Paul De Rienzo

2010-01-21T23:41:00.005-05:00

I will be speaking at Marjorie Moore's Memorial at Riverside Church on Saturday.

History Of Hunts Point

2010-01-04T20:00:00.001-05:00

Hunts Point is a poor neighborhood in the Bronx, but it has a fascinating history.

History Of Hunts Point

View more presentations from Paul DeRienzo.

Elissa Stein co-author of Flow, The Cultural Story of Menstruation

2010-01-03T00:52:00.001-05:00

2009-12-08T23:26:00.003-05:00

Dr. Omar Abdel Rahman
Interview by Paul DeRienzo
September, 1994

Hear the blind cleric convicted by the testimony of Federal confidential informant Emad Salem of planning a terror attack against targets in NYC.

Part 1(1.9M mp3),

Part 2(3.4M mp3),

Part 3(0.7M mp3)

2009-12-08T22:49:00.005-05:00

Afghanistan and the heroin trade

An Interview with Alfred McCoy author of

The Politics of Heroin:

CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade

by

November 9, 1991

Paul DeRienzo

Alfred W. McCoy is professor of Southeast Asian History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Educated at Columbia and Yale, he has spent the past twenty years writing about Southeast Asian history and politics. Mr. McCoy participated in Causes and Cures: National Teleconference on the Narcotics Epidemic Saturday, November 9 1991, at Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan.

PD: How did you come to write The Politics of Heroin; CIA Complicity In The Global Drug Trade?

AM: In 1971 I was a graduate student doing Southeast Asian History at Yale University. An editor at Harper & Row, Elisabeth Jakab, read some articles in a volume I had edited about Laos, which made some general references to the opium trade in Laos.
She decided this would be a great idea for a book and asked me to do a background book on the heroin plague that was sweeping the forces then fighting in South Vietnam. We later learned that about one third of the United States combat forces in Vietnam, conservatively estimated, were heroin addicts.
   I went to Paris and interviewed retired general Maurice Belleux, the former head of the French equivalent of the CIA, an organization called SDECE [Service de Documentation Exterieure et du Contre-Espionage]. In an amazing interview he told me that French military intelligence had financed all their covert operations from the control of the Indochina drug trade. [The French protected opium trafficking in Laos and northern Vietnam during the colonial war that raged from 1946 to the French defeat in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu.]
   The French paratroopers fighting with hill tribes collected the opium and French aircraft would fly the opium down to Saigon and the Sino-Vietnamese mafia that was the instrument of French intelligence would then distribute the opium. The central bank accounts, the sharing of the profits, was all controlled by French military intelligence.
He concluded the interview by telling me that it was his information that the CIA had taken over the French assets and were pursuing something of the same policy.
So I went to Southeast Asia to follow up on that lead and that's what took me into doing this whole book. It was basically pulling a thread and keep tucking at it and a veil masking the reality began to unravel.

PD: What was the CIA's role in heroin trafficking in Southeast Asia?

AM: During the 40 years of the cold war, from the late 1940's to this year, the CIA pursued a policy that I call radical pragmatism . Their mission was to stop communism and in pursuit of that mission they would ally with anyone and do anything to fight communism.
   Since the 1920's the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations, and the United States have prohibited opium and cocaine products from legal sale. These products had already emerged as vast global commodities with very substantial production zones and large markets, large demand for those commodities both in the third world and the first.
   The historic Asia opium zone stretches across 5,000 miles of Asian mainland from Turkey to Laos along the southern borders of the Soviet Union and the southern border of communist China. It just so happened that one of the key war zones in the cold war happened to lay astride the Asian opium zone.
   During the long years of the cold war the CIA mounted major covert guerilla operations along the Soviet-Chinese border. The CIA recruited as allies people we now call drug lords for their operation against communist China in northeastern Burma in 1950, then from 1965 to 1975 [during the Vietnam war] their operation in northern Laos and throughout the decade of the 1980's, the Afghan operation against Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
   Powerful, upland political figures control the societies and economies in these regions and part of that panoply of power is the opium trade. The CIA extended the mantle of their alliance to these drug lords and in every case the drug lords used it to expand a small local trade in opium into a major source of supply for the world markets and the United States.
   While they were allied with the United States these drug lords were absolutely immune to any kind of investigation. If you're involved in any kind of illicit commodity trade, organized crime activity like drug trafficking, there is only one requisite for success, immunity, and the CIA gave them that. As long as they were allied with theCIA, the local police and then the DEA stayed away from the drug lords.
   Finally, if there were any allegations about the involvement of their allies in the drug trade, the CIA would use their good offices to quash those allegations.
This meant that these drug lords, connected with the CIA, and protected by the CIA, were able to release periodic heroin surges, and [in Latin America] periodic cocaine surges. You can trace very precisely during the 40 years of the cold war, the upsurge in narcotics supply in the United States with covert operations.

PD: How does the CIA's policies affect drug interdiction? I've spoken for example to former Drug Enforcement Administration officer Michael Levine, who has expressed anger that he was pulled off cases because he got too close to someone who, while being a big trafficker, was also an asset of the CIA.

