Barack Obama's Farewell State Of The Union

Nitish Kumar, Narendra Modi, And FDI

The Bihar riddle: Modi govt clears loco projects but CM Nitish has no time for GE, Alstom chiefs via @firstpost https://t.co/BkgAOgfdrc

— Paramendra Bhagat (@paramendra) January 11, 2016

Narendra Modi
FDI Aur Opposition
Modi: NRI Prime Minister नहीं, FDI Prime Minister
मोदी का विदेश भ्रमण और FDI

Does Sean Penn Play Sean Penn In The Sean Penn Movie?

Who plays Sean Penn in the El Chapo movie?

Bin Laden, And Now El Chapo





The Tragic Farce Of El Chapo

A number of journalists who have spent years covering the border and the drug wars pointed out that whereas the Penn interview is a bit of a stunt—a mutually admiring jungle bro session, replete with tequila, that was written up in a florid, Gonzo fashion—the actual job of covering the cartels in Mexico is fraught with incredible peril. ...... According to people I’ve interviewed who have known Guzmán or done business with him, he is drawn, compulsively, to the deal. When he was in prison the first time, he went right on conducting business from behind bars; I once spoke to an ex-associate who had gone into the prison and presented Guzmán with a formal business plan. In 2008, when he was close to the height of his power and influence, Guzmán would take the risk of getting on the phone himself with a wholesale buyer from Chicago in order to bargain over the price-per-kilo on a single shipment of heroin. .......... The situation makes you wonder why the Mexican marines didn’t just kill Guzmán, like the American Navy SEALs did with Osama bin Laden, thereby obviating the dilemma of what to do with him. ........ “There is no prison in Mexico which can hold him.”

The Hunt For El Chapo

Guzmán, who is fifty-seven, typified an older generation. Obsessively secretive, he ran his multibillion-dollar drug enterprise from hiding in Sinaloa, the remote western state where he was born, and from which the cartel takes its name. The Sinaloa cartel exports industrial volumes of cocaine, marijuana, heroin, and methamphetamine to America; it is thought to be responsible for as much as half the illegal narcotics that cross the border every year. Guzmán has been characterized by the U.S. Treasury Department as “the world’s most powerful drug trafficker,” and after the killing of Osama bin Laden, three years ago, he became perhaps the most wanted fugitive on the planet. ....... part of Guzmán’s fame stemmed from the perception that he was uncatchable, and he continued to thrive, consolidating control of key smuggling routes and extending his operation into new markets in Europe, Asia, and Australia. According to one study, the Sinaloa cartel is now active in more than fifty countries. .......... Three years later, Guzmán married a teen-age beauty queen named Emma Coronel and invited half the criminal underworld of Mexico to attend the ceremony. The Army mobilized several Bell helicopters to crash the party; the troops arrived, guns drawn, to discover that Guzmán had just departed. ....... A former senior Mexican intelligence official told me that the cartel has “penetrated most Mexican agencies.” Was Guzmán being tipped off by an insider? After a series of near-misses in which Chapo foiled his pursuers by sneaking out of buildings through back doors, officials at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City took to joking, bitterly, that there is no word in Spanish for “surround.” ....... singers portrayed Guzmán as a country boy turned cunning bandit who had grown rich but not soft, his cuerno de chivo, or “goat horn”—Mexican slang for an assault rifle with a curved magazine—never far from his side. ...... One narcocorrido captured the predicament: “Only he knows who he is / So go looking for someone / Who looks just like him / Because the real Chapo / You’ll never see again.” ........ traffickers at the top of the hierarchy maintain operational security by rarely making calls or sending e-mails. Guzmán was known to use sophisticated encryption and to limit the number of people he communicated with, keeping his organization compartmentalized and allowing subordinates a degree of autonomy, as long as the shipments kept running on time. “I never spoke to him directly,” one former Sinaloa lieutenant told me. “But I knew what he wanted us to do.” ....... The Sinaloa cartel is sometimes described as a “cellular” organization. Structurally, its network is distributed, and has more in common with a terrorist organization like Al Qaeda than with the antiquated hierarchies of the Cosa Nostra. When the cartel suffers the loss of a major figure like El Chino Ántrax, it can reconstitute itself—but not without a few phone calls among the leadership. At the D.E.A., which taps hundreds of phone lines and e-mail accounts associated with traffickers, the process of applying pressure to a criminal organization and then monitoring furtive attempts at outreach is known as “tickling the wires.” ......... one reason that Guzmán had remained at large so long was his unparalleled network of informants. One person involved in the operation told me, “As soon as we landed, he knew.” ...... e was the oldest child of a subsistence farmer who dabbled in the drug trade. For generations, Sinaloan ranchers had cultivated cannabis and opium, and children were taken out of elementary school to assist in the harvest. Guzmán left school for good in third grade, and in the seventies, in spite of his illiteracy, he became an apprentice to two drug chieftains ....... Guzmán started as a kind of air-traffic controller, coördinating cocaine flights from Colombia. But he was clever and aggressive, and quickly began to acquire power. One night in November, 1992, Guzmán’s henchmen massacred six people at a crowded discothèque in Puerto Vallarta. They severed the telephone lines so that nobody could call for help, then walked inside and opened fire on the dance floor. The targets were Tijuana-based traffickers whom Guzmán was challenging for control of the lucrative smuggling routes through Baja California. ........ Behind bars, Guzmán consolidated both his empire and his reputation. He bought off the prison staff and enjoyed a life of relative luxury: he conducted business by cell phone, orchestrated regular visits from prostitutes, and threw parties for favored inmates that featured alcohol, lobster bisque, and filet mignon. While he was there, the Mexican attorney general’s office subjected him to psychological interviews. The resulting criminal profile noted that he was “egocentric, narcissistic, shrewd, persistent, tenacious, meticulous, discriminating, and secretive.” ......... He retreated to Sinaloa and expanded his operations, launching violent turf wars with rival cartels over control of prized entry points along the U.S. border. The sociologist Diego Gambetta, in his 1993 book “The Sicilian Mafia,” observes that durable criminal enterprises are often woven into the social and political fabric, and part of their “intrinsic tenacity” is their ability to offer certain services that the state does not. Today on the streets of Culiacán you see night clubs, fortified villas, and an occasional Lamborghini. Chapo and other drug lords have invested and laundered their proceeds by buying hundreds of legitimate businesses: restaurants, soccer stadiums, day-care centers, ostrich farms. ........ Juan Millán, the former state governor of Sinaloa, once estimated that sixty-two per cent of the state’s economy is tied up with drug money. Sinaloa remains poor, however, and Badiraguato, the municipality containing Guzmán’s home village, is one of the most desperate areas in the state. There had always been some sympathy for the drug trade in Sinaloa, but nothing deepens sympathy like charity and bribes. Eduardo Medina Mora, Mexico’s Ambassador in Washington, described Guzmán’s largesse in the state: “You are financing everything. Baptisms. Infrastructure. If someone gets sick, you provide a little plane. So you have lots of local support, because you are Santa Claus. And everybody likes Santa Claus.” ....... “In practical terms, organized crime literally privatized the municipal police forces across many parts of the country,” one senior Mexican official told me. Guzmán’s influence over the public sector was not confined to law enforcement. ........ As long as Guzmán remained in the mountains, the inhospitable terrain and the allegiance of locals appeared to guarantee his safety. In 2009, Dennis Blair, President Barack Obama’s national intelligence director, met with Guillermo Galván, who was then Mexico’s Secretary of Defense. Galván told him that everybody knew, roughly, where Guzmán was. ...... There is a saying in the Mexican drug trade that it is better to live one good year than ten bad ones. Many young men enter the industry expecting to enjoy a decadent life for a short time before being incarcerated or killed. Young narcos behave recklessly: they go to night clubs, they race Bentleys, and they post pictures of themselves online with their co-conspirators (and with the occasional dead body). The only traffickers in Sinaloa who beat the odds are those who are content to follow a more austere life in the mountains. ...... But because he was tired, or married to a much younger woman, or overconfident of his ability to escape, Guzmán began spending time in Culiacán and other cities. “Here’s a guy who has made hundreds of millions of dollars in the drug trade, and he’s living like a pauper up in the mountains” ....... “He likes the fiestas. He likes the music. He likes to dance.” Another law-enforcement official speculated that, though Guzmán was accustomed to a rustic life, Emma Coronel was not. “She’s not much of a mountain person,” he said, adding that they had twin daughters, and, even though Guzmán was a fugitive, his wife was adamant that he be present in the girls’ lives: “She would go out of her way to maintain that family life.” ....... The choreography was always the same. Diners would be startled by a team of gunmen, who would politely but firmly demand their telephones, promising that they would be returned at the end of the evening. Chapo and his entourage would come in and feast on shrimp and steak, then thank the other diners for their forbearance, return the telephones, pick up the tab for everyone, and head off into the night. .............. But the BlackBerry is made by a Canadian company, and Guzmán felt more comfortable using one. This trust was misplaced: by early 2012, the D.E.A. had homed in on Guzmán’s BlackBerry, and could not only monitor his communications but also use geolocation technology to triangulate his signal. .......... The D.E.A. agents who monitored his e-mails and texts marvelled at the extent to which his communications seemed focussed not on managing his multinational empire but on juggling the competing demands of his wife, his ex-wives (with whom he remained cordial), his girlfriends, and his paid consorts. ....... The authorities, unaware of the handoff, chased the signal around Los Cabos, until they finally pounced on the sacrificial subordinate. While they were occupied with arresting him, Chapo made it into the desert, where a private plane picked him up and flew him back to the safety of the Sierra Madre. ........ “He’s an illiterate son of a bitch, but he’s a street-smart motherfucker.” Rather than switch BlackBerrys, as he had done in the past, Guzmán now appeared to have stopped communicating altogether. ....... Like bin Laden, he might have chosen to rely on couriers. But a courier system is too inefficient for the fast pace of the narcotics trade, and so, as U.S. and Mexican authorities eventually discovered, Chapo devised an elaborate solution. In the past, he had occasionally restricted his contact with others in the cartel by relaying his commands through a proxy. For a time, a woman known as La Voz (the Voice) served as his gatekeeper, sending and receiving messages on his behalf. After Los Cabos, Guzmán reinstated this arrangement, but with additional precautions. If you needed to communicate with the boss, you could reach him via B.B.M., BlackBerry’s instant-messaging application. (Guzmán had apparently learned to read and write well enough to communicate in the shorthand of instant messages.) Your message would go not directly to Guzmán, however, but to a trusted lieutenant, who spent his days in Starbucks coffee shops and other locations with public wireless networks. Upon receiving the message, the lieutenant would transcribe it onto an iPad, so that he could forward the text using WiFi—avoiding the cellular networks that the cartel knew the authorities were trolling. The transcribed message would be sent not to Guzmán but to a second intermediary, who, also using a tablet and public WiFi, would transcribe the words onto his BlackBerry and relay them to Guzmán. .......... In American debates over the National Security Agency’s warrantless collection of “metadata,” this is one reason that many authorities have been quick to defend these techniques; a constellation of dialled phone numbers can be used to build a “link chart” exposing the hierarchy of an organization. ........ Now that Guzmán was spending more time in urban areas, his entourage had become very small. Nariz was part of this privileged circle, serving as Guzmán’s personal assistant and errand boy. ...... In Culiacán, Guzmán rarely spent consecutive nights in the same bed. He rotated from house to house and seldom told those around him—even Nariz—where his next destination was, until they were en route. Guzmán had a personal chef, an attractive young woman who accompanied him everywhere he travelled. He is said to have feared poisoning, and sometimes made his underlings taste food before he would eat it. ........ The marines readied their weapons and produced a battering ram, but when they moved to breach the front door it didn’t budge. A wooden door would have splintered off its hinges, but this door was a marvel of reinforced steel—some of the marines later likened it to an airlock on a submarine. For all the noise that their efforts made, the door seemed indestructible. Normally, the friction of a battering ram would heat the steel, rendering it more pliable. But the door was custom-made: inside the steel skin, it was filled with water, so that if anyone tried to break it down the heat from the impact would not spread. The marines hammered the door again and again, until the ram buckled and had to be replaced. It took ten minutes to gain entry to the house. ......... In the early days of Guzmán’s career, before his time at Puente Grande, he distinguished himself as a trafficker who brought an unusual sense of imagination and play to the trade. Today, tunnels that traverse the U.S.-Mexico border are a mainstay of drug smuggling: up to a mile long, they often feature air-conditioning, electricity, sophisticated drainage systems, and tracks, so that heavy loads of contraband can be transported on carts.

