All posts by alternativefreepress

Health/Environment

Fukushima Fallout? Emergency closure of fishery along entire West Coast – “Catastrophic crash… Population decimated”

Emergency closure of fishery along entire West Coast — Almost no babies surviving since 2011 — “Catastrophic crash… Population decimated… Crisis… Collapse so severe” — “Latest in series of alarming die-offs… mass reproductive failures… strange diseases” — Official: “A lot of weird things out there”

ENENews: April 16th, 2015

NY Times, Apr 15, 2015 (emphasis added): [Regulators] approved an emergency closure of commercial sardine fishing off Oregon, Washington and California… Earlier this week, the council shut down the next sardine season… [R]evised estimates of sardine populations… found the fish were declining in numbers faster than earlier believed… [Stocks are] much lower than estimated last year… The reasons are not well-understood.

Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting, April 13, 2015: Ben Enticknap, Oceana senior scientist (1:08:00 in) — “We’ve seen a significant change in recruitment [Recruitment: The number of new young fish that enter a population]. There’s been practically no recruitment in recent years, and this was not expected.”

Undercurrent News, Apr 14, 2015: [A]ccording to the report on the emergency action from the PFMC… “the total stock biomass of Pacific sardine is declining as a result of poor recruitment“… [A California Wetfish Producers Association official said] “little recruitment was observed in 2011-2014.”

Oregonian, Apr 13, 2015: Pacific coast sardines are facing a population collapse so severe [fishing] will be shut down… [The] downward spiral in spite of favorable water conditions has ocean-watchers worried there’s more to this collapse than cyclical population trends. “There are a lot of weird things happening out there, and we’re not quite sure why they aren’t responding the way they should,” said Kevin Hill, a NOAA Fisheries biologist… Fishery managers are adding it to a list of baffling circumstances off the West Coast… NOAA surveys indicate very few juvenile fish made it through their first year. “The population isn’t replacing itself,” Hill said.

SFist, Apr 14, 2015: [T]he population appears decimated… As the Council writes, “temperatures in the Southern California Bight have risen in the past two years, but we haven’t seen an increase in young sardines”… Sardines typically spawn in warmer waters, with cold water decreasing their numbers.

SF Chronicle, Apr 14, 2015: Sardine population collapses… [There’s] evidence stocks are going through the same kind of collapse [seen in the 1950s]… The sardine population along the West Coast has collapsed… Causes of crisis — A lack of spawning… was blamed for the decline… Severe downturn… things recently took a turn for the worse… because of a lack of spawning due to poor ocean conditions in 2014… The collapse this year is the latest in a series of alarming die-offs, sicknesses and population declines in the ocean ecosystem along the West Coast. Anchovies… have also declined [due to] a lack of zooplankton… Record numbers of starving sea lions… Brown pelicans, too, have suffered from mass reproductive failures and are turning up sick and dead… Strange diseases have also been proliferating in the sea…

Monterey Herald, Apr 13, 2015: For the first time in 30 years [sardine fishing] will be banned.

KPCC, Apr 1, 2015: The first time that sardine fishing has been banned since federal management of the fishery began… Many are worried a… catastrophic crash is happening.

Drugs, WTF

Mainstream Media Censors Critical Parts Of Obama Verbal Exchange With Rastafarian

Barack Obama stuttered for 20 seconds when a Rasta in Jamaica asked him about marijuana (VIDEO)

WTF News: April 12, 2015

The curious legal structure of state and federal laws in America has left many around the world with questions about why marijuana is treated with such a wide disparity in different regions.

A set of intriguing questions on the issue was posed to United States President Barack Obama during a recent trip to Jamaica by a geniune Rastafarian in the town hall crowd named Miguel Williams.

The exchange was originally reported as a funny outtake by Yahoo from an ABC News video but the full version of the video reveals the likely reason that Yahoo declined share the entire clip. The Yahoo article made a joke of a very serious set of questions and left out the most critical parts of the man’s logic, even disrespecting his stated nickname by not capitalizing the first letter.

US President Barack Obama had been on the verdant Caribbean island of Jamaica less than 24 hours — and had already visited Bob Marley’s former home — before he was asked by a dreadlocked Rastafarian about legalizing marijuana.

In a Kingston town hall event, participant Miguel Williams, sporting a “Rasta4life” wrist band, asked the US commander-in-chief if he would become ganja’s champion.

“Give thanks! Yes greetings Mr President,” said Williams, “life and blessings on you and your family.”

