Slashdot Mirror
Bitcoin Transactions Lead To Arrest of Major Drug Dealer (techspot.com)
"Drug dealer caught because of BitCoin usage," writes Slashdot reader DogDude. TechSpot reports:
38-year-old French national Gal Vallerius stands accused of acting as an administrator, senior moderator, and vendor for dark web marketplace Dream Market, where visitors can purchase anything from heroin to stolen financial data. Upon arriving at Atlanta international airport on August 31, Vallerius was arrested and his laptop searched. U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents allegedly discovered $500,000 of Bitcoin and Bitcoin cash on the computer, as well a Tor installation and a PGP encryption key for someone called OxyMonster...
In addition to his role with the site, agents had identified OxyMonster as a major seller of Oxycontin and crystal meth. "OxyMonster's vendor profile featured listings for Schedule II controlled substances Oxycontin and Ritalin," testified DEA agent Austin Love. "His profile listed 60 prior sales and five-star reviews from buyers. In addition, his profile stated that he ships from France to anywhere in Europe." Investigators discovered OxyMonster's real identity by tracing outgoing Bitcoin transactions from his tip jar to wallets registered to Vallerius. Agents then checked his Twitter and Instagram accounts, where they found many writing similarities, including regular use of quotation marks, double exclamation marks, and the word "cheers," as well as intermittent French posts. The evidence led to a warrant being issued for Vallerius' arrest.
U.S. investigators had been monitoring the site for nearly two years, but got their break when Vallerius flew to the U.S. for a beard-growing competition in Austin, Texas. He now faces a life sentence for conspiracy to distribute controlled substances.
In addition to his role with the site, agents had identified OxyMonster as a major seller of Oxycontin and crystal meth. "OxyMonster's vendor profile featured listings for Schedule II controlled substances Oxycontin and Ritalin," testified DEA agent Austin Love. "His profile listed 60 prior sales and five-star reviews from buyers. In addition, his profile stated that he ships from France to anywhere in Europe." Investigators discovered OxyMonster's real identity by tracing outgoing Bitcoin transactions from his tip jar to wallets registered to Vallerius. Agents then checked his Twitter and Instagram accounts, where they found many writing similarities, including regular use of quotation marks, double exclamation marks, and the word "cheers," as well as intermittent French posts. The evidence led to a warrant being issued for Vallerius' arrest.
U.S. investigators had been monitoring the site for nearly two years, but got their break when Vallerius flew to the U.S. for a beard-growing competition in Austin, Texas. He now faces a life sentence for conspiracy to distribute controlled substances.
But blockclouds are androgynous and so this breaks the fifth amendment!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Sounds like the vast majority of the crimes were committed in France and Europe. So he is being sent to Miami???
What is stopping the US government from profiting on the drug war they created, and then planting the private keys on anyone coming into the country?
I'd always been puzzled by how some people seem to imply use of bitcoin is somehow "anonymous". It may be anonymous *now*, but remember - every transaction lives on the blockchain FOREVER. Do something illegal with bitcoin and you can be found out years and years down the road (you better hope it's something covered by a statute of limitations).
... Is not the same as 'anonymity' because in a criminal case you just catch people and offer them immunity if they help you find the identity of the other people they sent or received money from.
tl;dr - if you're doing illegal stuff Bitcoin is much less anonymous than cash transactions.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Obviously a Libertarian, motorcycle gang member, or ham radio operator.
This was the DEA's greatest sting yet! Would he have won!? We'll never know!
Bitcoin is like a filter for this type of stupidity.
He can attend a beard growing competition but can't take the time to use full disk encryption? Was he stoned on Oxycontin?
Who is stupid enough to bring a "work" computer into the United States?
ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
Surely the War On Drugs has been won now right??? Or we're at least really close??
What, no?? But how can that be! All other drug dealers must have seen the life sentence and were immediately deterred, no?
Look, drugs like oxycodone/heroin/opiates and cocaine are extremely dangerous and can have devastating consequences when they're abused. Nobody is denying that. But they can't be forcibly eradicated. Given that, drug policy should seek to *minimize* the harm these drugs cause; but prohibition instead *maximizes* it.