Guzmán invented the border tunnel.

....... Since then, U.S. intelligence has attributed no fewer than ninety border tunnels to the Sinaloa cartel. ........ Meanwhile, Chapo ran through the sewers, like Harry Lime in “The Third Man.” ...... Guzmán’s genius was always architectural, and the infrastructure that he created will almost certainly survive him. ..... Some believe that, even before Guzmán’s capture, his role in the organization had become largely symbolic. “He was a non-executive chairman,” Ambassador Mora told me. “An emblematic figure.” ....... The opposition to extradition, however, could be driven by less noble concerns: flipping Guzmán might provide the American government with evidence against top Mexican officials. ........ His victims were overwhelmingly Mexican; one reason that the drug war has been so easy for most Americans to ignore is that very little of the violence visited upon Mexico has spilled into the U.S. During the years when Juárez was the most dangerous city on the planet—and a resident there had a greater statistical likelihood of being murdered than someone living in the war zones of Afghanistan or Iraq—El Paso, just across the border, was one of the safest cities in America. ........ Shortly after the arrest in Mazatlán, Guzmán’s son Alfredo lashed out on Twitter. “The Government is going to pay for this betrayal—it shouldn’t have bitten the hand that feeds it,” he wrote. “I just want to say that we are not beaten. The cartel is my father’s and will always be my father’s. GUZMÁN LOERA FOREVER.” His brother, Iván, vowed revenge: “Those dogs that dared to lay a hand on my father are going to pay.” ....... Guzmán’s sons would appear to be candidates, but, as the coddled children of a wealthy trafficker, they may be more enamored of the narco life style than of the business itself.

“The drug trade is one of the few really meritocratic sectors in the Mexican economy,” Alejandro Hope said. “Being the son of Chapo Guzmán doesn’t necessarily guarantee you’ll be his successor.”

