cocaine cowboys gang

The Cocaine Cowboys I is one of the most interesting crime documentaries ever filmed. And the main reason for this relays on real story behind the scenes and their real protagonists. This is the story of how cocaine first entered the United States in huge amounts, substituted the widely spread consume of pot and became what it is today, a multibillion dollar business, a large scale industry to satisfy the needs of greedy traffickers at both sides of the border and the lust of the consumers. How it eventually became a blood thirsty business, on how this industry kept relocating itself once the heat was too much to handle in some centers, on how smoking guns were the ones settling the terms in this business, on how technology was an organic part of smuggling the substance into USA and on how the traffickers on all parts saw their lives changed at first to become millionaires in months and latter on to see themselves staring the 2 by 2 square meters of a federal penitentiary if they were lucky enough to make it that far and negotiate with the state a deal.

In this documentary review I will go over art and reality, on the film itself and add some critics on my own as well, while mentioning as well other sources that add more information into the facts. I sometimes wonder is www.whentheshipcomesin.com is more of a documentaries blog or a movies blog, for more and more I get my hicks from the real thing, that happens to be more creative and more drastic than the invented stuff in some movies.

The set of all this heat was Miami, Florida. A quiet and peaceful community for the elderly in the sixties, where marihuana was already accepted as the drug of the people, but it reached to the point where there was so much of it that the dealer couldn’t sell it all. This city, filled with people from Spanish speaking countries, became the capital of cocaine in the United States.

Jon Roberts

Small gangsters, traffickers and couriers witnessed how cocaine could transform your life in a matter of months; these new cocaine lords will make much more amounts of cash in a much shorter time than the Italian mafia. Teamed with the best lawyers, accountants, technology, they will reach rich and famous and average consumers alike and serve them with the white powder to a point where selling 100 weekly kilos wouldn’t satisfy the local demand.

In Colombia everyone had a cut into it, so the Americans coming to Medellin to get the drugs on planes were never troubled, never had a problem. The favorite way back would be from the east side of Cuba, for the patrolling activity was around the Bahamas. So the plane would head North through Georgia and make a turn to the South into Miami, and thus, nobody would suspect from a plane coming from the North.

Another tactic implemented by traffickers, according to this documentary, was to through the cargo into the sea so speedy boats would take it. It took several attempts until it run smoothly for the Colombians wouldn’t rap the cocaine in a water proof fashion. The boat would make it into the Miami harbor through the “front door”, from there into the cars under surveillance of another team member, the spotter, up in a tall building, supervising no coast guards or cops were in the area at the time of the disembark of the substance.

Rivi Ayala - Main Enforcer

The trafficker would use working men looking for extra cash as transporter and rent numerous numbers of houses where to store the large amounts of cocaine. From there to the whole sellers, who would break into smaller packages as per retailer’s request. They could make $40-50 k of a single kilo in the street; the transport from Medellin to Miami was paid at a fee of $3500/kilo. The tactic was “keep everybody away from everybody”, this way there is no tracing back.

Money was kept in different locations away from the cocaine houses. Once the sell completed, the same us citizens that carried the drug into USA, would carry back Ochoa, Rafa and Escobar their money (no less than 10 million dollars per plane).The planes won’t fly back straight to Colombia, but into the money laundry paradise of Panama. The Panamanian army would take the money into a bank in the country where they have their accounts. The delivery guys were making 1 million dollar each per trip.

Everybody was doing cocaine back in the Miami of the 80’s, at every party, clubs, restaurants; it was everywhere, at the hand of regular middle class hand, as coca cola or pop corn, it was the cool thing to do. At every bathroom there were lines and people pushing shit up their nose.

Persuasive tools

The authorities and law enforcement, used to catch here and there 500 grams, 1 kilo packages, found it hard to cope with the more common tone of powder. District attorney was hitting new records case by case with the amounts of coke apprehended.
Colombia-Miami cocaine industry (Cocaine Inc.), represented 80% of the cocaine activities in the US, and were hitting figures of up to 7 billion dollars a year only in Miami, meaning each householder was expending $12,000/year. So much was the use of cocaine that the chances to find cocaine leftovers in a random dollar bill were pretty high.

Cocaine overdose increased into 88%, two a week casualties was the rate. People started smoking it.

