Was Operation Fast And Furious Really Part Of A Secret Deal Between The DEA And Mexico's Sinaloa Drug Cartel?
By Rick Ungar
An investigation by a major Mexican newspaper, El Universal, has
concluded that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency entered into
agreements—dating back to 2000 and continuing through 2012—with Mexico’s
largest drug trafficking gang, the Sinaloa Cartel.
According to Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla, a highly placed member of
the Sinaloa cartel and the son of top Sinaloa leader Ismael “El Mayo”
Zambada, the deal involved the cartel providing information about rival
Mexican drug gangs to the DEA in exchange for the U.S. government
agreeing not to interfere with Sinaloa shipments into the United States
and the dismissal of criminal charges against cartel participants.
In a series of court fillings in a criminal case
against Zambada-Niebla filed in the federal court in Chicago, it is
alleged that the U.S. efforts were part of a strategy previously
employed by the U.S. government in combatting Colombian drug cartels
whereby the government would “divide and conquer” by making sweetheart
deals with one cartel in order to gain information to be used in
destroying the cooperating cartel’s rivals.
The El Universal report is based not only on interviews with DEA and
cartel members—some currently incarcerated in Mexican jails—but
additionally based on the above-referenced court filings in the U.S.
District Court.
The document makes for some incredibly interesting reading and I highly recommend that you do so.
While much of what is included in various depositions and discovery
documents in the case has been kept from public view, El Universal has
managed to publish some of the statements made by Mr. Humberto
Loya-Castro—an attorney for the Sinaloa cartel who was party to the
meetings and a target of DEA investigations tied to his own activities
in drug trafficking in the United States. Loya-Castro was ultimately
indicted in the Chicago case.
“Mr. Loya-Castro stated that agents (DEA agents) told him
that, in exchange for information about rival drug trafficking
organizations, the United States government agreed to dismiss the
prosecution of the pending case against Mr. Loya-Castro (a different
case than the Chicago indictment), not to interfere with his drug
trafficking activities and those of the Sinaloa Cartel, to not actively
prosecute him, Chapo (Sinaloa boss Joaquin Guzman Loera), Mayo (Ismael Zambada-Garcia)
and the leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel and not to apprehend them. The
agents stated that this arrangement had been approved by high-ranking
officials and federal prosecutors.”
But was the agreement between the government and the Sinaloa cartel
only about information and a “pass” granted the drug peddlers to freely
ship their products into the United States?
A close reading of the motion referenced above
suggests that the deal with the Sinaloa drug gang may have included
shipments of guns to the cartel to be used to thin out the ranks of
rival drug gang members in Mexico—something that the U.S. government
would view as a “win” if they were following through on the “divide and
conquer” strategy employed in Colombia and allegedly in play in Mexico.
As you will see in the pleadings, Zambada-Niebla is deeply interested
in getting his hands on discovery that would support the claim that the
United States government was doing all of these favors in payment for
the deal the two sides had reached, including discovery documents
suggesting that weapons were part of the equation.
The allegation that guns were part of a deal between the U.S. and the Sinaloa traffickers has been suggested before. The Blaze reported on this back in August of 2012—
“Zambada-Niebla claims that under a “divide and conquer” strategy,
the U.S. helped finance and arm the Sinaloa Cartel through Operation
Fast and Furious in exchange for information that allowed the DEA, U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agencies to
take down rival drug cartels. The Sinaloa Cartel was allegedly permitted
to traffic massive amounts of drugs across the U.S. border from 2004 to
2009 — during both Fast and Furious and Bush-era gunrunning operations —
as long as the intel kept coming.”
If true–and the well researched El Universal report certainly gives
credence to The Blaze’s earlier reporting—it may be that Operation Fast
and Furious was not about a strategy to release guns into Mexico so they
could be tracked to drug traffickers, but rather all about using the
weapons—as part of the deal with the Sinaloa cartel—to kill soldiers of
drug traffickers we wanted off the streets and out of business.
Interestingly, this might just make Americans feel better about Operation Fast and Furious.
While much of the anger the scandal set off was based on what
appeared to be a sloppy and poorly executed exercise that resulted in
one of our own being murdered with the very weapons we had supplied,
would Americans feel better if they knew that the weapons were actually
being used as part of a strategy to take scores of drug traffickers
belonging to Sinaloa’s rival gangs off the playing field?
Indeed, if this is really a war, one might argue that this would be a pretty ingenious way kill enemy soldiers.
This leads me to ask a provocative question—
If the “divide and conquer” strategy was being applied in Mexico as a
part of the deal with the Sinaloa cartel—the same being based on what
many would claim was a successful strategy used to scale back the drug
trafficking originating in Colombia—was Fast and Furious the result of a
U.S. government that couldn’t shoot straight or a well organized effort
to allow the Sinaloa crew to kill off thousands of rival drug
traffickers to our mutual benefit?
By Bryan Llenas
U.S. and Mexican officials held a high level meeting on Thursday to
discuss a plan to build the first-ever high speed passenger railroad
line connecting both countries by 2018.
The proposed high-speed train would take passengers from San Antonio,
Texas, to Monterrey, Mexico through the U.S. border city of Laredo in
less than two hours.
