Showing posts with label at. Show all posts
Showing posts with label at. Show all posts
Monday, November 21, 2016
55 Million in Cocaine Was Just Discovered at a Coca Cola Plant
(ANTIMEDIA) Hundreds of kilos of cocaine were found in a Coca-Cola plant in France last Friday, making the seizure of the drug one of the largest ever on French soil.
French officials say the cocaine was discovered in backpacks among a shipment of orange juice concentrate that originated in Costa Rica. The 370 kg of literal coke uncovered at the factory is reported to have a street value of €50 million Euros ($55m) and was referred to as a “very bad surprise” by a local prosecutor.
Authorities are currently unaware of who was behind the cocaine, but an investigation is now underway in Signes, a village in the south of France. Employees of the plant have already been ruled out as suspects.
“The first elements of the investigation have shown that employees are in no way involved,” according to Jean-Denis Malgras, the regional president of Coca-Cola.
Coca-Cola was originally called Pemberton’s French Wine Coca and contained a mixture of Peruvian coca leaves, kola nut, damiana, and cocaethylene (cocaine mixed with alcohol). Druggist John Stith Pemberton invented his French Wine Coca in Atlanta, Georgia, and it became very popular across the southeastern United States.
The Coca-Cola recipe was a closely guarded secret, but in 1891, an Atlanta newspaper reported what many had already suspected: Coca-Cola contained cocaine. Coke was forced to change its marketing strategy and began referring to their product as “refreshing,” rather than promoting any medicinal benefits. Coca-Cola began taking cocaine out of its soft drink in 1903 because of racially-promoted fears among white society.
According to the New York Times:
“Anyone with a nickel, black or white, could now drink the cocaine-infused beverage. Middle-class whites worried that soft drinks were contributing to what they saw as exploding cocaine use among African-Americans. Southern newspapers reported that ‘negro cocaine fiends’ were raping white women, the police powerless to stop them.”
Cocaine was eventually made illegal in the United States in 1914, but it wasn’t until 1929 that Coca-Cola perfected its formula. Before that year, the psychoactive components of the coca leaf could still be found in the soda in small amounts.
The Coca-Cola soft drink became completely cocaine-free in 1929, but coca leaf extract is still used to this day as an active ingredient in the internationally popular soda. The ecgonine alkaloid, which gives cocaine its accelerating effect on the brain, is extracted from the coca leaf before processing.
The Stepan Corporation, a New Jersey-based chemical processing company, performs the extraction on the coca leaves for Coca-Cola. Stepan has an arrangement with the DEA and is the only group allowed to import the coca leaf into the United States. One hundred and seventy-five thousand kilograms of coca leaves are imported into the United States each year by Stepan. That is a street value equivalent to roughly $21 billion of cocaine,according to the United Nations.
So what happens to the actual cocaine processed by Stepan? It is hauled away from the facility in armored trucks and then sold to Mallinckrodt, a pharmaceutical company whose United States headquarters are based in St. Louis, Missouri.
The coca leaf extract is referred to as Merchandise No. 5.
Thursday, November 3, 2016
Only 10 Countries in the Entire World Are Not Currently at War
United States — A troubling report by the Institute for Economics and Peace found a mere ten nations on the planet are not at war and completely free from conflict. According to the Global Peace Index 2016, only Botswana, Chile, Costa Rica, Japan, Mauritius, Panama, Qatar, Switzerland, Uruguay and Vietnam are free from conflict. Iceland tops the list of most peaceful countries in the world, followed by Denmark, Austria, New Zealand, Portugal, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Canada, Japan, and Slovenia — while the United States ranked far lower, at 103. Palestine, placed in the index of 163 nations for the first time this year, ranked 148th.
War-torn Syria placed at the bottom of the list, lower than only South Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Central African Republic, Ukraine, Sudan, and Libya.
“The index gauges global peace using three broad themes: the level of safety and security in society; the extent of domestic or international conflict; and the degree of militarisation,” the report states.
Though 81 countries improved their level of peace according to those criteria, those gains were muddied by deteriorating peace in 79 other nations. In the last decade, “the average country score deteriorated by 2.44 per cent with 77 countries improving while 85 countries deteriorated, highlighting the global complexities of peace and its uneven distribution.”
While Central and South America continue to earn the worst marks for societal safety and security, the U.S. represents one of the only exceptions due to its “excessive incarceration rate.”
Overall, Europe held its spot as the most generally peaceful region, while the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) remains consistently the most tumultuous on the planet.
“The historic 10-year deterioration in peace has largely been driven by the intensifying conflicts in the MENA region,” the report notes. “Terrorism is also at an all-time high, battle deaths from conflict are at a 25-year high, and the number of refugees and displaced people are at a level not seen in 60 years.
“Notably, the sources for these three dynamics are intertwined and driven by a small number of countries, demonstrating the global repercussions of breakdowns in peacefulness.”
According to the report, the United States spends an outrageously high percentage of the globe’s military expenditures — 38 percent — while the next largest military spender, China, accounted for considerably less, 10 percent of the global share. In the score of militarization, the least peaceful countries include Israel, Russia, North Korea, Syria, and the U.S.
Of particular note in this year’s tenth anniversary index — the most comprehensive to date — globalization of conflict, in repercussions such as the growing refugee crisis, is driving a growing disparity between the least and most peaceful nations.
In fact, the “number of refugees and displaced persons increased dramatically over the decade, doubling from 2007 to 2015, to approximately 60 million people. There are nine countries with more than 10 per cent of their population classified as refugees or displaced persons with Somalia and South Sudan having more than 20 per cent of their population displaced and Syria with over 60 per cent displaced.”
While actual terrorist activity most heavily impacts Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, its ripples spread worldwide.
“Many countries are at record high levels of peacefulness, while the bottom 20 countries have progressively become much less peaceful, creating increased levels of inequality in global peace,” according to the report.
As the world descends into a far less peaceful state overall, the staggering cost of militarism and violence becomes painfully clear — 13.3 percent of the globe’s total economic activity, $13.6 trillion in purchasing power parity, concerned violent conflict. That’s the equivalent of “$1,876 for every person in the world.”
Working toward peace will require the international community to promote peaceful, just, and inclusive societies, the IEP urged in conclusion, though such goals aren’t expected to be reached quickly or easily.Wednesday, November 2, 2016
Im back at the shop!
Im back from a calm and quiet vacation at my cabin,
i have been sitting on my porch for 4 weeks listening to birds, squirrels,hedgehogs
and all other kinds of animals living there lives.
already miss it!
Anyway, im back to work and i still got some openings in september,
i have not released october and november yet.
/Tomas.
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