East and Gulf Coast port employers on Thursday raised the stakes in contract negotiations with the International Longshoremen’s Association, asking the National Labor Relations Board to order the union back to bargaining.
“Due to the ILA’s repeated refusal to come to the table and bargain on a new Master Contract, USMX filed an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) with the National Labor Relations Board and requested immediate injunctive relief — requiring the union to resume bargaining — so that we can negotiate a deal,” USMX said in a release.
Talks between employers and the ILA on a new six-year master contract covering 25,000 union employees in container and ro-ro services at three dozen East and Gulf Coast ports broke off in June over wages, benefits and the introduction of technology that would automate some dockside services.
The ILA has called for a strike on both coasts when the current contract expires at midnight on Tuesday.
The NLRB filing would not affect the strike deadline.
“USMX has been clear that we value the work of the ILA and have great respect for its members. We have a shared history of working together and are committed to bargaining.”
In an email to media a union spokesman called the filing a “publicity stunt”.
While the USMX was completing its filing early Thursday, it’s unclear what kind of timeline would be established by the NLRB. According to the board’s website, an initial investigation would determine whether a complaint should be issued against the ILA, which would then have 10 days to respond at a formal hearing. At the same time, the NLRB would have to decide whether to seek an injunction from a district court in the form of a temporary restraining order, which would theoretically send the union back to negotiations.
The NLRB may also decide not to issue a complaint, or the sides could come to a settlement.
Eventually, the NLRB could dismiss the complaint, order the union back to negotiations or ask an administrative law judge to further review the case. Any decision can be reviewed by a federal court of appeals; a decision there could be appealed to the Supreme Court.
It is also unclear what would happen if the union defies an injunction, though fines would likely be issued.
The U.S. State Department announced on Thursday a reward of up to $20 million for information leading to the arrest of an Iranian man charged with plotting to assassinate John Bolton, a former national security adviser to President Donald Trump.
Shahram Poursafi, 45, from Tehran, is believed to be working on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF)—a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization—to arrange a murder-for-hire scheme against Bolton, according to a State Department statement.
A criminal complaint by the Justice Department in August 2022 said the alleged plot was likely in retaliation for the death of IRGC-QF commander Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in January 2020.
Poursafi allegedly tried to hire “criminal elements” within the United States to kill Bolton in Washington or Maryland between October 2021 to April 2022 in exchange for $300,000, the department stated.
He allegedly provided material support and resources to facilitate the attempted murder and told the potential assassin that there would be a “second assassination job” for him after Bolton’s murder was completed.
The potential assassin later became a confidential source for U.S. investigators, the department said.
Poursafi allegedly asked a U.S. resident identified only as “Individual A” to take photographs of Bolton, claiming that the photos were needed for a book he was writing, according to the criminal complaint. The U.S. resident then introduced Poursafi to a covert government informant who could take the photographs for a price.
Investigators said Poursafi contacted the informant on an encrypted messaging application in November 2021 and offered the person $250,000 to hire someone to “eliminate” Bolton, an amount that would later be negotiated up to $300,000.
Poursafi later directed the informant to open a cryptocurrency account to facilitate the payment. In subsequent communications, he allegedly told the informant it did not matter how the killing was carried out, but that his group would require a video as proof that the deed was done.
When the informant asked about the potential repercussions of the killing being attributed to Iran, Poursafi allegedly told the informant not to worry and that his group would take care of it.
Poursafi, also known as Mehdi Rezayi, was designated a “specially designated global terrorist” by the U.S. government for his alleged involvement in the plot, according to the State Department.
The Epoch Times has reached out to Bolton for comment.
Trump Briefed on Iranian Threats
The State Department announcement came just two days after Trump’s campaign said the Republican presidential candidate had been briefed by U.S. intelligence about “real and specific” Iranian threats to his life.
In a Sept. 24 statement, the Trump campaign stated that U.S. intelligence officials have identified that “these continued and coordinated attacks have heightened in the past few months.”
His campaign added that law enforcement officials across all agencies are working to ensure Trump’s safety and to keep the election “free from interference.”