Main cocaine traffickers in Miami could make 50 grants a week while the country wide recession, unemployment was huge, but in Miami there were not enough gold Rolex watches stores to supply the local market, likewise with fancy cars, real estate and boats. No sign of recession in Miami. Millions of dollars from the cocaine industry were pouring into Miami’s economy. Retailers, as anyone else, closed their eyes as per where was the money pouring from: “Don’t ask, don’t tell, take the money and run”. Dozens of night clubs opened, were fed by the powder money. Horse races became a fashionable sport, having a private “heli” was not something reserved to the high society anymore. The guys moving the cables of this business had so much cash, they didn’t know where to put it.

Everybody had a price, from Noriega, to city managers, police departments. If stopped by a cop and found 50 kilos of cocaine in the trunk, a settlement was establish so both the cop and the trafficker would get away with it.

Four Miami mayors indicted, most of them convicted of corruption, contributions were made to the politicians through their parties, no questions asked.

The city was painted with new banks, when all knew Miami had no such volume of business or industry. These banks were reported to take in 6 billion dollars in extra cash from depositors a certain year, this made law enforcement suspicious.

Michael Munday, pilot

Banks invested in huge counting machines. Numbers coming from authorities, expected a mid size Miami bank to send the Federal Reserve 12 million dollars in cash, while in one year this bank sent $600 million to the reserve. The Miami Federal Reserve Bank was entering more money than the whole of the country Federal Reserve banks combined.

Miami flourished with construction sites, new cranes building new skyscrapers, new condos, etc,..
But this happy Eden garden had a turning point of never return at the Dadeland Mall on july 11th, 1979 at 14:28 hrs: two Latin males entered a liquor store in the mall and started to spit fire from the barrels of 14 different weapons (shotguns, carbines, Uzis, mag 10, assorted hand guns,etc,…) into other 4 Latin guys. We all hear in movies that violence is bad for “business”, and this was it, the powder was now becoming responsible for dead bodies and for an unprecedented level of violence. All Colombian murders would result in an open/pending (not resolved case).

Cocaine Formula

This first midday assault would become a frequent thing in Miami. It was the beginning of the war between Colombians and Cuban drug dealers. The Colombians trying to push the Cubans out and gain a higher share of the market. These now violent hit-men became to be known as the cocaine cowboys. Most of them from Medellin, living in South Florida, around 100,000 illegal immigrants of them. And these guys would do the job, Colombian style, killing all living members of a family, kids, cat and dog included. The trade mark of the cocaine cowboys was machine gun fire spraying in the streets.

It became so common to turn on your tv set and news opening with dead bodies due to cocaine dealers violence that only 4 or 5 dead bodies would drive your attention, like in the Chicago of the 20’s.

Tip of the iceberg apprehended

Miami became in the early 80’s the most dangerous place on earth. Only 1976 created 104 murders, during 1979 the rate escalated into 379 dead bodies and 500 in 1980, 621 in 1981.
Then in the 80’s high numbers of Cubans were authorized to flee their country, mostly the ones with police records, and people who could not produce any profit for Castro, all were sent to Miami, doubling the homicide rate. All of a sudden everybody in Florida would carry guns to defend themselves. The Police department acknowledged their lack of man power and resources, so they went on a blind hiring frenzy: from a standard of accepting you only if you had you not used drugs in the last 10 years into the hiring you on the condition of not to be high at the time of signing the contract.

Max, second from the left

This resulted in the largest corruption crises in the Miami Police Department: the entire academy recruit literally went to jail or died. People wouldn’t trust the law officers until new anti narcotics units were formed.

All this was explained in a Time magazine article of the year 1981 called “Miami, paradise lost” that literally crushed the city with delinquency records and stats, saying bottom line that the criminals were wining and the law abiding citizen was losing this battle for Miami.

Cocaine Cowboys posters

New “enforcers” like Jorge Ayala, would make a name of their own by killing for a pay by one of the cartel families; he confessed involvement in 29 murders and suspected of another 12 during the cocaine wars. He started as a delivery boy passing cocaine for $1,000 a day. One faithful day he would meet the most important profile in the industry: Griselda Blanco.

Ayala happened to spoil a murder Griselda requested, so she met Ayala, explained to him the harm he have caused to her and that she expected from him to kill two brother she had targeted, and with this, she would call it even. Ayala was told that he had just had a chat with the godmother, and if he wouldn’t deliver, she would put a hit on him.