To repeat what I said last time this came up,
The real problem is our inability accept facts and logic. Eliminating drug abuse by forcefully stopping it wasn't an entirely unreasonable thing to try, especially back then when the issue wasn't well studied. But it's 100 years now since the first drug prohibition, and >40 of the modern War on Drugs. It has been demonstrated beyond any doubt that no matter how harsh the penalties, even the death penalty for drugs some countries have, prohibition does not work. Anybody can get any drug they want, even in maximum security prisons. Our 4th Amendment rights are nearly dead largely because of this. Loads of other rights are seriously damaged. Police becoming heavily armed soldiers with us as the enemy are a consequence of this. You might be able to justify all that, and the millions upon millions of lives ruined, and the hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars spent, if it was eliminating or seriously reducing the harm drugs cause to society... but it unequivocally is not.
Drugs like cocaine, heroin, and meth have horrific consequences when they're abused; to the user, to their family, and to society. Since eliminating them is absolutely never gonna happen, we should instead pick the policy that minimizes the harm caused. Most people are simply incapable of accepting that criminal prohibition instead takes these very harmful substances, and increases their harm by orders of magnitude, and strips everyone of their civil rights.
If you want to:
-Minimize the number of addicts,
-Minimize the number of ODs,
-Minimize acquisitive crime (property crime to raise money),
-Minimize violent crimes,
-Maximize opportunities for people with abuse issues to get help,
Then you have to provide tightly regulated, but legal, access, to all drugs. There's been extensive studies on this, it's not some random idea, it's a thoroughly studied and validated fact. Use does not increase. Portugal decriminalized all drugs for personal use; use went down. Turns out there's not loads of people saying 'gee, I sure wish heroin wasn't illegal, I'd try it otherwise'; something compounded by the fact the people most likely to develop an abuse issue are the least likely to be deterred by legality. All of the money currently spent on prohibition would instead go to education, prevention, and treatment- every dollar spent on that reduces drug abuse more than a dollar spent on prohibition. The money taken away from violent criminal organizations would completely cripple them. There'd be more cooperation with police who weren't constantly breaking down doors and shooting dogs, or sexually assaulting people on the side of the road with cavity searches (seriously, google roadside cavity search). There'd be less harassment when police couldn't bump their numbers with petty drug crimes.
It's a hard fact to swallow, because you see the damage drugs can do, and desperately want that to never happen. But since that's impossible, you have to instead mitigate. However bad you think a given drug is, prohibition makes it worse. Whenever you say "Well, $x shouldn't be illegal because $y", $y is made worse, not better, by keeping it illegal.
Additionally, Portugal has gone farther down this route than any other country, decriminalizing even cocaine and heroin for personal use. The result? The number of addicts plummeted, and remains far below the rest of Europe. Violent crime went down. Drug usage didn't go up. The NYTimes just covered this.
Because some of his customers were in the USA and he was dumb enough to fly to Texas. Not that he would've likely gotten away, anyhow: selling drugs is illegal on both sides and there are extradition treaties in place.
I suggest taking a class on legal procedure if this is confusing to you. It's not the least bit surprising to me.
I have to say he does have an excellent orange beard. He will probably be more butthurt from the jail making him cut that off than the sentence itself.
...drug lords, kid touchers, and terrorists laundered another couple billion in fiat currency today.
Just like any other day.
Why would anyone who runs a dark web market enter the United States with a laptop? How f'ing amateur is that? He shouldn't have even had a smartphone. Go to an internet cafe or buy a $300 Chromebook when you arrive.
So he knew enough about how to use the darknet, bitcoin, and PGP, but not to encrypt his actual files/login or store them outside of local storage.
Seems a little off to me.
If he is dealing drugs, and also has poor Opsec like this, then he deserves to be busted. I for one am happy when dealers have poor Opsec. It makes us all safer, and reduces the likelihood of feds backdooring the innocent.
So they arrested him, searched him, realized he was 'OxyMonster', issued a warrant, presumably arrested him again!
Am I missing something? Something is certainly missing: Is the FBI using parallel construction again?
Vallerius flew to the U.S. for a beard-growing competition in Austin, Texas
Proving once again, as many cops say, most crooks are stupid.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
The story sounds like a PSA for what happens if you do drugs.
So here is someone making a boatload of money from a criminal enterprise, but nonetheless decides it would be a good idea to fly to the USA carrying almost as much incriminating evidence as possible. And in a world that has an Internet with every photo app imaginable, he does it so people can look at his beard in person. In the USA.