San Antonio and Monterrey are about 300 miles apart, roughly 5 hours'
driving distance. Under the proposed plan, passengers would be able to
travel quickly between both nations thanks to pre-clearance immigration
and customs checks, so the train wouldn't have to stop at the border.
U.S. Congressman Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat, and Texas
Department of Transportation Commissioner Jeff Austin, as well as
Mexican officials, presented the plan to U.S. Secretary of
Transportation Anthony Foxx on Thursday in Washington D.C..
"Secretary Foxx and his team are interested," Cuellar said. “A
high-speed rail between San Antonio and Monterrey through Laredo would
revolutionize trade and travel between the United States and Mexico.”
The project is planned as a joint effort by both nations. But the
timeline remains somewhat murky. Both countries are optimistic the
project will get done, but the effort seems to be taking a more
immediate priority south of the border.
Mexican officials told Fox News Latino they have already
received the go-ahead and funding is lined up from the federal
government and the state of Nuevo Leon. Mexico estimates its share of
the cost for the project will be around $1.5 billion, with construction
slated to begin as early the first half of 2015 and completed by 2018.
Both Rep. Cuellar and Mexican officials expect the project to be mostly privately funded.
Marco Antonio Gonzalez Valdez, a congressman from Nuevo León, said
new railway reforms proposed by President Enrique Pena Nieto are
expected to pass Congress in the coming months and will open Mexico's
railroad industry to private investment.
But while Mexico is primed and ready to build, the U.S. is still in a study phase of the project.
The idea for the international railway sprung from an initial Texas
Department of Transportation 850-mile study started in September of
2012, scheduled to be completed in December 2014. The study initially
looked into building a high-speed rail between Oklahoma City and South
Texas but has been expanded to include a separate extension of the
railway from San Antonio to Monterrey Mexico.
"The study costs $5.6 million dollars, and an additional $400,000
would allow us to extend the study to Monterrey. Once we have route
selection then we will begin talking to the private sector," Texas
transportation commissioner Jeff Austin said. "We are hoping to get this
started by 2015."
Officials noted current railroads in South Texas will most likely not
support high speed trains and entirely new high speed infrastructure
would need to be put in place.
A high speed link between San Antonio and Monterrey, proponents said,
would be an economic boost to both sides of the border. Mexico was the
second-largest goods export market to the U.S. in 2012 and is currently
its third-largest goods trading partner.
Monterrey is Mexico’s third-largest city and is considered the most
important financial, educational and industrial center in the country.
According to Rolando Zubiran, the state’s deputy minister for foreign
investment, 80 percent of U.S. Mexican economic activity passes through
Monterrey.
But there are some security and safety questions for potential
passengers on the high-speed rail, as Mexico continues to fight ruthless
drug cartels. In 2010, Monterrey was at the center of a turf war
between the Zetas and Gulf cartels.
“It will be a non-stop train,” said Jorge Domene Zambrano, Governor’s
Executive office Chief of Staff, in response to concerns about a train
traveling high speeds through the country still mired in its brutal drug
war.
"The only real obstacle we can see to this project is the American study," said Gonzalez told Fox News Latino. "The project does not begin until the study is complete." Follow us on twitter.com/foxnewslatino
Like us at facebook.com/foxnewslatino Bryan
Llenas currently serves as a New York-based correspondent for Fox News
Channel (FNC) and a reporter for Fox News Latino (FNL).
After reading about the problems facing legal pot growers, I wondered whether there exists a bitcoin-based bank. Upon searching, I found these fresh links and articles below. Not that this is good or bad. I was once inclined to think legalization would cut off the cartels, but given the news cited in other recent posts, it may serve as an in road. We may want the revenue, but at what cost?
Bottom line is that the Federal government has continued to either turn a blind eye or obstruct issues that would secure the United States against cartels and illegal immigration, and now they look the other way with legalization of marijuana. They are opening the door to legalized gambling as well, but what they don't consider is the long-term cultural impact and the vice that goes along with it, they only want the revenue. Will the Federal govt. look the other way on bitcoin as well?
A Bitcoin storage service that insures deposits of the digital currency against loss and theft has launched in London.
Elliptic Vault uses "deep cold storage", where private
encrypted keys to bitcoins are stored on offline servers and in a secure
location.
The facility's founders say they are the "first in the world" to offer insurance for Bitcoin owners.
Stolen bitcoins cannot be recovered as all transactions are irreversible.
Online wallets used to store bitcoins have been subject to a
number of cyber-attacks and some users have also suffered from
accidental loss.
How Bitcoin works
Bitcoin is often referred to as a new kind of currency.
But it may be best to think of its units being virtual tokens rather than physical coins or notes.
However, like all currencies its value is determined by how much people are willing to exchange it for.
To process Bitcoin transactions, a procedure called "mining"
must take place, which involves a computer solving a difficult
mathematical problem with a 64-digit solution.
For each problem solved, one block of bitcoins is processed. In addition the miner is rewarded with new bitcoins.
This provides an incentive for people to provide computer processing power to solve the problems.
To compensate for the growing power of computer chips, the
difficulty of the puzzles is adjusted to ensure a steady stream of about
3,600 new bitcoins a day.