“My name is Miguel Williams but you can call I and I ‘[S]teppa’… That is quite sufficient, ya man.”

Unperturbed by giggles from the audience, Williams set forth his case for legalization and decriminalization of the hemp industry and marijuana.

The Rastafari faith includes the spiritual use of cannabis.

“How did I anticipate this question?” was Obama’s joking response. “Well,” he said adding a comic sigh.

“There is the issue of legalization of marijuana and then there is the issue of decriminalizing or dealing with the incarceration in some cases devastation of communities as a consequence of non-violent drug offenses,” Obama said.

“I am a very strong believer that the path that we have taken in the United States in the so-called ‘war on drugs’ has been so heavy in emphasizing incarceration that it has been counterproductive,” he said to some cheers.

But on the question of whether the United States should, in the words of reggae musician Peter Tosh “legalize it” Obama was more circumspect.

“I do not foresee, any time soon, Congress changing the law at a national basis.”

What was skipped by Yahoo is one of the principal questions at the heart of the drug war and an issue of personal liberty for billions around the world.

(Miguel “Steppa” Williams on the island nation’s economic issues relating to the International Monetary Fund)
“It really comes on the foreground of, um… we face economic issues with the [ (IMF)] et cetera, and we find realistically that the hemp industry, the marijuana industry provides a highly feasible alternative to rise up out of poverty, so I am wanting to overstand and to understand how US is envisioning, how would you see Jamaica on a decriminalization, legalization emphasis on the hemp industry… Your thoughts… (to crowd applause)

The virtually global prohibition on marijuana is not new and has failed to hide the knowledge that cannabis and hemp can be used for thousands of commercial products and industrial services, not to mention personal use at home.

The question stumped President Obama for about 20 seconds as he formulated his response. Obama started with a nervous explanation of the laws in Washington and Colorado and the distinction between decriminalization, which is focused on ending the prison problem leaving millions with drug convictions that prevent them from getting a job, versus the legalization aspect which enables the legal sale and taxation of the plant. He went on to bend his response towards a cynical message of “reducing demand” for cannabis, as in lowering the amount consumed by the populace, and then trended into talking about problems of addiction and a public health crisis.

Obama largely ignored the issue of economics and poverty, the critical part of the series of questions asked, giving it very little response time in comparison to the long-winded explanation of the simpler concepts. Well played Mr. President, can’t bash the IMF of course, it is counterproductive to the organization’s goals of “government reform” enforced by debt slavery. Obama simply stated that even if cannabis and hemp were legal, multinational corporations would soon dominate the market and freeze out “small and medium” competitors as he framed it.

(full article at WTF News)

Alternative Free Press -fair use-

Geopolitics/War, Privacy, Tyranny

Undercover Mounties pushed pressure-cooker bomb plan on accused terror couple, court hears

Ian Mulgrew
Postmedia News: April 9, 2015

The Surrey couple accused of plotting to bomb the B.C. Legislature was taken on a three-day holiday in the Okanagan by the RCMP so they could relax while working on their terrorist plan.

But surveillance recordings of the impoverished addicts relishing the police-provided corner hotel suite and personal bathrobes don’t buttress the prosecution case against the pair. They broadsided it.

Organized after RCMP undercover officers had spent more than four months in a futile attempt to have John Nuttall articulate a real plan, the police used the Kelowna getaway to persuade him to abandon a harebrained scheme involving rockets armed with explosives made from cow manure and use pressure-cooker bombs filled with C-4.

“The reason I like the pressure-cooker idea is because we know it works, and it’s doable,” said an undercover officer acting as an Islamic extremist in the sophisticated police sting.

Later during the meeting, the officer, who like his colleagues cannot be named or identified by court order, enthusiastically reiterated the message: “I like that idea (using pressure-cooker bombs) … if you had a bunch of those and you decided you actually wanted to use that … if you wanted to put C-4 in that, like holy shit, how much damage would that (cause)…”

If Nuttall didn’t get the message, it was repeated a third time by the cop: “I like the pressure cooker thing a lot. I think it is feasible. It’s exciting. You know you can do it.”

It was a banner day for the defence, which has called on the jury to scrutinize police conduct.

Nuttall, 40, and Amanda Korody, 31, have pleaded not guilty to four charges in connection to the supposed plan to detonate explosive devices in Victoria during July 1, 2013 Canada Day celebrations.

But their B.C. Supreme Court trial has heard that by mid-June Nuttall, who was on methadone, didn’t know what day of the week it was and often confused the federal and provincial governments, Parliament and the Legislature, Ottawa and Victoria.