This is your brain on drugs.
or stop being authoritarian garbage and leave people alone
This is why more and more darknet marketplaces are accepting Monero. It's like having a mixer built in to the protocol itself. And to make things even better, the Monero blockchain is itself encrypted. Unless you are one of the participants in a transaction, you can't see what address the coins were sent from, who they were sent to, or how much was sent. And they are in the process of integrating with i2p for even better anonymity.
Disclaimer: I hold quite a bit of Monero. But that's because I honestly think it's the best and fastest-growing "privacy cryptocurrency"
Part of the Second American Revolution!
There are a number of countries where trafficking *is* a capital offense, and dozens to hundreds of traffickers are executed every year. It doesn't work; drugs remain readily available and usage rates are no lower than similar countries with lesser penalties. There's a principle in criminal justice, not just limited to drug sentences... any sentence above 20-25 years has no additional deterrent effect, because someones life is effectively over at that point anyway.
I know it's a long rant, but it's a complex issue. People have a strong emotional response to the idea of legalizing hard drugs, and overcoming that and the "it's bad so it must be stopped" reaction is an uphill climb, chipping away one by one at the reasons people can't bring themselves to accept reality.
Not encrypting his harddisk did him in.
Surely the War On Drugs has been won now right??? Or we're at least really close??
Really close. For something like 100 years now. There are even statistics that show this war is getting more and more expensive, while the number of drug-addicts is long-term stable. Imagine what would happen if all that money would not be spent on fighting drugs. The US would probably have a billion addicts within a few years!
My personal take is that this "war on drugs" is really a religious extremist "war on fun", where anything besides prayer must never be fun. If they had not failed so badly with alcohol, using that would probably get you a life-sentence these days as well. And then everything else the religious fuckups do not want you to have any fun with. I agree, decriminalization, medical-grade drugs, reasonable prices and clear warnings with the instructions how to use this stuff is the only thing that will minimize damage to individuals and society. It takes two brain-cells to rub together to see that, and the religious do not have these. And yes, that is not a really good situation, but it is vastly better than this insane "war".
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I mean a couple of years, maybe. But life? The same as murderers? Violent criminals?
Is this justice, or just revenge?
Encrypt your hard drives, and then power down the device before going through any checkpoint. You may want to keep some of your coin in a cold wallet for bail and/or a lawyer.
So, Why is this guy being arrested? The only drugs that he is responsible for is selling to and from Europe and the site is hosted overseas. What are they charging him with?
of the war on drugs, which is getting rid of undesirables.
Think of it like this. If you're poor odds are good you take some drugs to cope or know somebody who does. Now, ask yourself what happens if you wander into a a well-to-do neighborhood to say use their parks or send your kid to their schools? You get arrested. And with Civil Asset Forfeiture law you don't even have to be guilty of anything.
Don't believe me? Who were the biggest pot smokers around the time it was made illegal? Answer: Mexican migrants. Who do we associate most with opioid addiction? The Chinese. And take a look at our current drug policy of 'legal on the state level but not on the federal'. It's the best of both worlds. You can still crack down on the poors while letting the rich toke up.
Basically, it's yet another example of class warfare. If you're paying attention you'll find plenty of folks denying that a class war's going on. That's because the best kind of war is one the other side doesn't know it's fighting.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
should have used monero
> Of course there are easier, more rational approaches that would nearly eradicate the drug epidemic No half intelligent person would dispute that fact.
If people had self discipline, as any half-intelligent person should, addiction and drug related crime wouldn't occur. Neither would child abuse or serial murder. And yet, they do. It takes a very small number of "half-unintelligent" people to create enormous problems with addiction, with drug abuse, and with crime resulting from it. Even for reasonable people, the deceit involved in various drug trades has been extremely dangerous. Please look at the economic and social history of tobacco, of alcohol, and even of non-physical addictions like gambling to see a history of rational attempts to control them, and the failure of rational policies.
Could it be done better? I agree, many US drug policies are outrageous and ineffective. Are there rational approaches that would almost eradicate it? I must disagree: It has roots in human physiology, in human weakness, in crime, and in politics that make it extremely difficult to eradicate. Many are _not_ driven by greed. Many are founded in erroneous ideology. The idea that the war on drugs is a monolithic policy that "fits every aspect of the government's agenda" suggests that it is a thought out plan. I'm afraid it is not. Different members, and different branches, of the Us government have different goals which combine to extend current policies.
