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IPFS News Link • General Opinion

What a Bunch of Hooey about Viktor Bout

• https://www.fff.org by Jacob G. Hornberger

It's almost as bad as their monumental hooey about Russian citizen Maria Butina. The hooey surrounding Bout and Butina only goes to show what happens to people's minds when the government inculcates them with an extreme, obsessive anti-Russia hostility. 

I've written repeatedly about the federal government's ludicrous prosecution of Butina, and so I won't repeat my analysis of her case. Let's instead focus on Bout. 

Bout is the Russia arms dealer who was just traded for Brittney Griner, the American basketball star who pled guilty to violating Russia's drug laws and got sentenced to serve nine years in jail. Bout is the international arms dealer who got convicted of conspiring to sell arms to FARC, the rebel group in Columbia that U.S. officials labeled a terrorist group. He was also convicted of conspiring to kill DEA officials operating in Columbia. He was given a 25-year jail sentence and had served 10 years of it when he was traded for Griner.

The mainstream press is decrying the trade. They're saying it's just not fair. An arms dealer for a drug-war violator? Oh my gosh, how could President Biden permit himself to be taken in by the evil Russkies?

Unsaid in all this is that the U.S. government, like the Russian government, makes it a criminal offense to possess and distribute marijuana. Defenders of the U.S. drug war can say that the federal penalty for marijuana possession is lower in the U.S. than in Russia, but isn't that a distinction without a difference? Moreover, let's not forget that in the long, sordid history of America's drug war, countless Americans have been forced to served much longer jail sentences for marijuana possession than Griner.


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