Here’s a recent interview I did for “The Newsmakers” programme on TRT World, discussing the Dark Web and privacy:
The Newsmakers, TRT World, Turkey from Annie Machon on Vimeo.
Here’s a recent interview I did for “The Newsmakers” programme on TRT World, discussing the Dark Web and privacy:
The Newsmakers, TRT World, Turkey from Annie Machon on Vimeo.
Last month I had the pleasure of attending the biennial Drug Policy Alliance shindig in Washington on behalf of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (www.leap.cc). We also held our annual LEAP board meeting ahead of the DPA, and it was great to have the chance to catch up again with my fellow directors.
I’ve been the European Director for LEAP for a while now and am thrilled to say that LEAP Germany launched (LEAP_DE_Launch_Article) last September in the Bundestag in Berlin, with some senior police officers, lawyers and judges as the founding members. LEAP UK is also up and running and will be holding an official launch event early next year, so watch this space.
While in Washington all the directors were interviewed about our specific areas of interest around the failed war on drugs. Here is a video of former prosecutor, Inge Fryklund, and myself discussing the links between the war on drugs and terrorism:
LEAP Directors discuss link between the war on drugs and terrorism from Annie Machon on Vimeo.
Next year we have UNGASS in April in New York — the UN General Assembly Special Session — the first such since 1998 when the UN decided it would achieve a drug free world by 2008.
Well, that was obviously a raging success, as drugs are cheaper, more easily accessible and more potent than ever before in the key consumer areas such as North America and Europe, while whole regions of the world comprising the producer and transit countries are being decimated by the violence attendant on the drug trade as organised crime cartels and terrorism fight for control of a highly lucrative trade.
UNGASS 2015 should provide the world with a chance to rethink this failed policy of prohibition. Certainly the tone has shifted since 1998 to at least an understanding of the benefits within some consumer countries of de-penalisation of drug use — those who choose to use their preferred substance are no longer criminalised, and the estimated 15% who go on to develop dependencies are in many Western countries now offered health interventions rather than prison.
However, from our law enforcement perspective, this still leaves the drug trade in the hands of organised crime and terrorist organisations such as ISIS. The UN has itself variously put the annual illegal drug trade profits at anywhere between $320 billion and half a trillion dollars per year. This is the biggest crime wave the world has ever seen, and we need the UN to develop some joined-up thinking and produce a radical and effective policy to deal with it: regulate, control and tax.
An interview I did on RT about the shooting down of a Russian jet by Turkey over Syria:
Turkish shoot down of Russian Jet from Annie Machon on Vimeo.