I'm afraid it's not one problem, so it can't be defeated by a single logical analysis.
> Obviously there is no real threat, there hasn't been since invention of atomic weapons.
If Io may say, this is disingenuous. There was a real threat from Afghanistan, which was hosting the Taliban. which had just murdered thousands of the most powerful and wealthy US citizens. The next logical target was Pakistan, which had since been hosting the Taliban and which has been selling nuclear technologies around the world. I'd prefer not to discuss why the US targeted Iraq next: it's a long discussion.
But in terms of the drug trade: sir, I suspect you were not alive during the Vietnam era, when US servicemen were often returning to US soil with opioid addictions. I myself only met, but was not old enough to greet on their return, Korea veterans who returned with similar addictions. The Soviets encountered it in dangerous proliferation when they occupied Afghanistan, one of the world's greatest sources for opium: I'm seeing reports of it now with US troops returning from Afghanistan today. This occurs for _any_ nation that invades Afghanistan. The proliferation of opium dens was a critical part of the Sherlock Holmes stories and Dr. John Watson's return from Afghanistan.
The depth of your stupidity is breathtaking.
would be nice of ice addicts left people alone, where I live they are a constant menace to the point now police and armed guards need to be stationed at the hospitals as these fuck witts when high will happily beat, stab, assault anyone they see with incredible rage. sadly it isn't possible to just let people be as many of the drugs being taken affect MANY others when those people take them, sometimes in life threatening ways.
If Vallerius is guilty of the charges being made against him, then I have absolutely no problem with due legal process being used to hand down the appropriate due punishment.
However, reading the OP, a question regarding jurisdiction springs to mind. The extract quotes a DEA agent, who says (of Vallerius), "His profile listed 60 prior sales and five-star reviews from buyers. In addition, his profile stated that he ships from France to anywhere in Europe."
I ask this question because I am trying to understand how the Unites States Government believes that it has standing to prosecute in this case? The only logical answer to that question that I can see would be if the transactions conducted on the darknet actually took place on US soil - but even that seems to me to be somewhat of a vague area of international law.
Perhaps another reader can clarify this point for me: if we have three directly involved parties [a buyer, a seller and the platform-running middle-man] in a transaction, plus perhaps the network connections between them, then how would an international court of law decide the location and/or terms under which a case could be brought? Is it the law of the land for the buyer, the seller or the middleman? Does the fact that any identifiable part of an illegal transaction takes place within a nation's jurisdiction give that nation the right to prosecute a case?
I will re-iterate what I said at the beginning of this post: I have no sympathy for anyone involved in selling drugs. But in order for society at large to respect the law, we need to trust the law. We need to see that the law is applied transparently, consistently and fairly. We need to understand both the powers and the limits of the law. Without these things, then as individuals within that society, we are at risk from all sorts of different types of corruption and injustice.
Very interested to know if anyone can clarify this...
Drugs are far less common in Taiwan than they are in the US or UK and Taiwan has the death penalty for drug trafficking.
So it clearly works for them.
https://traveloops.files.wordp...
Taiwan only executes small numbers of people - about half a dozen a year since 2010.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The process is fucking metal too
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Are there rational approaches that would almost eradicate it? I must disagree: It has roots in human physiology, in human weakness, in crime, and in politics that make it extremely difficult to eradicate.
No doubt. None of the policies, prohibition, decriminalizing, or legalization, would almost eradicate it. But which one of those results in the *least* harm to both addicts and society? The answer is legalization (tightly regulated legalization, not talking about over-the-counter).
I'm afraid it's not one problem, so it can't be defeated by a single logical analysis.
The details vary, but the policies fall under one of the 3 umbrellas just mentioned. Right now, every single policy in every single state boils down to trying to eradicate drug abuse at the end of a gun, locking people up.
This occurs for _any_ nation that invades Afghanistan.
