Addicts To Easy Money, Violence & Terrorism  -  Introduction

 

Few citizens feel they are addicts or enablers. But I ask you to be sensitive to the many small acts, which contribute to systemic error and societal death. These acts push organized crime participants and addicts to easy money. Each type citizen is free to fleece the public, to rob humanity and to disable democracies. Let’s work together to prevent rather than enable such thievery. We must not accept the clueless CEO’s defense or the President’s spin as a meaningful way to rebuild what the greedy on our world scene have destroyed. Every one of us must be concerned or, our children, our friends and neighbors will pay great costs, for instance three trillion dollars for an unnecessary war.

 

Let’s trace disruptive behaviors and character aberrations that hurt billions of lives and stem troubles perpetrated against individuals, groups and humanity. I submit violence-prone terrorists, easy-money addicts, organized crime members, traffickers and corrupt corporate functionaries and their enablers can be curbed via clearly managed prevention strategies, even 12-step self-help groups. Beyond prevention tactics, persons who obsess and oppress humankind and those who lust after easy money must be confronted, heard, treated, rehabilitated and re-educated on a case-by-case basis. Rather than be doorsteps for manipulators, I urge we must 1) unite to weed out this menace, 2) demand honest interpersonal relations and 3) take actions that revitalizes and sustains genuine democracies. When feasible let us use restraint in the face of those who express hate and let us foster harmony rather than lash out with brute force or arrogance. Rather than play games or fear and smear tactics to put others down, best we exercise democratic living strategies. Fostering healthy respect for ourselves and others stimulates freedom and trust needed for reducing the sicknesses found behind violence, terrorism and drug use all of which the US society needs to deal with better. It’s true, "bullets breed bullets, and violence breeds violence." Three hundred fifty (350) Guatemalans lost their lives to violence in the month of January 2006; so says their Civil National Police (PNC) report to Guatemala President Oscar Berger.

 

Many say addicts and their enablers can be treated or rehabilitated with hard labor, psychotherapy, self-help groups, and/or behavioral reorientation. (Red China, 1950; 2001; Potter-Efron & Potter-Efron, 1991; Reid, 1989; Decker, 1999; Blum & Payne, 1991; Ashenberg Straussner, 1993.) Fewer say this about terrorists or their enablers. But by the 1960s, Denmark’s hard-core criminal-rehabilitation program produced excellent results. Hard-core criminals lined up to benefit from what prison programs provided. In China, addicts volunteered (to be rehabilitated) in 2000 to be spared of hard labor or death as demanded for decades. More countries need education, prevention, treatment and rehabilitation methods to curb troubles or terrorism created by addicts and those who accept their habits. These include the US, Afghanistan, Algeria, Libya, Egypt and Sudan and many signing the December 2000 Treaty Against Transnational Organized Crime. (Ibid, UNIS.) Yet unresolved anger grew into haughty foreign policies that enable easy money addiction, terrorism, violence, or clearly have threatened democracies since George W. Bush took office. Why have we ended up at war? Is not propaganda or psy-ops enabling news media terrorism? The world condones the use of psy-ops in rogue nations as well as China and the US. (Ibid, Odasuo Alali, 1994; & Ibid, US Army Field Manual – FM 33-1, Psychological Operations --Chapter 8.) In August 2005 China's Propaganda Department, the Ministry of Culture and four other regulators published new rules in an effort to tighten control over cultural products, further restricting what foreign filmmakers and television companies can do in China. By January 2006 we learned soft Google negotiators wanting to do business on the mainland; they abandoned a guarantee made to US citizens, i.e., it would not search human rights inquiries ask of them. But, President Bush held he could abandon a 200 year guarantee not to spy on US citizens.  