...... Whereas Sinaloa is a traditional drug cartel, focussing chiefly on the manufacture and export of narcotics, newer groups, such as the Zetas and the Knights Templar, have diversified their money-making activities to include extortion, human trafficking, and kidnapping for ransom. With cocaine consumption declining in the U.S., and marijuana on a path toward widespread legalization, a Darwinian logic is driving the cartels’ expansion into more parasitic varieties of crime. Organizations that once concentrated exclusively on drugs now extract rents from Mexico’s oil industry and export stolen iron ore to China; the price of limes in U.S. grocery stores has doubled in the past few years because the cartels are taxing Mexico’s citrus farmers. “We don’t have a drug problem—we have a crime problem” ....... In a poll of Mexicans conducted after the arrest, half the respondents said that Guzmán was more powerful than the government of Mexico; in Culiacán, in the days after his capture, hundreds of protesters took to the streets, holding signs demanding his release. ....... “They don’t know what they’ve done, and what kind of trouble they’ve got themselves in, the people who ordered my arrest,” the band sings, assuming the voice of the kingpin. “It won’t be long before I return to La Tuna and become a fugitive again. That’s what the people want.”

Cocaine Incorporated

Joaquín Guzmán, is the C.E.O. of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, a man the Treasury Department recently described as the world’s most powerful drug trafficker. Guzmán’s organization is responsible for as much as half of the illegal narcotics imported into the United States from Mexico each year; he may well be the most-wanted criminal in this post-Bin Laden world. ....... Guzmán is 55, which in narco-years is about 150. He is a quasi-mythical figure in Mexico, the subject of countless ballads, who has outlived enemies and accomplices alike, defying the implicit bargain of a life in the drug trade: that careers are glittering but brief and always terminate in prison or the grave. When Pablo Escobar was Chapo’s age, he had been dead for more than a decade. ...... It’s no accident that the world’s biggest supplier of narcotics and the world’s biggest consumer of narcotics just happen to be neighbors.

“Poor Mexico,” its former president Porfirio Díaz is said to have remarked. “So far from God and so close to the United States.”

........ The Sinaloa cartel can buy a kilo of cocaine in the highlands of Colombia or Peru for around $2,000, then watch it accrue value as it makes its way to market. In Mexico, that kilo fetches more than $10,000. Jump the border to the United States, and it could sell wholesale for $30,000. Break it down into grams to distribute retail, and that same kilo sells for upward of $100,000 — more than its weight in gold. And that’s just cocaine. Alone among the Mexican cartels, Sinaloa is both diversified and vertically integrated, producing and exporting marijuana, heroin and methamphetamine as well. ........ Chapo Guzmán’s organization would appear to enjoy annual revenues of some $3 billion — comparable in terms of earnings to Netflix or, for that matter, to Facebook. ....... very nimble and, above all, staggeringly complex. ...... “Chapo always talks about the drug business, wherever he is,” one erstwhile confidant told a jury several years ago, describing a driven, even obsessive entrepreneur with a proclivity for micromanagement. From the remote mountain redoubt where he is believed to be hiding, surrounded at all times by a battery of gunmen, Chapo oversees a logistical network that is as sophisticated, in some ways, as that of Amazon or U.P.S. — doubly sophisticated, when you think about it, because traffickers must move both their product and their profits in secret, and constantly maneuver to avoid death or arrest. As a mirror image of a legal commodities business, the Sinaloa cartel brings to mind that old line about Ginger Rogers doing all the same moves as Fred Astaire, only backward and in heels. In its longevity, profitability and scope, it might be

the most successful criminal enterprise in history

. ........ Sinaloa is the Sicily of Mexico, both cradle and refuge of violent men, and the ancestral land of many of the country’s most notorious traffickers ......... His formal education ended in third grade, and as an adult, he has reportedly struggled to read and write, prevailing upon a ghostwriter, at one point, to compose letters to his mistress. Little is known about Chapo’s early years, but by the 1980s, he joined the Guadalajara cartel, which was run by a former policeman known as El Padrino — the Godfather. ...... Martínez knew U.S. agents were monitoring his radio communications, so rather than say a word, he would whistle — a signal to the pilots that they were cleared for takeoff. ..... Now it was the Colombians who went hat in hand to Chapo, looking not to hire him to move their product but to sell it to him outright. They would tip Martínez $25,000 just to get an audience with the man. ...... the stout Martínez was known in the cartel as El Gordo. He and Chapo — Fatty and Shorty — made quite a pair. ..... Chapo owned a fleet of Learjets, and together, they saw “the whole world.” They both used cocaine as well, a habit that Chapo would eventually give up.

When a lawyer inquired, years later, whether he had been Chapo’s right-hand man, Martínez replied that he might have been, but that Guzmán had five left hands and five right hands. “He’s an octopus, Chapo Guzmán,” he said.

For his efforts, Martínez was paid a million dollars a year, in a single annual installment: “In cash, in a suitcase, each December.” When Martínez’s son was born, Chapo asked to serve as godfather. ........... “Drug cartel,” it turns out, is a whopper of a misnomer; neither the Mexicans nor the Colombians ever colluded to fix prices or supply. “I wish they were cartels,” Arturo Sarukhán, Mexico’s ambassador in Washington, told me. “If they were, they wouldn’t be fighting and driving up the violence.” ....... their own 747s, which they could load with as much as 13 tons of cocaine. .......

Moving cocaine is a capital-intensive business

.......... Cannabis is often described as the “cash crop” of Mexican cartels because it grows abundantly in the Sierras and requires no processing. But it’s bulkier than cocaine, and smellier, which makes it difficult to conceal. ...... a story about the construction of a high-tech fence along a stretch of border in Arizona. “They erect this fence,” he said, “only to go out there a few days later and discover that these guys have a catapult, and they’re flinging hundred-pound bales of marijuana over to the other side.” He paused and looked at me for a second.

“A catapult,” he repeated. “We’ve got the best fence money can buy, and they counter us with a 2,500-year-old technology.”

.......... Improvisation is a trafficker’s greatest asset ..... a hunter was trekking through the remote North Woods of Wisconsin when he stumbled upon a vast irrigated grow site, tended by a dozen Mexican farmers armed with AK-47’s. According to the D.E.A., it was

a Sinaloa pot farm, established on U.S. National Forest land to supply the market in Chicago

. ........ it was one of Chapo’s deputies, a trafficker named Ignacio (Nacho) Coronel, who first spotted the massive potential of methamphetamine.

“Nacho was like Steve Jobs,” Hernández told me. “He saw the future.”

....... Container ships from India and China unloaded precursor chemicals — largely ephedrine — in the Pacific ports Lázaro Cárdenas and Manzanillo. ...... But Chapo’s greatest contribution to the evolving tradecraft of drug trafficking was one of those innovations that seem so logical in hindsight it’s a wonder nobody thought of it before: a tunnel. ......

When this new route was complete, Chapo instructed Martínez to call the Colombians. “Tell them to send all the drugs they can,” he said.

As the deliveries multiplied, Sinaloa acquired a reputation for the miraculous speed with which it could push inventory across the border. “Before the planes were arriving back in Colombia on the return, the cocaine was already in Los Angeles,” Martínez marveled. ......... Chapo shifted tactics once again, this time by going into the chili-pepper business. He opened a cannery in Guadalajara and began producing thousands of cans stamped “Comadre Jalapeños,” stuffing them with cocaine, then vacuum-sealing them and shipping them to Mexican-owned grocery stores in California. He sent drugs in the refrigeration units of tractor-trailers, in custom-made cavities in the bodies of cars and in truckloads of fish (which inspectors at a sweltering checkpoint might not want to detain for long). He sent drugs across the border on freight trains, to cartel warehouses in Los Angeles and Chicago, where rail spurs let the cars roll directly inside to unload. He sent drugs via FedEx. ....... more than a hundred tunnels have been discovered in the years since Chapo’s first. They are often ventilated and air-conditioned, and some feature trolley lines stretching up to a half-mile to accommodate the tonnage in transit. ...... blue-chip traffickers tend to fixate, with neurotic intensity, on the concept of risk. “The goal of these folks is not to sell drugs,” Tony Placido, who was the top intelligence official at the D.E.A. until he retired last year, told me. “It’s to earn a spendable profit and live to enjoy it.” ........ “the marginal imprisonment risk.” ...... Now in his 60s and a grandfather, El Mayo has been in the drug business for nearly half a century and

has amassed a fortune. But you can’t buy peace of mind.