There are currently about 11 million bitcoins in existence.
To receive a bitcoin a user must have a Bitcoin address - a
string of 27-34 letters and numbers - which acts as a kind of virtual
postbox to and from which the bitcoins are sent.
Since there is no registry of these addresses, people can use them to protect their anonymity when making a transaction.
These addresses are in turn stored in Bitcoin wallets which are used to manage savings.
They operate like privately run bank accounts - with the proviso that if the data is lost, so are the bitcoins owned.
James Howells lost about £4.6m when he threw away his hard drive, forgetting that he had bitcoins stored on it.
Elliptic co-founder Tom Robinson says the service addresses a "deep concern" among Bitcoin users
Unlike money stored in a conventional bank, bitcoins are not insured and there is no way of retrieving them once they are gone.
'Obvious step'
"One of the main concerns people have with Bitcoin is that
it's quite difficult to store securely," Elliptic co-founder Tom
Robinson told the BBC.
"Offering people insurance seemed an obvious step."
But convincing an insurance firm to trust the nascent currency was not an easy task.
"It was very difficult to find an insurer," said Mr Robinson,
an Oxford graduate with a PhD in physics who started the company with
two friends.
"The industry is very conservative and they did not understand Bitcoin.
"They were also influenced by the negative publicity Bitcoin
received, although this has improved since Silk Road [an online
marketplace] was taken down and stopped dominating the Bitcoin agenda."
Layers of security
The company is underwritten by Lloyd's of London, which will
give people "more faith in the Bitcoin system", according to Emily
Spaven, managing editor of CoinDesk, a digital currency news site.
Insurance payouts will be calculated using the Bitcoin to US dollar exchange rate at the time a claim is made.
Elliptic's focus is on storing bitcoins as securely as possible, using what Mr Robinson calls "deep cold storage" techniques.
Bitcoin keys are encrypted and stored offline. There are
multiple copies, protected by layers of cryptographic and physical
security.
The copies are accessible only via a quorum of Elliptic's directors.
Illicit financing
Elliptic's launch comes as Bitcoin has been making news around
the world, with governments deciding how to legislate for the currency.
Singapore has become one of the first countries to issue
guidance on taxation for Bitcoin businesses, although it also said it
was monitoring transactions to detect illicit financing by criminals and
terrorists.
Bitcoin was less fortunate in China, where the largest online
marketplace, Alibaba Group's Taobao, said it would ban virtual
currencies.
In December, the country's central bank ordered financial institutions to halt Bitcoin-related services and products.
There was a breakthrough for the currency in the US, however,
where Overstock.com became one of the first major online retailers to
accept Bitcoin on Thursday.
SEATTLE
— In his second-floor office above a hair salon in north Seattle, Ryan
Kunkel is seated on a couch placing $1,000 bricks of cash — dozens of
them — in a rumpled brown paper bag. When he finishes, he stashes the
money in the trunk of his BMW and sets off on an adrenalized drive
downtown, darting through traffic and nervously checking to see if
anyone is following him.
Despite
the air of criminality, there is nothing illicit in what Mr. Kunkel is
doing. He co-owns five medical marijuana dispensaries, and on this day
he is heading to the Washington State Department of Revenue to commit
the ultimate in law-abiding acts: paying taxes. After about 25 minutes
at the agency, Mr. Kunkel emerges with a receipt for $51,321.
“Carrying
such large amounts of cash is a terrible risk that freaks me out a bit
because there is the fear in my mind that the next car pulling up beside
me could be the crew that hijacks us,” he said. “So, we have to play
this never-ending shell game of different cars, different routes,
different dates and different times.”
Launch media viewer
Mr. Kunkel and his business partner, Mr. Berman, left.David Ryder for The New York Times
Legal
marijuana merchants like Mr. Kunkel — mainly medical marijuana outlets
but also, starting this year, shops that sell recreational marijuana in
Colorado and Washington — are grappling with a pressing predicament:
Their businesses are conducted almost entirely in cash because it is
exceedingly difficult for them to open and maintain bank accounts, and
thus accept credit cards.
The
problem underscores the patchwork nature of federal and state laws that
have evolved fitfully as states have legalized some form of marijuana
commerce. Though 20 states and the District of Columbia allow either
medical or recreational marijuana use — with more likely to follow suit —
the drug remains illegal under federal law. The Controlled Substances Act, enacted in 1970 classifies marijuana as a Schedule I drug, the most dangerous category, which also includes heroin, LSD and ecstasy.
As
a result, banks, including state-chartered ones, are reluctant to
provide traditional services to marijuana businesses. They fear that
federal regulators and law enforcement authorities might punish them,
with measures like large fines, for violating prohibitions on
money-laundering, among other federal laws and regulations.
“Banking
is the most urgent issue facing the legal cannabis industry today,”
said Aaron Smith, executive director of the National Cannabis Industry
Association in Washington, D.C. Saying legal marijuana sales in the
United States could reach $3 billion this year, Mr. Smith added: “So
much money floating around outside the banking system is not safe, and
it is not in anyone’s interest. Federal law needs to be harmonized with
state laws.”