The main real character behind The Cocaine Cowboys was (and is?) Griselda Blanco. She was called the “madrina” or godmother. Born in Colombia at a single mother family, Griselda was frequently beated by her mother, who had to prostitute herself for a living. It was told that Griselda at her teenage years was the mastermind of the kidnapping of a wealthy family kid at Medellin and ultimately, after the negation of paying a ransom, she would murder the kid. A certain night, Griselda was so badly beaten than, bleeding and naked, left her house to never return. It was then than she will meet her first husband, and lately her second, with whom she will have three kids. She moved to New York and from there to Miami where she was known to police as a multikilo dealer and a serious threat to US. Griselda had no fear and was feared by all, and she liked it that way, she suffered so much during her childhood that she could share some of this with others.

Cocaine arriving by sea

She had to prove herself to the other male latino drug lords and show them she was the meanest you can get. She collected wealth around her. She had 3 older sons: Dixon, Uber and Osvaldo. Her last son was named Michael Corleone.
Griselda’s crew was responsible for the first Miami bloody strike related to the cocaine industry at the liquor store at the mall in ‘79. Right there she started the cocaine wars and homicides multiplied by the numbers, she killed many colombians and cubans, becoming responsible for the majority of homicides in South Florida during 1979, 1980 and 1981.

There was always a reason for her to put a hit on someone and have him hit the ground. For this she employed a wide crew of hitmen: Chucho Castro, Jaime Bravo,Oscar Bravo, Diego Escobar, Mantec, Cubamba, Velazquez, Hugo, Melanyo, Toto, Carlos Venegas,Diego Sepulveda, Paco Sepulveda,etc,…

One day Osvaldo, one of Griselda’s son, wanted to spend the night at Chucho’s house, the later would agree to it and had a small quarrel. Osvaldo told her mother and Chucho had his days numbered from then on. She assigned Chuchos murder to Jorge Ayala. Ready to kill Chucho, Jorge, together with a colleague, rampaged on the road into Chuchos runing car and pulled their trigger of the M-16s that spitted rounds into Chuchos car, with the bad luck, of deadly injuring his son,who, to all’s surprise, he was as well travelling in his father’s car. From this day on, kids were an accepted toll in the cocaine war in Florida.

Client delaying on pay day - Before

After

Chucho promised to retaliate and kill Jorge Ayala, but Jorge couldn’t care less. Jorge was the chief enforcer of Griselda, he controlled her team and during a period of years he was exclusively the only person who was making the killings.
Alfredo Lorenzo was one of Griselda’s customers, and he promised to Jorge that he will collect the money, in exchange of the 5 cocaine kilos he got from Jorge, in 2 weeks time. Griselda didn’t accepted any delays in her business and after the time that was agreed, she wouldn’t be interested in the money back to her anymore, she will take know your life, full stop.

As Jon Roberts (Coke trafficker of those days) put it: “The Italians, if you delay on payment day, they would try to figure out how to get their money back…the Colombians they act first and they think”.

CENTAC in action

Jorge Ayala says “this is not about the money, if someone rapes me of I will kill him”. He, Oscar and Miguel paid a visit to Alfredo’s house. After Alfredo opened the door Ayala placed a gun in his mouth and told him to be quiet. Alfredo’s wife together with their 3 sons were at the house aged 6, 4 and the baby son. Jorge confessed, being interviewed at the prison, that he was given orders to waste them all and that he thought only to do Alfredo, then, suddenly, while Jorge was talking with Alfredo’s wife, two shots where heard from one of the rooms: Miguel has shot Alfredo. Jorge approaches Miguel and while talking another spit of bullet were heard from an Uzi: Oscar shot 15 rounds in the wife’s body, allegedly while this tried to chop him. The wife was still dead alive with all the metal in her and Jorge took the silencer pistol and put her out of her misery with 2 rounds in the back of her head. Miguel was heading towards the children’s room for Griselda had promised him a bonus for the kids, when Jorge dissuaded him and they left the house.

Jorge’s next mission would be to kill all the crew of Paco Mejilla, who allegedly stole from Griselda, a full cargo of cocaine destined for Miami and finally reached New York. Jorge did 11 people. In less than 24 hours. He was supposed to have wasted a 12ve person,but he left him go.
Griselda was creating more and more enemies by the hours.

Griselda Blando - la madrina

Pablo Mejilla, Paco’s father, was in Miami, at the Mall of the Americas, when seven gunman fired at him and killed him. Papo, Pablo’s son was in the car waiting for him and he was now also a target, that this time Jorge will try to eliminate with the help of 200 sticks of dynamite. The explosives tore the roof, all the neighbors car windows were blasted, but, once again,Jorge missed: … the house was empty.