AM: Mike Levine speaks from personal experience. In 1971 Mike Levine was in Southeast Asia operating in Thailand as an agent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration [DEA]. At the same time I was conducting the investigation for the first edition of my book.
   Mike Levine said that he wanted to go up country to Chiangmai, the heroin capital of Southeast Asia at that point, the finance and processing center and hub of an enterprise. He wanted to make some major seizures. Through a veiled series of cut outs in the U.S. embassy in Bangkok, instructions were passed to his superiors in the DEA, who told him he couldn't go up and make the bust. He was pulled off the case.
He said it wasn't until he read my book a number of years later that he understood the politics of what was going on and he realized why he had been pulled off. All of the upland drug lords that were producing the narcotic, the heroin, were in fact CIA assets. Now he understands it.
   That is not just a single incident, so let's go back to basics. What is the institutional relationship between the DEA an the CIA? The Federal Bureau of Narcotics [FBN] was established in 1930 as an instrument of the prohibition of narcotics, the only United States agency that had a covert action capacity with agents working undercover before World War II. During the war when the OSS [Office of Strategic Services] was established, which is the forerunner of the CIA, key personnel were transferred from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics to train the OSS officers in the clandestine arts.
   That close institutional relationship between the DEA [direct descendant of the FBN] and the CIA continues up to the present day. The long time head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, a man named Harry Anslinger, who headed that bureau from 1930 until his retirement in 1962, was a militant anti-communist who spent a lot of his time in counter-intelligence operations. There's a very close relationship between the two agencies.
During the cold war the main priority abroad for the United States government was anti-communism, and whenever theCIA mounted an operation, every other U.S. agency was subordinated to the CIA's covert operations.
   That meant that when the CIA was running one of its covert action wars in the drug zones of Asia, the DEA would stay away. For example, during the 1950's the CIA had this ongoing alliance with the nationalist Chinese in northern Burma. Initially mounting invasions of China in 1950-51, later mounting surveillance along the border for a projected Chinese invasion of Southeast Asia. The DEA stayed out of Southeast Asia completely during that period and collected no intelligence about narcotics in deference to the CIA's operation.
   Let's take two more examples that bring it right up to the present. [First] the Afghan operation: from 1979 to the present, the CIA's largest operation anywhere in the world, was to support the Afghan resistance forces fighting the Soviet occupation in their country. The CIA worked through Pakistan military intelligence and worked with the Afghan guerilla groups who were close to Pakistan military intelligence.
   In 1979 Pakistan had a small localized opium trade and produced no heroin whatsoever. Yet by 1981, according to U.S. Attorney General William French Smith,Pakistan had emerged as the world's leading supplier of heroin. It became the supplier of 60% of U.S. heroin supply and it captured a comparable section of the European market. In Pakistan itself the results were even more disastrous.
   In 1979 Pakistan had no heroin addicts, in 1980 Pakistan had 5,000 heroin addicts, and by 1985, according to official Pakistan government statistics, Pakistan had 1.2 million heroin addicts, the largest heroin addict population in the world.
   Who were the manufacturers? They were all either military factions connected with Pakistan intelligence, CIA allies, or Afghan resistance groups connected with the CIA and Pakistan intelligence. In May of 1990, ten years after this began, the Washington Post finally ran a front page story saying high U.S. officials admit that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar [leader of the Hezbi-i Islami guerilla group], and other leaders of the Afghan resistance are leading heroin manufacturers.
   This had been known for years, reported in the Pakistan press, indeed in 1980 reported in McClean's magazine. In fact in 1980 a White House narcotics advisor, Dr. David Musto of Yale University, went on the record demanding that we not ally with Afghan guerilla groups that were involved in narcotics. His advice was ignored and he went public in an op-ed in the New York Times.
   Another example: Let's take the cocaine epidemic. In 1981 as cocaine began surging north into the United States, the DEA assigned an agent named Tomas Zepeda, in June 1981, to open up an office in Honduras. By 1983 Zepeda was collecting very good intelligence indicating that the Honduran military were taking bribes to let the aircraft through their country to come to the United States.
   Zepeda was pulled out of Honduras and that office was closed by the DEA. They didn't open another office in Honduras until 1987 because Honduras was a frontline country in the contra war. If Zepeda's reports about involvement of the Honduran military had been acted upon, the DEA would have been forced to take action against the Honduran military officers who were working with the CIA to protect the contras.
In short, there was a conflict between the drug war and the cold war. Faced with the choice, the United States government chose the cold war over the drug war, sacrificing a key intelligence post for theDEA in Honduras.
   The same thing happened in Afghanistan. During the 1980's from the time that heroin trade started, there were 17 DEA agents based in Pakistan. They neither made nor participated in any major seizures or arrests. At a time when other police forces, particularly Scandinavian forces, made some major seizures and brought down a very major syndicate connected with former president Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan.

PD: What is the role of banking in the heroin trade? What, if any, are the connections to the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) scandal.

