What Bond villains tell us about the world we live in
International terrorism, it seems, still. U.S. officials still seem to think that a splashy attack is of a greater threat to the American people than systemic corruption abroad or at home.
Is that analysis correct? Is a shadowy “ISIS-K” more dangerous to U.S. citizens than, for example, private equity partners or real estate speculators, who nearly brought down the world economy in 2008, then presided over an eviction frenzy that continues today? Or who take over struggling corporations and pay themselves generous “management” fees out of the pension fund, bankrupting it? Is ISIS truly more dangerous to humans and the irreplaceable air and forests and the creatures in them than the fossil fuel companies that, not content to tear down mountains, are now shattering the very bedrock under our feet, to extract ever more natural gas?
What about drug trafficking? Is that a vital U.S. interest? It has not been explicitly mentioned in statements on Afghanistan, but judging from Washington’s approach to Latin America, the Afghan opium industry seems a likely candidate.
In May — just when our Kandahar-based cooperative needed to hire extra people to harvest wild herbs so we could distill their essential oils — I would watch men boarding busses headed west, to fields dense with lovely, tulip-like poppies. There the workers would labor for a few well-paid weeks scratching the stalks with needle-tipped tools, then scraping away the sap that oozed out. That sap is what is turned into opium.
I get it: Afghanistan — no matter who its rulers are — is a major source of dangerous drugs.
And yet, what organizations manufactured and distributed the opium derivatives that have killed more than 750,000 Americans since 1999? Narcotics trafficking networks? Surely. And what about U.S. pharmaceutical companies, like Purdue and Cardinal Health and McKesson — some of which received preferential contracts during the COVID pandemic?
I ran into these two oddly-related posts at the same setting. They got me to thinking....we need modern Bond villains.
I agree that hedge-funds who run companies into the ground would work.
The Sackler family? or maybe the judge that let them off the hook.
Maybe the propagandist's that make money promoting false info? Those that enable them?
Companies that price gouge, or pollute. Lawyers that tie up our courts frivolous lawsuits.
Or maybe cops who take assets from people in the name of the law or Kill brown people at an alarming rate.
No Drugs, No Crime and Just Pennies for School: How Police Use Civil Asset Forfeiture
In the past two decades, the federal government took in $36.5 billion in assets police seized from people on America’s roads and in its poorer neighborhoods, many of whom never were charged with a crime or shown to have drugs.
There are a lot better villains than drug dealers and atomic weapon stealers out there.
Maybe Hollywood is the problem.
Update:
Or this guy.. Peter Thiel Gamed Silicon Valley, Donald Trump, and Democracy to Make Billions, Tax-Free
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