Sean Penn Interviews El Chapo
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scotian said:
The war on drugs is a huge industry. Legalizing marijuana put a huge dent in it but there's just too much at stake for it to go away completely.
The war on drugs has a direct hand in enabling:
The military industrial complex. Lots of money goes into domestic armaments and multilateral arms deals overseas specifically for the war on drugs.
The private prison industry. Shit loads of money gets thrown around everywhere.
Civil forfeiture. Local police and federal authorities make unknown amounts of money through confiscating private possessions through permissive search and seizure and civil forfeiture laws.
The war on drugs definitely allows various intel agencies a very broad latitude to engage in pretty shady activity that would normally be scrutinized. The CIA has a long track record of using the war on drugs to raise funds and use money in this way.
There's probably also very large business interests who want to keep the war on drugs ongoing too. It helps crack down on cheaper "illegal" alternatives to legal and highly addictive drugs like Oxycontin. The pharm industry and tobacco/alcohol companies were active lobbies against marijuana legalization.
There's also a lot of individual corrupt politicians in many countries who benefit financially from the war on drugs in various ways. Either they get outright kickbacks (like in Mexico, Honduras, Colombia, El Salvador, etc..) or they benefit through lobbyist money through indirect methods like in the U.S.
The main beneficiaries on the war on drugs are military, civil law enforcement, corrupt politicians, and big business. This is why it's been so hard to end the war on drugs.
double post
DarkTriad said:
I see your point, but I can't see el Chapo escaping again: it would force the Mexican president to quit and abandon politics forever. Unless some people (Pena Nieto's political adversaries) would want just that...?
The story here, I think, is that El Chapo's security became compromised when he gave in to advances from this woman, which weakened him.
He is a local hero to many in the rural villages of Sinaloa. If he chose to, I bet he could have hid out there, protected locally, off the grid, for years.
Instead, he chose to entertain Hollywood vanity, rather than embrace the protection from his people, and now he is in prison.
He is a local hero to many in the rural villages of Sinaloa. If he chose to, I bet he could have hid out there, protected locally, off the grid, for years.
Instead, he chose to entertain Hollywood vanity, rather than embrace the protection from his people, and now he is in prison.
Sean Penn without doubt crossed certain moral lines here when he agreed to "interview" the Western Hemisphere's most notorious fugitive, a criminal whose body-count runs well into the thousands.
What Penn was doing looks a lot like aiding and abetting a known fugitive. But that's for the law to decide.
I don't know what it is about Sean Penn's character that makes him court danger and criminality so strenuously. There must be some sort of self-destructive impulse that he has.
I actually admire his acting. And on the whole, his movies are usually very good.
What the hell is he doing getting caught up in this sort of thing?
I think the only reason he himself is not in trouble is that he--Penn--played a key role in apprehending El Chapo. Whether Penn knew it or not, he was under surveillance by US law enforcement authorities. And they tracked him every step of the way in his trip to the Mexican countryside.
In any case, this whole thing is very strange.
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What Penn was doing looks a lot like aiding and abetting a known fugitive. But that's for the law to decide.
I don't know what it is about Sean Penn's character that makes him court danger and criminality so strenuously. There must be some sort of self-destructive impulse that he has.
I actually admire his acting. And on the whole, his movies are usually very good.
What the hell is he doing getting caught up in this sort of thing?
I think the only reason he himself is not in trouble is that he--Penn--played a key role in apprehending El Chapo. Whether Penn knew it or not, he was under surveillance by US law enforcement authorities. And they tracked him every step of the way in his trip to the Mexican countryside.
In any case, this whole thing is very strange.
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Quintus Curtius said:
Sean Penn definitely gets off on the idea of courting self-destructive "danger". I think he is very intelligent and talented, highly egoistical, and deeply flawed. He enjoys his worldwide fame and its trappings, but at the end of the day is unfulfilled by all the superficiality of the industry he is part of, and wishes he was famous/great in some more "real" realm of life. Probably wishes he was born Che Guevara, or something, hence his Chapo/Chavez/Iraq/Haiti/Katrina stunts.