“I’m terrified they’ll incarcerate me,” he acknowledged. “I’m full of fear. Always.” ........ Smugglers often negotiate, in actuarial detail, about who will be held liable in the event of lost inventory.

After a bust, arrested traffickers have been known to demand a receipt from authorities, so that they can prove the loss was not because of their own negligence

(which would mean they might have to pay for it) or their own thievery (which would mean they might have to die). Some Colombian cartels have actually offered insurance policies on narcotics, as a safeguard against loss or seizure. .......... The Sinaloa is occasionally called the Federation because senior figures and their subsidiaries operate semiautonomously while still employing a common smuggling apparatus............

The organizational structure of the cartel also seems fashioned to protect the leadership.

No one knows how many people work for Sinaloa, and the range of estimates is comically broad. Malcolm Beith, the author of a recent book about Chapo, posits that at any given moment, the drug lord may have 150,000 people working for him. John Bailey, a Georgetown professor who has studied the cartel, says that the number of actual employees could be as low as 150. ....... working “for the cartel but outside it.” ...... On one occasion, he attended a meeting outside Culiacán with many of the cartel’s top leaders. But there was no sign of Chapo. Once the discussion concluded, an emissary left the group and approached a Hummer that was parked in the distance and surrounded by men with bulletproof vests and machine guns, to report on the proceedings. Chapo never stepped out of the vehicle. ....... The brutal opportunism of the underworld economy means that most partnerships are temporary, and treachery abounds. ...... Chapo’s organization is occasionally referred to as an alianza de sangre (“alliance of blood”), because so many of its prominent members are cousins by marriage or brothers-in-law. Emma Coronel, who gave birth to Chapo’s twins, is the niece of Nacho Coronel, the Steve Jobs of meth (who died in a shootout with the Mexican Army in 2010). ......

The surest way to stay out of trouble in the drug business is to dole out bribes, and promiscuously. Drug cartels don’t pay corporate taxes, but a colossus like Sinaloa makes regular payments to the federal, state and municipal authorities that may well rival the effective tax rate in Mexico.

........ The cartel bribes mayors and prosecutors and governors, state police and federal police, the army, the navy and a host of senior officials at the national level. ....... a fortified prison in Jalisco that was Mexico’s answer to a supermax. But during the five years he spent there, Chapo enjoyed prerogatives that make the prison sequence in “Goodfellas” look positively austere. With most of the facility on his payroll, he is said to have ordered his meals from a menu, conducted business by cellphone and orchestrated periodic visits by prostitutes, who would arrive aboard a prison truck driven by a guard. ....... When Miguel Angel Martínez was working for Chapo, he says, “everyone” in the organization had military and police identification. Daylight killings are sometimes carried out by men dressed in police uniforms, and it is not always clear, after the fact, whether the perpetrators were thugs masquerading as policemen or actual policemen providing paid assistance to the thugs. .......

When you tally it all up, bribery may be the single largest line item on a cartel’s balance sheet. In 2008, President Felipe Calderón’s own drug czar, Noe Ramirez, was charged with accepting $450,000 each month.

....... the cartels spend more than a billion dollars each year just to bribe the municipal police. ..... the “falcons,” an army of civilian lookouts who might receive $100 a month just to keep their eyes open and make a phone call if they notice an uptick in border inspections or a convoy of police. “There are cities in Mexico where virtually every cabdriver is on the payroll,” Michael Braun, formerly of the D.E.A., said. “They have eyes and ears everywhere.” ........ the Americans. Guards at the U.S. border have been known to wave a car through their checkpoints for a few thousand dollars ...... When corruption fails, there is always violence. .... Sinaloa has risen to pre-eminence as much through savagery as through savvy. “In illegal markets, the natural tendency is toward monopoly, so they fight each other,” Antonio Mazzitelli, an official with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Mexico City, told me. “How do they fight: Go to court? Offer better prices? No. They use violence.” ........ in a multibillion-dollar industry in which there is no recourse to legally enforceable contracts, some degree of violence may be inevitable. ....... “It’s like geopolitics,” Tony Placido said. “You need to use violence frequently enough that the threat is believable. But overuse it, and it’s bad for business.” ........ a Sinaloa subsidiary allied with a Tijuana farmer known as the Stewmaker, who dissolved hundreds of bodies in barrels of lye, the Zetas have pioneered a multimedia approach to violence, touting their killings on YouTube. One strategic choice facing any cartel is deciding when to intimidate the civilian population and when to cultivate it. Sinaloa can be exceedingly brutal, but the cartel is more pragmatic than the Zetas in its deployment of violence. It may simply be, as one Obama administration official suggested, that the Sinaloa leadership is “more conscious of their brand.” ........ The Zetas have diversified beyond drugs to extortion, kidnapping and human trafficking, blossoming into what officials call a “polycriminal organization.” Sinaloa, by contrast, has mostly tended to stick to its core competence of trafficking. According to one captured cartel member, Chapo specifically instructed his subordinates not to dabble in protection rackets and insisted that Sinaloa territory remain “calm” and “controlled.” ........

by 2009, Mexican-based criminal organizations were operating in “more than a thousand U.S. cities.”