His lawyer Marilyn Sandford suggested the holiday was organized because the Mounties were concerned their 240-officer investigation was off the rails because Nuttall was unbalanced and unfocused.

Much of what he said was culled from Rambo movies, conspiracy plots and extremist Islamic literature.

He was wearing mirrored-rock-star sunglasses and eye-makeup, known as kohl, as the RCMP officer pretending to be an extremist Arab businessman drove them to Kelowna on June 16.

Nuttall intended to launch rockets at the “Parliament Buildings” and if he had any left over he would launch them at Seattle — which he believed was 32 km from Vancouver rather its true distance, 230 km.

“It’s going to take a lot of planning … a year to plan this and build this,” he said.

“A year, holy, that’s…” the corporal said, staggered.

“Starting today, oh yeah,” Nuttall continued. “By this time next year I want to be doing this … maybe sooner, the sooner the better.”

“I thought you wanted to make the pressure cookers?” the officer asked.

“I did, but as a distraction,” Nuttall replied.

Nuttall had told the undercover officer earlier he wanted to arm the rockets with homemade explosive made in part from cow manure.

But on the way to the Okanagan, the officer told him: “Don’t worry about explosives. Know what we are going to use? We are going to use C-4.”

“C-4 for the test?”

“For the pressure cooker,” the officer said.

(read the full article at National Post)

RELATED:
Did FBI “Set Up” Capitol Bombing Suspect? They’ve Done It 49 Times Since 9/11!

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Alternative Free Press -fair use-

Geopolitics/War

Day One of Mike Duffy trial is bad news for Harper

Karl Nerenberg
rabble: April 8, 2015

On the first day of the Mike Duffy trial, both the prosecution and the defence made arguments that were damaging to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his inner circle.

Crown Prosecutor Mark Holmes said, “Sen. Duffy was probably ineligible to sit in the Senate as a representative of Prince Edward Island.”

Holmes added that this trial will not decide that thorny constitutional question.

But folks in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) must have collectively winced when they heard that assertion from a non-partisan public official.

The PMO had, it seems, made great efforts to establish that Duffy could be a Prince Edward Island resident for the purpose of representing that province in the Senate, but not for the Senate expense rules.

Duffy and his various lawyers make the opposite claim.

They argue that once Duffy was appointed Senator from Prince Edward Island, the former journalist automatically became a PEI resident in every sense of the word.

On Tuesday, Duffy’s criminal lawyer, Donald Bayne, intimated that the Prime Minister and his office, and the Conservative Senate leadership, saw things that way until Duffy’s PEI residency became a political embarrassment.

Then they turned on Duffy and decided to — in Bayne’s version — compel the PEI Senator to publicly “admit” he had made a mistake in claiming expenses for his Ottawa-area home.

In Duffy’s now famous words in the Senate chamber itself, the Prime Minister ordered him to: “Pay the money back!”

During his opening statement at the trial, Bayne even produced part of a police interview with Harper’s former Chief of Staff, Nigel Wright, in which the Bay Street multi-millionaire and one-time political wunderkind said: “We are basically forcing … somebody to repay money that they probably didn’t owe, and I wanted the prime minister to know that and be comfortable with that.”

Both sides make Harper look bad

So take your pick.

If the prosecution is right, the Prime Minister knowingly made an unconstitutional appointment to the Upper House.

If the defence is right, the Prime Minister’s Office and other senior Conservatives engaged in a scheme to whitewash a Senator’s politically embarrassing expense claims — claims which the Party leadership quite likely encouraged the Senator to make in the first place.

(read the full article at rabble)

Banksters, Corporate Welfare

Why Canada’s economy is headed off the cliff

Vikram Mansharamani
PBS : March 27, 2015

Canada is in the midst of a unprecedented housing boom that seems likely to bust. I was recently in Canada and noticed a schizophrenic oscillation between housing exuberance and oil-price despair. What did it mean for the Canadian economy’s outlook? Upon returning to the US, I did some research. What I found leads me to the conclusion that Canada is now among the most vulnerable large economies in the world. Here’s why.

First, household credit. The seemingly conservative Canadian population has been voraciously consuming debt at a breakneck pace. Total household debt (C$1.82 trillion) now exceeds GDP (C$1.6 trillion), approximately C$1.3 trillion of which was for residential mortgages (Click HERE). Further, household debt is now >160% of disposable income – meaning it would take ~20 months for a family to pay off its debt if interest rates were 0% and they spent 100% of their disposable income to do so. Uh oh! The consumer clearly seems stretched, so much so that McKinsey recently suggested Canadian financial instability driven by a rapid consumer slowdown was not unlikely (click HERE).