 

As economies worldwide grow year after year, many easy money addicts wager to “play the game”. On Wall Street some believe greed is a growth motive. Yet history is full of financial wreckages, hurt and violence created by the lure of easy money. To accommodate solutions, this book advances Koym’s work on greed dependencies (Ibid, 1994; 1986; 2003) and identifies activities of money launderers, drug cartels, terrorists, organized criminals and other easy money seekers. Systematic redirection of addicts in socially useful directions as found herein, offer greater practicalities than socio-biologist mean-gene approaches. Those that wrong humankind through criminal acts must be brought under the rules of law or have their fangs removed. Perpetrators (including the 22 most-wanted terrorists) must be asked to justify their actions, preferably within cultures they represent. As such the principal enablers also come under trial. 

 

 In January 2003, Brazilian President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva initiated massive anti-hunger campaigns in his country. On July 11, 2003 during an official visit with Portugal’s President Jorge Sampaio Mr. Lula da Silva called for a new international approach to security that is not based solely on force. He urged:

 “It will not be through military means that we put an end to terrorism or drug trafficking either. We are going to face this with a lot more weight once we attack the key problem, which is poverty in the world.”

(Ibid, July 11, 2003, News released at Portugal’s Presidential Office, Lisbon, Portugal.) By 2005, nearly 75 percent of the masses in the Western Hemisphere show deep disregard for the two to five percent who exploit them.

 

Mental health, sociological and political science professionals can:

 

 

Achieving the foregoing goals in the spirit called for by the Dalai Lama (See “Ethics for the New Millenium” Ibid, March 12, 2000, reiterated 2005) requires much give and take. While many argue for legalizing drug use, leaders representing all world countries voted against this practice in UN based meetings held in 1999. (Ibid, Arlacchi, 1999.)

           

       Pino Arlacchi, former Undersecretary of the U.N. Office of Drug Control and Organized Crime Program, argues since immense amounts of money are involved, money seekers “…merely shift emphasis and keep producing violence to stay in control.” He says the law of supply and demand will reduce the number of drug users. (Ibid, November 1, 1999.) Yet US voters in eight states legalized the use of marijuana, asking for leniencies in the laws. [See Chapter 3, page 67 and 69.]

 

A major imbalance exists between cultures, hyper capitalism and ecommerce as found in affluent and poor countries. Jeremy Rifkin (Ibid 2000) urges an age of access calls for every living experience to be paid up front. Perhaps as he says internet changed the way business is done, but Rifkin’s ideas fail to give humankind equal footing. The poor remain under the thumbs of the powerful. Few poor touch a computer. Even fewer truly benefit from advances brought forth by the advent of internet or ecommerce. Economies far and wide permit easy money cravers to victimize or control others. They leave more than 5.5 billion people in the second and third world far behind. Billions who earn less than a dollar a day are separated further and further. Oft, those poor with deep needs abandon their culture in the attempt to keep pace. This abandonment removes much-needed support systems. It sets more up to become addicted. Little by little the fertile turfs those prospects provide “easy marks” and grow more and more new addictions.

 

Ironically Jack Welch, GE’s business model builder, released the book Jack, Straight from the gut on September 11, 2001. Luckily those surrounding Welch forced him to acknowledge that cultural supports count. (His words, Ibid.) Jack’s lust for winning depicts a lack of insight or the caring called for by many poor, especially those outside the USA. Despair felt by almost two billion poor, calls for the staying power of culture.  Contrast the most affluent 20 percent of New York City earn a median income of $152,350 while the poorest 20 percent eek out $10,700; or, that the sum total net worth of the lowest 50 percent in the US equaled that of Bill Gates at the end of the year 2000. (Ibid, Hertz, 2002.)

 

What Is Forthcoming?

 

Chapter I provides an overview describing where, when and how easy money addicts become dominant players on the local, state, national and world scenes. Too often average citizens become fighting mad. They obsess as they find fault on the part of foreigners. Chapter II, the centerpiece of this book, urges that mental health and police professionals to be better acquainted. I believe mental health leaders must provide more socio-psycho-legal-culturally inclusive understanding about human nature and forge a plan addressing the global context. As such they must guide the adoption of home grown rules of law in country after country.  (See the objectives enunciated by psychologist James Ogloff. (Ibid, 2000.) He urges the foundation for any law should be found in mental health. Chapter II helps readers to conceptualize organized crime behavior as an easy money addiction in psychological terms. It also helps leaders to appreciate how to classify easy money addicts so they may be treated and rehabilitated and/or how the harm and violence they create may be preventable. These chapters move us away from punishment heavy approaches. 