The
limitations have created unique burdens for legal marijuana business
owners. They pay employees with envelopes of cash. They haul Chipotle
and Nordstrom bags containing thousands of dollars in $10 and $20 bills
to supermarkets to buy money orders. When they are able to open bank
accounts — often under false pretenses — many have taken to storing
money in Tupperware containers filled with air fresheners to mask the
smell of marijuana.
The
all-cash nature of the business has also created huge security concerns
for business owners. Many have installed panic buttons for workers in
the event of a robbery and have set up a constellation of security
cameras at their facilities beyond what is required, as well as floor
sensors to detect break-ins. In Colorado, Blue Line Protection Group was
formed a few months ago, specializing in protecting dispensaries and
facilities that grow marijuana, and in providing transportation
security. The firm largely uses military veterans who have Special
Operations experience.
Marijuana
business owners have devised strategies to avoid the suspicions of
bankers. A number of legal operations have opened accounts by
establishing holding companies with names that obscure the nature of
their business. Some owners simply use personal bank accounts. Others
have relied on local bank managers willing to take chances and bring
them on as clients, or even offer tips on how to choose nondescript
company names.
But
the financial institutions eventually shut down many of these accounts
after managers conclude the businesses are too much of a risk. It is not
unusual for a legitimate marijuana business to go through a half-dozen
bank accounts in a few years. While they are active, however, these
accounts may have informal restrictions placed on them — some
self-imposed — so they do not draw the scrutiny of bankers who may file
suspicious-activity reports or would be required to report deposits over
$10,000 in cash. The account holders may make only small deposits, and
only at night and at certain branches. Mr. Kunkel of Seattle has such an
account.
At
the largest credit union in Washington State, BECU, about 20 accounts
have been shut down in the last three years after it was discovered they
were for businesses in the legal marijuana trade, Todd Pietzsch, a
spokesman for the credit union, said.
Kristi
Kelly, 36, who owns two dispensaries and several marijuana growing
operations in the Denver area, said six bank accounts of hers had been
canceled in the last 18 months. “Opening the account is not necessarily
the problem,” she said. “Our cash deposit levels flag a bank’s
compliance division.”
Launch media viewer
Mr.
Kunkel, co-owner of five marijuana dispensaries, delivered a bag of
cash to the Washington State Department of Revenue in Seattle. After 25
minutes, he emerged with a receipt for $51,321.David Ryder for The New York Times
Ms.
Kelly, who had just paid $10,000 in cash to the City of Denver for
licensing and application fees to expand her business, said that several
times a week she carried around tens of thousands of dollars in a bag.
“I never felt as illegitimate as the day I had to buy a cash counter,”
she said, adding that she spends three hours or so a day just managing
the cash from her business’s multiple locations.
A.T.M.s
are common in marijuana outlets, but the business owners often have to
use their own cash in the machines in case law enforcement authorities
conduct a raid and seize the money.
Those
marijuana operations that do have bank accounts or use the personal
ones of their owners can use a cashless A.T.M. service in which a debit
card is swiped at a dispensary and the money is transferred into the
recipient’s account.
“It
is operating over the A.T.M. network and not the credit card network,”
said Lance Ott, whose company, Guardian Data Systems, provides this
service. “The A.T.M. networks are not as regulated. This is the
loophole.”
Since
legal marijuana operations, for the most part, cannot get bank loans,
these small businesses have to rely on short-term loans from
individuals, usually with higher interest rates.
To
help, High Times magazine is starting a private equity fund to invest
in marijuana businesses. But many investors may feel uneasy about
marijuana businesses that do not have bank accounts. And without bank
references, entrepreneurs say, it is much tougher to get lines of credit
from vendors.
Leaders
in the marijuana trade point out that giving accounts to businesses
would allow for more transparency and meticulous regulation and would
help ensure that jurisdictions receive the taxes they are entitled to.
Marijuana
entrepreneurs and banks both would like clear guidelines from the
government on how financial institutions can serve the industry. On
Friday, six members of Colorado’s congressional delegation sent a letter to the Treasury and the Justice Department requesting that they “expedite” that guidance.
In
August, the Justice Department issued a memo indicating that it would
not crack down on legal marijuana as long as eight regulatory
requirements were met, like preventing revenue from the sale of
marijuana from going to criminal enterprises and preventing the
distribution of marijuana to minors. The memo did not address banking.
The
Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network hopes to
circulate recommendations by the end of this month to officials at the
Treasury and the Justice Department for their opinions, an official
briefed on the situation said. There is no timetable for formal
guidelines.
Richard
Riese, senior vice president for regulatory compliance at the American
Bankers Association, said banks wanted clear and comprehensive
guidelines on how to do business with the legal marijuana industry.
Mr.
Riese said, for instance, that banks would want to know that they were
not “aiding and abetting” a criminal enterprise if they provided
services to marijuana businesses. “Banks will need a lot of detail from
regulators to get the satisfaction and comfort they are looking for,” he
said.
Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
A version of this article appears in print on January 12, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Banks Say No to Marijuana Money, Legal or Not.
In one of the first scenes of early Oscar favorite “12 Years a Slave,” the film’s protagonist, Solomon Northup, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor
, is seen at night, sleeping alongside a fellow enslaved servant.