Two weeks later, Jorge’s team found out that Paco Mejilla was to arrive to Miami airport. They decided to kill him at the airport with a bayonet inside the airport in return, Jorge would get half million dollars. Jorge rejected for this was a suicide mission, for the whole building was filled with cops (he explained). Griselda then decided that Miguelito would do it.  Miguelito was the kind of person that would go on a mission to kill the president if the money was right.

As Paco Mejilla arrived, Miguelito approached him form behind and started to stab him with the bayonet 6 or 7 times, with no by standards reacting, Miguel dropped it and started to run. In moments the police had him surrounded and took him into custody.

Paco survived the stabbing, and that was the end of Mejilla-Griselda war.
A special police group was formed, the CENTAC, to fight cocaine violence while Reagan had just been elected. The president decided to flood the city streets with federal agents, customs officers, coast guards, policemen and not to save in resources.
Homestead military airport was at the service of fighting clandestine vessels and aircraft who tried to smuggler narcotics into Florida.

This represented the beginning of the end of the cocaine cowboys era. Murders decreased in 50% and Griselda was thinking on moving the whole thing to California. And she did, in 1984, she left Miami and started a new at California.In order to get the drugs, Griselda started to make friends with Marta Ochoa, a member of the Ochoa’s family. Her plan was to,after having requested drugs from Marta, kill her,so Griselda could accuse her of having taking her money. And so she did, and by that she put a price on her own head.

Cocaine Cowboys Poster

In the meantime, Max, a part of the local cocaine industry, felt that he had some heat, and next thing he sees is 40 guns were pointed in his head, that was the last time he was spotted. Jon Roberts had millions of dollars buried in his lawn, and after the Feds got Max, Jon wants to hide the greens, but nobody paid a visit to Jon.

On September the 28th, 1986, Jon, awaken, went to the house where they had the radio transmitter and the landing pad and saw one of their planes loaded with dope, landed in the field and though everything went on wheels as usual, and all of a sudden, from all directions, the Feds stormed, Jon thought he was back in Nam for a moment.

Mike and his plane

Later the agents would acknowledge that they didn’t expected to find also Jon in there and his made the job easier for them, to catch all the fish at one spot. But Micky won´t be an easy catch: he headed the swamp after he blowed one of the planes in flames.
Max, after being caught, rolled on all of his ex colleagues and started collaborating with the authorities. Without Max, the Feds would have never closed the case. The Feds and he DEA were not aware of anything during the 5 years of the gang trafficking with cocaine: they had no clue where the landing field was, or which high tech transmitters they were using, …

DEA storming

All the confiscating properties of the whole gang summed around 130 millions dollars.
Law enforcement dismantled the organization and as their members were being held in custody and prosecuted, all the businesses, night clubs that they frequented started to drying up, car dealerships as well, jewelry shops, real state values, etc,…Cocaine money actually built half the city of Miami.

"We are in the jailhouse now"

Miami was in the mouth of everybody those day, at Time magazine, “Paradise Lost”, and there were as well two movies that really placed Miami on the center: “Scarface” of Al Pacino and ¨Miami Vice¨ tv series, both movies focused totally on the drug industry that flourished in Miami.

Miami Vice

Scarface

Mike and Jon spent a decade in jail. Jon would return to Florida on 2000, as a condition for his parole and Mike was released in 1999, after he was a fugitive for 6 years and served 7 at jail.
Rafa Cardona Salazar got killed in Medellin on 1987.
Max entered after his arrest in 85, the Federal Witness Protection Program: to this day he remains hiding. He reportedly has a $3 million on his head.
Rivi avoided the death row by testifying against his own boss, Griselda Blanco, and plead guilty on three murders and gave details on another 14 murders by Griselda´s organization.

Griselda Blanco on the papers

So Griselda was in custody waiting for trial, when Rivi was involved in a phone sex scandal with secretaries at the State Attorney´s Office, that after humiliated, the state dropped Rivi as a witness against Griselda and offered her a plea bargain.

Griselda made a lot of enemies during this time, that resulted in the assassination of Uber and Osvaldo, her two sons, in Colombia. Griselda was released from jail on June 2004. The very same day she saw the outside world again, Rivi was stabbed in a Miami prison, he survived…coincidence?

