep people from having cars, just like the people of the Third World.  After all, a car gives people the freedom to move, and freedom is a bad thing in the minds of Democrats since it limits the power the government has over citizens.
Recently, Gavin Newsom, the Democrat governor, transferred millions of dollars that the voters had been ensured would go to improve the state's failing road infrastructure to a fund designed to convince Californians to give up their cars.
Democrats are also working to make cars unaffordable for any but the richest Californians.
Californians pay $1.53 more for a gallon for gasoline than the rest of America.  That's $21 more for a tank of gasoline.  Facebook employees won't notice it, but the poor in California who can't afford to live near their jobs are paying through the teeth.
Like all third-world tyrants, Democrats are doing everything they can to eliminate democracy in California.
The jungle primary, where the top two candidates in the primaries go against each other, has resulted in many races where two Democrats are running against each other, giving voters who don't agree with the Democrats' failed policies no one to vote for.
California is doing nothing to ensure that people who shouldn't vote don't vote.  Instead, the people running the state are doing everything possible to let illegal aliens vote.  When illegal aliens go pick up their driver's licenses, they're automatically enrolled to vote unless they say they're not citizens.
California is also trying to end democracy by keeping the Republican presidential candidate off the ballot.  Democrats passed an unconstitutional law to keep any candidate who didn't release his tax returns off the ballot solely to keep Californians from voting for Trump.
Finally, the Democrats are going after freedom of the press.  An undercover journalist revealed that Planned Parenthood was selling aborted baby parts.  Instead of investigating that illegal practice, Democrat Kamala Harris decided to put the journalist on trial.
Democrats keep telling us California is the future if they get elected.  That means that poverty, homelessness, the end of democracy, and a press that reports only what Democrats want heard are what Democrats are promising us.
If you're an immensely wealthy Google employee, California is Heaven.  If you're not, it's becoming more and more like Hell.
You can read more of Tom's rants at his blog, Conversations about the obvious, and feel free to follow him on Twitter.
Millions Of Californians Are De-Powered As Utility Safeguards Bottom Line
10/12/2019
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California’s mass electricity shut-down has not gone well. Millions of state residents got little warning that their power would be switched off for up to a week while Pacific Gas & Electric checked its lines for any technical problems.
But as I wrote a couple days ago, it’s likely PG&E’s biggest concern was losing another pile of money if it was seen to be irresponsible: California Power Company Unplugs Customers to Protect Its Profits. The utility recently paid out $11 billion to resolve most of the insurance claims from two major wildfires in the state.
Naturally there was a great deal of anger about the shutdown, as Thursday’s Los Angeles Times described:
And there were millions of persons affected. Some of the reports use the term “customers” which means households, not individuals.
For some people, the outage was more than a huge inconvenience: A front page article in Friday’s New York Times titled “Frailest in Peril As Power Cuts Dim California” pointed out that many medical devices require electricity to run. (Reprinted in MSN.) So wildfires are not the only danger to public safety — PG&E endangered some Californians by its power shutoff.
I was lucky that the unplugged zone in my town was a few blocks away, but I still carried a flashlight around the house after dark just in case. It was unsettling that PG&E has sounded unmotivated to get the lights back on ASAP.
Here’s the LA Times article mentioned above:
Classes were canceled. Frozen foods melted. Hospitals switched to emergency generators. Blooms withered in florists’ coolers. Unused food was jettisoned at shuttered restaurants. Lines formed at gas stations. Cellphones faded out.
That’s what happened Wednesday when the state’s largest utility shut off power to millions of Californians in a drastic attempt to avoid the killer wildfires that have charred hundreds of thousands of acres, caused billions of dollars in damage and spurred cries for widespread change in how electricity is delivered over the state’s aging grid.
Pacific Gas & Electric Co. began cutting power to customers shortly after midnight in counties around Sacramento. By the end of the day, the outages had radiated out to encompass 34 counties, with all but seven counties north of Merced at least partly in the dark.
The move by PG&E marks the largest power shut-off to date as California utilities attempt to reduce wildfire risks. Equipment malfunctions have been tied to some of the state’s most destructive and deadliest fires, including the 2017 wine country blazes and last year’s Camp fire, which devastated the town of Paradise and killed 85 people.
In January, PG&E filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, anticipating multibillion-dollar legal claims stemming from the Camp fire, which also destroyed nearly 14,000 homes. A month later, officials at the utility acknowledged that its equipment probably sparked that blaze.
“The safety of our customers and the communities we serve is our most important responsibility, which is why PG&E has decided to turn power off to customers during this widespread, severe wind event, ” Michael Lewis, PG&E’s senior vice president of electric operations, said Wednesday. “We understand the effects this event will have on our customers and appreciate the public’s patience as we do what is necessary to keep our communities safe and reduce the risk of wildfire.”
But tempers flared against the utility everyone loves to hate—enough so that a cautious PG&E erected barriers around its San Francisco headquarters Wednesday. At the same time, the California Highway Patrol was investigating whether someone shot at a PG&E truck Tuesday night.
[. . .]
In the Sierra foothills town of Placerville, the power went out about 3 a.m., leaving many residents angry and scrambling for supplies. Customers roamed the aisles of Placerville Hardware in darkness at midmorning, loading up on flashlights, oil lamps and batteries. Cash registers ran on a generator.
“There isn’t a tree moving right now because of the wind, ” said Tod Pickett, who was buying battery-powered lamps. “And they are telling us there’s a hurricane. There are 12 billion reasons why PG&E is sticking it to us, ” he continued, referring to the monetary settlements paid after past fires. (Continues)

