BATF sells 250 million bootleg cigarettes -- that's 250M felonies by BushObama! by piratenews

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BATF sells 250 million bootleg cigarettes -- that's 250M felonies by BushObama!

POSTED BY: PIRATENEWS
UPDATED: Monday, January 25, 2010 07:04
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Sunday, January 24, 2010 6:29 PM

John Lee, conspiracy therapist at Hollywood award-winner History Channel-mocked SNL-spoofed PirateNew.org wooHOO!!!!!!

Vagina included

“Smugglers with ties to terrorist groups are acquiring millions of dollars from illegal cigarette sales and funneling the cash to organizations such as al Qaeda and Hezbollah, federal law enforcement officials say, prompting a nationwide crackdown on black market tobacco,” the CIA’s favorite newspaper, The Washington Post, reported on June 8, 2004.

At the time, the ATF had 300 open cases of illicit cigarette trafficking. “The deeper we dig into these cases, the more ties to terrorism we’re discovering,” said Michael Bouchard, assistant director of the ATF.

As it turns out, the ATF is responsible for much of this illegal smuggling.

“Undercover ATF agents in Virginia have funneled more than 250 million cigarettes onto the nation’s streets in the past three years through black market sales targeting smugglers,” the Associated Press reported on January 22.

“Authorities say the flood of government-provided smokes — a pack and a half for every man, woman and child in New York City, the smugglers’ main destination — leads them to organized crime rings and can even cut off financing for terrorists. The stings by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have yielded about five dozen federal arrests, albeit none on terror charges.”

The AP found undercover sales of more than 250 million cigarettes in the last few years. In other words, it looks like the ATF is responsible for a large part of illegal cigarette sales.

In recent years, the ATF has used such tactics to boost their budget and rationalize their existence. Linking terrorism to illegal cigarette sales is part of the process. “Unfortunately, terrorism has become a sort of a buzzword,” said John W. Colledge III, a Nevada-based consultant who once ran large-scale cigarette smuggling investigations for the U.S. Customs Service. “That’s what gets you funding.”

The most notorious example of this showboating occurred in Waco, Texas, when the ATF raided the Branch Davidians. “The ATF blasted into the Branch Davidian compound like bulldogs with their eyes on the bone of federal funding and that the FBI colluded in covering up both ATF and FBI blunders,” writes Paul Brenner in a review of Waco: The Rules of Engagement.

http://www.infowars.com/atf-responsible-for-creating-large-part-of-ill
egal-cigarette-black-market/

Waco: The Rules of Engagement
P1 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4298137966377572665
P2 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1755692679103175934

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Monday, January 25, 2010 7:04 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Took ya long enough.

It's just like the CIA with cocaine, remember one could not all that long ago buy it over the counter, and yet, there were FAR fewer drug/addiction problems then than there are now.
http://www.thegooddrugsguide.com/gallery/c_toothache_drops.htm

Get it outlawed, and then run it yourself, tremendous profit margins and the added benefit of being able to arrest your competitors.

While not outlawed, per se, constant unconstitutional misuse of the tax code has amounted to a de-facto prohibition (the powers that be having learned NOTHING from history) of tobacco and given root to a tremendous smuggling market, helped along by truckers who were having their balls crushed in a vice by artificially inflated fuel prices not to very long ago and took to smuggling as the only way to make ends meet.

There's already a pretty solid line of smuggling operations which many folk deliberately turn a blind eye to as long as they don't fall to temptation (which they almost always do) and start moving pot, smack and blow to boost profits, and some of those who already move that stuff have started adding tobacco as a side cargo.

It's just starting to get that way with prescription drugs, too, the way the fuckers in Big Pharma put the squeeze on by controlling the FDA and misuse of IP laws to maintain monopolies and prevent competition as well as blocking generics - Medicare/Medicaid and the AARP have been prettymuch stuck up Big Pharmas ass for years now, so the price break is getting to where some of the street dealers can get you grammas blood pressure meds for 20-50% less.

What's it say when you have to see the fuckin pusherman to get your gramma her meds, neh ?

This is just more of the same "War on (some) Drugs" bullshit, that's more about exclusive profit than it ever was about any bloody thing else.

Of COURSE the ATF is gonna participate in the smuggling to bulk up their profits, they had the CIA's fine example to build from, didn't they ?

And it's not like one can call them to account for it when the some folk in charge of enforcing the rules are the ones breaking them.

-Frem

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