Griselda was deported to Colombia…

white light black rain

A thrilling documentary with testimonies of the small numbers of survivors from the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the Americans in ´45 in which 140,000 victims perished in Hiroshima and 70,000 in Nagasaki. All survivors are now at the last days of their lives, only now have received a sort of indemnification from the Japanese government. As in other societies, those symbol of defeat, are consciously put aside, left behind, not wanting to be remembered. Those talking in this doc were then young child and they still today carry the physical and psychological wounds caused not only by the bomb but also by their own coreligionists, Japanese that don’t know their suffering, don’t remember what happened and definitely could place themselves into the same situation by not acknowledging what hit their country then. As you all know, the war came to an end as consequence of  plutonium 21 kilotons ¨Fat man¨ and uranium 15 kilotons ¨Little boy¨. The two bombs were carried out by 3 bombers, the Enola Gay and two others, one filled with observers in charged of filming the whole thing and another filled with scientists to measure the explosion. Today humans have risen our destructive capacity to an astonishing 400,000 Hiroshima´s bombs. Well known are Einsteins words about the 4rth World War where weapons will be rocks.

<embed src=”http://www.metacafe.com/fplayer/5350758/White_Light_Black_Rain__2007_.swf” width=”400″ height=”345″ wmode=”transparent” pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowFullScreen=”true” allowScriptAccess=”always” name=”Metacafe_5350758″> </embed><br /><font size=”1″><a href=”http://www.metacafe.com/w/5350758″>White Light/Black Rain (2007)</a> – <a href=”http://www.metacafe.com/”>The best home videos are here</a></font>

Angelina Jolie as Mariane Perl

Daniel Pearl was a happy American journalist, from a New Jersey Jewish family, serving as South Asia Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal in Mumbai. He traveled to Karachi, with his french wife and also journalist, Mariane (Van Neyenhoff), to cover the alleged connection between Richard Reid (the “shoe bomber”) and Al-Qaeda.

The movie based on the book of Mariane Pearl, Daniel Pearl’s widow, on the tragic and brutal capture of Daniel in Karachi, the huge port city of Pakistan, in 2002.

Daniel requested an interview with one of the well know and connected islamist militant named Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, on its way to the restaurant were they were to meet, on February the 1st 2002, Daniel never returned and was captured by the The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty (NMRPS).

Daniel Pearl

Mariane Pearl

Mariane worries about her husband, were later confirmed by a mail she got from the kidnappers stating Daniel was held by Islamic militant who requested the liberation of some Guantanamo Pakistani prisoners and to stop the F-16 military aid from US government to Pakistan, in order to see Daniel back alive.

The original message:

“We give you one more day if America will not meet our demands we will kill Daniel. Then this cycle will continue and no American journalist could enter Pakistan.”

This hotmail message was accompanied by some pictures showing Daniel captured by the terrorists:

Daniel Pearl Captive	Daniel Pearl captive
Daniel Pearl captive	Daniel Pearl captive

Local authorities were alerted and with the time also American personnel from the FBI and the local embassy in order to run a full scale operation aiming for Daniel search and release. Pakistani interior intelligence, (detective Mir Zubair Mahmood) run a city wide search for anyone involved by tracking both the IP (helped by CIA computer experts) of the mail received and the source of the different mobile phone calls that were made from suspects’ devices.

Later on Colin Powell and Musharraf requested the release of Daniel though we all know all efforts led to nothing.

9 days latter Daniel was assassinated.

A video recording was made and released on February 29th 2002, which his captures named it: “The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl”. In it the terrorist made Daniel said antizionist propaganda while showing images of dead Muslims, together with violent video excerpts from the middle east. At the end of the video, the terrorist behead Daniel.
This barbaric document was sent to the house were Marine resided and latter on got into the internet and the rest of the media.

Daniel Pearl video

He sentenced to death for his participation, likewise, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, allegedly 3rd in command in Al-qaeda, acknowledge that he had personally beheaded Daniel.(“I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl, in the City of Karachi, Pakistan”)

British Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the mastermind of the kidnapping and killing, surrendered to an ISI agent, that concealed him a week, keeping him away from the Pakistani police. Saeed took part in the 1994 kidnapping of westerners in India, later incarcerated and release while doing time in the Indian jail in exchange for the hijacked Indian plane of 1999.

Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

Daniel body was later found on May 16 2002, not far from the place he was held captured, in a grave 30 miles from the city, cut in ten decomposed pieces. The body was found after one of the militants who took actual part in the dismemberment by knife of Daniel, was caught by Pakistani police and confessed his part in the crime.

Daniel Pearl body found

Daniel family created the Daniel Pearl Foundation with the purpose of cross-cultural understanding through journalism, music, and innovative communications.

On may 17 2010, president Obama signed “Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act”, Mariane and his son Adam were present as well.