ARE THEY SUCKING IN BRIBES FROM BIG PHARMA? - YANG AND O'ROURKE PROPOSE DECRIMINALIZING OPIOIDS AND HEROIN - CHINA AND NARCOMEX JUST ENDORSED BOTH!



Yang and O'Rourke propose decriminalizing opioids, including heroin

David Knowles
Editor









Candidates discuss opioid decriminalization and sending drug company executives to jail

Scroll back up to restore default view.
At Tuesday’s Democratic presidential debate, candidates Andrew Yang and Beto O’Rourke endorsed decriminalizing opioids, including heroin, as a way to control the drug epidemic that has ravaged American communities.
Yang, a businessman with no prior political experience, said that doing so would help addicts “get well.”
"The least we can do is put the resources to work in our communities so our people have a fighting chance to get well,” Yang said, adding, “Part of helping people get the treatment they need is letting them know that they are not going to be referred to a prison cell. They’ll be referred to treatment and counseling.”
Yang also took aim at drug companies who have profited from the manufacture and sale of opioids, describing the problem as “capitalism run amok.”
“We need to decriminalize opiates for personal use,” Yang continued. “We have to let the country know this is not a personal failing, this is a systemic government failing. And then we need to open up safe consumption and injection sites around the country because they save lives.”


Andrew Yang and Beto O'Rourke during the fourth U.S. Democratic presidential candidates 2020 election debate at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio U.S., October 15, 2019. (Photos: John Minchillo/AP, Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)
Andrew Yang and Beto O'Rourke during the fourth U.S. Democratic presidential candidates 2020 election debate at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio U.S., October 15, 2019. (Photos: John Minchillo/AP, Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)

O’Rourke, the former representative from Texas, said he agreed with Yang that opioids should be decriminalized, and said that the legalization and prescription of marijuana instead of opioids was also something that should be tried.
“Anyone with drug addiction today is not a problem for the criminal justice system, they are an opportunity for our public health care system,” O’Rourke said.
The bulk of the discussion on the opioid crisis, however, was focused on the drug companies who have been held liable for pushing medication on patients who soon became addicted to them.
Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., said she favored jailing executives at companies found to have fueled the crisis.
“They are nothing more than some high-level dope dealers,” Harris said, adding, “The eight biggest pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies last year profited $72 billion on the backs of people like families that we are talking about that have been overwhelmed by this crisis.”


YOU WILL NOT HEAR OUT OF FEINSTEIN'S BIG MOUTH 

ANYTHING ABOUT CHINA'S CRIMES IN THIS COUNTRY 

BUT YOU SURE WILL FIND HER VOTING FOR ANYTHING

THAT BENEFITS RED CHINA.



JUST FOLLOW THE MONEY!


Fentanyl, China, and The American Chemical War


October 15, 2019 

Thousands of Americans are being poisoned to death every year by a powerful drug being illegally sent into the country. Potent and inexpensive Fentanyl has taken more and more American lives year after year, and the biggest source is now clear: China.
However, it’s not the case that there are simply a few criminals hiding in the shadows producing this drug for profits. Rather, it may be the Chinese leadership itself condoning Fentanyl production and export to the United States, as experts have described China’s actions as a form of chemical warfare.
Now, the United States is taking a stand.



FEINSTEIN HAS SPENT HER POLITICAL LIFE STALKING THE HALLS OF CONGRESS SNIFFING OUT DEALS THAT PUT HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS IN HER POCKETS.
SHE HAS AVOIDED PROSECUTION BY VOTING AGAINST ANY ETHICS BILLS AND HER HUSBAND, RICHARD BLUM'S HANDING OUT "CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION" BRIBES TO EVERY DEMOCRAT OUT THERE!



*
IN THE November 2006 election, the voters demanded congressional ethics reform. And so, the newly appointed chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is now duly in charge of regulating the ethical behavior of her colleagues. But for many years, Feinstein has been beset by her own ethical conflict of interest, say congressional ethics experts.

