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Navigating the World Wide Web is always a surprising journey. As I began my morning's routines and read the news, I happened to visit the web pages of NOW with Bill Moyers published by PBS.org.

Bill Moyers has just aired the investigation on "Tobacco Traffic" which was conducted by NOW, THE NATION and the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Sometime ago I explained that the United States has some $750 billion of laundered or criminal money embedded into a $10 trillion economy. Today we can have a tangible understanding of the corrupt economic and political system as we glance at the pictorial description on how UD dollars originating from Columbian drug smuggling in the US are sold to peso brokers who have offices in the US and Colombia.

Eventually, the peso brokers offer UD dollars to Colombian importers to pay for imported goods, including cigarettes.

We must imagine that this smuggling scheme affecting Colombia is a scheme used world wide for the laundering of drug money and any other money originating from criminal activities. The presence of this enormous laundered money in the global economy affect the global political and economic decisions and therefore we are able to understand the level of corruption of our own governments, governments who have become private contractual deals while entertaining wars against terrorism in the name of freedom and patriotism.

Let us reflect on President George W. Bush money tree; on Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's media empire; on Uday Hussein, son of Saddam Hussein, who is controlling the smuggled shipments of cigarettes into Iraq.

It is a corrupt world, that is why we have wars and poverty.

References

"Tobacco Traffic" is the result of a six-month investigation by NOW with Bill Moyers, THE NATION, and the Center for Investigative Reporting. April 19, 2002 http://www.pbs.org/now/indepth/041902_smuggling.html

The George W. Bush Money Tree http://www.bushwatch.net/bushmoney.htm

Associated Press. Poll: 4 out of 5 Italians think Berlusconi has conflict of interest. ROME (AP) -- Some 80 percent of Italians think Premier Silvio Berlusconi has a conflict of interest because of his multibillion-dollar business empire, according to a poll published Friday in L'Espresso newsweekly. http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/020308/italy_berlusconi_conflict_of_interest_4.html