President Trump Launches War on Drugs, But Must Target Drug Banks
by Michael Billington
[Print version of this article]
Feb. 10—President Donald Trump has launched a deadly serious War on Drugs. On Feb. 8, in a speech before the Major Cities Police Chiefs Association (MCCA) in Washington, the President said that the drug scourge was destroying the potential of America’s youth and America’s future, and must be crushed, naming the newly installed Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Gen (ret.) John Kelly, as the man to lead the effort.
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The following day, Trump issued an executive order naming the newly confirmed Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, to be head of a new Task Force “to focus on destroying transnational criminal organizations and drug cartels,” with a 120-day mandate to report on “transnational criminal organizations and subsidiary organizations, including the extent of penetration of such organizations into the United States.”
This is the first serious call for combatting the drug scourge—now devastating every community and millions of families in the United States—since Lyndon LaRouche first coined the term “War on Drugs” in 1980. The LaRouche organization then formed the “National Anti-Drug Coalition” and launched the magazine “War on Drugs.”
The one problem with the Trump War on Drugs—and a potential Achilles Heel, if it is not corrected—is the failure to identify and target the actual core of the international drug cartel, the banks which facilitate this business. The publication by EIR in 1978 of the first edition and reprints of Dope, Inc. and the half-dozen subsequent editions and re-issues of that blockbuster exposé, documented in great detail how the illicit drug business—the biggest business in the world—is controlled entirely by the British and Wall Street banks, since the time of the British Opium Wars against China, and continuing through to today.
The identification of the too-big-to-fail banks in London and New York as the headquarters of “Dope Inc.,” will also provide yet another motivation for the immediate restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act, to stop the criminal money laundering and speculation which has brought the trans-Atlantic financial system to ruin.
President Trump is fully aware that the drug issue is central to the future of the nation, as was clear in his remarks to the Major Cities Police Chiefs Association Winter Conference in Washington on Feb. 8. He emphasized that “every child in America should be able to play outside without fear, walk home without danger, and attend a school without being worried about drugs or gangs or violence. . . . So many lives and so many people have been cut short. Their potential, their lives have been cut short. So much potential has been sidelined. And so many dreams have been shattered and broken, totally broken.
“It’s time to stop the drugs from pouring into our country,” Trump continued. “And, by the way, we will do that. And I will say this: General—now Secretary—Kelly will be the man to do it.”
He continued: “It’s time to dismantle the gangs terrorizing our citizens, and it’s time to ensure that every young American can be raised in an environment of decency, dignity, love, and support. You have asked for the resources, tools, and support you need to get the job done. We will do whatever we can to help you meet those demands.”
The President noted that he had brought a number of law enforcement officials to the White House, and asked them “what impact do drugs have in terms of a percentage on crime? They said, 75 to 80 percent. That’s pretty sad. We’re going to stop the drugs from pouring in. We’re going to stop those drugs from poisoning our youth, from poisoning our people. We’re going to be ruthless in that fight. We have no choice. . . . And we’re going to take that fight to the drug cartels and work to liberate our communities from their terrible grip of violence.”
Dope Inc.: Run by British Banks
President Trump’s War on Drugs is to be highly commended, and to be supported in full by all those anywhere in the world who treasure the human mind and human spirit, but it will fail if it does not go after the heart of the beast—the British banks, headed by HSBC, and its Wall Street subsidiaries. Under its earlier name—the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank—HSBC ran the opium trade in Asia during the Opium Wars of the 19th Century, and more recently ran the money laundering for the Mexican drug cartels into the United States.
When HSBC was caught in this crime, the Obama Administration, busy promoting drug use and the legalization of drugs across the United States, ruled that no bankers should be criminally prosecuted for drug money laundering, just as none were to be prosecuted for the massive crimes in their derivative scams leading to the 2007-08 near collapse of the western banking system. Obama’s ties to George Soros, the notorious funder and promoter of virtually every international effort to legalize drugs, are well-documented.
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President Trump is now positioned to correct this crime. He promised during his campaign to implement the Glass-Steagall Act—the Franklin Roosevelt law which separated commercial banks from investment banks, offering government support only to the former, which were forbidden to participate in speculative activities. President Trump must be held to account for that promise. If the Glass-Steagall Act is implemented, the drug money operations of the “too-big-to-fail” banks will be dried up virtually overnight, and the drug cartels can be mopped up relatively easily.