He also has that artistic "dark side" where you just know that these types will not go out from this world quietly, because death by some public stunt (whether by suicide, or by "suicide by mob" or whatever) ensures his posthumous ego will still be stroked by flames of eternal notoriety.
Also, I wouldn't pass it by him, or his grandiose ego, to be actually trying to exact revenge on Chapo in the name of all those who died from drugs, first and foremost his own kid brother (actor Chris Penn) who was once cocaine addicted (which may partially blamed for his death), as well as many of his high profile friends (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Heath Ledger, etc.) as well as many other countless anonymous victims.
I only read small part of that whole RS article, the part where he was feigning ignorance about the technology, which means that right away he's telegraphing his innocence about the whole capture thing, but doing so quite unconvincingly.
Something tells me Penn loves having his sleep disturbed for the rest of his life. It's narcissism, and social hierarchy, really. When he goes to Hollywood parties he gets to play the "real deal" among the sea of fakes.
I tried to read the interview and discovered it was largely about Penn. This, too, fits with his general worldview and psychopathy. In passing, Penn's prose is eye-wateringly bad.
scotian said:
How does it end?
It's not like drug cartels will just decide to stop murdering people because the US President declares the war on drugs to be over. It's not like addicts will stop burglarizing homes, stealing identities, neglecting children, or engaging in domestic violence. The drug economy will still suck money out of the rest of the economy.
How do you fix all these problems just like that?
Daddy Chains said:
That's a great analysis. You're right...I had forgotten that Chris Penn died of his drug problems.
If this was some sort of subtle "revenge" that Sean Penn extracted against El Chapo, then that would almost make him a hero...and that makes this story even more fascinating.
Who knows? Maybe Sean Penn was acting at the behest of the DEA. Maybe the whole thing was a plan to lure El Chapo into custody.
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Quintus Curtius said:
And not only that, we also could reasonably infer that Charlize Theron had (suddenly) dropped him when she heard of his Chapo stunt plans. Being a mother of two small (if adopted) children, her instinct probably kicked in as she knew that she couldn't entirely trust him to not fuck it up for her and/or her children.
She probably gave Sean Penn an ultimatum, either her or El Chapo. And he chose Chapo, because he knew well that pussy (aging at that) is highly disposable/replaceable, while natural high of this type is permanent.
Gunner
Kingfisher
New development in the story (just available in Spanish, for the moment):
El Chapo texted, using Blackberry, Kate del Castillo, the thirst was out of this world and she friendzoned him hard. Lots of mexican websites are mocking el Chapo texting style, thirst and words.
Please, rememeber, everytime you text a girl or publish something on the internet think that is possible for everyone in the world to see it and that no pussy is worth the price:
Original news in Spanish:
http://www.milenio.com/policia/chap...-cartas_kate_chapo_sean_penn_0_663534049.html
Website mocking him and correcting the texts (Chapo does not know how to write Spanish):
http://www.sopitas.com/570955-una-h...n-los-sms-entre-el-chapo-y-kate-del-castillo/
El Chapo texted, using Blackberry, Kate del Castillo, the thirst was out of this world and she friendzoned him hard. Lots of mexican websites are mocking el Chapo texting style, thirst and words.
Please, rememeber, everytime you text a girl or publish something on the internet think that is possible for everyone in the world to see it and that no pussy is worth the price:
Original news in Spanish:
http://www.milenio.com/policia/chap...-cartas_kate_chapo_sean_penn_0_663534049.html
Website mocking him and correcting the texts (Chapo does not know how to write Spanish):
http://www.sopitas.com/570955-una-h...n-los-sms-entre-el-chapo-y-kate-del-castillo/
Gunner said:
Holy shit. If those texts are true, he friendzoned himself so fucking hard it's nearly unbelievable. He even calls her a friend in his texts and she responds that she too would like to talk to him in person...about their project. I kind of pity the guy now in a strange way.
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