AM: There have been three times in the past 15 years in which the CIA's money transfer activities have surfaced. The first came in the late 1970's when the Internal Revenue Service, the IRS, investigated a Nassau bank called the Castle Bank. It's a very interesting bank. It was set up by a man named Paul Helliwell, a very senior CIA operative who had retired from the agency. He set up this bank and it grew into a Latin American network of banks. It was used by the CIA to launder money.
   In essence, what appears to emerge from the investigation of the Castle Bank in the late 1970's, was that the CIA did not want to move operational funds for covert operations through normal banking channels, where they could be uncovered, either by the United States or abroad, where they could come to the knowledge of opponents of the agency.
They preferred to work through allied banks. Banks that were secure, that were a little bit loose in their accounting procedures. When the Castle Bank was uncovered, the IRS announced a major investigation of the bank's money laundering activities. Suddenly the IRS cancelled the investigation and the Wall Street Journal was told by informed sources in the IRS that the CIA had blocked the investigation.
   As soon as Castle Bank collapsed, a small merchant bank based in Australia, operating offshore between Australia and southeast Asia, suddenly mushroomed into a global network of banks, acquiring Latin American and European structures that had belonged to Castle Bank. This bank in Australia called the Nugan-Hand Bank began very quickly in the late 1970's, to acquire a board of retired U.S. intelligence officials, either CIA or various military intelligence services.
   The most prominent example, the former Director of Central Intelligence, William Colby, became the legal council of Nugan-Hand Bank. The bank was founded by Frank Nugan, an insecure and incompetent Australian lawyer, and by Michael John Hand, a man with a high school degree who had gone to Vietnam with the Green Berets. He had served in Laos in the 1960's as a contract CIA operative, fighting with three of the people who became very prominent in the CIA's privatized operations, Thomas Clines, Theodore Shackley and Richard Secord, all very big names in the Iran-Contra scandal.
   Michael John Hand was the one who worked with William Colby as legal counsel. One of their big operations was to buy a former U.S. naval base in the Turks and Caicos islands in the Caribbean. Australian police investigators who examined that contract, drawn up by William Colby for Michael John Hand, concluded that the plausible explanation they could discover for that contract was to establish a way-station for cocaine smuggling between Colombia and the United States.
   We do know the bank was pioneering in the smuggling of heroin between Southeast Asia and Australia. In the late 1970's Australia had very strict banking laws, and anytime you got foreign exchange you had to account for it. The Nugan-Hand Bank helped Australian organized crime figures get their money overseas so they could buy heroin and ship the heroin back to Australia.
   The Australian police investigators documented that Michael John Hand worked very closely with Australia's top criminal drug traffickers to finance the first shipments, the pioneering shipments, of heroin to Australia from Southeast Asia.
In 1980 that bank went belly-up and it collapsed, Frank Nugan committed suicide, and then a really amazing event occurred. Thomas Clines, the former CIA chief of station from Laos, a man of great prominence in the Iran-Contra scandal, flew to Sydney, Australia and exfiltrated Michael John Hand, who disappeared in the United States and was never seen since.
   Then we come to BCCI. Although we haven't gotten to the bottom of it by any means, we haven't even begun to ask the questions, much less get the answers. BCCI mushroomed in the 1980's and seemed to serve as a similar conduit as Castle Bank and Nugan-Hand Bank. The Manchester Guardian published an expose saying that the CIA paid its operations in the United Kingdom through BCCI, and it's known that the CIA paid the Afghan guerrillas, who were based in Pakistan, through BCCI.
   There's one rather large question that nobody is asking about BCCI. It's a Pakistani bank, it booms during the 1980's, in exactly the same period that Pakistan emerges as the world's largest heroin center. We know the Pakistan military officers involved in the drug trade had their accounts with BCCI. There's a three way relationship that really cries out, screams, demands, a congressional investigation.
   The relationship between BCCI and the CIA operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan; how much money was the CIA moving through those accounts? Secondly, the relationship between the Pakistan military connected with that operation and BCCI. Thirdly, the relationship between the booming heroin trade of Pakistan and BCCI. I think what we'll possibly discover is that the CIA was shipping its funds into Pakistan through BCCI, protecting BCCI thereby from serious investigations elsewhere in the world. That the Pakistan military were in fact banking their drug profits, moving their drug profits from the consuming country back to Pakistan though BCCI. In fact the boom in the Pakistan drug trade was financed by BCCI.The interrelationship between the Afghan resistance and the CIA and the Pakistan drug trade can all be seen through the medium of BCCI, the banker to both operations, the resistance and the drug trade.

PD: What are the alternatives to the drug war?

