I finally watched Narcos on Netflix.
Then I watched the follow-up, Narcos: Mexico, as well.
Both are entertaining, and well-constructed.
(Definitely made me wistful for the years when streamers would drop mad cash on high-end talent & production values.)
And anyone who doesn’t love Pedro Pascal is kidding themselves.
It’s fascinating history, too, at least the part that wasn’t dramatized.
How cartel behavior in Colombia, and then Mexico, allowed organized crime to flourish, hollowing out a bunch of Latin American countries in the process.
(A cartel being an economic instrument in which competitors collude to fix prices and control the market.)
Though the show is set in the 80’s and 90’s, the reality is still current.
In fact, it’s worse.
These days, you can add countries like Ecuador and Argentina to the many that are wracked with violence, infiltrated by criminal networks, due to the realities of supply and demand.
Americans demand narcotics to numb the pain of a nearly impossible set of expectations for contemporary existence.
If tens of millions of people here didn’t need help getting through the day, (or the night, in the case of cocaine,) it is certain Latin America would be in better shape.
We’ve always been the bully big brother, impeding their opportunities to advance.
But now there’s an even bigger bully on the block, trying to take us down:
China.
You saw that coming because of the headline.
Sure.
And maybe you know that Chinese companies provide the industrial chemicals that Mexican cartels use to create fentanyl in Mexican labs?
Maybe you also knew that HSBC, the bank, has been implicated in money laundering for the cartels too?
But even I didn’t know, until this week, that the Chinese triads are the leading producers of illegal marijuana in the United States.
Apparently, they moved from partnering on money laundering, to raising capital for their own enterprises by funding illegal grow houses, to sell in states where weed is still illegal.
You can’t make this shit up.
First, I caught news that the Feds were stopping LEGAL shipments of weed in Southern New Mexico, at border checks 60 miles inside the US.
Odd, for sure.
Our Governor and Senator complained, as it’s an interruption of a billion dollar business in a poor state.
I assumed they were just straw men for the Mexican Cartels, but this morning, ProPublica blew the lid off with an amazing story of the Triads taking over Oklahoma.
Oklahoma?
If you know anything about authoritarianism, and Chinese history, you’ll know their power structure is top down.
It’s why Tik Tok is in so much trouble here, or why Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai defended China instead of Hong Kong a few years back.
Nobody over there does any business without the bosses knowing what’s up, and approving.
Just like Putin.
Then party gets a cut, and works with the mafia, as he does.
This is some reverse Opium Wars shit, going on at the same time Tik Tok has convinced American youth in the righteous cause of… Hamas?
Pay attention, folks.
You’ve been warned.
The 21st great power wars are just getting started.
Sunshine and Olly 
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