“All in all, it was an incredible victory for the Chinese government. Feinstein has done more for Red China than other any serving U.S. politician. “ Trevor Loudon

“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes.  This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan  AMERICAN THINKER.com


Senator Who Employed Chinese Spy Endorses Joe Biden for President

Win McNamee/Getty Images
  9 Oct 20192,419
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A high-profile U.S. senator with professional and personal ties to China — including once employing one of its spies — is backing former Vice President Joe Biden amid mounting questions over his son’s business dealings with the communist regime.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), a former chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, announced her endorsement of the former vice president on Tuesday, claiming to have witnessed Biden’s “fortitude” and leadership during their overlapping tenures in Congress.
Feinstein said in a statement:
I’ve worked closely with Vice President Biden and I’ve seen firsthand his legislative ability, his statesmanship, and most importantly his moral fortitud. During his time in Congress and in the White House, Joe Biden has been a tireless fighter for hard working American families.
The endorsement comes as Biden’s presidential campaign is besieged by scandal regarding the lucrative business dealings his youngest son, Hunter, had with foreign governments.
Only hours before Feinstein’s endorsement, the Chinese government announced it would not investigate how Hunter Biden ended up at the center of one its top private equity firms. The Chinese foreign ministry made the decision after President Donald Trump publicly called for a probe of Hunter Biden’s dealings with Bohai Harvest RST (BHR). In particular, Trump has noted that the circumstances surrounding BHR’s creation could have posed a conflict of interest for Joe Biden.
As Peter Schweizer, senior contributor at Breitbart News, revealed in his bestselling book Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends, Hunter Biden inked the multibillion-dollar deal that created BHR with a subsidiary of the state-owned Bank of China in 2013.
The timing of the lucrative deal has been brought into question as it came only 12 days after Hunter visited China with his father aboard Air Force Two. Officially, the then-vice president was visiting the country amid escalating tensions over islands in the South China Sea and decided to bring his granddaughter and son along. In a March 2018 interview with Breitbart News Tonight, however, Schweizer detailed the political machinations that preceded Hunter Biden’s $1.5 billion venture with China:
In December of 2013, Vice President Joe Biden flies to Asia for a trip, and the centerpiece for that trip is a visit to Beijing, China. To put this into context, in 2013, the Chinese have just exerted air rights over the South Pacific, the South China Sea. They basically have said, ‘If you want to fly in this area, you have to get Chinese approval. We are claiming sovereignty over this territory.’ Highly controversial in Japan, in the Philippines, and in other countries. Joe Biden is supposed to be going there to confront the Chinese. Well, he gets widely criticized on that trip for going soft on China. For basically not challenging them, and Japan and other countries are quite upset about this.
Since its creation, BHR has invested heavily in energy and defense projects across the globe. As of June, Hunter Biden was still involved with BHR, sitting on its board of directors and owning a minority stake of the fund estimated to be worth more than $430,000.
Such dealings at the center of politics and business, while perhaps not illegal, are not exclusive to the Biden family alone. As a few noted at the time of Feinstein’s endorsement, the senator and her husband have their own close ties to the communist country.
During her tenure as mayor of San Francisco in the late-1970s and early-1980s, Feinstein took advantage of the newly normalized diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China by establishing one of the first sister city partnership between San Francisco and Shanghai. Through that partnership, Feinstein led trade delegations to China in which she and her husband, Richard Blum, became acquainted with some of the country’s most prominent political leaders.
As the Federalist noted in August 2018, Feinstein and her husband leveraged those relationships to boost their own wealth. In 1986, Feinstein and Jiang Zemin — the then-mayor of Shanghai, who would later ascend to the presidency of the People’s Republic of China — “designated several corporate entities for fostering commercial relations.” One of those firms was Shanghai Pacific Partners, which employed Blum as a director. Blum reportedly had an interest of upwards of $500,000 in a project backed by Shanghai Pacific Partners.
After Feinstein was elected to the Senate in 1992, Blum continued profiting off their ties to China. A the same time, the freshman lawmaker was pitching herself as a “China hand” to colleagues, even once claiming “that in my last life maybe I was Chinese.” Through her seat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Feinstein led the fight on a number of initiatives seen as being favorable to China, including granting the country permanent most-favored-nation trading status in 2000.
Despite Feinstein and her husband having a close relationship with Jiang, the Chinese government targeted the senator as part of its espionage operations. In the early 2000s, the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) recruited a longtime employee of the senator to gather information about the inner workings of her congressional and district offices. Feinstein only learned of the staffer’s duplicity in 2013, after he’d already been on her payroll for more than 20 years.
“While this person, who was a liaison to the local Chinese community, was fired, charges were never filed against him,” Politico reported in 2018, speculating that because “the staffer was providing political intelligence and not classified information—making prosecution far more difficult.”
Apart from the convoluted history of the senator’s ties to China, the political timing of Feinstein’s endorsement also caught many off guard. The California Democrat, who hosted a fundraiser on Biden’s behalf last week alongside House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) daughter, is only the most recent figure from the Democrat establishment to openly pledge support for the former vice president. Feinstein’s endorsement, however, was not totally expected, especially since her seamate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), is mounting a bid of her own for the Democrat nomination. In fact, earlier this year, Feinsten flirted with the notion of remaining neutral in the 2020 contest out of respect for Harris.
Compounding the political picture is that most polls show Biden no longer the favorite to win California, having fallen behind Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).
Feinstein, however, did not address any of that when endorsing the former vice president on Tuesday. Instead, the senator offered platitudes about Biden’s work to enhance gun control and how his campaign was a “fight to restore the soul of the nation.”