AM: In the 1980's, indeed over the last 20 years, society has been given two choices in the drug war. The escalating repression against the drug trade by Presidents Nixon, Reagan and Bush while the media gave airtime and space to only one sustained critique.That critique put forth by the Drug Policy Foundation argues that the drug war wasn't working and therefore we should pursue a policy of legalization. Simply turn the whole policy of repression on its head, instead of trying to wipe out the drug trade we legalize it.
Let me first of all review the drug war. Is it working? No it's not. The current drug war budget is $11 billion, a very large amount of money. Of that $11 billion, 86% is devoted to the suppression of cocaine trafficking between the United States and Colombia and cocaine trafficking in the U.S. as well. However, while we're devoting 86% of our drug war budget to cocaine, use of cocaine has gone up by 15 percent. Every single indicator shows cocaine addiction is rising at the same time we are fighting this drug war.
   The White House is claiming victory in the drug war, William Bennet, the drug czar who retired several months ago, claimed a victory, President Bush has alluded to a victory in the drug war, and so has the current drug war czar, Mr. Bob Martinez. What they claim as a victory is a victory over casual drug use. Well let's face it casual drug use doesn't count, if some kid tries drugs and doesn't like it that's nice but that's not the problem.
   The problem is repeated use, and every single indicator says repeated use is up. The drug war is not working. It's filling up our prisons. The prison population doubled under President Reagan, and we now have over 400 prisoners per 100,000 population versus 35 per 100,000 in Holland. We have the largest prison population per capita in the world and it's going up. At the same time our heroin use is going up and our cocaine use is going up.
   The reason why is because our effort in the drug war has been concentrated in interdicting the supply of drugs in the United States and over the last 20 years we have fought this drug war on a bilateral basis. The United States in 1972 went into Turkey and said "wipe out your opium trade" and in the 1980's they went into Colombia and said "wipe out your cocaine processing industry". In the early 1980's the U.S. went into Bolivia and said "wipe out coca cultivation in the western part of your country". This is bilateral interdiction, where the U.S. as a sovereign power deals with another sovereign state and applies pressure on that sovereign state to get action on drugs.
   There is a misperception about the nature of heroin and cocaine. These are not petty vices, these are complex global commodity trades involving vast areas of production and enormous consumption. It's a commodity comparable in every respect to coffee or tea.
When you bring down the baton of law enforcement on a complex global commodity trade something curious and something paradoxical, something almost magical happens. The genius of capitalism, its magic, its alchemy, transform the lead of repression into the gold of stimulus. Every time we apply repression upon narcotics production on this bilateral basis we stimulate production, and ultimately we stimulate consumption because of the law of supply and demand.
   In 1972 President Richard Nixon wiped out the Turkish opium crop with his first drug war, the grandmother of drug wars. This grandmother of drug wars totally wiped out Turkish opium production, and for a while it disrupted the French connection between Turkey, which had supplied French labs in Marseille, which in turn supplied New York.
It looked like victory until you see what really happened. Turkey only grew 7% of the worlds opium. Across the 5,000 mile band of mountains from Turkey in the west to Laos in the east lay the rest of the worlds opium production, the other 93 percent.
   Turkey had a shortfall of production, that meant there was a shortfall in supply of illicit opium. So the price went up as would always happen, short supply and the price goes up. That meant farmers elsewhere in the opium zone, from Iran, Afghanistan increased their production as happens every single time. The repression creates a shortfall in supply which raises price and then stimulates production everywhere around the world.
What then is the solution to the problem? Somewhere between the poles of repression and legalization there is an alternative strategy which I call regulation. I don't think we should really fool ourselves to consider legalization. It's politically impractical, it's never going to happen.
   If we legalize the drug we are not going to legalize it for kids, this is a country that just raised the drinking age for the socially acceptable drug, alcohol from 18 to 21. You give me the name right now of one legislator who is going to stand up and say "I favor crack for kids, vote for my bill," nobody will ever introduce such a bill. Even if by some miracle you got a legalization bill it would exclude 21 year olds and it would mean that the big drug, crack cocaine would have 89% of its clientele excluded from legalization.
I favor regulation because if cocaine and heroin are commodities let's deal with them as such. You don't repress commodities, you regulate them. Accept the fact that there is no quick fix to this trade, it's been around for 200 years as a major global commodity, as an illegal commodity it's been around for 70 years and it's likely to be around for another 70, maybe 200 years.
   Recognizing that you then cancel your bilateral interdiction efforts and transfer your funds to the multilateral effort being run by the United Nations. The multilateral effort by the United Nations actually does reduce production slowly, painfully over a period of decades.
   Ultimately we're going to have to seek an amelioration, not a solution, on the streets. We're going to have to address the complex of causes as to why people use drugs. That is where we have to concentrate our money.

Send comments about this page to: Paul DeRienzo
Photos from Afghanistan taken in April, 1996 by Q. Sakamaki

2009-12-08T18:08:00.000-05:00

Newscaster and host Paul DeRienzo joined by Marjorie Moore and activist Dana Beal announce the attack on the World Trade Center while live on WBAI-99.5-FM on 911September 11, 2001. WBAI's studios at 120 Wall St. are just a few blocks from Ground Zero.

2009-12-01T23:52:00.002-05:00

2009-11-29T01:56:00.001-05:00

2009-11-29T01:52:00.001-05:00

2009-11-29T01:50:00.002-05:00

Drug Treatment Center in Caracas, Venezuela

2008-03-24T17:39:00.001-04:00

Carlos Escarrá on the War on Drugs

2008-03-16T11:38:00.003-04:00

Carlos Escarrá, Venezuela National Assembly

2008-03-16T11:38:00.001-04:00

Dominatrix Ilona Paris on Valentines Day

2008-03-16T11:37:00.005-04:00

Ibogaine in Venezuela

2008-03-16T11:37:00.001-04:00

Nadav Lev, Guitarist and Alma Moshonov, Soprano

2008-03-16T11:36:00.003-04:00

The Case for Mumia Abu Jamal

2008-03-16T11:36:00.001-04:00

Magnolia Martin filmmaker Facing the Habit

2008-03-16T11:35:00.003-04:00

Gail Archer Concert Organist

2008-03-16T11:35:00.001-04:00

Ethel Performs Live on Let Them Talk

2008-03-16T11:34:00.001-04:00

Independent filmmaker Jill Freidberg on Oaxaca

2008-03-16T11:29:00.001-04:00

Richard Hambleton on his art

2008-03-16T11:28:00.001-04:00

A Celebration of Brad Will

2008-03-16T11:27:00.003-04:00

21st Century Foxes

2008-03-16T11:27:00.001-04:00

Prof Irwin Corey; The World's Foremost Authority

2008-03-16T11:26:00.005-04:00

Avant-Garde-Arama at PS 122

2008-03-16T11:26:00.003-04:00

Tony Brown and the Jena 6

2008-03-16T11:26:00.001-04:00

Joseph Carranza on 9/11

2008-03-16T11:25:00.001-04:00

Priya of Warcry Cinema with Paul DeRienzo

2008-03-16T11:24:00.003-04:00

Committee to Welcome Ulises Ruiz on Aug. 18, 2007

2008-03-16T11:24:00.001-04:00

Ibogaine in Slovenia

2008-03-16T11:19:00.001-04:00

Medical Marijuana Activist Doug Greene

2008-03-16T11:18:00.003-04:00

Dr. Sharon Stancliff of the Harm Reduction Coalition

2008-03-16T11:18:00.001-04:00

Ed Rosenthal Wizard of Medical Marijuana

2008-03-16T11:17:00.001-04:00

Dana Beal on the Global Marijuana March

2008-03-16T11:16:00.003-04:00

Same Sex Dancing

2008-03-16T11:16:00.001-04:00

Sally Clayton of CVTC interviewed

2008-03-16T11:15:00.003-04:00

Urban Tantra with Barbara Carrellas

2008-03-16T11:15:00.001-04:00

Q. Sakamaki, Award Winning Photojournalist

2008-03-16T11:14:00.003-04:00

Joshua Fried: composer

2008-03-16T11:14:00.001-04:00

The Michelangelo Code Science not Fiction

2007-03-23T15:04:00.001-04:00

The Michelangelo Code Science not Fiction
Originally uploaded by nashua.