Second, housing prices. Home prices continue their basically uninterrupted rise that began in the mid-late 1990s. Unlike the United States real estate markets, which have corrected, Canadian prices continue to rise.   Detached single-family homes in Toronto now average more than C$1 million and Vancouver is now deemed the second least affordable city in the world (click HERE) – thanks to Chinese buyers (who are themselves facing a slower economy). Take a look at the following chart of US and Canadian housing prices in real terms since 1990.

Slide1

It’s interesting to note that the data in this chart is updated through the summer of 2014 (click HERE), and we know that prices have risen since then. In fact, the Bank of Canada even suggested in December that housing prices were overvalued by as much as 30% (click HERE). The IMF has also sounded warnings.

Third, crude oil. The impact of lower oil prices is rippling through the economy at breakneck speed. Since 2011, Alberta, the oil-rich home of the oil sands, was responsible for more than 50% of all jobs created in Canada. It has literally been the locomotive of job creation pulling Canada forward. It’s now in reverse. Employment growth has stopped in Alberta and is now shrinking. According to construction industry association BuildForce, Alberta is likely to see sustained job losses for the next three years at a minimum (click HERE). Further, because Alberta drew workers from all over the country, any provincial slowdown will have national ramifications on unemployment and consumer confidence (click HERE).

Finally, craziness. Yup, not sure how to better categorize what I’m about to say. Here’s the situation, as told to me by Seth Daniels of JKD Capital, one of the most astute Canada-watchers I know. Seth told me that there is now a booming private mortgage market in which ordinary citizens are borrowing from their home equity lines to lend money to desperate borrowers. Specifically, he noted “a homeowner acts as a subprime lender by drawing a HELOC at ~3% interest-only, and lends it to a subprime borrower at 8-12% for one year (interest only).” I honestly didn’t believe him when he first mentioned this to me, but I then confirmed it myself (click HERE).   In fact, if you’re a Canadian and interested, here’s a sales pitch from one vendor (click HERE). It’s only a matter of time before this shadow mortgage banking market slows, and the ramifications are likely to be enormous.

wile-e-coyote-falling-off-cliff

Net net, the ending of the Canadian credit binge, combined with an oil-driven economic slowdown, is likely to crush consumer sentiment.  In this Loonie tune, it seems our Crazy Canadian Coyote has run off the cliff, his feet are still moving, but he has yet to look down. He’s suspended in air, and it’s only a matter of time until gravity exerts its force.

Originally posted at:
http://www.mansharamani.com/navigating-uncertainty/crazy-canadian-credit-confronts-crude-eh/

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/why-canadas-economy-may-be-headed-off-the-cliff/

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Alternative Free Press -fair use-

Health/Environment

Mainstream media FINALLY covers ‘Unprecedented damage’ to ocean from Fukushima

Mainstream media have ignored the ongoing nuclear disaster in the pacific ocean for years, but reality is becoming harder for them to ignore.

CTV News: Radioactive waste specialist at Beyond Nuclear Kevin Kamps on how signs of radioactivity off B.C.’s coast should give us larger concern.

Alternative Free Press has been covering the Fukushima crisis ongoing since our inception. Here are just a few of the articles:

Fresh leak at Fukushima nuclear plant sees 70-fold radiation spike(February 2015)

Fukushima Didn’t Just Suffer 3 Meltdowns … It Also Suffered Melt-THROUGHS and Melt-OUTS(April 2014)

Fukushima boss admits radioactive water out of control(April 2014)

Fukushima Storage Crisis: Full Of Radioactive Water(March 2014)

Canadian Soil Tests Positive for Fukushima Radiation(March 2014)

Fukushima’s Radioactive Ocean Water Arrives At West Coast(February 2014)
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Alternative Free Press

Health/Environment

Scientist defends WHO report linking herbicide to cancer

Carey Gillam
Reuters: March 26, 2016

A World Health Organization group’s controversial finding that the world’s most popular herbicide “probably is carcinogenic to humans” was based on a thorough scientific review and is a key marker in ongoing evaluations of the product, the scientist who led the study said Thursday.

“There were several studies. There was sufficient evidence in animals, limited evidence in humans and strong supporting evidence showing DNA mutations … and damaged chromosomes,” Aaron Blair, a scientist emeritus at the National Cancer Institute, said in an interview.