 

Chapter III asks are the pursuits of economic might, violence or terrorism addictive and asks if large holdings of corporations and insurance companies, especially those who choose not to explain how they derived large incomes, stir free of corruption. Learned sources in the International Ecological Economists Academy  (Ibid 1997; 1998) and the International Monetary Fund  (Ibid, July 1999) say their large buildups go to “safe havens and off-shore bank accounts.” Large sums come from money launderers, prostitution, fake churches that fleece radio-listening givers worldwide, governments involved in trafficking and other clandestine activities. Why are writers terminated in unexplained accidents after covering this subject? (Ibid, UN, January 2000; Anonymous, 1999.)

 

Chapter IV reviews the lure of easy money, greed and smuggling; it urges all readers have been deeply affected for centuries by addicts to easy money. Trafficking in human beings has occurred for centuries and no laws oppose the same in five countries. Rachel Ehrenfeld (1990) says “Money from drug smuggling supports terrorists. Terrorists provide assistance to drug traffickers.” (Ibid p xxii.)

 

Chapter V warns against the use of brute force as pushed by big brother bigotry. (See Richard Hass, 1999, a full-page declaration in the Mural newspaper.) Contrary to Hass’s trigger-happiness, urging intervention in local politics, the International Society for Ecological Economics asks for congruence-seeking forums. They foster sustainability development achieved by localization or internationalization, not overkill.

 

Chapter VI calls on an appreciation of myths, principles and logic as timeless truths that buttress peace and coexistence. A more learned look over time at what lives on and on, reveals better ways to overcome daily problems. A dire need exists to draw upon strengths found in older cultures rather than bash them hard on the presumption “American might can beat the hell out of anyone that crosses it.” If strengths of myths are allowed to flow, marvelous returns may be expected. But once negative images are planted, they rein for indefinite periods of time.

  

In Chapter 7, I urge that the push be put on localization and off of globalization so more free enterprise is possible. Rather than polarize nations, the World Bank’s former chief economist, now Columbia University Professor Joseph Stiglitz says localization schemes help self-identified target countries to build from within rather than selling out to be globally run. The idea is to grow resolute co-leaders and followers not enablers. Less trampling on other’s cultures and sovereignties also reduces the desire to immigrate.

 

Chapter 8 discusses why drug control and immigration policies should not overlap. Koym (Ibid, 2000; 2001), Tram Nguyen (2005) and David Bacon agree on this. (Ibid, April 6, 2000.) Tram Nguyen the author of We are all suspects now: Untold stories from immigrant communities after 9/11, says several hundred thousand were hurt by Patriot Act and other laws used to scare immigrants. I concur immigration policies undermine rights and the well being of persons once they are in the US. Bacon says:

“It’s ironic [that] our political climate removes welfare and social benefits in the name of the work ethic, then punishes the undocumented for the crime of working.”

In fact, ill-founded policies and coercive practices force foreigners to stop in their tracks and some may even turn to incomes that come from narco trafficking or organized crime. 

 

Chapter 9 urges peacekeeping remedies, community policing and democratization provide meaningful routes for redirecting addicts, enablers and terrorists. It takes issue with prosecutors who protect corporate entities that partner with traffickers; it urges that international tribunals be convened in countries where drug lords and terrorists live, and for the implementation of multi-lateral self-policing mechanisms to replace annual US certifications of other countries. To make such mechanisms function, consideration must be given to the like of Federico Reyes Heroles (1999), General Rosso José Serrano (1999), the Anti-terrorism Act of 2001, the Transnational Treaty of December 2000 and Transparency International.

 

Chapter 10 urges that sustainable development be cultivated on a local basis with free trade. One enhances the other and truer transfers of wealth may follow. Massive numbers of people believe in the common good of humankind; they buttress poor people who are forced by economics to grow plants from which drugs can be made; thus, much better remedies are needed.