Solar1 Outreach Coordinator Chris Neidl

2007-01-19T16:20:00.000-05:00

Solar1 Outreach Coordinator Chris Neidl
Originally uploaded by nashua.

Joan Moossy, Peter Lance, Paul DeRienzo

2006-12-05T17:57:00.000-05:00

Joan Moossy, Peter Lance, Paul DeRienzo
Originally uploaded by nashua.

Investigative reporter Peter Lance discusses his newest book Triple Cross on a US Attorney and the road to 9/11

nickflynn

2006-09-27T16:19:00.000-04:00

Nick Flynn discusses the film "Darwin's Nightmare"
Originally uploaded by nashua.

Darwin's Nightmare was shot on Lake Victoria, Tanzania. This amazing film, which deals with fish, guns and globalization, is the work of director Hubert Sauper. Nick Flynn was along for some of the filming. For more info go to www.hubertsauper.com or www.nickflynn.org

Dana with Paul & Joanie

2006-09-22T00:49:00.000-04:00

Dana with Paul & Joanie
Originally uploaded by nashua.

Dana Beal's answer to global warming. www.cures-not-wars.org

Kym Platt

2006-09-16T15:02:00.000-04:00

Kym Platt
Originally uploaded by nashua.

Kym Platt of askthisblackwoman.com asked Rev. Jesse Jackson recently on BBC to come to Harlem to take an AIDS test. Kym talks about AIDS in the African American community in New York City, the crisis of black leadership, and her advice giving website, askthisblackwoman.com

ves

2006-09-16T15:01:00.000-04:00

ves
Originally uploaded by nashua.

Ves Pitts’ exhibition is a collection of Baroque photographs that explore a kaleidoscope of macabre places and erotic personas. From the dark cavernous clubs of New York and Amsterdam to the elaborate religious shrines of Rome, Mr. Pitts has documented a variety of the eccentric that reflects on art history and early silent cinema. Inspired by the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, Mr. Pitts adds a hint of Southern gothic debauchery to create photographs that float in and out of the unconscious and authentic truth.

Peter Lance with Paul & Joanie

2006-08-30T19:42:00.000-04:00

Peter Lance with paul & Joanie
Originally uploaded by nashua.

on the Let Them Talk set

2006-08-30T19:37:00.000-04:00

on the Let Them Talk set
Originally uploaded by nashua.

It was a great show with Aton Edwards discussing methods to survive a disaster.

Interview with Aton Edwards of the International Preparedness Network

2006-08-30T17:41:00.000-04:00


Aton Edwards author of Preparedness Now! An Emergency Survival Guide for Civilians and their Families. An essential guidebook for protection fom extreme weather, infectious disease and terrorist attack.

Cynthia Copeland

2006-08-12T20:16:00.000-04:00

Cynthia Copeland
Originally uploaded by nashua.

Cynthia Copeland with Paul & Joanie after appearing on Let Them Talk. Ms Copeland is curator of Legacies at the New York Historical Society.

Kate Bornstein on her new book Hello Cruel World

2006-08-12T19:18:00.000-04:00


KATE BORNSTEIN is an author, playwright and performance artist. Her latest book is Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws.

Mark Whitwell on the Heart of Yoga

2006-08-12T18:52:00.000-04:00


Mark is interested in developing an authentic yoga practice for the individual, based on the teachings of T. Krishnamacharya and his son TKV Desikachar, with whom he enjoyed a relationship for more than twenty years. Mark's teachings clarify the profound passion and relevance of ancient wisdom to contemporary life.

2006-07-02T23:19:00.000-04:00

This NYPD helicopter raced just a few feet over the harbor to intercept a ferry pulling into the Statue of Liberty on Wednesday, June 27, 2006. At the last moment the aircraft pulled up and away at about the time this photo was taken. A tourist on board was overheard exclaiming that the pilot was a relative. On Sunday July 2, the New York Times ran a story on the new aggressive tactics of the NYPD helicopter squad. Click on the image to see a larger version.

2006-04-05T13:08:00.000-04:00

A lot has been happening since my last post. I work now guiding tourists to NYC, Washington, D.C. and Boston, mostly high school students. It's grueling, but often quite fun. I've seen more tourist destinations like Ellis Island, where my family came to the US early in the last century, but where I never visited before. Considering how immigration has become such a hot topic recently the visit to Ellis and the nearby Statue of Liberty was appropriate. I've always supported immigration and immigrants to the USA. The concept of "illegals" and "aliens" has always disgusted me. When space craft photograph the earth from orbit then we see what a small world we inhabit. To create artificial boundaries serves only the interests of globalization and imperialism. It's not just a matter of what country, but that we are all of the same planet separated by archaic class and racial divisions. Fear of outsiders threatens our humanity and we must not succumb to the anti-immigrant disease.

Last night on Let Them Talk our guest was Ian Williams and author and reporter who covers the United Nations. We discussed two of his books RUM: A Social and Sociable History of the Real Spirit of 1776 and DESERTER: Bush's War on Military Families, Veterans and His Past. I'm going to have him on again to talk more about Bolton and the UN.