When you consider the huge jump in the price of narcotics between bulk importation and retail sales, it might seem that Chapo would want to expand into street-level distribution. ....... “It was like watching a virus in a Petri dish,” he said. “It was constantly growing.” ....... When The Associated Press tracked down Otis Rich, a Baltimore dealer who was ensnared in one of the operations, he answered the obvious question with a telling reply: “Sina-who?” ........ A big reason for the markup at the retail level is that the sales force is so exposed — out on the corner, a magnet for undercover cops, obliged to negotiate with a needy, unpredictable clientele. When you adjust for all that added risk, the windfall starts to seem less alluring. Like a liquor wholesaler who opts not to open a bar, Chapo appears to have decided that the profits associated with retail sales just aren’t worth the hassle. ......... Chicago, home of the Mercantile Exchange, has always been a hub from which legitimate goods fan out across the country, and it’s no different for black-market commodities. Chapo has used the city as a clearinghouse since the early 1990s; he once described it as his “home port.” ........ Chapo tends to dominate a conversation, asking a lot of questions ....... “They have to offer lines of credit,” Wardrop told me, “no different from Walmart or Sears.” ....... “fronting,” rests on an ironclad assumption that in the American marketplace, even an idiot salesman should have no trouble selling drugs. One convicted Sinaloa trafficker told me that it often took him more time to count the money he collected from his customers than it did to actually move the product. ....... “That price is fine,” Chapo agreed, without argument. Then he added something significant: “Do you have a way to bring that money over here?” ........ For the Sinaloa cartel, pushing product north into the United States is only half the logistical equation. The drug trade is a cash business ....... These bills are counted, hidden in the same vehicle compartments that were used to smuggle drugs in the opposite direction and then sent to stash houses in Los Angeles, San Diego and Phoenix. From there, they move across the border into Mexico. ......... the fee for fully scrubbing and banking illicit proceeds may run Sinaloa more than 15 cents on the dollar. But a great deal of the cartel’s money remains in cash. ........ some is sent to Colombia to purchase more product, because drugs offer a strong return on investment. “Where would you put your money?” the former Cisen officer Alejandro Hope asked me with a chuckle. “T-bills? Real estate? I would put a large portion of my portfolio in cocaine.” ........ money can start to pile up around the house. The most that Martínez ever saw at one time was $30 million, which just sat there, having accumulated in his living room. In 2007, Mexican authorities raided the home of Zhenli Ye Gon, a Chinese-Mexican businessman who is believed to have supplied meth-precursor chemicals to the cartel, and discovered $206 million, the largest cash seizure in history. ......... It might be impossible to eradicate all the cartels in Mexico, this theory goes, so the government has picked a favorite in the conflict in the hope that when the smoke clears, a Sinaloa monopoly might usher in a sort of pax narcotica. ....... a system in which junior traffickers would walk into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and announce their willingness to become informers — then feed the Americans intelligence about rival cartels, thereby using law enforcement to eliminate their competitors. ........ Sinaloa guards its secrets ruthlessly. After Chapo’s friend Miguel Angel Martínez was arrested in 1998, four men came to kill him in prison, stabbing him repeatedly ...... This time, an assassin managed to get as far as the gate outside Martínez’s cell and chucked two grenades at the bars. Locked in with nowhere to run, Martínez could only cower by the toilet to shield himself from the blast. The roof caved in, and he barely survived. Asked later who it was that tried to have him killed, Martínez said that it was his compadre, Chapo Guzmán. “Because of what I knew,” he explained. ........ In 2008, Chapo’s lover, Zulema Hernández, was discovered dead in the trunk of a car, her body carved with the letter “Z.” “It’s like the evolution of the dinosaurs, and the coming of the T. Rex,” Antonio Mazzitelli told me. “The T. Rex is the Zetas.” ....... In March, the cartel dumped a collection of dismembered bodies in Zeta territory and posted a series of open letters on the walls around them, deriding the Zetas as “a bunch of drunks and car-washers.” Each message was signed, “Sincerely, El Chapo.” ........ One thing Chapo has always done is innovate. Even as he engages in violent brinkmanship along the border, the cartel is expanding to new markets in Europe, where a kilo of cocaine can sell for three times what it does in the U.S., and in Australia, where authorities believe that Chapo is now a major cocaine supplier. There are also indications that the cartel is exploring opportunities in Southeast Asia, China and Japan — places Chapo and Martínez first visited as younger men. And Chapo’s great comparative advantage still lies along that fraught boundary between Mexico and the United States. Even if the kingpin is killed or captured, one of his associates will quite likely take his place, and the smuggling infrastructure that Chapo created will endure, channeling the product, reaping the profits and feeding, with barely a blip in service, the enduring demand on this side of the border — what the historian Héctor Aguilar Camín once referred to as “the insatiable North American nose.”

Bin Laden, And Now El Chapo

Bin Laden, And Now El Chapo

He got Bin Laden. And now El Chapo. Who is left standing? I don’t see anyone. This is a clean sweep. There’s noone else of stature left. Quick question: give me the name of the leader of ISIS. I don’t know either. We could both look it up, but my point has been proven.

I can see another movie coming out of this. Sean Penn got played. I mean, who does not want to be in a movie? I don’t know about you, but I do. A journalist and some Hollywood appeal to ego can do what massive intelligence can’t. It’s a needle in a haystack problem reoriented and turned into a let’s lure the bastard out of the rathole kind of thing. A haystack has nothing on a tropical jungle. Don’t let maps fool you.

Another Zero Dark Thirty is on its way.

I almost feel like this is why the Hollywood people make campaign contributions to people who end up being president. Look at the ROI, it’s HUGE! Software people would kill for this kind of margins!

While there is one less drug dealer out on the streets of Chicago. Some good got done. Because these organizations are so hierarchical, getting the top guy is a deep punch. El Chapo’s son, heir apparent, has feet that don’t fit the boots. Neither the drug trade nor his organization have been eliminated. But suddenly no Scarface is feeling safe anywhere in Latin America right now. Or in Miami, or in Chicago. Maybe they also grabbed notebooks with phone numbers in the sweepstakes.

The most wanted man in Chicago has been captured.

Mexico: Sean Penn interview helped nab 'El Chapo' https://t.co/MCxIMO4MD2 via @usatoday

— Paramendra Bhagat (@paramendra) January 11, 2016

A Mexican actress's tweet kick-started talks with 'El Chapo' @CNN https://t.co/1ld6HvLDwU

— Paramendra Bhagat (@paramendra) January 11, 2016

El Chapo Speaks https://t.co/pADkRiOn6d via @rollingstone

— Paramendra Bhagat (@paramendra) January 10, 2016

Sean Penn’s Excursions Into Writing Often Mix Activism With Journalism https://t.co/WIw0Xrp6Cy

— Paramendra Bhagat (@paramendra) January 10, 2016

Sean Penn's secret interview with 'El Chapo' led to capture
Mexican drug lord’s dreams of biopic aided in his capture

After months of searching, it was Guzmán’s contact with movie producers and actresses about a biopic based on his life that ultimately helped authorities recapture the chief of the Sinaloa cartel along a highway outside a coastal city, according to Mexican attorney general Arely Gómez González. ....... Guzmán’s interview with Penn helped lead authorities to Guzmán’s whereabouts in Durango state in October. ....... Famous for his Houdini-like disappearing acts, Guzmán vanished down an escape hatch and into the sewer. It wasn’t until he popped up four blocks away, stole a car, and sped out of town that Mexican authorities finally captured him on the highway and ended six months of national humiliation for letting the world’s top drug lord go free. ....... “I never thought they’d catch him again,” said José Carlos Castro, a 29-year-old auto shop employee who worked across from the raided house. “Much less right here.” ....... According to the Rolling Stone article, Guzmán boasted to Penn about his drug empire. “I supply more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anybody else in the world,” Guzmán said. “I have a fleet of submarines, airplanes, trucks and boats.” ....... Guzmán’s capture was celebrated by law enforcement officials in Washington because Guzmán runs a drug-trafficking network with vast international reach that has been dumping tons of cocaine and heroin into U.S. cities for years. But more than that, it represented a massive vindication, at least symbolically, for a Mexican government that has often seemed incapable of alleviating the brutal drug war violence that has left some 100,000 dead in the past decade. ...... After two prison escapes, many expect the Mexican government to extradite Guzmán to the United States. ..... The Mexican attorney general’s office said in a statement Saturday that extradition procedures would begin. But that could take weeks or months, as the accusations against Guzmán must be reviewed and a judge needs to recommend a course of action. ...... Over the next weeks and months, as military operations focused on his home state of Sinaloa, authorities chipped away at the vast network of accomplices who helped Guzmán escape from a maximum-security prison. They arrested corrupt prison guards and officials, relatives who handed out bribes and oversaw tunnel construction, and his trusted pilots, who flew him to Sinaloa. ....... In October, they tracked him to a ranch house in the town of Pueblo Nuevo in the western state of Durango. ..... The neighborhood was upper middle class: The mayor and the governor’s mother lived nearby. The house also sat directly above the sewer tunnels. ........... “I thought we were in Syria,” said one neighbor who lived a block away and refused, like many others interviewed, to give her name out of fear for her safety. “This has been the biggest shock of my life. The world’s most-wanted man is my neighbor.” ........ A white sedan was stopped at the traffic light when they reached the street. Guzmán and Gastelum ordered a man and a woman out of the car and sped off through drizzling rain. ........ “I think it’s kind of stupid,” said a guest from Tijuana who refused to give his name for security reasons. “If you have that kind of money, why would you be here in Los Mochis? You’d be in Dubai or Switzerland.” ...... Guzmán was later flown to Mexico City and returned to Altiplano prison, the facility he escaped from in July. For a year and a half before that, he lived in a tiny concrete cell with a hole in the floor for a toilet. To free him, his accomplices cut through the floor of his shower stall and ferried him into a mile-long tunnel equipped with a motorcycle.