Mexico Seizes 52,000 Pounds of Fentanyl From China

 CommentsAugust 29, 2019 Updated: August 29, 2019


The Mexican Navy in the Port of Cardenas discovered 52,000 pounds of fentanyl powder in a mismarked container from a Danish ship arriving from Shanghai, China.
The cargo manifest for the 40-foot ocean container stated that the powder content was 23,368 kilograms of inorganic calcium chloride, commonly used as an electrolyte in sports drinks, beverages, bottled water and as a non-sodium flavoring for pickles.
The Navy of Mexico intercepted the unloaded 40-foot container on Aug. 24, which originated from Shanghai, China and was bound for the Sinaloa Cartel home-base in Culiacan, 300 miles north of the port. According to local media, the Navy alerted customs authorities from the nearby City of Lazaro Cardenas. Samples collected from plain bulk-bags were taken to a laboratory that confirmed the powder was fentanyl.
Mexican Customs seized 931 sacks of the substance weighing about 25.75 tons. The total weight of the fentanyl powder seizure is preliminary, with authorities still evaluating the purity of fentanyl seized. But if the seizure is confirmed as pharmaceutical-grade fentanyl, it could be pressed into tens of millions of tablets.
Fentanyl synthetic-opioid was hailed as a wonder drug 50 years ago when it was approved as a more effective treatment than drip morphine for cancer patients’ pain. With four types of opioid receptors throughout the human body, pharmacological fentanyl is more effective attaching faster to all the receptors than the highest purity of illicit street-heroin.
Drug cartels favor fentanyl or fentanyl precursors imported from China because it can be diluted with fillers and marketed by street-dealers as cocaine, heroin or meth. Fentanyl can also be pressed into pills and sold on the street as oxycodone.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse warns that pharmaceutical-grade fentanyl is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine. Fentanyl is extremely dangerous to handle because as little as 0.25 milligrams absorbed through the skin can be lethal.
According to the non-partisan U.S. Congressional Research Service dated Aug. 15, Mexico’s transnational crime groups expanded their control of the opioids market, with U.S. overdose deaths rising to a record 72,000 in 2017.
The Port of Lazaro Cardenas fentanyl seizure follows the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Aug. 15 announcement of cumulative year 2019 seizures of 1,138,288 illicitly created fentanyl pills by its Phoenix DEA Field Office in cooperation with Arizona law enforcement agencies. That is nearly triple the 380,000 fentanyl pills seized in year 2018, and over 56 times the 20,000 fentanyl pills seized in year 2016.
Former Sinaloa Cartel crime boss Joaquin Guzman Loera (“El Chapo”) was extradited to the United States in January 2017. He was earlier convicted in Mexico for trafficking cocaine, heroin and fentanyl. But he successfully escaped from two Mexican prisons.
Guzman was sentenced by a U.S. district judge in July 2019 to a life term in a maximum-security U.S. prison, with the addition of 30 years, and ordered to pay $12.6 billion in forfeiture for being the principal leader of the Sinaloa Cartel and for 26 drug-related charges, including a murder conspiracy.
Breitbart News’ Texas news bureau reported last week that the Mexican army, federal police, and investigative personnel with the attorney general’s (FGR) office raided a Sinaloa Drug Cartel lab at a residence in the northwest section of Culiacan.
The two fentanyl cooks arrested were identified as Cuban nationals with street names of Abel “N” aka “El Cubano” and Carmen “N,” Abel’s wife. Investigators confiscated 2,500 pills and a press to mass-produce blue M-30s, sold illicitly as “Mexican Oxy.”
Chriss Street is an expert in macroeconomics, technology, and national security. He has served as CEO of several companies and is an active writer with more than 1,500 publications. He also regularly provides strategy lectures to graduate students at top Southern California universities.