Their faces are barely illuminated against the velvety black background,
but the subtle differences in their complexions — his a burnished
mahogany, hers bearing a lighter, more yellow cast — are clearly
defined.
“Mother of George,”
which like “12 Years a Slave” opens on Friday, takes place in
modern-day Brooklyn, not the candlelit world of 19th-century Louisiana.
But, like “12 Years a Slave,” its black stars and supporting players are
exquisitely lit, their blue-black skin tones sharply contrasting with
the African textiles they wear to create a vibrant tableau of textures
and hues.
Gallery
“Mother of George” and “12 Years a Slave” are just the most
recent in a remarkable run of films this year by and about African
Americans, films that range in genre from the urban realism of “Fruitvale Station” and light romantic comedy of “Baggage Claim" to the high-gloss historic drama of “Lee Daniels’ The Butler” and the evocatively gritty pot comedy “Newlyweeds.”
The diversity of these films isn’t reflected just in their stories and
characters, but in the wide range of skin tones they represent, from the
deepest ebonies to the creamiest caramels.
The fact that
audiences are seeing such a varied, nuanced spectrum of black faces
isn’t just a matter of poetics, but politics — and the advent of digital
filmmaking. For the first hundred years of cinema, when images were
captured on celluloid and processed photochemically, disregard for black
skin and its subtle shadings was inscribed in the technology itself,
from how film-stock emulsions and light meters were calibrated, to the
models used as standards for adjusting color and tone.
That
embedded racism extended into the aesthetics of the medium itself, which
from its very beginnings was predicated on the denigration and erasure
of the black body. As far back as “The Birth of a Nation”
— in which white actors wearing blackface depicted Reconstruction-era
blacks as wild-eyed rapists and corrupt politicians — the technology and
grammar of cinema and photography have been centered on the unspoken
assumption that their rightful subjects would be white.
The result
was that, if black people were visible at all, their images would often
be painfully caricatured (see Hattie McDaniel in “Gone With the Wind”)
or otherwise distorted, either ashy and washed-out or featureless
points of contrast within the frame. As “12 Years a Slave” director
Steve McQueen said in Toronto after the film’s premiere there, “I remember growing up and seeing Sidney Poitier sweating next to Rod Steiger in ‘In the Heat of the Night,’
and obviously [that was because] it’s very hot in the South. But also
he was sweating because he had tons of light thrown on him, because the
film stock wasn’t sensitive enough for black skin.”
Montré Aza
Missouri, an assistant professor in film at Howard University, recalls
being told by one of her instructors in London that “if you found
yourself in the ‘unfortunate situation’ of shooting on the ‘Dark
Continent,’ and if you’re shooting dark-skinned people, then you should
rub Vaseline on their skin in order to reflect light. It was never an
issue of questioning the technology.” In her classes at Howard, Missouri
says, “I talk to my students about the idea that the tools used to make
film, the science of it, are not racially neutral.”
Missouri
reminds her students that the sensors used in light meters have been
calibrated for white skin; rather than resorting to the offensive
Vaseline solution, they need to manage the built-in bias of their
instruments, in this case opening their cameras’ apertures one or two
stops to allow more light through the lens. Filmmakers working with
celluloid also need to take into account that most American film stocks
weren’t manufactured with a sensitive enough dynamic range to capture a
variety of dark skin tones. Even the female models whose images are used
as reference points for color balance and tonal density during film
processing — commonly called “China Girls” — were, until the mid-1990s,
historically white.
In the face of such technological chauvinism,
filmmakers have been forced to come up with workarounds, including
those lights thrown on Poitier and a variety of gels, scrims and
filters. But today, such workarounds have been rendered virtually
obsolete by the advent of digital cinematography, which allows
filmmakers much more flexibility both in capturing images and
manipulating them during post-production.
Cinematographer Anastas Michos recalls filming “Freedomland”
with Julianne Moore and Samuel L. Jackson, whose dramatically different
complexions presented a challenge when they were in the same shot. “You
had Julianne Moore, who has minus pigment in her skin, and Sam, who’s a
dark-skinned guy. It was a photographic challenge to bring out the
undertones in both of them.”
Michos solved the problem during a
phase of post-production called the digital intermediate, during which
the film print is digitized, then manipulated and fine-tuned. “You’re
now able to isolate specific skin tones in terms of both brightness and
color,” says Michos, who also shot “Baggage Claim,” “Jumping the Broom”
and “Black Nativity,” due out later this year. “It gives you a little
bit more flexibility in terms of how you paint the frame.”
Daniel Patterson, who shot “Newlyweeds” on a digital Red One camera,
agrees, noting that on a recent shoot for Spike Lee’s “Da Blood of
Jesus,” he was able to photograph black actors of dramatically different
skin tones in a nighttime interior scene using just everyday house
lamps, thanks to a sophisticated digital camera. “I just changed the
wattage of the bulb, used a dimmer, and I didn’t have to use any film
lights. That kind of blew me away,” Patterson says. “The camera was able
to hold both of them during the scene without any issues.”
The
multicultural realities films increasingly reflect go hand in hand with
the advent of technology that’s finally able to capture them with
accuracy and sensitivity. And on the forefront of this new vanguard is
cinematographer and Howard University graduate Bradford Young
, the latest in a long line of Howard alums — including Ernest
Dickerson, Arthur Jafa and Malik Sayeed — who throughout the 1990s
deployed the means of production to bring new forms of lyricism,
stylization and depth to filmed images of African Americans.