An official from Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied on Thursday allegations that Tehran was involved in plots to assassinate the Republican presidential candidate.
Trump was the target of an assassination attempt during his Pennsylvania rally in July when he was shot in the ear. Authorities fatally shot the gunman, identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Pennsylvania.
A second apparent assassination attempt occurred at Trump’s golf club in Florida on Sept. 15. Police arrested Ryan Wesley Routh, a 58-year-old man from Hawaii, in connection with the incident.
‘Bombed To Dust’: A Look At Beirut’s Night Of Hell
Lebanon and the whole Arab world is in shock after Hezbollah on Saturday confirmed the death of Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah.
But common Lebanese civilians are reeling after mass destruction was unleashed by Israeli warplanes overnight. The attacks continued on Beirut’s southern suburbs, leaving entire buildings turned to dust.
This comes at the end of a week which already witnessed at least 700 killed, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. It is unclear how many casualties are militants vs. civilians – but very clearly the civilian casualty toll has been high.
Israel’s military is vowing to continue its military operation in the skies over Lebanon, and has frequently asserted that Hezbollah hides missiles, drones, and UAVs within and underneath residences.
There were some sporadic missile waves fired from south Lebanon into Israel overnight, but with Nasrallah and the top leadership now confirmed dead, it is unclear what Hezbollah’s organizational capabilities will be at this point.
Israel is still taking no chances, having canceled schools across the north, and banned large public gatherings.
“Israel’s military updated guidelines for residents on Saturday that prohibit large gatherings, demonstrations, and sports events in central Israel due to concerns of a counterattack after Israel killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah,” AP reports.
For eight hours straight and counting, Israel has been carpet-bombing densely populated neighbourhoods of Beirut and greater Lebanon. A new bomb dropped, a new tragedy—every 5 minutes. Videos out of Tel Aviv show Israelis dancing at celebration parties.
Joseph Bahout, the Beirut-based director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, has described to Al Jazeera the situation on the ground in Lebanon as of Saturday morning…
“I’m talking to you and there’s a drone flying over the southern suburb where I live some 500-600metres from. Bombings have not stopped all night long – you can see pictures of people on the streets, on the roads, sleeping in open-air spaces, really left alone without any care and sometimes without any food to eat.”
He continued, “So Lebanon today is a complete mess, it’s a country in chaos and I think that the worst is to come regardless of the political and military results of the strike on Hassan Nasrallah or not.”
Hezbollah is meanwhile vowing to continue fighting Israel, and Israel is in turn warning that its bombing campaign will not end until the Iran-backed group’s military capabilities are fully degraded. More airstrikes on Beirut have been observed on Dahiyeh neighborhood later in the day Saturday.
Joe Rogan has warned that if Kamala Harris gets into office the First Amendment will be at risk and online censorship will only get much worse.
Rogan pointed out that X and Rumble were the only remaining major platforms where true free speech was somewhat protected.
Asked by his guest, former Navy Seal Shawn Ryan, whether he’d faced any significant censorship on audio only streams, Rogan said that he hadn’t, despite Spotify removing 70 of his shows in 2022.
“Audio is like, they’re leaving that alone for now, I think it’s probably because it’s not as easily shared,” said Rogan, prompting Ryan to predict, “That’s what’s coming next.”
NEW: @joerogan warns that the First Amendment is in danger if Kamala Harris and Tim Walz win.
“I don’t think it [censorship] turns around if Kamala Harris gets into office. I think they clamp down more.”
“I don’t think it turns around if Kamala Harris gets into office, I think they clamp down more, I think the same stuff they tried to do with Twitter they’ll try to do with other things, they’ve already openly discussed it,” said Rogan.
In 2019, Kamala Harris demanded that Twitter shut down Donald Trump’s account, two years before the president was suspended following the January 6 riot.
“We’re talking about a private corporation, Twitter, that has terms of use, and as far as I’m concerned and I think most people would say, including members of Congress who he has threatened, that he has lost his privileges and it should be taken down,” Harris told Jake Tapper at the time.