 

Chapter 11 presents a dialogue between the poor who seed and cultivate drug producing plants and affluent users who bear grave hurt and vice versa.  More need face-to-face interactions that deal with the hurts communicated. Dialogue between both groups can preserve humanity if both groups elect not to be a part of the menace created by the excessive availability of drugs. 

 

In Chapter 12, you see the drawbacks of using toxic poisons to kill plants. Poorly designed drug-reduction methods stress the environment unsuccessfully. The use of them outweighs benefits. Why? Poisons remain around a long time. Then they harm wild life, humans and other species for decades. Biological controls are feasible but scientific support must be advanced.

 

The closing chapters call for long-term research and greater patience on the part of affluent nations. Chapter 13 focuses on proactive methods, which prevent pessimistic outcomes. Use of sustainability development gives people the option to maintain and restore cultures to their original stamina. And, Chapter 14 targets terrorists amidst easy money addicts and empire growers and it cautions against giving any executive unlimited powers either in the time or war or peace. I emphasize humanitarian outcomes, reduced indices of organized crime and increased indices on peacekeeping. I urge that the US get its own anger under control before bashing others. Why not look at the world with long-term perspectives rather than being charged time after time with overkill? 

 

US citizens could know much more about the wonders of the world as well as the languages used. Yet we choose to bomb the hell out of foreign lands without blinking an eye. Principally egotistical, we believe we are and have the best. Perhaps the best riches can buy are found in the USA. But we have much to learn about being inclusive and humble. We can be more consistent practitioners of democracy. The third world bemoans the vast number of US-based addicts to easy money.

 Table 1. International Conflict In Need of Resolution

Two Billion Impoverished                       600 Million Affluent

People With Resentments          vs.             People Jolted

& Pent-Up Desires                                   In Aggregate

 

Who are some easy money addicts? Makers of medicine, computers, war materials, autos and an endless list (like the owners of Worldcom, Microsoft, Enron, Hughes Tools, GE, Glaxco Pharmaceuticals, Exxon-Mobil, Texaco and Dow Chemical) fit the description. Should Ken Lay, Jeff Skillings or any easy money addict like them get off using a “Clueless CEO defense?” This book on greed is not an attack on US ingenuity or its way of life. Rather it asks us to observe how our obsessions are shortening the period of time the US will remain “world leaders.” Too often we demand enablers to support the US way as the only way. Those habits suggest we are addicts and addict enablers who willfully control others. Texan Rep. Tom DeLay, Former WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers, lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Rep Hugo Cunningham generally fit my easy money addict definition.

 

       I argue there are probably a mere 40 years is required for leaders among the four billion poor from 3rd world countries to rise up and knock the US corporate demigods from their pedestals. Though we are a hyper power with the capability to take on multiple foes, it is not in our best interest to create enemy after enemy using the art of scape goating, intimidation and harassment. This talk was liked because I incorporated several illustrations and stated historical fact showing Arabic intellectuals from Lebanon, Algeria and Egypt called for developing alternative Islamic youth training so youth could be given a way around the presumed healthiness of becoming a martyr as called for by fundamentalist clerics of the 1970-1997 time frame.  

 

As a whole this essay and my book asks, do we want to enable the addicts to easy money around the world to dominate us as the pot is stirred with violence and terror? The author asks you to observe the relatedness between routine money grubbing economic and business practices, organized crime, their cousin greed and addicts to easy money. This includes enabling done by war mongers, like George W. Bush, who has spent more money in his administration on big defense contracts, plainly enabling paranoia. Certainly it is time for a significant force of questioners to form coalitions with professionals, laypersons and international leaders who question cavalier attitudes about wild spending and ask for remedies. A need exists to hammer out mechanisms that prevent, treat and rehabilitate addicts to easy money and their enablers, so a better world may be enjoyed.

 

 

References

 

Executive Order 12978 (1995) Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, Washington, DC: Author.