In Mexican town where ‘Chapo’ broke out of jail, admiration and awe

“A thief is someone who takes your watch, steals your phone,” he said. “This man gives work to thousands of people and raises the economy of the country.” ....... It’s people in the United States who buy his drugs, Medina added. ..... Amid the working-class neighborhoods and rolling farmlands surrounding the prison, there is support for Guzmán and fascination with his escape. Residents see him as the drug lord, not the assassin; the benefactor, not the extortionist; a world-famous Mexican celebrity who outsmarted and embarrassed a deeply unpopular government. ....... “He’s more than a drug trafficker. With this, many people will consider him a saint.” ...... he was in isolation under 24-hour video surveillance and wearing a tracking bracelet. But because of privacy and human rights concerns, Osorio Chong said, the cameras in Guzmán’s cell did not cover a small portion of the shower area, and it was in that tiny blind spot that his tunnelers made their entrance. ....... The record of the brutal recent years of Mexico’s drug war shows that Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel — the wealthiest and most powerful drug-running operation — killed thousands of people. He has a long rap sheet in Mexico and the United States. And now he is again one of the world’s most-wanted criminals. ........ “Chapo is one of the narcos who doesn’t bother people,” said a man in a butcher shop who gave his name as Pablo. “They’re not all the same. He doesn’t kidnap, rob, kill. And he gives jobs.” ...... “He can come back and start a war,” she said. “He’s one of the big ones. It depends on how they treated him inside. If it was bad, he’s going to come back.”

Sean Penn Interview With “El Chapo” Helped Authorities Locate Drug Lord

The actor turned gonzo journalist carried out a seven-hour interview with Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán—and the pair later kept in contact by phone and video—for a Rolling Stone piece published late Saturday night. The piece is accompanied by a two-minute video interview of Guzmán in which the drug lord answers questions that Penn sent via BlackBerry Messenger. ....... Now Mexican authorities are saying the meeting between the Hollywood star and the drug kingpin in October helped them locate Guzmán. Although they did not capture “El Chapo” at the time, apparently because authorities decided not to open fire as the drug lord was with two women and a child. But it proved to be a major breakthrough in the manhunt and helped officials track him down and eventually capture him on Friday, six months after his second escape from prison. Shortly after his capture, officials said that part of what helped officials locate the fugitive was his desire to make a movie about his life. ....... The head of the Sinaloa cartel had previously denied he was involved in drug trafficking, telling a group of journalists in 1993 that he was a farmer. ...... The cartel he leads may be among the world’s deadliest, but Guzmán insisted he is not a violent person. “Look, all I do is defend myself, nothing more,” he said. “But do I start trouble? Never.” Still, he evidently doesn’t want to pretend he’s a nobody. “I don’t want to be portrayed as a nun,” he tells Penn at one point. ........ Although he was evidently interested in making a movie about his life, Guzmán was “unimpressed with its financial yield,” writes Penn. ...... "Mexico is ready,” a Mexican official tells the Associated Press. “There are plans to cooperate with the U.S.”

El Chapo’s Vanity Got Him Caught: Drug Lord Wanted to Make Movie About His Life

In the end, his narcissism did him in. Cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán—the world’s most notorious drug kingpin—was proud of what he had accomplished in his life and wanted the world to know his story. It was this desire to share his tale of going from poverty to one of the world’s richest men that helped authorities locate the head of the Sinaloa drug cartel at a dingy roadside motel, six months after his second escape from prison. ....... An “important element in determining El Chapo’s whereabouts was finding out that he wanted to film an autobiographical film,” Mexico’s Attorney General Arely Gómez González said at a news conference. “He established communication with actresses and producers, which became a new line of investigation.” The names of the actresses and producers were not revealed. ........ [Guzmán] had started the process of making a biopic on a life in which he went from rags to riches, from dropping out of school and selling oranges in the street to landing on the Forbes list of billionaires. It was as if he wanted his own version of Narcos, the popular Netflix series on the life of slain Colombian kingpin Pablo Escobar—except while alive and able to influence the casting and script. ......... Authorities almost had him in October but decided not to pursue him because he was accompanied by two women and a young girl. ....... extraditing Guzmán was the only way to make sure his capture would have an effect on the drug trade.

Sean Penn and 'El Chapo' secret interview: What happens next

First came the arrest, then the publication of a bombshell interview in a mountainous Mexican jungle, and now the extradition process.

....... Before the interview came to light, two U.S. law enforcement officials had said tracking of cell phones and electronic exchanges of people close to him led to his recapture. Mexican authorities said they captured Guzman partly because his representatives contacted filmmakers and actors about making his biopic. ..... There have been conflicting reports on whether Mexican officials knew about the meeting...... But the timing of the interview coincides with reported sightings and near-misses. ........ In October, the same month Penn interviewed him, authorities said they almost caught Guzman but he slipped away.

Theatrics Surrounding El Chapo’s Capture Distract From Mexico’s Real Woes

Pinning down the meaning of Joaquín Guzmán Loera — the deadly and celebrated Mexican drug trafficker known as El Chapo — is a constant battle between tragedy and farce. ..... Many, though, seemed to take it as further justification for an abiding cynicism toward the government and its ability to combat drug traffickers who all too often seem not only above the law, but also stranger than fiction. ....... Social media buzzed with jokes about the capture and the interview, including a derogatory hashtag using Mr. Penn’s name in Spanish. ....... “But the main point is that we have an immense problem with drugs and crime in Mexico, with impunity and with the lack of the rule of law in the criminal system.” ..... To some, Mr. Penn’s account felt less like journalism than mythmaking, an extension of the Hollywood machine that Mr. Guzmán seemed eager to leverage. ...... Both the capture and the publication of the interview have fed the persistent international image of Mexico as a nation hopelessly trapped in the vicious tides of a drug war. The kingpins, with their resources, egos and catchy nicknames, never fail to capture the imagination of the world. ....... Analysts asked why, if the government could hunt down El Chapo, it could not locate 43 students who disappeared from a teachers college in the state of Guerrero. Or why it could not halt the peso’s slide against the dollar, down nearly 20 percent in the past year......... “Instead of focusing on one person and placing all this attention and effort on one guy, they should focus on more relevant issues like education,” said Jose Fuentes López, 22, who waits tables at a coffee shop in Monterrey. ......... “When you see this criminal being interviewed by a world-class actor you know something is not right, because everything is like a show,” he added. “He is a criminal, nothing else.” ....... Too many others still find him compelling. .....

In his home state of Sinaloa, for example, there was no sense of triumph in the arrest of a man many viewed as a native son. Feelings of shock gave way to worry.

....... “We were perfectly comfortable when El Chapo was here,” said a 16-year-old named Elvira, visiting a coffee shop in the city of Los Mochis, where Mr. Guzmán was captured. “Now we are worried someone else is going to come here and try to fill his spot.” ...... For many Mexicans, their government is an institution not to be trusted, and watching Mr. Guzmán consistently outsmart it was a favored pastime. Like elsewhere, people love an outlaw and Mr. Guzmán gave them a lot to love. ...... “Of the 120,000 people dead in the past decade, half come from the wars that the Sinaloa cartel opened” .......