Rogan also made reference to Harris’ running mate Tim Walz asserting that certain kinds of speech are not protected under the First Amendment.
Back in August, Walz claimed that there was, “No guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy.”
“Tim Walz said that the First Amendment doesn’t apply to misinformation or hate speech, okay, well, it certainly does,” responded Rogan.
The podcast host said the entire point of the First Amendment was to allow unrestricted speech and then allow it to be corrected by someone else if it’s wrong.
Commenting on so-called “misinformation,” Rogan pointed out that, “So much of it turns out to be true, how about masks don’t work? You would get screamed at for ‘masks don’t work’ – well guess what? They don’t fucking work. They don’t work.”
Rogan highlighted how Dr. Anthony Fauci gave an interview at the start of the COVID pandemic telling Americans that masks were useless.
“There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask,” Fauci said in remarks made on March 8, 2020.
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Iran’s Supreme Leader Transferred To Secure Location As Region Braces For What’s Next
Events are moving fast in the Middle East region following the massive Israeli airstrikes which killed Hezbollah’s longtime leader, Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah belatedly confirmed his death on Saturday.
Overnight, Iran held an emergency meeting of its national security council, at the home of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But immediately after the meeting, which was likely disclosing to Iran’s leadership and miliary the death of Nasrallah, the Ayatollah was reportedly transferred to a secret and secure location.
Khamenei has been “transferred to a secure location inside the country with heightened security measures in place,” regional security officials told Reuters.
“The sources said Iran was in constant contact with Lebanon’s Hezbollah and other regional proxy groups to determine the next step after Israel announced that it had killed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in a strike on south Beirut on Friday,” the report added.
Given Israel’s surprise and bold decapitation strike against Hezbollah, Iran likely fears that Israel could go after the Islamic Republic’s top leadership in Tehran next. Netanyahu had warned this week, “There is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach.”
There are unconfirmed reports that one or more Iranian IRGC offers were killed in the strike that took out Nasrallah.
So far Iran has been mute in terms of a military response. Will it launch ballistic missiles on Israel? Will it mount attacks on other Israeli assets in the region or across the globe?
Did Khamenei go to a secure location in order to oversee a new war?
All Israeli embassies and consulates globally are on high alert at this sensitive moment. Iran has now found its number one proxy in the region neutered, wounded, and on the defensive. It could take a while for Hezbollah to regroup.
Telling: Reuters reports #Iran’s regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has been transferred to a secure location, with heightened security measures in place after the strike on Nasrallah, sources said on Saturday. The fear and paranoia is setting in after Netanyahu warned… pic.twitter.com/cjxX5N3WxI
Israel’s overwhelming aerial attacks on Lebanon have killed at least 700 people since Monday, Lebanon’s Health Ministry has announced Saturday.
France and other Western nations are currently warning of the ‘destabilizing’ fallout from the Nasrallah assassination. Currently the situation is highly unpredictable and if Iran decides to retaliate then runaway escalation into major regional war is the likely next step.
Hezbollah Confirms Its Leader, Hassan Nasrallah, Killed By Israeli Strike
On Saturday Hezbollah has finally issued confirmation via its Al-Manar television channel that Hassan Nasrallah, the Lebanese Shia group’s leader for 32 years, has been killed in Friday’s major Israeli airstrikes on the Dahieh suburb of Beirut.
The group said in the statement of the slain Secretary-General, “His eminence, the master of resistance, the righteous servant, has passed away to be with his lord who is pleased with him as a great martyr.”
“The leadership of Hezbollah pledges … to continue its jihad in confronting the enemy [Israel], supporting Gaza and Palestine, and defending Lebanon and its steadfast and honorable people,” it added.
There was nothing further detailed as to precisely how the group would respond, only that it plans to continue its fight against Israel. No doubt it could take some time before it regroups, as likely many more of its commanders were taken out in the large-scale strikes which utterly destroyed multiple large buildings Friday.