Angelina Jolie plays Mariane in this almost solo play searching for her husband, while being pregnant of Adam, their child. She will show in the film a desperate woman, worrying for the whereabouts of Daniel, handling the tens of people at her resident handling the investigation. After the drastic outcome of Daniel’s kidnapping and assassination, she would travel to France where she resides till today with her only son.

May Daniel rest in piece.

This is the story of a noble people, the Navajo, native Americans, and how time and again they were deceived by greed and evil, personalized by the White man, as usual. The documentary will examine the events surrounding the pass of the law PL 93-531 in 1974 that had in mind to relocate some 10.000 Dine (Navajo) native Americans from the land they lived in peace at with their Hopi neighbours. This is an Oscar winning Award documentary related by Martin Sheen and beautifully dressed by the music of Laura Nyro. The story comes way before the seventies, it actually did begin when Europeans came into the land and conquered by the sword every peace of it, with no sensitivity about its resources and peoples in it cohabiting. Ever since then till these days the white man, its governments and corporations gain control of these lands through deception and lies, dishonor and treason, for exploitation and greed for any transcendent things is all that the white cares about, and if in the process he has to starve to death woman, children and elders he will do, and in this process he will kill himself also and every drop of humanity and decency that could have been existed in him. And then, after he gathered the courage to kill himself as an ethical human being, he will show no mercy when he has to take with him as many other humans as he can, for nothing will cause him more pain than the one he has already inflicted in himself.

At first the white man came in and took the fertile lands for himself leaving the arid ones for the Indians, killing in the process as much Indians as he could, mixed with the thrill of a legal carnage, for there is nothing the white man likes the most than killing with a license. Then obliged the Indians to drop their weapons and promise never to fight and so they did the natives, for unlike the white man, they do believe in honor, truth and the power of your word.

Later on the white man inducted the natives to take the tomahawk and fight, when it served the interest of Washington, for they wanted them to be the code people in WWII and latter Vietnam.
But when they came back, the white man again discovered an interest in the lands of the Indians, now for what lied beneath it: gas, uranium, coal and oil. As in the way Washington acts, they sold the right to exploit these sacred land for low prices, Interior Secretary James Watt gave the order in 1983, bought the rights of exploiting the resources, giving the owners a mere 2-3 % of its value, and in exchange they left a polluted environment filled with toxic substances and wastes to totally destroy the land from its roots, to show others that there where the white man passes no root will ever thrive.

Most of the labor in the tribes had to finally work for the mines, like the Peabody Coal, and would end their days with lung cancer and raise their children raise of malformation to twice the US average due to all the toxic agents left behind.
This is only one of the examples where the white man in order to raise his children and send them to the best universities, he has to buy the politicians and journalists silence so they close their eyes when the white men annihilates all the good and gentleness. Peter La Farge, a native american songwriter, put in words and Johnny Cash and latter Bob Dylan put it in accords with “The Ballad of Ira Hayes”, where the war hero comes back to meet his slow death in the land dried by the white man.

Down the ditches for a thousand years
The water grew Ira’s peoples’ crops
‘Till the white man stole the water rights
And the sparklin’ water stopped.

Narrated by Joaquin Phoenix, this is an eye-opening documentary about human cruelty inflicted upon animals, and about the hypocrisy of humans, who unhealthily, immorally and abusively consume everything  that comes from animals, conduct experiments that aren’t lifesaving on them, use them for entertainment purposes, skin them, etc.,…and all in a mass-production way, so as  “to cut expenses”. For example, “let’s keep skinning the foxes but without the expensive anesthesia”.

We humans are hypocritical because at the same time we involve ourselves in this carnival of the senses, we turn our heads and intentionally ignore others’ suffering, we will eat our foie gras but will comfortably choose not to khow how it was “produced” and will even say “why would they show us these things on tv?”. Well, if we have what it takes to enjoy the foie gras, we better have the stomach to deal with the torments the duck goes through, just to be served on our adorned platter. The next time you eat anything that is made of cows, be aware that it was most probably de-horned without any anesthesia, that it was given antibiotics, and that its excruciating death was as slow and Dantesque as you can imagine any death in a torture chamber to be.