Ironically the Taliban are the only ones to ever stop opium production there. During their rule from 1996-1999, Afghanistan produced around 3,000 metric tons annually. But in 2000, the Taliban banned the growing of poppies. Production plummeted to a mere couple hundred tons the very next year. Then in 2001 the US came along and kicked them out, and despite spending billions on counter-narcotics operations, production shot back up. First back to where it was until 2005, then after 2005 it basically doubled to an unprecedented 8000 tons making them the world leader, all despite the DEA and the military having carte blanche to eradicate it.
So anyway, when our soldiers return home, what awaits them? They can't openly seek help if they're addicted. The social stigma and risk of prison is too high. If they tell a doctor at the VA, it's put down in their file and obtaining pain relief down the road goes from difficult to outright impossible. The most effective treatment programs are banned anyway; and methadone turns one into a slave, having to show up at a clinic every day, no matter what, or get violently ill. Our soldiers deserve better. They deserve a world where their medical problem isn't a criminal justice problem. Everyone deserves that.
The answer is that the corrupt America and its CIA doesn't want anyone cutting in on its profits from covert drug trafficking.
Alcohol.
sadly it isn't possible to just let people be as many of the drugs being taken affect MANY others when those people take them, sometimes in life threatening ways.
But that's what's happening now. They *are* taking those drugs, they *are* hurting other people. Prohibition isn't stopping them. And the evidence is clear, taking the money spent on prohibition and instead spending it on education, prevention, and treatment, and not saddling abusers with a criminal record and unemployment, giving them little to lose, and forcing them to spend all their time in a violent black market, will result in *fewer* instances of them 'beat, stab, assault anyone they see with incredible rage'. Prohibition creates the most instances of that happening.
And Portugal also has far less drug addiction than the US and the UK, despite personal use possession of *all* drugs (including cocaine and heroin) being legal.
Iran executes hundreds and hundreds of drug traffickers every year. Even their own authorities admit it hasn't done anything to reduce the drug problem in the country. Malaysia will execute you for as little as 200g of pot; the death penalty is the only permissible sentence for many drug crimes. Drug abuse is rampant.
Are you going to seriously suggest that changing the penalty from a life sentence (current penalty for top traffickers), or 20-25 to life (major traffickers), to the death penalty, would have *any* effect on drug abuse in the US? Especially given the existing evidence that there's no additional deterrent effect beyond 25 years to begin with? The penalties for drugs are already grossly disproportionate to their harm at all levels, and you'd have to increase the penalties on the lowest levels by a *huge* amount to really have an effect. Unfortunately for you we've kinda got this thing here about excessively sadistic punishments. Not to mention the collateral consequences to everybody from laying waste to the rest of the constitution as police power explodes.
No, I said it worked for Taiwan. The US and Taiwan are very different and executing more people for drug offences in the US probably won't help. On the other hand neither will copying Portugal.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Don't apologize, everything you said is correct but reading more than 100 words is a struggle for some people. Remember those things we had in the old days? Some of them had many thousands of words and no pictures. Books! That's what they were called. Give one of those to a young person and they start crying.
I'm going to have to stop ending my emails with Cheers mow.
The only thing which works in the USA and the solution to every problem is more guns. It's been so successful they try it in other countries - look how well Iraq has done with more guns (tm).
>> This occurs for _any_ nation that invades Afghanistan.
> Ironically the Taliban are the only ones to ever stop opium production there.
May I disagree? I suggest that "not being at war" was the factor that curtailed opium production. I suggest that it wasn't merely that the Taliban were in charge, it was that food crops could be grown, harvested, and distributed legally, possibly even at a profit. For people in a war zone, short-term profit with smaller investment and more easily portable goods becomes critical.
I agree with you that managed legalization is a good step. But it does not seem to be an "approach that would eradicate the drug epidemic". It's not "eradicated" the problem for alcohol or tobacco, it's merely helped contain it.
Fun fact: the taliban are hellbent on eradicating drug use and had been burning poppy fields pretty effectively until the USA ousted them. Bringing back the drug dealers with the Northern Coalition. Nowadays even the Taliban are in the drug trade to finance their war. Yes, the US govt is against drugs... except when it isn't.
Too many people getting caught via BTC, and BTC requires extra steps to try to wash the coins. There are other projects that are better for anonymity, that don't require anything extra. .
Monero - survived multiple studies about it's effectiveness. Apparently there's a monero darknet store in the works?
SumoKoin - based on same codebase/algorithm as Monero, but with some tweaks.