Last week we featured an interview with Bogdan Denitch, which is archived and available at pdr.autono.net. Denitch is a Professor Emeritus at City University of NY and he headed the sociology Department there for 12 years. He founded and ran the Socialist Scholars Conference held at Cooper Union for a quarter century. He currently runs a NGO based in Zagreb, Croatia fighting for the return of refugees to the region after a decade of war. We spoke about the impact of the uncompleted war crimes trial in The Hague of former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.

2006-03-18T23:37:00.001-05:00

It’s a new beginning, at 8:00 PM on Tuesday, March 21, 2006, the Spring Solstice, Join Let Them Talk TV, a new weekly Public Access TV program -- a live viewer-active political, artistic adventure in TV from the depths of Ground Zero, Manhattan in New York City. Featuring Paul DeRienzo and Miss Joan Marie Moossy with live guests and viewer call ins -- Let Them Talk is NOW on Manhattan Neighborhood Networks, Channel 56 on Time Warner Cable. Let Them Talk is also available LIVE on MNN.org also at 8 PM every Tuesday -- click on Channel 56. Be Heard!

(All times are Eastern Time Zone)

Learn more about Let Them Talk at

pdr.autono.net

Watch our pilot episode at

pdr.blogomat.com

Contact Let Them Talk:

letthemtalk_tv@yahoo.com

2006-01-04T00:40:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year and best wishes for 2006

2005-12-21T23:50:00.000-05:00

An interesting conversation with Dr. Ken Alper about the history of the illegality of Ibogaine beginning in the 1960s.

----------------------------

From: kra1@
Subject: bog_Heroin_Anal_Sul, Drug_War_Budget_Phil

Paul-

On the other hand, regardless of the Farnsworth article indicating that
ibogaine was scheduled by the FDA by at least 1968, the attached article by
Sullivan indicates that the NY state police were aware of ibogaine by 1967.

Also attached is a 1994 newspaper story on the Drug War. According to that
story, the entire NIDA medications development budget in the ibogaine
project era was 22 million, relative to a total Drug war expenditure of 13
billion.

-KA
See also
The Drug to End All Drugs
Addicts may get new lives, as clinical studies of exotic, controversial ibogaine are set to resume
by Aina Hunter
-----------

On 12/17/05 7:56 PM, "Paul DeRienzo" wrote:

> > fascinating, this arrest would have been before there was a federal law
> > against Ibogaine, I think it wasn't made illegal under federal law
> > until 1970. This is a state bust., Sounds like NYC was ahead of its
> > time. So was California, it made LSD illegal in 1966. The story fits
> > the pattern of Ibogaine being found as a sideshow to larger
> > conspiracies having to do with LSD (and interestingly enough mescaline
> > too.) I've still not found any major Ibogaine busts at the federal
> > level. I'm still looking.
> >
> > --Paul
> >
> > On Dec 17, 2005, at 7:19 PM, Kenneth Alper M.D. wrote:
> >
>> >> See the attached. Under subheading "Possession Charged"
>> >>
>> >> "...McLendon was charged with possessing ...1/4 ounce of ibogaine
>> >> powder,
>> >> according to Mr. Morgenthau"
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> -KA
>> >>
>> >>
> >

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The following list is for internal use of Million Marijuana March Organizers. Many [personal addresses] in brackets are listed so that our affiliates can mail posters, buttons, etc. to each other, BUT are not for posting on websites. If you wish to put this list up on a website, consult with www.cures-not-wars.org to see what we've actually displayed. To get on the poster for 2006-update your contact details & add your city to this List:

2005-12-03T00:00:00.000-05:00

Just got this letter from Jodie Giesz-Ramsay the editor of Cannabis Culture Magazine. "The Ibogaine Alternative" is posted at cannabisculture.com and pdr.blogomat.com. You can purchase is for reprint from Featurewell.com

Cannabis Culture founder March Emery was arrested in Canada by cops under pressure from the US Drug Enforcement Agency. Emery is a Canadian citizen, who reportedly runs a marijuana seed business in Canada. He remains free, but faces a long fight against extradition to the US.

---------
Hi Paul,

I put your story on the front page of Cannabis Culture. It was great. :)

Things are fine here. Just sent the last issue (58) to print. A week of relative peace will soon be followed by more hard work on the next issue!

The case hasn't changed at all. No date has been set for the extradition hearing. We'll probably set it on December 8th.

I hope you're well. Keep in touch!

Cheers,
Jodie

2005-11-29T00:03:00.000-05:00

Shortly after the beginning of 2002 the Pacifica Campaign removed its home page from the Internet and went so far as to take down archives kept by Google. However after a careful search of the net by KPFK listener Nalini Lasiewicz and a web page developed by WBAI LSB member Paul DeRienzo we are now ready to return the Pacifica Campaign web page to the Internet. Included are nearly one year of posts announcing protests, blockades and boycotts of Pacifica and its five radio stations, particularly KPFK in Los Angeles and WBAI in New York City.

2005-11-23T00:28:00.000-05:00

I had the opportunity to meet Michel Negroponte, the filmmaker whose HBO documentary METHADONIA exposing the problems of treating heroin addiction with legal methadone is premiering this week. We were at 9 Bleecker St. at the regular Sunday meeting of Cures Not Wars, which is a harm reduction group based in New York City. His brother John Negroponte is Director of National Intelligence for the United States. Brother John was formerly the ambassador to Iraq, ambassador to the United Nations and ambassador to Honduras under the Reagan administration. Michel seemed nothing like his brother, who is arguably a bonafide war criminal involved in covering up Honduran death squads who murdered political activists.