Within hours prior to Hezbollah finally confirming and announcing the monumental development which will send shockwaves through the Arab world, the Israel Defense Forces issued a statement proclaiming: “Hassan Nasrallah will no longer be able to terrorize the world.”
PM Netanyahu had ordered or monitored the strike from New York, after just stepping away from a speech before the United Nations General Assembly:
Overnight it was clear something major was brewing given there was an emergency meeting in Tehran of top national security officials chaired by the Ayatollah in the wake of the Dahieh bombings. Within the last hours Reuters has reported that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been “transferred to a secure location inside the country with heightened security measures in place,” according to Iranian security officials.
American-supplied heavy bombs were likely used in the strikes that killed Nasrallah:
Israel media says about 85 so-called “bunker-buster” bombs were used. Also known as “ground penetration munition”, these missiles burrow deep into the ground before they detonate.
They have the power to destroy underground facilities and reinforced concrete buildings. The bombs each weigh between 2,000 and 4,000 pounds.
Nasrallah has loomed large in the last decades of Middle East conflict and politics, having founded Hezbollah in 1982 and spending his life transforming it into a fierce guerrilla warfare group which has became Israel’s number one regional foe (alongside Hamas).
Below is the full Hamas statement as translated and published in Al Jazeera:
“We extend our sincere condolences, sympathy and solidarity to the brotherly Lebanese people and brothers in Hezbollah and the Islamic resistance in Lebanon.”
“We condemn in the strongest terms this barbaric Zionist aggression and the targeting of residential buildings … in the southern suburb of Beirut, and we consider this a cowardly act of terrorism, a massacre and a heinous crime, which proves once again the bloodiness and brutality of this occupation.”
Hamas further said that Hezbollah has a whole line-up of leaders waiting to take up the mantle of war against Israel: “History has proven that the resistance against the Zionist enemy, in all its factions and places of presence, whenever its leaders go as martyrs, has a generation of leaders to lead them on the same path,” the statement concluded.
It is well-known that the group has also long been supported by Iran, from where it receives much of its most sophisticated surface-to-surface missiles, including ballistic missiles.
Israel had kept its airstrikes on Beirut going throughout the night, even after the attack which killed Nasrallah and many top commanders, while civilians desperately fled the southern suburbs.
British Government Warns Of Weak Military – Says Civilians Must Be ‘Ready To Fight’
The British House of Lords has published a report claiming that military recruitment is dangerously low and the country’s combat readiness is at risk. They say the civilian population ‘must be ready to fight’ (a clear reference to military conscription) should war with Russia be triggered.
The paper, titled ‘Ukraine: A Wake-Up Call’, admits to weaknesses in NATO’s assumptions on “deterrence”, though it seems to pretend as if Ukraine is part of NATO when it’s not. Chaired by Lord de Mauley, the committee launched the inquiry in February 2024, two years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with the goal of assessing the conflict’s implications for UK defence policy.
“…We identified two key lessons. First, our deterrence strategy towards Russia clearly failed. If we are to restore the credibility of NATO’s nuclear and conventional deterrence posture towards Putin, we must develop a clearer understanding of the reasons for this failure.”
“Secondly, the invasion exposed significant weaknesses in both the UK’s and NATO’s military strength, and the UK’s ability to sustain large-scale warfare. Successive governments have attempted to maintain the notion of the UK as a global power, but the war in Ukraine has been a wake-up call, laying bare the gap between that ambition and reality.”
It should be noted that February was near the beginning of Russia’s attrition based offensive that is poised to take control of the entire Donbas region of Ukraine. This was well after Ukraine’s much hyped “counter-offensive” which ended with an embarrassing whimper.
The report paints a concerning picture of the British Army’s ability to contribute adequately to NATO’s deterrence strategy. It states:
“All in all, the evidence we heard points to the current size of the British Army being inadequate. While size is not the only measure of capability, we are concerned that the Army cannot, as currently constituted, make the expected troop contribution to NATO. We therefore question whether the British Army is prepared to meet the growing threat posed by Russia to European security.”