Blair chaired the 17-member working group of the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which rocked the agricultural industry on March 20 by classifying glyphosate as “probably” cancer-causing.

[…] Monsanto spokesman William Brennan said. “Monsanto would like to understand how this conclusion could be reached and how the IARC process differs from other scientific reviews.”

But Blair said Thursday the classification is appropriate based on current science. There have been hundreds of studies on glyphosate, he said, with concerns about the chemical growing over time. The IARC group gave particular consideration to two major studies out of Sweden, one out of Canada and at least three in the United States, he said.

He stressed that the group did not classify glyphosate as definitely causing cancer.

“We looked at, ‘Is there evidence that glyphosate causes cancer?’ and the answer is ‘probably.’ That is different than yes,” said Blair.

He said the scientific understanding of glyphosate impacts is still evolving.

“It is different than smoking and lung cancer. We don’t say smoking probably causes cancer. We say it does cause cancer. At one point we weren’t sure, but now we are.”

Blair said the criticism of his group’s conclusion was not surprising given the widespread use of glyphosate.

“These sorts of things are going to go on as evidence is evaluated and scrutinized. That is what science is in democracy.”

(Read the full article at Reuters)

RELATED:
Study Confirms Popular Herbicide Is Brain-Damaging Neurotoxin
Study Shows Pesticides More Toxic to Human Cells Than Declared

Banksters, Corporate Welfare, Geopolitics/War, Tyranny

Quebec students are fighting for you

Jon Parsons
theindependent.ca : March 27, 2015

It seems like only yesterday the 2012 Quebec student movement rocked the streets of Montreal, and now they’re at it again.

The basis for the current strike is the same as its predecessor: opposition to austerity and neoliberalism. Over the last few years student groups in Quebec have consistently organized massive demonstrations in an impressive show of strength and commitment, and so it seems correct to understand the present student strike more as an intensification of a protracted struggle.

At the same time, there has been a proliferation of militant student protest throughout the global West. Occupations and demonstrations are continuing on a number of campuses, such as the London School of Economics, and University of Amsterdam, and University of Arts London, and University of Melbourne, to name a few. The grievances are strikingly similar to those expressed in Quebec – austerity, tuition fees, neoliberalism.

Outside the global West, significant and ongoing student movements are taking a stand in Honduras, Mexico, Hong Kong, and Myanmar, to name a few.

There has arguably not been such widespread student unrest since the famous student-led protests of 1968, and, at least in the West, Quebec students have been on the frontlines of the fight, enduring police brutality, subversion, and constant obfuscation in the mainstream press.

The student fight is your fight, too

The province of Newfoundland and Labrador has until recently weathered the effects of the 2008 global financial crisis, but with a significant deficit and growing debt, the provincial government has indicated that austerity measures will come into force in short order. Many things are “on the table,” including increased tuition at Memorial University, among other measures common to austerity economics.

At the same time, recent studies have shown that Newfoundland and Labrador is one of the least politically engaged provinces in Canada, in terms of both formal and informal politics. NL has one of the lowest overall voter turnouts (around 53 per cent) as well as the lowest youth voter turnout of any province (around 29 per cent).

The reasons for this are many and varied, and it is not my intention to assign blame. Nonetheless, there is an overwhelming sense of complacency, perhaps apathy, with regard to politics in the province, and especially so for youth.

In light of this, it is nothing of an exaggeration to say that Quebec students are fighting for us all, as they are the only significant force in the country opposing austerity and neoliberalism, and the only ones who seem to understand the importance of popular protest. Quebec students are showing us all how it’s done, both in terms of tenacity and in terms of organization, as Ethan Cox explains in Ricochet.

(read the full article at theindependent.ca)

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Alternative Free Press -fair use-

Drugs

Former Drug Czar John Walters Spews Nonsense On Twitter; Cannabis Doesn’t Lower IQ

John Walters apparently likes Twitter:

Except, he needs to do more reading…

Then, a follow-up study published 6 months later in the same journal found that the Duke paper failed to account for a number of confounding factors: “Although it would be too strong to say that the results have been discredited, the methodology is flawed and the causal inference drawn from the results premature,” it concluded.