Animals skinned alive for our clothing

We are a global species and are the end consumers of all of these products originating from the animal world. We know very well that animals are helpless when it comes to defending themselves against us, more sophisiticated elevated sense of being. We also know that the indifference and insensitivity we have developed over the years toward the suffering of our fellow-animals, will only lead us to be bound to do the same against under another human, or as Leo Tolstoy put it: “As long as we have slaughtered houses we will have combat fields”; For you cannot be the same individual after you cut a small’s animal testicles with your bare hands, or when you burn an animal alive, or when you skin another animal alive, or when you see animals agonizing from pain after the blows you have inflicted on them. We are what we eat and what we do, and no painful death can go unfelt  in the meat we eat.

slow painful death so we can eat a steak, totally concious in video

Next time you go to a zoo, don’t buy a ticket when they tell you “that it’s educational”, for there is nothing that you can learn from an animal in captivity, it is either a physically or mentally sick animal.

Also, the next time you visit San Fermin or a rodeo, acknowledge the fact that you are  a sadist, or that you don’t mind watching another being’s suffering till death just for you to “have fun”.

The nest time you visit a circus, bear in mind that you are only watching how an animal was taught to perform under physical constraint and fear of physical punishment, only to perform tricks for your eyes. Do not be surprised if the animal eventually retaliates.

The next time you take your usual Bayer aspirin or the product of any other corporation, Colgate or the others, keep in mind the great number of animals that have been systematically tortureed, even when they know that if a testing on an animal had positive results, they will still have to test on humans.

Next time you see someone from Al Qaeda decapitate some journalist’s head, be aware that he probably “practiced” previously with animals, so that you and I can eat them.

It is in our hands to decide whether we should cause so much suffering, torture, agony and slow death during the lives of animals so that they may serve to feed us, dress us and entertain us.  If there is a G-d out there, I definitely do not think that he would ever take all of this that we are committing, for granted.

Score: 10

If there is an educational and informative documentary work, Zeitgeist is its name. A deep research into our current monetary system based on enslave, scarce and above all profit for the benefit of CORPORATIONS. Names like Exxon, Texaco, WalMart, Merrill Lynch, CityGroupInc, Morgan Stanley, CNN, CBS, FOX, MacDonalds, AT&T, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, etc,… All  these nice entities are the real owners of our global world and won’t think twice to send their economic hitmen and try to brive heads of state in order to let them into his country and exploit his resources.  Once the specific foreign leader bribed, the companies get into the country, exploit its resources by a small fraction paid of the real cost of it. Thus, the profit is all for the corporations and the targeted country is left as before but this time with no natural resources and a bunch of corrupted new rich men leaders.

If the leaders refuse to be bribed… accidents happen, CIA fashion. If the CIA cannot do it, the Army will, and then you will find that what it was supposed to protect and defend its citizens is now fighting for corporation interests instead of values. Just to exemplify this: Before 1980’s Afghanistan produced 0% of the world’s opium, after the US/CIA backed Mujahideen won the Soviet/Afghan war, by 1986 they were producing 4-% of the world’ heroin supply. By 1999, they were producing 80% of the total market supply. But then something unexpected happened, the Taliban came to power and by 000 they had destroyed most of the opium fields. Production dropped from 3000+ tons to 185, a 94% reduction. . On Sept. 9th 2001, the full Afghan invasion plans were on G. Bush’s desk. . Today, after the US invasion, US controlled Afghanistan provides 90% of the world’s demand breaking records nearly every other year*.

These same corporations are the ones that killed the electric car, which by the way, it is a known solution since the beginning of last century just because it doesn’t go on petrol, thus we have no profit there, so they banned the use of the batteries (that are also under their control) in these cars. These are the people that wont blink while deforesting the amazons or as Bayer, who wouldn’t have remorse after selling in Europa what was previously banned in the US, a medicine that had been proved cause of aids in many patients. This people aren’t neither interested in well being and environment, but in proliferating, keeping people watching American gladiator and made them think that technology put them on the unemployment.

And here is where it comes www.thevenusproject.com: a new way of thinking and acting for today’s generation. On an era where technology success surrounding us in our daily chores there is no excuse to make the change the corrupt system where we think our politicians will take care of us in this democracy and push forward our interests. Reality is much different: those leader have pending bills with those people that actually placed them on the top, yes, you guessed right again, the corporations, those entities that pay for Obama’s election campaign and right after he won, will pay a visit to his office. And this is how the current system works.

This same corporations control the media, so they can keep you with their news, right where they want you to think. And here is the way we can improve our situation in order to make things change: do not support this corporations by buying their news, by consuming their products, electricity or water, try to be as much self dependent as possible, for in this materialist world we all know what happens when an article/idea is not consumed: they stop producing/exploiting it, it dies and they will have to come up with something the people wants. That is what happened when they started boycotting the city bus companies in southern US for the where were part of the racist system against African Americans. And what are the options? As mentioned, planet friendly technology together with environment protecting energies like tides, helical, waves, solar and thermo, all of them long knocking on our doors.