The current size of the British Army is 75,166 regular troops and 183,000 personnel across all branches. Keep in mind only 80,000 of these personnel would play a front line combat role. If the casualty numbers coming out of Ukraine are anywhere close to accurate this would not be enough troops to sustain a single year of combat in an attrition based war.
The House of Lords called on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to develop a plan that “resonates with citizens, emphasizing the importance of national security in their daily lives and moving beyond the notion that defense is solely the military’s responsibility”.
The paper also warned that while there was a risk that conversations around civilians “could end up veering into discussions around conscription”, the government had “an opportunity to broaden this out and consider how it could incorporate the whole of society in building resilience”.
The real question is, why would the British public fight for the current government? Military recruitment relies heavily on true patriots and a sense of national identity, but Keir Starmer and government overall has made it quite clear that they intend to erase indigenous Anglo-Saxon British identity through forced mass immigration from third-world countries. Starmer has even gone so far as to arrest British citizens simply for posting critical opinions on social media.
The House of Lords acts bewildered as to why the civilian population has little interest in military readiness. Maybe it’s because the British government has gone full Orwellian? The average westerner is not going to go to war to risk their lives for a system that oppresses them. This is why recruitment is at all time lows and why conscription would be useless.
Another factor which likely plays a considerable part in public apprehension is the threat of WWIII. The majority of people in the west have little enthusiasm over engaging in a war that could very well lead to a global nuclear exchange, especially over a country like Ukraine which, for them, is insignificant. There is nothing to be gained.
England’s Chief Medical Officer testified before the (token and pointless) Covid Inquiry earlier today, claiming he feared the government “overdid it” when talking up the dangers of Covid.
The Government potentially overstated the danger of Covid to the public at the start of the pandemic, Prof Sir Chris Whitty has admitted.
The Chief Medical Officer told the Covid Inquiry he still worries about whether the Government got “the level of concern” right as it introduced lockdowns and shielding measures.
Sir Chris said it was a difficult balance and if anything it was possible that authorities “overdid it” when communicating how dangerous the virus was at the beginning of the pandemic.
Of course, this is all very British understatement combined with “official inquiry dilution”, which automatically transforms “I know we did X” into “I fear we may have done X by accident“.
Whitty doesn’t “think they potentially overstated the danger”, he knows they definitely did. We all do, it’s been pretty much proven.
“Covid” was a tapestry of lies, and a tangle of deliberately inflated statistics created specifically to enable those lies.
That’s all old news.
Yet Chris Whitty himself is a good example of a potentially interesting phenomenon.
From the beginning of the “pandemic” he seemed strangely keen to distance himself from the very panic he was helping to create, and to, in pure Doublethink, underline the complete lack of danger from the so-called “deadly new disease”. See this video, taken from a “Covid Briefing” on May 11th 2020:
Now, that’s not to suggest he was some kind of hero standing on principle – he wasn’t. He was a lying shill who backed the narrative and lies and vaccines as much as anyone – but he seems to have had some level of discomfort with the enormity of the deceit.
I guess you could say this serves as a reminder that – however monolithic the establishment may seem – it is still made up of human pieces that might not always 100% agree about everything.
Yes, the “covid” scam had the backing of almost every establishment institution on the face of the planet, but those institutions are made up of individuals. And at least some of those individuals probably had doubts.
Probably not moral doubts – you don’t climb the heights in intelligence or politics without being some type of psychopath – but maybe rudimentary discomfort over fear of discovery and/or failure, or an ego that doesn’t want to be seen to be the kind of person who tells lies, or one narcissistic eye on how they might be remembered by posterity.
You have to wonder how many there were who in private offered self-serving opposition to one of the greatest lies in history – and how much of a role they collectively played in the ultimate failure of the Covid narrative to go the whole distance.
The United States needs to ramp up enforcement against every step of the manufacturing and trafficking of fentanyl and other deadly synthetic drugs if it hopes to stem the crisis, several experts told The Epoch Times. With every passing day, however, the path to success gets narrower as the criminal organizations involved get more sophisticated.