Beyond the death toll, the cartels remain corrupting forces that exert control over every level of government. But unlike the government, which changes hands and switches players regularly, the cartels are far more permanent

...... And shortly after the interview was published Saturday night, Mexicans came up with the hashtag #NoSeanPenndejos, a play on the actor’s name that, roughly translated, means don’t be a jerk.

Sean Penn was right: Spying eyes were on him

Sean Penn hanging with El Chapo is like Rodman's bromance with Kim Jong Un. Symbolically appalling, but good for intel.

— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) January 10, 2016

What I learned today A gifted actor with a jet, a burner phone & email can find the world's most wanted man faster than the ENTIRE Mex govt

— Don Winslow (@donwinslow) January 10, 2016

Sean Penn is good in True Detective season three, but the plot is totally unrealistic.

— Dave Pell (@davepell) January 10, 2016

Sean Penn's journalistic partner, actress Kate Castillo, thinks governments are deliberately hiding a cure for AIDS. https://t.co/CzpBf3vAfy

— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) January 10, 2016

"Mr. President, Sean Penn is here to interview you." pic.twitter.com/ccIKlH6U0j

— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) January 10, 2016

Spotted asking around about Sean Penn's whereabouts pic.twitter.com/Rt3wzkFQOH

— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) January 10, 2016

#SeanPenn cancels planned vacation in #Mexico, doesn't cite reason pic.twitter.com/hzRMbwptlk

— Sputnik (@Sputnik_Not) January 10, 2016

“An Interview With Sean Penn" will become a security industry shorthand joke for careless situational opsec, I called it first people

— xeni (@xeni) January 10, 2016

some free security advice, in case any of you are drug lords in hiding: get rid of all technology, don't talk to sean penn

— Adrienne Porter Felt (@__apf__) January 10, 2016

"Mexico's government was aware the interview was being conducted, and was closely monitoring all movements." https://t.co/5Gy6oXChjB

— Matt Pearce (@mattdpearce) January 10, 2016

Imagine a murderous drug lord reading your story about him and saying: Bravo, wouldn't change a thing 👌👌👍👏

— Alex Burns (@alexburnsNYT) January 10, 2016

exclusive photo of the meeting of the Lego versions of Sean Penn and El Chapo. pic.twitter.com/Lwp0Ik1ubQ

— Hector Becerra (@hbecerraLATimes) January 10, 2016

is it terrible that I'm kind of chuffed that the CIA looked at Penn and thought, we could use that idiot https://t.co/7tp5wNCFbv

— Julia Carrie Wong (@juliacarriew) January 10, 2016

"I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn." pic.twitter.com/8R3HtG5zrg

— Jason Sparks (@sparksjls) January 10, 2016

Biggest surprise is El Chapo didn't just do a Medium post.

— Brian Morrissey (@bmorrissey) January 10, 2016

.@desusnice Not trusting Sean Penn to maintain operational security is probably rule #1 of surviving on the run. @GreatDismal

— Nick Kolakowski (@nkolakowski) January 10, 2016

"Chapo, que tal?" "Well, I suffered Sean Penn for 7 hours. Then he told the world he farted on me. Then I got captured again. Been better!"

— Cardiff Garcia (@CardiffGarcia) January 10, 2016

chapo: what is this shit henchman: [shrugs] chapo: i cant read this shit henchman: u wanted to edit it [both laugh] chapo: fuck it its fine

— Adam Weinstein (@AdamWeinstein) January 10, 2016

Abu Bakr: "On Monday morning I want you to cancel that meeting with Brad Pitt."

— David Shorr (@David_Shorr) January 10, 2016

I would kid him a lot about this in prison which I think he would probably respect, although I can't be certain. https://t.co/4KQgR5SN6C

— pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) January 10, 2016

El Chapo sat with Sean Penn for 7 hour interview; planned to finance a movie about himself. Wonder if he'll be calling into Sunday shows?

— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) January 10, 2016

The cops apparently gave El Chapo a choice: line-edit Sean Penn's piece or surrender. pic.twitter.com/dNSJ5cWy1r

— Don Van Natta Jr. (@DVNJr) January 10, 2016

Which celebrity will help El Chapo with his next prison escape?

— David Shorr (@David_Shorr) January 10, 2016

Not sure who looks like the bigger fugitive here. pic.twitter.com/yqun6VE4vP

— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) January 10, 2016

I genuinely feel bad for chapo, having to sit and talk to sean penn for that long

— Rembert Browne (@rembert) January 10, 2016

What Is This Talk Of Bloomberg 2016?

I just chanced upon it yesterday somewhere. And looked it up today. What's cooking? 2016 is looking to be like New York's year. Polls at this stage don't mean much. They just mean people are not paying close attention just as yet.



Clinton and Trump Aren't Clear Party Favorites Anymore

The poll shows Clinton with a 3-point lead over Bernie Sanders in Iowa’s Democratic Party contest, with 48% of the vote, while the Vermont senator is beating the former secretary of state in New Hampshire with 50% to her 46%. ...... In a match-up between Clinton and Trump, the NBC/Marist poll showed Clinton as the preferred candidate with 48% to Trump’s 40%. The results of a Fox News poll released two days earlier showed different results, with Trump beating Clinton 47% to 44%.

Bill Ackman: Mike Bloomberg will run for president and win in 2016

Forbes estimates Bloomberg’s net worth at $38.8 billion, or nearly 4 times what Trump says he’s worth, and nearly 10 times what Forbes says Trump is worth. ...... Ackman said Hillary Clinton has proven to be a terrible candidate. And Trump has shown that the country might be willing to vote for a billionaire from New York. .... Rupert Murdoch tweeted in August that it was time for Bloomberg to enter the race. This summer the New York Post reported that a number of prominent New York Democrats dissatisfied with Clinton have tried to recruit Bloomberg for the race.

Trump Paves the Way for Bloomberg’s 2016 Presidential Run https://t.co/LvGMFdtvr4 via @intelligencer

— Paramendra Bhagat (@paramendra) January 10, 2016

Bloomberg Eyes Third-Party Run Against Trump and Clinton https://t.co/vRvV8ancZl via @WeeklyStandard

— Paramendra Bhagat (@paramendra) January 10, 2016

Bloomberg commissioned poll to test 2016 waters, source says @CNNPolitics https://t.co/zmLaCDjwmv

— Paramendra Bhagat (@paramendra) January 10, 2016

Uttar Pradesh 2017: Mayawati Deserves A Victory

Uttar Pradesh 2017: Mayawati Deserves A Victory

She seeks no alliance because deep inside she knows she can win this one. By vote share she does lead the third largest party in the country. And, foremost of all, there is an acute need for Dalit liberation in the country. Just like India had to say we are our own country, Harijans will have to say we are our own religion. We do lay claim to the Ved-Puran-Upanishad just like the Christians lay claim to the Old Testament, but we are our own religion, we are not Sanatani, and we are not Hindu, we are Harijan. We worship Ram. Our book is the Tulsidas Ramayana. Ramcharitmanas. We disown the Valmiki Ramayan as a work of slander by a Sanatani Shaitan on par with Ravana. We will build a Ram Temple, but there will be a mosque side by side. We want to co-exist with the Hindus and the Muslims, but we are nobody’s untouchables. We inhabit nobody’s caste system. We will not accept anything less than religious equality. We will outlaw all discriminatory behavior that targets Harijans. We will have the police fight and eliminate caste violence, which will be renamed religious violence. We will empower our community through education, health and entrepreneurship.