I found this piece of investigation not only a must-see, but a must follow. There are some grey areas where I may object, such as simplifying all religions and make one from all of them, saying that we are all the same. Score: 9

* Source: Washington Post, “Afghanistan Opium Crop sets record” and UNODC report “The Opium economy in Afghanistan”

I had to come straight from finishing the documentary into the dashboard so I dont forget a thing. My flesh and blood is one of the most inspiring and moving docs I have seen in a few, may be I have ever seen, period. Filled with tenderness, love, caring, humanity on the one hand, of a person who decides to take into her home and adopt 13 kids, each one at a different time in his life but all share some physical an mental disabilities.On the other hand it is ashtonishing to be proved again that the whole medicine for many things is pure love and caring, that is what Susan Tom, a 53 divorced Californian, provides to all of the children and not like if she were managing a care home or a center but as her real home, she is mom for 13. Some of the kids lack some limbs, some others handicapped by burns, some mentally disabled, but all and all everybody is happy at this home, meaning, they are all mentally healthy, which cannot be said for many of what we consider “normal” people. This real life doc it was just a blow of fresh air or wake up call, you name it. Surely worth to watch. My score (I´m always saving good scores for what could come): 7.

The union of marihuana and man

The Union is a fine documentary about cannabis, marihuana (or marijuana) hump. How the prohibition of this plant came into effect and more important why. The documentary is centered around British Columbia long tradition of marijuana growing, producing, distributing and selling. Interested factors are showed about the all positive factors of this plant as fiber, medicine, combustible and others. How tobacco industry kills approx. 400.000 in the US alone, more than all hard drugs as cocaine, heroine and other + all traffic accidents + alcohol casualties combined. How secondary effects of the pharmaceutical industries medicines kill every year thousands of individual, aspirin for instance kills,how this industry only cares about medicines secondary effects as far as it can be proved that they were responsible, else, they wont care putting you down while consuming their “legal” poisons that by the way, most of them create dependencies. This war on marijuana will feed one of the growing and more profitable industries in America: private jails; special forces will feed also from this illegal drug, by the way also by confiscating whatever they get into their hands. But also regimens of advocates and above all of them again the pharma companies, as far as you buy from them, their stuff is legal. On the other hand a striking factor says it all, the number of deads caused by marijuana…oh…let me see…zero, yes you read it right, “0″, nada, rien, niente. That is right. So why is it illegal? because politicians don’t want to acknowledge that either they were wrong or that they were stupid to go with this stream of nonsenses, either reason wont make them reelect. Score: 7.5

Garbage Warrior is a fantastic documentary abou t the life project of an american architech in New Mexico, Michael Reynolds. After completing his formal studies he becomes aware that modern architecture does not build having in mind man neither his enviroment. This will make him, together with global warming and the need for sustainable housing, get into a journey of creating housing without the need of having any cooling, heating, running water. His houses will provide all these and more: even fruits and vegetables from the green houses he designs and buids. This passion for becoming stronger by being less and less dependant on electricity, water and others that come from the resources providers companies. He came up with the revolutionar idea of isolating from cold and hot by using garbage tires filled with dirt and soda cans. Both will provide thermo isolation from cruel winters cold and from dessert high temperatures. Water will be gathered from at the roofs from night moisture and birds and vegetation will habitate inside the house compound. Electricity will come from solar panels and wind power. His dream attracted some hardcore followers who today live at the same project spot with him, each at his own house. The sad part of his dream as asual were the orthodox authority who wanted, as storsionist, a cut of the cake, meaning: “either you pay us or we hunt you”. The board of architects, or something named like it, took from his his architect license. The local government, came out saying his houses are illegal so he cannot build more of them. It took him several years to Michael to get back what it was his. I felt some kind of sadness while watching how an optimistic, positive and progressive individual is being hunted by the legal mob. Score: 7

It has been a while and several crappy movies since I came up with this one. Look is a fine well produced, edited and among all sensational well constructed plot around the world of the surveiling cameras surrounding us. All this film looks like a reality document of real security cameras in stores, streets, elevators and buildings that are watching you 24/7. They will catch every move, every glimpse and some also every word you come up with. They help decision makers to get clues on a crime, fellany and such and will be used when the whole judiciary process is on. On this, I think first of a kind motion picture on this subject and with a story telling structure, you will enter into the daily life of several anonimous people and how they get into trouble. Score:6.5