At Howard, Young says, “the question of representation was always first and foremost. . . .
When bias is built into the negative, how does that affect the way we
see people of color on screen? People like Ernest, Malik and A.J.
[found] a sweet spot. There’s always an inherent bias sitting over us.
We’ve just got to climb through it and survive, and that’s what’s
embodied in the cinematography.”
Whether working on film stock for Dee Rees’s “Pariah,” high-definition video for Ava DuVernay’s “Middle of Nowhere,” or with digital Red cameras for Andrew Dosunmu’s “Restless City”
and “Mother of George,” Young is finding a newly rich visual language,
one that’s simultaneously straightforward, soft, stylish and intimately
naturalistic. His work with Dosunmu — for which Young won the Sundance
cinematography award this year — is especially expressive, with the
camera coming in and out of focus and often capturing the actors in
moments of stillness, like works of sculpture.
“I was trying to be
assertive with the imagery as flamboyant, space-age and assertive as
African American textiles have been for 10,000 years,” Young explains,
adding that he lit “Mother of George” to accentuate blue skin tones and
illuminated scenes from above, to suggest natural sunlight. “It takes us
back to Tuaregs and Niger and nomads, because the people in the film
are kind of like nomads,” he says. “That’s why the top light is always
so cool, and their hands are always stained with something. Because
that’s what nomadic people do.”
Solomon Northup is a nomad as well
in “12 Years a Slave,” in which he and his fellow laborers — often
abused, but shown in all their physical types and tonal subtleties —
stand in symbolic rebuke to a cinematic apparatus that habitually
ignored or despised them. Like their brethren in “Mother of George” and
other denizens of this year’s “black new wave,” these characters are
claiming aesthetic space that they’ve long been denied.
That
space, at long last, seems endless: Young suggested that his next step
with Dosunmu might be photographing a movie in 3-D. Having transformed
the black body in a two-dimensional format, he says, “let’s work on the
perception of the black body in space. Instead of having depth of field,
let’s actually take control of each field.” It’s tempting to imagine
that Northup and his peers would agree — literally, metaphorically and,
not least of all, cinematically.
As the smoke settles from the first week of legal marijuana
sales in Colorado, experts are warning that sanctioned pot dealers could
become targets for the very folks they put out of business.
Taking over a trade once ruled by drug cartels and turning it into an
all-cash business could make pot shops prime targets for extortion,
black-market competition and robbery. One veteran border narcotics agent
told FoxNews.com Colorado's legal pot industry will find it hard to
keep the criminals from horning in on a lucrative business they once
controlled.
"What is
quite possible is that cartels will hire straw owners who have clean
records who can apply for a license, then sell large quantities both
legally and on the black market."
- Denver DEA office spokesman Albert Villasuso
"Mexico is already in Colorado without the risks," the agent, who
requested anonymity, said of the state's heavy pre-existing cartel
presence. "Legal businesses will likely see a rise in extortion attempts
while law enforcement will see a lot of backdoor deals being made."
Cartels, especially the Juarez and Sinaloa, who have a strong
presence in Colorado, could not have been happy with the estimated $1
million in sales Jan. 1, the first day of legalized retail sales. In
2012 the Mexican Competitiveness Institute issued a report saying that
Mexico’s cartels would lose as much as $1.425 billion if Colorado
legalized marijuana. The organization also predicted that drug
trafficking revenues would fall 20 to 30 percent, and the Sinaloa
cartel, which would be the most affected, would lose up to 50 percent.
Faced with such losses, the violent cartels could force their way in
as black market wholesalers or simply rob pot dispensaries, which take
only cash and have not been able to establish accounts with banks
because of lenders' fears of violating federal laws. But the general
consensus is that the Mexican cartels will not quietly relinquish the
Denver market.
The owner of the Colorado Springs dispensary told the Denver Post he
is planning to get a concealed-weapons permit, for protection when he
has to move money out of the store.
"Any way you plan it out, there's going to be a large amount of cash around," he said. "And that's extremely scary."
Denver police are taking a wait-and-see posture as to what may emerge.
“It’s only been a week, so we still have to sit back and see how this
will play out,” Denver Police spokesman Sonny Jackson told FoxNews.com.
“We’re a police department, we’re always concerns about what may
happen.”
Jackson said he would not speculate as to if or which cartels may decide to infiltrate the legitimate businesses or how.
“We’re concerned with the public consumption right now,” Jackson said.
The Marijuana Enforcement Division of the Colorado Department of
Revenue, the primary enforcement office responsible for overseeing the
production and sale of the retail marijuana, did not return repeated
attempts by Fox News.com for comment.
Denver DEA office spokesman Albert Villasuso said with some 50 retail
outlets in operation, the agency can only monitor if, how and when the
cartels decide to move in to the legalized retail industry in Colorado.
"What is quite possible is that cartels will hire straw owners who
have clean records who can apply for a license, then sell large
quantities both legally and on the black market," Villasuso said. "We
still don't know what the fall out will be but when there is this much
money involved the potential is great for groups to want capitalize."