More than 100,000 Americans died of an overdose last year; of which more than 70,000 overdosed on synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, according to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The United States government has poured billions into addiction treatment, but the drugs are too broadly available for the treatment to stick, some experts said, arguing the supply needs to be drastically curbed.
Illicit fentanyl usually comes across the southern border from Mexico where it’s manufactured from chemicals made in China and pressed into pills that often look like prescription drugs such as Xanax, Adderall, or oxycodone.
Steps by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to regulate export of illicit chemicals have been dismissed by the experts as cosmetic. Instead, they say, the regime is using drugs as a strategic weapon against the United States.
“This is a chemical war that we’re facing, and no one’s treating it as a war,” said Derek Maltz, former head of special operations at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
“People are treating it as a drug issue. It’s not a drug issue. It’s the number one threat to our national security,” he told The Epoch Times.
The House Select Committee on the CCP issued a report earlier this year detailing China’s involvement at every step of fentanyl trafficking. Chinese companies produce the precursor chemicals from which fentanyl is prepared. Chinese companies ship the chemicals to Mexico. Chinese-made pill presses allow the production of counterfeit pills. Chinese organized crime groups then help the cartels launder and move the illicit profits from the United States to Mexico.
Both the Trump and the Biden administrations have managed to press China to impose additional regulations on fentanyl as well as its analogs and precursors, but the measures “lack teeth” because they fail to impose “substantial costs” on illicit producers, according to Andrew Harding, a research assistant in the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center.
“As long as the producers can stay quiet and evade law enforcement, they will continue to produce,” he told The Epoch Times.
The CCP has claimed to shut down 14 websites, suspend more than 330 business accounts, and close down more than 1,000 online shops that were engaged in the sale and distribution of illicit drugs and precursor chemicals, a senior Biden administration official told reporters in July.
But he acknowledged that “there continues to be a significant supply of precursor chemicals out of [China].”
“There’s obviously a whole lot more to do. And that’s why these ongoing conversations and engagements are so important, even if we’re taking small steps one at a time,” he said.
The experts, however, suggested that the time for small steps and engagement has passed as China’s weak actions hint at intentionality.
“This is all part of their strategic plan, in my opinion, to harm America,” Maltz said.
“It’s part of the unrestricted warfare game, and that’s what’s happening. And they’re actually very successful, because America is not taking care of business, and America is not taking it seriously.”
The Select Committee on CCP found that Beijing was subsidizing illicit chemical exports, providing tax rebates specifically on sales of chemicals that are often not only illegal in China, but lack legitimate use besides making illegal drugs. Some of the rebates were even higher than those offered on any other export products.
It also found evidence that the regime was intentionally making it difficult for foreigners to find information about the rebates.
The Biden administration, however, stopped short of endorsing this conclusion.
“We do not have any information to support that finding, that [China] is actually subsidizing these exports,” said the senior administration official, adding “there’s a need for an ongoing conversation about that.”
The White House didn’t respond to a list of questions emailed by The Epoch Times.
To truly solve the crisis, the experts said, the United States needs to hit every chokepoint along the trafficking chain. And it must be done fast.
“We’re losing hundreds of thousands of Americans. What’s going to happen in a few years?” Maltz asked.
“They’re not going to be filling jobs that are important down the line. They’re not going to be going to college, they’re not going to be getting professional jobs, they’re not going to be helping our society. They’re going to be gone.”
The government is already playing catch-up with traffickers, he noted.
Cartels and other criminal organizations are increasingly trafficking synthetic drugs even more powerful than fentanyl, such as xylazine and nitazenes. Xylazine is particularly abhorrent since it causes tissue necrosis and its overdose can’t be reversed using naloxone—a drug that can overturn an overdose caused by opioids, including fentanyl, if administered quickly.
If the fentanyl crisis is likened to cancer, the United States is already in an advanced stage, according to Michael Brown, formerly a DEA agent of more than 30 years who now heads counter-narcotics technology at Rigaku Analytical Devices.