Michel was personable and interested in learning more about Ibogaine. He also gave us some family history background, about how his father traveled from Greece to Davos, Switzerland to be treated for tuberculosis at the famous clinic known as "The Magic Mountain" founded by Dr Alexander Spengler. There the elder Negroponte met the woman, also from Greece, who would be his wife. With the start of World War II the Negroponte's moved to London, where John was born before moving to the United States.

According to Michel to this day his family teases John, who because of his London birth can never become President of the United States. I guess John Negroponte has to settle with being the power behind the throne. Michel also told another story about his brother, who Michel says he calls a couple of times a month. John recently told Michel that he'd be hard to get in touch with because he would be in the "Midwest," where he said there might be problems with the cell phone connections. A few days later Michel said he got a call from his brother who was in the Middle East. I guess the government isn't worried about a Kansas branch of al Qaida.

2005-11-20T02:08:00.001-05:00

Joanie and I showed up at MNN to record another episode of our new old show Let Them Talk. Our guest was supposed to be Lynne Stewart who faces sentencing in January on trumped up charges of allegedly helping convicted Islamic militant Sheik Omar Abd Rahman pass a message to his followers. When we arrived at MNN studios on 59th between 10 and 11th Avenue I saw yellow police tape everywhere. An MNN staffer told us that they had been told moments before by the NYPD to evacuate the building because of a possible collapse of an adjoining building. Outside there was a crane on a site next to the MNN building and an old warehouse behind in on 60th street. Meanwhile Lynne arrived ready for the interview, which had to be postponed. We wound up sitting at a Starbucks drinking Egg Nog Latte, Orange Spice teas and espressos while discussing the niceties of Patrick Fitzgerald conservative, catholic boy school attitudes that lie behind his persecution of Lynne. Fitzgerald was second seat on the trial of Rahman in the 1990s and has been the chief inquisitor who jailed NY Times reporter Judith Miller for three months. As soon as MNN straightens out its problem we will reschedule the interview and hopefully I'll be announcing the broadcast time and channel on this site. You can watch a video of Joanie's summer 2004 interview prior to Lynne's conviction here

2005-11-12T00:38:00.001-05:00

Joanie and I taped the first installment of the resurgent Let Them Talk on public access cable TV, featuring AJ Weberman on his new book the Dylan to English Dictionary. I'll post the time and date later. We played our theme song, which hasn't been heard broadcast in NYC since February 2002. Its "Let Them Talk," by Little Willie John from the double album "Free at Last." Willie John was born 1937 in Arkansas and raised in Detroit. He started singing at 13 and had his first hit at 17. He wrote one song that became a huge hit, "Fever," but it was left to Peggy Lee to make the song famous. Let Them Talk is typical of the slow blues ballads that Willie John (who was said to be "awfully small in stature, but terribly large in soul and voice") sang so well. He lived life "as he saw it, all out," and if he were alive today he'd be a contemprary rock-blues musician. Willie John reportely died from pneumonia at the Washington State Prison in 1967, where he was doing time for manslaughter.

Let Them Talk will be seen on Manhattan Neighborhood Networks at various times in a couple of weeks. Drop back to get the latest dates and times. In teh meantime you can join the Let Them Talk mailing list at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/letemtalk/

2005-11-06T23:41:00.000-05:00

I was watching the local news (Fox 5 NY) at 5 pm on October 6 when an announcement came on concerning possible terror attacks in the NY subway system. The anchor Rosanna Scotto was all set to do a live on air phone interview about the breaking story. The caller said he was a city official reporting calm that fortunately when the "suspicious package" supposedly found on the subway was opened by police it turned out to be "Howard Stern's Ball Sack." Co-anchor Ernie Anastos doubled me up when he said "what?" Rosanna Scotto looked pissed. She immediately said , "WHAT?!!!" and the caller repeated, "we're investigation Howard Sterns ball sack." The look on Scotto's and co- anchor Anastos' face was priceless. We're still laughing.

2005-11-06T23:29:00.000-05:00

I spoke briefly with Mary Francis Berry after she was interviewed by Sam Greenfield on the WWRL show "Drive Time Dialogue" on Wednesday October 26. I joked that I had once "worked" for her at Pacifica, but she was not amused. I told her I had been run out too and she said "I bet you were one of the people who wanted to get rid of me and now you know what I was dealing with." I agreed , but told her that I didn't know her at the time and I had simply followed the views of people who had brought me into Pacifica and who I at that time had no reason to distrust. She was sympathetic, but kept repeating that "Pacifica is a mess." I haven't read her book yet, but Sam told me its great.

It's fascinating that the day after Rosa Parks died Amy would be plugging Parks as part of DN!'s fundraising. In light of Pacifica's recent history, which includes running Mary Francis Berry, an African-American woman, out of Pacifica management, a woman who fought similar battles for Africa-American people makes those pleas for money seem hypocritical to me.

2005-10-30T22:27:00.000-05:00

In September I got to visit the 2005 Lyon Biennial, a show of contemporary art that's open until the end of the year in the city of Lyon in France. I interviewed the co-curators of the event Nicolas Bourriaud & Jérôme Sans. A team of critics and exhibition directors whose work includes the Palais de Tokyo contemporary art center in Paris. Bourriaud is a regular contributor to Beaux-Arts Magazine, Art Press and Flash Art. His work includes the exhibition “Touch” at the San Francisco Art Institute. Sans has been curator of exhibits in Stockholm and Milwaukee as well as the Taipei Biennale in Taiwan in 2000 and “Live” at Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 2004. Interview with Bourriaud and Sans

The theme of the Lyon Biennial is "Experiencing Duration" about events and art that transcends time. The main venue for the Biennial is the Sucrière, a sugar storage warehouse on the Lyon riverfront that was renovated as a part of a larger project to revitalize the old port. As one enters a gently sloping ramp leads towards the former storage silos that form the reception area. Entering the warehouse itself, visitors follow the route formerly taken by the arriving sugar. The first work that they see is Andy Warhol’s 1963 movie “Sleep” a film of poet John Giomo doing just that for 8 hours. Among the other works that introduce the exhibit are Yoko Ono’s “Smile,” a 1968 film of John Lennon’s head and shoulders against a leafy green- background for the entire two-take film. The film consists of John going from a deadpan face to a full-on smile.