Villasuso also said that even if legal stores do face extortion
efforts by cartel groups it is unlikely law enforcement will even be
made aware of it if merchants are too frightened to come to police.
Extortion has proven to be a lucrative ancillary enterprise for cartels
in Mexico resulting in thousands of businesses closing rather than pay
the quota, as it is called, or the store owners face the threat of
death, which too has occurred.
One group who hopes to mitigate any risks is the Blue Line Protection
Group, which specializes only in security for the marijuana stores.
Seeing a growing market, Ted Daniels started the company and uses
ex-military and law enforcement to provide security for the stores'
money and supply shipments, and the growing operations. The
highly-trained and combat-experienced guards are heavily-armed with
assault rifles and protective vests.
"This was an industry here that created a lot of challenges," Daniels
told WDVR television news in Denver Jan. 7. "This group I put together
is designed specifically to protect product, people, and money."
iOptik allows users to see digital data such as directions and video calls
Tiny 'screens' sit directly on users' eyeballs and work with a pair of glasses
They provide an experience equal to watching a 240-inch TV at 10ft away
A working system is due to be revealed at the Consumer Electronics Show
The contact lenses that could do away with TV screens: System that projects images onto the eyeball to be unveiled next week
By
Ellie Zolfagharifard Contact lenses that allow the wearer to see high-definition virtual screens are to be unveiled in Las Vegas next week.
Dubbed iOptik, the system allows the users to see projected digital information, such as driving directions and video calls.
The
tiny 'screens', which are the invention of Washington-based group
Innovega, sit directly on a users' eyeballs and work with a pair of
lightweight glasses. The glasses are fitted with
micro-projectors and nothing else. The contact lenses, however, are more complicated devices. They can be worn on their own and only function with
the iOptik software when a user looks through the company's paired
glasses. The system can work with smartphones
and portable game devices to deliver video - or switch to a translucent
'augmented reality' view, where computer information is layered over the
world we know it.
‘Whatever runs on your smartphone would run on your eyewear,’ Innovega chief Stephen Willey said in an interview with CNET. ‘At full HD. Whether it's a window or immersive.’
Crucially, the device can be worn while moving around in a similar way to Google Glass.
Innovega customised the standard contact lens manufacturing process with a unique filter to make the contact lenses.
'All
the usual optics in the eyewear are taken away and there is a
sub-millimeter lens right in the centre,' Mr Willey told CNET.
'The
outside of the lens is shaped to your prescription if you need one and
the very centre of the lens is a bump that allows you to see incredibly
well half an inch from your eye.'
An
optical filter also directs the light. 'Light coming from outside the
world is shunted to your normal prescription. Light from that very near
display goes through the center of the lens, the optical filter,' Mr
Willey said The contacts are
due to be previewed at the Consumer Electronics Show and promise to
provide a much more immersive experience than other head-work wearable
devices. The company
unveiled a prototype of the technology at the 2013 Consumer Electronics
Show, but plans to show a more advanced, working version next week. Innovega could also license the
technology to other vendors, who may add elements such as audio, touch
control, motion control, and other hardware seen in gadgets such as
Google Glass.
Last year,
South Korean scientists created soft contact lenses fitted with LEDs,
bringing the possibility of transparent, flexible materials that can be
programmed to take pictures a step closer to reality.
Unlike
the iOptik, which requires glasses to work, these contact lenses can be
used as standalone systems capable of performing tasks such as taking
pictures. Microsoft and the
University of Washington have also been working on similar projects
that seem more like a prop in movies such as Mission Impossible 4. In
2012, they created a prototype of a hard augmented reality contact lens
capable of receiving radio signals and transmitting them to the brain
through optical nerves.
HOW DOES IOPTIK WORK?
The
glasses are fitted with micro-projectors and nothing else. Additions in
the future could include audio devices, touch control, a camera and an
accelerometer. The contact
lenses can be worn without the glasses and only function with the iOptik
software when a user looks through the company's paired glasses. Innovega customised the standard contact lens manufacturing process with a unique filter to make the contact lenses. 'All
the usual optics in the eyewear are taken away and there is a
sub-millimeter lens right in the center,' MD Stephen Willey told CNET. 'It's
shaped, so the outside of the lens is shaped to your prescription if
you need one and the very centre of the lens is a bump that allows you
to see incredibly well half an inch from your eye.' An
optical filter also directs the light. 'Light coming from outside the
world is shunted to your normal prescription. Light from that very near
display goes through the center of the lens, the optical filter,' Mr
Willey said.
Virtual reality has a come a long way since the 1990s, the heady days
of Lawnmower Man and epic battles with evil triangles and squares. But
with the arrival of the Oculus Rift headset, VR is poised to change the
way we play, work and learn. That may sound like hyperbole, but I assure
you that it's entirely justified.
The Oculus Rift is a consumer-focused virtual-reality headset that
initially got going on Kickstarter in August 2013, where it asked for
$250,000 (£150,000) but earned nearly $2.5m in backing. Since then, it's
picked up loads more venture capital (about $91m in total) to produce
its mass-market product, due sometime in 2014 at a target price of about
$300. It's fair to say that it's earned a few believers with deep
pockets already.