So far, it should still be possible to crack down on the supply of fentanyl precursor chemicals, perhaps with the aid of artificial intelligence, he said. But the precursor chemicals have their own precursors too. If the cartel labs become so sophisticated as to manufacture fentanyl precursors from chemicals that are too general in purpose to effectively track, it will be even more difficult to root the problem out, he said.
“If the cartels get to what I call the final evolution of narco-chemistry, which means they have multiple recipes that can be used to make stage one, stage two, and stage three pre-precursors to make the required precursors, there’s no way even using AI, I think, we can beat this issue in the next five to 10 years.”
Pressure on CCP and Mexico
“An effective U.S. strategy to combat the international fentanyl trafficking industry should begin with the recognition that the United States lacks good-faith partners in both the Chinese and Mexican governments,” according to a recent Heritage report coauthored by Harding.
The CCP has not only been unwilling to address the issue constructively, but has in fact used it as a bargaining chip to force concessions from the U.S. on technology sales, he said.
The Mexican government, in the meantime, seems to be under profound influence of the cartels, the experts said.
“All those chemicals … are coming in and they’re coming in freely because people are being paid off, and the Mexican government allows it,” Victor Avila, former Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent with Homeland Security Investigations, told The Epoch Times.
The only way to induce cooperation would be to twist the hands of governments, some experts said. The Biden administration has imposed sanctions on more than 300 entities and individuals tied to fentanyl trafficking but it’s not clear if that has produced any tangible effect.
Sanctions would only be effective if they hit major companies, Brown said.
In 2019, China had more than 23,000 chemical companies and about 5,000 that produced pharmaceutical precursors. The Chinese chemical industry produces some $1.5 trillion annual revenue. That’s about 40 percent of the world’s chemical market, he noted.
If a few small Chinese chemical companies are sanctioned, it doesn’t make much of a splash. But if a major Chinese company is targeted, that would get the attention of the regime and create a deterrent, Brown told The Epoch Times.
With its extensive internet monitoring, the CCP, sufficiently motivated, should be able to sniff out fentanyl precursor traffickers, the Select Committee on CCP report pointed out.
The CCP could also share useful information with the United States.
“If China was sincere on helping the U.S. with the crisis, it would have agreed to share information on chemical shipments with the U.S. and Mexico so that they can be tracked,” Brown said.
Even in absence of CCP’s cooperation, however, the United States could do much more, the experts suggested.
Intercepting Packages
The United States should use its Navy and the Coast Guard to interdict suspicious maritime shipments from China to Mexico before they reach cartel-controlled ports, the Select Committee on CCP report recommended.
But because fentanyl is so potent, precursor chemicals are often sent in smaller quantities by air, Brown said.
Packages from China to Mexico are usually shipped through Alaska, giving the United States an opportunity to check them on the way, he noted.
“Customs and Border Protection have access to those parcels. If they can identify a suspected parcel, they can go in and actually seize it.”
Sometimes, the chemicals are sent to a front company that looks like a drug maker but in fact doesn’t produce anything. A background check would reveal it as fake.
Precursor chemicals can also be shipped to a legitimate pharmaceutical company and then diverted to cartels. In that case, the company’s production wouldn’t match the amount of precursors it’s ordering.
It’s extremely common, however, for the packages to be mislabeled, Brown said. The only way, then, would be to check packages en masse using sniffing dogs or gadgets that can identify chemicals. Not all packages would need to be checked, but it would need to be a percentage large enough to serve as a deterrent.
Such checks could be much more effective by using artificial intelligence to recognize suspicious patterns, he said.
“Does it make sense for somebody in Mexico to order 500 pounds of pool cleaner from China? AI would say, ‘I don’t like this. Maybe take a look at it,’ right?”
Focusing on shipping has the added benefit of minimizing the civil rights impact of false positives. Nobody needs to be arrested or stopped by police to check a package during transit. International packages are already expected to get probed by customs officers, so there’s no new privacy intrusion.