Zcash - (although there's now some questions about Zcash, it's still accepted to be untraceable)
Dash - there were some vulnerabilities at some point, those were patched up.
ISIS = randoms ?? The breath of your stupidity is ... breathtaking.
Why would a Frenchman enter a beard growing competition? The winners are always Germans or Scandinavians.
Obviously I'm not suggesting there was anything good about the Taliban, but the fact remains they were able to stop opium production in Afghanistan and the US cannot.
But it does not seem to be an "approach that would eradicate the drug epidemic". It's not "eradicated" the problem for alcohol or tobacco, it's merely helped contain it.
I'm not sure who you think is saying that. Not me or anyone else in this thread. I'm saying that among the 3 possible policies, prohibition, decrim, and legalization, the latter minimizes the harm drugs cause. Minimize is not eradicate, which is impossible. If it were possible, prohibition would be a sound policy. But it's not. There will always be substantial problems, but they will be at their lowest levels in a system of regulated legal access and aggressive education, prevention, and (non-coercive) treatment.
My personal take is that this "war on drugs" is really a religious extremist "war on fun", where anything besides prayer must never be fun.
Sex is much more fun than any drug - and legal. (prostitution is illegal many places, but generally not needed for sex.) If they had a 'war on fun', they lost decisively before even starting.
Surely you'd put this data on your own cloud server / NAS and download AFTER you had arrived? But a laptop when you arrive and take an hour to set it up. You go through Customs clean as a whistle.
Only boring people are ever bored.
On the other hand neither will copying Portugal.
And you base that on what? A deep abiding belief that one day our prohibitionist policies will magically start working when they haven't for the past 40 years? Other countries do things like heroin maintenance- giving addicts pharmaceutical heroin- it's been a huge success in every country that's tried it. There's every reason to believe these programs would help the situation in the US and no reason to believe they wouldn't. And given the unmitigated disaster that is our current policy, and the complete lack of evidence to suggest doubling down on it would change anything, there's even less of a reason not to pursue it.
We would have handed him over on request by US authorities with little evidence and despite the life term which is not equaled in the UK.
France protects their citizens better. Whodathunk it.
Surely the War On Drugs has been won now right??? Or we're at least really close?? What, no?? But how can that be! All other drug dealers must have seen the life sentence and were immediately deterred, no?
Not all but it has stopped some. For example, I've contemplated some sort of drug trafficking/dealing business as a way to make cash, but every time I do the numbers the risk of a long prison sentence is too great.
There are measures of success that don't require a 100% hit rate.
Sometimes the best action is no action at all. This couldn't be applied more appropriately to anyone other than the government. While I agree that there are instances where bad things happen and it is out of everyone's control except for those involved, I largely dispute the idea that the government has to get involved every time something unfortunate happens in the world. In just about every instance where the government has gotten involved whether it be foreign affairs, domestic matters, drugs or policing the net result has almost always been counterproductive to the cause. Whether the driving forces be greed or fear I don't think it dismisses the fact they they are still wrong. To address crime (not just addiction) or terrorism there needs to be a paradigm shift that has to occur. Passing more laws, increasing prison sizes or increasing military budget or going to war while might seem like a quick fix, doesn't really address the underlying problems and in most cases exacerbates them. Law enforcement should really be handed over to the Healthcare Industry. Yes, healthcare, it's a very complicated problem whereas in most instances can be remedied by medication and/or therapy. There are qualified people who go to school for addressing things like this. Only the most heinous crimes where medical treatment has failed should additional measures be taken, not out of necessity for punishment but for public safety. Poverty and the media is another cause but I am not going to get into all the ways to address those as there are many. As for military/war, going to war never solves anything. The bombings in Afghanistan and Iraq will do nothing but radicalize more people and give rise to additional attacks and hate groups. You mention Vietnam... there is nothing good that came out of the US involvement there. There are consequences to all the wars that have taken place and I can imagine that in the decades to follow you will begin to see the result of it, if not already. Any action taken with foreign nations needs to be handled a little more elegantly with a level of humanity, but most importantly not driven by profit, greed or fear.
That beard is top notch.
If you are going to sell drugs, launder money, run a gambling website, or whatever offshore. I think it is safe to assume that the U.S. gets crossed off your places to EVER visit along with countries that are willing to do our bidding.