The Yadavs are the Krishna people. We Harijans are Ram people. Hare Rama, Hare Krishna. We want to spread the good word globally. And so, we are one with the Hare Rama Hare Krishna mission. We harbor no animosity towards the Yadav community, but democracy thrives on political competition. That is the best way to serve the good people of Uttar Pradesh.

Mayawati is both Harijan and a woman. She has been both in power and opposition. She has also served in Delhi as a MP. And she is in a position to fight caste violence, gender violence, and religious violence at the same time. Just like Nitish ran on a one point law and order plank in 2005, Mayawati’s one point mantra now seems to be Aman Chain, as in, law and order. If she were to elaborate on that and make it specific, she gets the Dalits, the women, and the Muslims. That would be enough to secure her a victory. Law and order really is the agenda item number one. That is the top responsibility of any state anywhere. You deliver on that one, and then you can build development and progress on top of it.

Maybe finally Uttar Pradesh’s time for double digit growth rates has come. She might even hold conversations with Nitish on that one post victory. Law and order kah ke to jit gaye, ab age ka rasta kya hai, jara bolo. Roads and bridges, schools and hospitals, ease of doing business. Waise bhi koi mysterious baat hai nahin. Abhi tak to baat obvious ho gayi hai. Jagah jagah log kar rahe hain. Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are India’s heartland, the core of the Hindi belt.

She could rule Uttar Pradesh and act equi-distant to both the National Democratic Alliance and the Grand Alliance at the national level. That is also a valid option. As in, it is very possible for Mayawati to win Uttar Pradesh in 2017, and for Modi to again sweep the state in 2019. As long as the country’s growth rate is north of 10%, I don’t see how he can have a problem.

Her national agenda is not Modi or Nitish. Her national agenda is to organize the Dalits nationally. Uttar Pradesh is only a start.

Lekin pramukh mudda hai ki Harijan ko alag dharm ke rup mein samvidhan mein darj karvao. Just like Yadavs have no caste, Harijans also have no caste. Brahmins are going to have to have a standalone identity, just like the Yadavs and the Harijans. They may not build hierarchies for others. The Bramhin identity is going to have to be a cultural identity. If they disagree, sue them. Take them to court.

Gender violence, caste violence, religious violence. Dial 100 is a good idea. But many more women will have to be recruited into the police force. When an act of gender violence gets reported, the police team that shows up should have at least one female police officer. Riots can be eliminated. There should be an early warning system like for cyclones and tsunamis. Corruption and political interference have to be rooted out from law enforcement. Fast track courts have to be put in place like in Bihar. Maybe Uttar Pradesh will put 150,000 petty criminals behind bars in UP.

Dalits will have to get organized before they can be liberated, and Mayawati’s BSP is the best vehicle for that organization work nationally. Majlis might also make inroads among Muslims nationally if they toned down the rhetoric a little, and if they can show good governance in some major city and also some state. Ultimately it is about governance. You have to show you can put together an appealing political platform, then that you can build an organization and a political campaign that wins you a mandate, and once you get it that you govern, you deliver on the promises. The Majlis president has performed very well in the national parliament, but I don’t see the Majlis governing anywhere. There is work to do. Ironically, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have lots and lots of Muslims, and there people like Laloo, Nitish, Mulayam and Mayawati are eating the cake. They are not leaving much room for Majlis. Because Majlis has no governance track record in their own home territory. They are a rhetoric party so far. Harijan ke tarah Musalman ko bhi age aana hoga. Hindu ke saath per capita income parity lena hoga. Employment aur housing mein discrimination fight karna hoga. Uske liye lawmaking ki jaroorat hai.

BJP mein Modi ka leadership socially uplifting hai. The BJP could also be competing for both Dalit and Muslim votes. Why not?

Saudi Arabia: SuperPower?

English: Saudi Arabia 2010 estimated population density. Data source: http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/gpw/ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What is this talk of a 10 trillion dollar company? Whatever it is, this godzilla of a company, I want this company to invest in my company, like Yahoo invested in Alibaba. If this goes through, and there indeed is a 10 trillion dollar company ..... and there are people who lose sleep trying to figure out if Apple or Google will be the world's first trillion dollar company ....... Saudia Arabia is suddenly right there with America and China. This super duper mega corporation. This can't be called a corporation, or even a mega corporation. We need a new name. What could it be? A billion dollar company is a unicorn. A 100 billion dollar company is a godzilla. (Sorry, that name is already taken). What is a trillion dollar company? What is a 10 trillion dollar company? Yet to be named.

I think Donald Trump is responsible. ISIS is putting out recruitment videos featuring Donald Trump. The Saudis have done two things in a row. They have picked a fight with Iran that has all the inkling of a fight between unequals. And now this. The message is, Donald, come be janitor, we hire billionaire janitors.

Saudi Arabia is ruling the era of oil. They could also do really well in the era of solar. They do get a lot of sun. And 3D printing could simply scoop up the sand. You could manufacture all kinds of things with the sun and the sand. And you got trillions to invest.

Fear Of Gun Violence Is Black Slavery Today

Mars is the new Moon. Now we want to go to Mars. Shift happens. Similarly, I think it is fair to say gun violence is the black slavery today. The black neighborhoods of this country have been infested with both drugs and violence. I don't know how much of this is random and how much of this is planned, but the impact is devastating. If there were a racist conspiracy to keep black people down, you would push drugs and guns into The Hood. It works like magic. The black community stands knee-capped. It's a tragedy, because it is such a waste. Black potential is human potential. We would all be better off if black folks had a shot in life.

Mars is the new Moon. And gun violence is the black slavery today. You can not take America into the 21st century without a constitutional amendment that settles the gun debate once and for all. I thought that might happen before gay marriage went national. I am glad gay marriage has gone national, but gun violence also needs to stop. I am glad poor white folks now have health care, but black folks deserve a life without a permanent threat of guns.

I can't think of a better way for the first black president to end his eight years than by steering a constitutional amendment on this topic. This country owes this president this little thing. He has done right by everybody. He saved you from a Great Depression. He gave you health care. The least you can give him back is some gun sanity. You owe him one. It is payback time.

The Home Run Has To Be A Constitutional Amendment, Abe Lincoln Style

NRA Is Today's KKK, The Heck With KKK

Barack Obama, Do Something For Black People

English: Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of the United States. Latviešu: Abrahams Linkolns, sešpadsmitais ASV prezidents. Српски / Srpski: Абрахам Линколн, шеснаести председник Сједињених Америчких Држава. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Barack Obama has spent seven years taking good care of white people. Now those white people need to rally behind him in his final year quest for doing something for black people. This is the Abraham Lincoln part of the marathon run, the final mile. Bring it on. Let the fight commence.

The black folks who ran as hard as they could from Barack Obama in 2007 were some of the loudest in 2009 and 2010 and 2011 in saying he was not hiring enough black folks in the top ranks, he was not doing enough for black folks. I said then that the best thing Barack Obama can do for black people is to do the very best he can as president. Just do a good job. Perform well. And he has achieved FDR heights. He has performed. He has delivered like a once in a half century president.

But now it is time to do something fundamental for the black people. I have no idea when this country might see another black president. It might not happen for a while. I don't see anyone on the horizon. So let's squeeze as much out of this final year as we possibly can. Let's do something for black people. Let's do something fundamental.

Barack Obama: FDR, Lincoln And Washington
You May Not Kill
The Insanity Of Guns In America
MLK, Malcolm X, And Assassinations
What Did I Do?