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It is not only Lyndon LaRouche who has identified the role of the banks in the global drug trade. In 2009, after the 2008 near-collapse of the western banking system, Antonio Maria Costa, then the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, pointed out that the international banks had become “drug dependent.” He said: “In many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system’s main problem, and hence liquid capital became an important factor. Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drug trade and other illegal activities. . . There were signs that some banks were rescued that way.”
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Viktor Ivanov, the Director of the Russian Federal Narcotics Service from 2008 until 2016, speaking in Washington in 2011, said: “Drug money and global drug trafficking are actually not just valuable elements of, but as donors of scarce liquidity, a vital and indispensable segment of the whole monetary system.” In order to shut this down, he said, Russia and the United States must work in tandem to effect a “drastic transformation of the international financial system. . . . To a certain extent, we are observing a revival of the logic of the Glass-Steagall Act, adopted in the U.S. in 1933 at the height of the Great Depression, which separated the deposit and investment functions of banks.”
However, he added, “restrictions to prevent the attraction of criminal money are required even more. In other words, liquidation of the financial bubble alone will not be enough. . . . The key way to liquidate global drug trafficking, is to reformat the existing economy and shift to an economy that excludes criminal money” and provides reproduction of net “liquid assets, i.e., to an economy of development, in which decisions are based on development projects and long-term targetted credits.”
Trump’s Executive Order vs. Dope, Inc.
Trump’s executive order of Feb. 9 is powerful and clear: “Transnational criminal organizations and subsidiary organizations, including transnational drug cartels, have spread throughout the nation, threatening the safety of the United States and its citizens. . . . These groups are drivers of crime, corruption, violence, and misery. . . . In particular, the trafficking by cartels of controlled substances has triggered a resurgence in deadly drug abuse and a corresponding rise in violent crime related to drugs. . . . A comprehensive and decisive approach is required to dismantle these organized crime syndicates and restore safety for the American people.”
This executive order came at the same time as the confirmation by the U.S. Senate of Jeff Sessions as U.S. Attorney General. Sessions has been one of the fiercest opponents of the drug legalization policy implemented by Barack Obama.
It is also relevant that Gen. (ret.) John Kelly, the former head of U.S. Southern Command, who is now Secretary of Homeland Security, emphasized the importance of a “layered approach that extends far beyond our shores, throughout the hemisphere, in partnership with our neighbors to the South and North,” when he testified before the Senate in January. “If the drugs are in the United States, we’ve lost,” he said.
He estimated that 99% of the heroin that enters the United States is produced in Mexico. Poppies used to manufacture heroin are grown in Mexico and Guatemala, and then the drug is shipped to the United States. He emphasized the importance of a partnership with Mexico, saying the United States would like “to help them get after the poppy production. . . after the production labs. . . after the heroin, methamphetamine. . . before it gets to the border.” It should be added that the destruction of the Mexican economy since NAFTA has left many of its youth with nowhere to go but the drug trade. There must be economic development.
On the U.S. side of the border, Kelly said the demand for drugs must be drastically reduced. “You’re never going to get to zero,” he said, “but we know how to do this. We’ve done it before with other drugs and other things that were bad for our society.” Speaking of the Bush and Obama years, Kelly added: We’re not even trying.”
Join the Fight
President Trump’s War on Drugs provides yet another stark reason for the hysterical campaign by London’s Dope, Inc. to bring Trump down. A destabilization like the “color revolutions” run by drug-pusher George Soros against nations across Europe, Africa, the Mideast, and South America, is now being waged against the government of these United States, led by the City of London, its Wall Street subsidiaries, and their whorish presses.
The means to defeat this evil is to mobilize the American people, and people around the world, to induce President Trump to carry out his pledge to enact the Glass-Steagall Act, and restore the “American System” of Hamiltonian banking, capable of directing credit into national infrastructure, industrial and agricultural growth, and restoring the nation’s dedication to advancing the frontiers of scientific knowledge, through fusion power development and space exploration—LaRouche’s Four Laws.
The President has demonstrated that he is willing to work with the great nations of the world—Russia, China, Japan, and a restored Europe and America—to create an era of “Peace Through Development,” as with Xi Jinping’s “win-win” policy of the New Silk Road. By restoring America’s role as a nation builder, and protecting the future of our children as productive and creative human beings, America can and must, once again, stand as a Temple of Hope and a Beacon of Liberty for the entire world.