“If you’re using pattern recognition and parcel screenings, if you open it up, if five out of 50 parcels are legitimate, it doesn’t matter. You just put it back on the board and send it to where it’s going. But if you start making a 20 to 30 percent seizure rate, cartels are going to go on panic mode,” Brown said.
Targeting Cartel Labs
More than 100 “super labs,” operated by cartels in Mexico, produce fentanyl and press it into pills, Avila said.
The first step should be to designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, he recommended.
“Let’s start there, because that’s what they are. You designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations now, you treat them just like ISIS, just like the Taliban, just like al Qaeda, exactly the same, meaning that no longer do you do even what I used to do as a special agent—those investigative techniques are stale and outdated. You need to go after these guys using Department of Defense resources.”
There’s a chance the United States could convince the Mexican government to cooperate with U.S. military operations against cartels.
“We have good informant networks in Mexico and we know where … a lot of these production labs are. We could definitely get access to their locations. So we should be destroying those production labs, because without the chemicals, without the labs, you can’t produce the poison,” Maltz said.
There needs to be a way to intimidate the cartels, he suggested.
“We have to be way more aggressive with the cartels right now. There’s no fear. They have no fear of America because there’s no consequences.”
Securing the Border
“Having a wide-open border, and that’s what we have now, is facilitating the ability for these cartels and for these criminals to get these substances into America, because our resources are being overwhelmed,” Maltz said.
When the Border Patrol has its hands full processing hundreds of thousands of people illegally crossing the border, that’s when the drugs can pour in undetected.
Fraud is a permanent part of life. There will always be people who seek illicit advantage by representing themselves as something they are not or promising to do something they don’t intend to do. No area of human life is immune: Financiers, doctors, teachers, car mechanics, plumbers, bridegrooms—there will always be frauds among them. So it’s puzzling when we are told that there is one area of human life where fraud can’t exist.
Transgender activists tell us that if a man says he is a woman, we absolutely must believe him – always, without exception. Let’s be clear about what this means. Even if we were to accept the entirety of the transgender thesis that men can become women if they sincerely believe they are, it still doesn’t follow that every transgender claim must be accepted as genuine. To decide in principle, without scrutiny of the individual case, that not a single transgender claim may be doubted, would make transgenderism unique in human affairs. You can question anything else that someone says, but not this.
Why?
Is it because nobody could gain an illicit advantage by claiming to be transgender?
That is clearly not so. Male felons will have a much easier life in a women’s prison. Mediocre male athletes will benefit greatly by claiming to be female—they can become world-class overnight.
Predatory males gain by getting access to places of female sanctuary such as locker rooms.
In all these cases, there are powerful motivations for fraud, which means that there will be fraud.
Do we see compelling evidence of fraud in some transgender claims?
You’d have to be blind not to. Biologically male felons have gained access to female prisons and impregnated female prisoners—that’s predatory heterosexual male, not female, behavior. Some males who have gained access to female changing rooms by claiming to be women have been reported to sit idly on a bench ogling the disrobing women and exposing themselves. Again, predatory male, not female behavior. And when biological males exploit the strength advantage of their male bodies to easily defeat female athletes, they don’t seem to be showing any fellow feeling for women—they look more like bullies exploiting their masculine strength advantage to gain athletic triumphs they could never achieve as males.
Why is the transgender lobby so insistent that every single claim to be a female made by a male must be accepted as sincere?
Why are we not allowed to consider the possibility of fraud, even when it’s glaringly obvious?
The answer to this conundrum is probably that transgender activists know it’s hard to convince most people that a man can become a woman just by identifying as one, and so they keep up an unremitting insistence that we simply must believe. But in the grip of this overwhelming need to demand belief, they lose sight of the fact that there are bound to be cases where we—and they, too—should not believe. A public already inclined to skepticism will become even more skeptical when transgender advocates are seen to be protecting fraudsters.
When transgender activists won’t acknowledge that some transgender claims may be fraudulent, they give new opportunities, and cover, to peeping toms, flashers, lechers, cheats, and bullies – the sort who have always preyed on young women, but now have active assistance from the very people who want us to believe that they are uniquely compassionate and enlightened.
