Actually they are not targeting big tech companies, EU made legislation to protect its citizens from being exploited in various ways, the big tech companies are targeting themselves by employing practices which aim to exploit users (including EU citizens) in various ways.
First of all, problem with fentanyl is that it's ~100x more potent than morphine, or ~20x times more potent than heroin. While many people read this as "it's got 100x times stronger high", it doesn't mean that (actually it has shorter acting high, more adverse side effects and slightly less enjoyable high compared to heroin). It's just means you need 20x times lower quantity for comparable effect. Given that into account, you need 20x lower quantity to smuggle. It's physically impossible for ANY agency to control millions and millions of postal shipments containing small amounts of contraband. It's one thing to push 100kg containers of heroin, and whole another game ordering 50 grams from Dark web. It's incontrollable in that way.
Second, what you're basically asking for is MORE WAR ON DRUGS. Addiction is public and mental health problem, and should be approached as such. DEA is the last agency you should plead for help in times of crisis such as this opioid one. Harm reduction programs are proven as best way to tackle such problems, proven time and time again around the world.
Third, calling fentanyl "Chinese fentanyl" is reminiscent of recent declarations of "Chinese virus". It's fentanyl. It doesn't have nationality.
I suspect that as a fully synthetic opiod, fentanyl is less likely to have much in the way of higher vapour pressure impurities vs. an acetylated purified plant extract like heroin. My guess is that on top of taking up 20x less space, it's more than 20x harder for dogs to smell due to having fewer low molecular weight impurities that outgas/evaporate.
And yeah, I do think that not preventing its import is doing a tremendous amount of harm. If you want to call this "war on drugs", call it what you wish, but I think everyone would be better off if the arrows in that PDF were eliminated.
On one hand you have "penned an opinion piece in The Washington Post" and on the other you have pouring of tens / hundreds of millions of dollars into climate change denial (and setting up network of fellow billionaires who poured their money into same causes).
Mr. Koch just doesn't want people to desecrate his family grave when he finally bites the dust. I don't buy it for a second that he has truly changed. He will die rich while the rest of us try to clean up the mess he and his brother created.
Koch has spent a fortune on destabilizing public infrastructure in midwest cities. If he "believed in people", he could show it by not tearing down public transit systems which disenfranchises poorer people.
Id say it is. It's the local government chosen by the people deciding the infrastructure, rather than big car and oil companies controlled by a small group of oligarchs
Maybe it's a more complex matter? How about if people at the bottom were not continuously smacked by rich libertarian assholes and had a chance of having freedom of leisure, education, movement & all that good stuff that can make a citizen, who then is able to participate in decision making progress instead of being treated as animals for being poor? Feels bottom-up to me.
He spent hubdreds of millions of dollar doing the exact opposite. You know what they say, put your money where your mouth is. He's lying in plain sight.
As the article points out the Koch's themselves, running a 100+ billion dollar empire, were quite happy buying themselves into the highest echelons of power, spreading their beliefs from the top down
Mr. Koch and his late brother David seeded the political landscape with conservative and libertarian ideas, then built an infrastructure to nurture them. Koch-aligned ventures fund more than 1,000 faculty members at more than 200 universities, helped bankroll think tanks such as the Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute, and supported the American Legislative Exchange Council (a nonpartisan organization of similarly minded state legislators) to write bills that were introduced and championed by Republican state lawmakers across the country.
You know what would really decentralise the country and create a bottom-up utopia? If no single entity had the resources the Kochs has. But in the world of the Kochs privately funded authoritarianism does not count.
Bosnia basicaly doesn't have ports (besides Neum, which is not realy practical), so either Albania / Montenegro / Croatia. Most likely Albania - Kosovo - Serbia route, since it's already established heroin smuggling route.
Most likely Montenegro -> Serbia. Much easier, then going through two other countries, and Montenegro has issues (both election, and previous corruption problems).
Last time I passed through Montenegro I got stoped by two cops and they straight out asked me money (they wanted 20 euros for each), so they didn't suspend my license. (and yes, they were slavic/montenegrins and not Albanians)
I was going 64 khm/h on a 60km/h zone. They are corrupt as hell.
> Most likely Albania - Kosovo - Serbia route, since it's already established heroin smuggling route.
I assume this would require the smuggler to either be a Serbian or Kosovo citizen, or make a handover to a local person in Kosovo? A citizen of a third country cannot enter Serbia after entering Kosovo from a third country. The Serbian authorities will deny you entry and tell you to go back and enter into Serbia from one of the other countries bordering it.
Regarding 4): Those croatian guys are just mules basicaly, 3 guys from seaside town proficient in boat sailing. Two younger guys in mid 20's and main guy who fell into some financial business / mortgage problems. They are not even part of any criminal organization, they were just hired because of their sailing skills.
Fun fact of the day: lobbying is legal and common across all of Europe. It's why the EU has such intense agriculture protectionism, the farmers act as an interest group that constantly lobbies on their own behalf. It's why Germany's domestic auto market has been specifically set up for decades to protect the domestic players against foreign competition. Go into Western Europe and try threatening Airbus, good luck, they'll lobby you right out of the EU unless you have a superpower backing you.
Lobbying does not mean corruption is legalized in the US.
In my observation, people that claim lobbying is legalized corruption in the US, don't know anything about the laws that surround lobbying, the limits, how it works, and how it doesn't work. It's primarily a popular Reddit-knowledge (aka low quality, easy to throw around, often wrong or incomplete) bumper sticker to post online. People routinely go to jail for violating the strict laws surrounding lobbying. You can't buy politicans and you can't buy legislation; trying that is a quick trip to prison.
Lobbying in the US is more lax than in most of Western Europe, that much is true. Althought the special interests in Europe are every bit as potent as those in the US. As a politician, just try going after farm subsidies in the EU, see what happens to you.
As is usually the case when it comes to fake Reddit-knowledge, the reality of lobbying in the US is far more nuanced and complicated. I understand people love their bumper stickers though, for artificial virtue signaling purposes ("Free Tibet").
You can hire a registered lobbyist and they can argue a position that you favor. That's most of what you can do. And nearly everything to do with lobbying in the US is public information due to hefty disclosure requirements.
Well, lobbying is not an instance of retail corruption, where everyone is on sale for some price. However, it (lobbying) is a form of network corruption--where individual acts don't appear corrupt. At a macro level, they appear corrupt. Anyway, network corruption can't be prosecuted.
Now that bribery is explicitly legal in the US, and lobbyists deliver the bribes, lobbying has become more or less synonymous with bribery, because who would pay any attention to a lobbyist without a bribe in hand?
I'm not disagreeing with you, but regarding money laundering, it's not like drug trafficking and heists are only illegal streams of money which needs to be cleaned. Trafficking, prostitution, illegal gambling, depositing of toxic waste, bribe money, cyber crime, financial malversations etc.
I would expect that proceeds from drugs constitute the vast majority of value that is laundered today, though. It would be interesting to consider the impact, for sure.