I got to try out the Rift a few months ago. I
didn't have a choice in the demo I played, so I was stuck riding in a
little yellow race car.
I have always hated race cars– they just
seem like death pageantry. But it was that or nothing, so I settled into
my seat and waited for the race to begin. And when it did, I turned my
head and saw the world flying by. As I approached 120mph, I experienced
slight vertigo, a feeling of pulling in my chest. Leaning my head out of
the side of my car and watching the wheels spin made my eyes reel, and I
could almost feel the wind in my hair. With unrestricted field of view,
I felt like I was there.
I asked the Oculus Rift representative
whether I could crash the car, half-afraid, half-hoping that she would
say yes. The answer turned out to be no. Regardless, when the race was
over, I was a believer in the future of virtual reality.
The
prospects for video games are obviously very exciting, but what if I'd
rappelled into an active volcano? What if I'd taken a trip to Mars? This
is the real promise of virtual reality: the rekindling of the human
sense of adventure. Virtual reality makes possible explorations we never
dared to embark upon. We can voyage to the bottom of the sea by way of
an underwater drone with a 360-degree camera, playing around with gulper
eels and anglerfish, along with all the other alien species we haven't
discovered yet. The video feed could be open to everyone, so anyone with
a Rift could explore the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
We could
send out space probes and bring the vastness of the cosmos to the
masses, a privilege usually given to a lucky few. Imagine strapping into
your virtual reality helmet and turning around to see the Earth growing
smaller in the distance. Perhaps we could orbit the moons of Jupiter
many years from now. This would inspire such wanderlust that it could
jump-start the US space programmes, whose ambitions America has
apparently ceded to, oh yes, the rest of the world.
The Oculus Rift offers the wearer a breath-taking experience
There's exploration to do here in the mundane world, too. Surgery
simulators are just a few years away, and medical students or even
hobbyists (not murderers, one would hope) could poke and prod to their
heart's desire. In virtual reality, doctors can attempt new techniques,
and failure won't be followed by lawyers.
The Art Vandelays of the
world can try their hand at architecture, with principles of physics
firmly in place, and see just how sound their structures are. Minecraft
has already signed on to be a Rift title, but that's just one example of
the sorts of games that will help children explore their creative sides
in a principled way, certainly more so than if they were shooting bears
in Oregon Trail.
In less academic pursuits, cinema could be
brought into the fourth dimension. 3-D is a cute gimmick, but The
Amazing Spider-Man 2 in 3-D – due out in 2014 – is not exactly
pioneering cinema. Think instead about a Sherlock film in which you have
360-degree vision of the set. You'd have everything in your field of
view that the great detective has, and might be able to solve the
mystery before he does. And what self-respecting geek wouldn't want to
be in Middle-Earth? There are far more artsy applications, I'm sure, but
I'm more of a Dumb and Dumber guy.
What the Oculus Rift is going
to bring to the masses is the ability to do things because we can.
"Impossible", "unsafe" or "ridiculous" will be the bywords of the lazy
or the boring. There's no reason not to jump off a cliff, so we'll jump
off cliffs. Gravity and physics say you can't ride an ant, Honey, I
Shrunk the Kids-style, but who is going to listen to gravity and physics
when you can ride an ant, preferably while wearing a loincloth and
carrying an axe, with heavy-metal music in the background? How many
times have you watched a nature documentary and wanted to kick a lion's
jerk face while he's attacking a poor little dik-dik? Well, try it, and
see what happens.
We can be much more ridiculous than that.
There's nothing stopping us from becoming elephants, feeling our own
immensity and weight, and seeing how hard it is to hide from a poacher
(unless we choose to stomp said poacher into a fine paste suitable for
sandwiches). Magic will no longer be the domain of wizards when anyone
can wield the flame of Anor. It is in these ridiculous activities that
we might free our minds to conceive new ideas.
These are
activities that anyone can take part in. As in the 1995 virtual-reality
classic Strange Days, the Rift could let someone in a wheelchair run
along a beach. Being bedridden doesn't mean you can't fly to unexplored
planets in a spaceship of your own making. Being 90 doesn't mean you
can't ride a roller-coaster.
With such wondrous experiences
available, we can only expect – as Strange Days warns – that some people
will fall into virtual worlds a little too deeply at the expense of
actual life. It's happened before with games like EverQuest and World of
Warcraft, but virtual reality has a more instant appeal once you try
it, especially when there's a lot more to do than viciously swing a
sword at some poor orc for hours on end.
For most, though, virtual
reality won't be the only reality, at least not in the foreseeable
future. There are already lots of Oculus Rift experiences available, and
many more planned. This is the beginning of something very special.
Posts
Elliptic co-founder Tom Robinson says the service addresses a "deep concern" among Bitcoin users
The fact that
audiences are seeing such a varied, nuanced spectrum of black faces
isn’t just a matter of poetics, but politics — and the advent of digital
filmmaking. For the first hundred years of cinema, when images were
captured on celluloid and processed photochemically, disregard for black
skin and its subtle shadings was inscribed in the technology itself,
from how film-stock emulsions and light meters were calibrated, to the
models used as standards for adjusting color and tone.