The Biennial also exhibited a room of the works of 1960s underground comic book artist R. Crumb whose retro work follows his sexual appetite for large woman and intersects with the lives of 60s cultural luminaries like Janie Joplin. Crumb lives in France.

The 60s era work, produced during a rebellious time marked by cultural upheaval and political radicalism contrasted with contemporary works that in some instances reflect a more sophisticated style. But the 60s works do reflect the energy of their time and together other recent works form a synergistic continuity. View my interview on French TV

2005-10-26T20:12:00.000-04:00

2003-02-27T12:54:00.000-05:00

Interesting story form an insider at the February 15 anti-war rally in New York City. Alan who runs the Rock Against Racism sound system and a company called Metrosound put in a bid to do the sound for the anti-war rally. He is a close associate of Leslie Cagan and has done the sound for countless events organized by Cagan. Alan also does the sound for the annual Cures Not Wars marijuana legalization rally on the first weekend in May each year and he runs the sound for the club Monster on Sheridan Square in the Village.

After approaching Cagan about doing the February 15th demo in Manhattan he was put in touch with Valerie an associate of the group International A.N.S.W.E.R., one of the rally's chief organizers. A.N.S.W.E.R. is also closely related to a socialist group called Workers World Party. Immediately there began intense haggling over the price of providing the massive sound reinforcement system, a problem he had never experienced before with a Leslie Cagan organized event. But eventually the arguing centered on control of the main stage. Valerie insisted that a separate company she had chosen run he stage. As a sound engineer Alan didn't care about who managed the stage since to him that's the most minor and easiest to run part of a rally. But it was obvious that the control over who could or could not speak was the paramount concern of the organizers.

Finally Alan agreed on a price. But at the last minute a new production company, actually a Bronx based group not known for its political involvement was chosen over the Rock Against racism system. Alan says that the main difference between his company and the one chosen by the rally organizers is that he uses union contractors to do those parts of the job that must by law be done by union workers. The group chosen by the Cagan folks is strictly non-union and therefore can underbid a company that uses unionized workers.

In another conversation a veteran activist close to the group International A.N.S.W.E.R. informs us that there has been a lot of behind the scenes dissent at A.N.S.W.E.R. meetings over how the large sums of donated monies are being used. This witness claims that a recent $40,000 contribution to A.N.S.W.E.R. was diverted to the Worker World Party. She says many New York activists are upset that funds donated for work in New York are not finding their way to projects sponsored by grassroots people and that the money is going to a different group then the one that received the donation.

2003-02-24T22:28:00.000-05:00

Paul De Rienzo

History Of Hunts Point

Elissa Stein co-author of Flow, The Cultural Story of Menstruation

Dr. Omar Abdel RahmanInterview by Paul DeRienzoSeptember, 1994

Hear the blind cleric convicted by the testimony of Federal confidential informant Emad Salem of planning a terror attack against targets in NYC.

Part 1(1.9M mp3),

Part 2(3.4M mp3),

Part 3(0.7M mp3)

An Interview with Alfred McCoy author of

The Politics of Heroin:

CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade

by

November 9, 1991

Paul DeRienzo

Drug Treatment Center in Caracas, Venezuela

Carlos Escarrá on the War on Drugs

Carlos Escarrá, Venezuela National Assembly

Dominatrix Ilona Paris on Valentines Day

Ibogaine in Venezuela

Nadav Lev, Guitarist and Alma Moshonov, Soprano

The Case for Mumia Abu Jamal

Magnolia Martin filmmaker Facing the Habit

Gail Archer Concert Organist

Ethel Performs Live on Let Them Talk

Independent filmmaker Jill Freidberg on Oaxaca

Richard Hambleton on his art

A Celebration of Brad Will

21st Century Foxes

Prof Irwin Corey; The World's Foremost Authority

Avant-Garde-Arama at PS 122

Tony Brown and the Jena 6

Joseph Carranza on 9/11

Priya of Warcry Cinema with Paul DeRienzo

Committee to Welcome Ulises Ruiz on Aug. 18, 2007

Ibogaine in Slovenia

Medical Marijuana Activist Doug Greene

Dr. Sharon Stancliff of the Harm Reduction Coalition

Ed Rosenthal Wizard of Medical Marijuana

Dana Beal on the Global Marijuana March

Same Sex Dancing

Sally Clayton of CVTC interviewed

Urban Tantra with Barbara Carrellas

Q. Sakamaki, Award Winning Photojournalist

Joshua Fried: composer

The Michelangelo Code Science not Fiction

Solar1 Outreach Coordinator Chris Neidl

Joan Moossy, Peter Lance, Paul DeRienzo

nickflynn

Dana with Paul & Joanie

Kym Platt

ves

Peter Lance with Paul & Joanie

on the Let Them Talk set

Interview with Aton Edwards of the International Preparedness Network

Cynthia Copeland

Kate Bornstein on her new book Hello Cruel World

Mark Whitwell on the Heart of Yoga

Dr. Omar Abdel Rahman
Interview by Paul DeRienzo
September, 1994