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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   1256 thread views

Transnational Thursday for December 18, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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The boats are carrying cocaine. Assuming that the maps and accompanying discussion in glossy reports produced by various anti-drug orgs (pre-2025 US, UN and NGO-produced reports broadly agree) are correct, most of the cocaine on these specific boats is not ultimately heading for the US.

Some cocaine enters the US by boat after island-hopping across the Caribbean, but most cocaine landed in Trinidad, Suriname, or the Dominican Republic is going to be smuggled in air passenger baggage into the relevant European country with historical links, at which point in can then move freely within the EU (and in practice almost freely to the UK or Switzerland). European street prices for cocaine are currently more than double US ones, so that is more lucrative for the smugglers.

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