Now, a new study out from the University College of London provides even stronger evidence that the Duke findings were flawed. The study draws on a considerably larger sample of adolescents than the Duke research – 2,612 children born in the Bristol area of the U.K. in 1991 and 1992. Researchers examined children’s IQ scores at age 8 and again at age 15, and found “no relationship between cannabis use and lower IQ at age 15,” when confounding factors – alcohol use, cigarette use, maternal education, and others – were taken into account. Even heavy marijuana use wasn’t associated with IQ.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/

This conversation was a byproduct of Walter’s praise for Chris Christie’s comments about tax from legal Cannabis representing “blood money.” After being challenged by Nick Gillespie at Reason questioning why taxing alcohol is not “blood money”, he apparently blocked him.

Drugs

Hookers & blow: Colombian drug cartels funded DEA sex parties with prostitutes

Drug Enforcement Agency officials caroused with prostitutes in Colombia at “sex parties” funded by drug cartels. Although the behavior resulted in “possible significant security risks,” it wasn’t reported up the chain of command, a new DoJ report says.

When looking into cases of sexual misconduct and sexual harassment allegations within the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the Department of Justice’s (DoJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that up to 10 DEA agents – including an assistant regional director (ARD) – “solicited prostitutes and engaged in other serious misconduct while in the country,” but that those incidents were not reported to the DEA’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR).

The report did not name the country, but Politico reported that the activities took place in Colombia.

Colombian sex parties

The OIG investigators interviewed a former host-country police officer who told them he had “arranged ‘sex parties’ with prostitutes funded by the local drug cartels for these DEA agents at their government-leased quarters, over a period of several years” from 2005 to 2008. Another foreign officer said that he had provided protection for the DEA agents’ weapons and property during the parties and that “in addition to soliciting prostitutes, three DEA [supervisory agents] in particular were provided money, expensive gifts, and weapons from drug cartel members.”

“Although some of the DEA agents participating in these parties denied it, the information in the case file suggested they should have known the prostitutes in attendance were paid with cartel funds,” the OIG report states.

Two of the DEA agents who were subjects of the investigation told the OIG that one of the supervisory agents “frequented a prostitution establishment while in their overseas assignment and often took agents serving on temporary duty to this establishment and facilitated sexual encounters there.”

A DEA inspector who worked with the investigators told them that “prostitution is considered a part of the local culture and is tolerated in certain areas called ‘tolerance zones,’” and that “it is common for prostitutes to be present at business meetings involving cartel members and foreign officers,” the report states.

The inspector added that the acceptability of this type of behavior affects the way in which federal law enforcement employees conduct themselves in Columbia, noting that agents needed better training that explicitly prohibits this type of conduct prior to arriving in the country.

The OPR did not report the sex parties or employment of prostitutes to the DEA Office of Security Programs to identify security risks to the DEA and to assess the agents’ continued eligibility for security clearances. This was despite the fact that the DEA inspector had explained to OPR management that most of the “sex parties” occurred in government-leased quarters where agents’ laptops, BlackBerry devices, and other government-issued equipment were present, which created potential security risks for the DEA and for the agents who participated in the parties, potentially exposing them to extortion, blackmail, or coercion, she told OIG.

On top of security risks to the US, the agents’ activities also risked prosecutions against the drug cartels in Colombia.

“We found that some of the DEA Special Agents alleged to have solicited prostitutes were also involved in the investigations of the two former host country police officers who made these allegations,” the OIG investigators wrote. “If these Special Agents had served as government witnesses at the trials of these defendants, their alleged misconduct would have had to be disclosed to defense attorneys and would likely have significantly impaired their ability to testify at trial.”

In the end, seven of the 10 agents admitted attending parties with prostitutes while they were stationed. The DEA, which first learned of the parties in 2010, imposed penalties ranging from a two-day suspension to a 10-day suspension. One agent was cleared of all wrongdoing.

But the linking of DEA agents to prostitutes in foreign countries didn’t end there.

Partying with prostitutes in Thailand

“The Acting Assistant Regional Director who supervised the two special agents in [Colombia] was also alleged to have solicited prostitutes” in Thailand, the report states. “In that case, the AARD allegedly engaged in sexual relations with prostitutes at a farewell party in the AARD’s honor. There were also allegations operational funds were used to pay for the party and the prostitutes who participated.”

In Thailand, DEA agents patronized prostitutes “on a regular basis,” held several loud parties with prostitutes that occurred at an agent’s government-leased quarters, and frequented a brothel. One of the agents was accused of assaulting a prostitute following a payment dispute. The DEA management in the country did not report the accusations up their chain of command or to OPR, “treating these allegations as local management issues,” the report found.

(read the full article at RT)

Read the report at http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/2015/e1504.pdf