United Nations Information Service, (December 14, 2000) Treaty Against Transnational Organized Crime, Palermo, Italy: UNIS.

 

Alali, O. (1994) Terrorism & the news media, Jefferson, NC: Macfarland. 

Anonymous (1999) “Be careful, two writers I knew were killed for publishing very similar works,” (Ibero America: Personal Communication). 

Arlacchi, P. (November 1, 1999) “The case against legalization: The U.N.’s drug czar on supply and demand,” Newsweek International Edition, p. 20.

Ashenberg Straussner, S. L. (1993) Clinical work with substance-abusing clients, New York: The Guilford Press.

Bacon, D. (April 6, 2000) “A clarion call: Amnesty for the undocumented,” San Antonio Current, p. 47.

Blum, K. & Payne, J. E. (1991) Alcohol and the addictive brain: New hope for alcoholics from biogenetic research, New York: The Free Press.

Dalai Lama (March 12, 2000) “Ethics for the New Millennium,” Bombay, India: Reuters, The 14th Dalai Lama. 

Decker, D. J. (1999) Stopping violence: A group model to change men’s abusive attitudes and behaviors, New York: The Haworth Maltreatment and Trauma Press.

Ehrenfeld, R. (1990) Narco terrorism, New York: Basic Books Inc.

Hass, R. (October 17, 1999) “México y EU: Juntos para intervenir,” Mural, p. 4-A.

Hass, R. (1999) El policía con desgano: Estados Unidos después de la Guerra Fría, Washington DC: Brookings Institute.

Hertz, N. (2002) The Silent Takeover: Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy, New York: Free Press.

International Ecological Economists Academy (

International Monetary Fund  (July 1999) Report mentioning “safe havens and off-shore bank accounts,” Washington DC: Author.

Koym, K. G. (2001 in press; 1998) Programas para estudiantes y empleados en contra dependencias a drogas, alcohol, juegos y codicias. East Bernard, Texas: Advocacy Services Press. 

Koym, K. G. (1994) Linking SAPs & EAPs against drug, alcohol, gambling & greed dependencies. East Bernard, Texas: Advocacy Services Press.

Koym, K. G. (1986) Breaking into nests of sick people: A treatise on exploitation, San Antonio: Advocacy Services Press. (Out of print)

Lula da Silva, L. I. (July 11, 2003) “Fighting terrorism requires us to fight poverty without using arms,” Unpublished official commentary: In Lisbon with Portugal President Jorge Sampaio.

Ogloff, J.R.P. (August 2000) “Two steps forward and one step backward: The law and psychology,” Law and Human Behavior, 24:4, 457-485.

Perkins, J. (2004) Confessions of an economic hit man. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

Potter-Efron, R. T. & Potter-Efron, P. S. (1991) Anger, alcoholism, and addiction: treating anger in a chemical dependency setting, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Reid, W. H. (1989) The treatment of psychiatric disorders: Revised for the DSM, New York: Brunner/Mazel.

Reyes Heroles, F. (1999) Memorial del mañana, México DF: Taurus.

Rifkin, J. (2000) Age of access: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism, Where All of Life Is a Paid-For Experience, Washington, D.C.: Tarcher-Putnam Foundation.

Serrano, R. J. (June 14, 2000) “Crusader against drug cartel retires,” Bogotá: Reuters News Service, Houston Chronicle, p 29A.

Serrano, R. J. (October 14, 1999) Mentioned in “Super agente colombiano,” Mural - AFP, p 13-A.

Serrano, R. J. (October 14, 1999) Mentioned in “Preparan traslado de narcos,” Mural - (EFE/NTX), p 13-A.

Stiglitz, J. (September 17, 1999) “Global poverty to climb next century,” Washington, D.C.: Associated Press, News, p 32, World Bank.

U.N. Drug Control Program & Crime Prevention Office (January 2000) “Terrorism, drug abuse, violence, trafficking in human beings, organized crime and money laundering,” Vienna, Austria: Author.

Welch, J. (2001) Jack: Straight from the gut, New York: Warner Brothers.

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