COMPULSORY EDUCATION

truthNproof…“indisputable evidence is our weapon; unity is our power”

Compulsory
1 required by law or a rule 
2 customary or routine as to be expected of everyone or on every occasion

3 involving or exercising compulsion

Compulsion 

1 the action or state of forcing or being forced to do something
2 an irresistible urge to behave in a certain way against one's conscious wishes

3 a limitation or restriction

Education is a form of learning in which the knowledge, skills, values, beliefs and habits of a group of people are transferred from one generation to the next through story telling, discussion, teaching, training, and or research. Education include informal transmission of knowledge, values, beliefs, skills, attitudes and habits from one human being to another. Education is divided into stages such as preschool, primary school, secondary school and then college, university or apprenticeship.

Mathematics from Greek máthēma, “knowledge, study, learning” is the study of topics such as quantity numbers, structure, space, and change. 

Geometry from the Ancient Greek: geo- "earth", -metron "measurement" is a branch of mathematics concerned with questions of shape, size, relative position of figures, and the properties of space. 

Pedagogy is the science and art of education. The development of the human being to skills acquisition. The word comes from the Greek paidagōgia from paidagōgos, in which país, genitive , paidos means "child" and ágō means "lead" literally translated "to lead the child".

Compulsory education a period of education that is required and imposed by law. Most countries the education needs to take place at a registered school. Primary school or elementary school, is the first stage of compulsory education, coming between early childhood education and secondary education.

A Curriculum is the range of courses from which what subject matters to study. A specific learning program and assessment materials for a given course of study. A Curriculum is a experiences through which children become the adults they are programed to be for society. A form of social engineering 

Social Engineering is a discipline in social science that refers to efforts to influence popular attitudes and social behaviors on a large scale, whether by governments, media or private groups.  
Social science is a major branch of science, and a major category of academic disciplines, concerned with society and the relationships among individuals within a society. The history of the social sciences begins in the Age of Enlightenment after 1650, which saw a revolution within natural philosophy, changing the basic framework by which individuals understood what was "scientific".

Compulsory school attendance based on the Prussian model gradually spread to other countries, reaching the American Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1852, and spreading to other states until, in 1918, Mississippi was the last state to enact a compulsory attendance law. Massachusetts had originally enacted the first compulsory education law in the American colonies in 1647.

The Kingdom of Prussia implemented a modern compulsory system in 1763 which was widely recognised and copied. It was introduced by decree of Frederick the Great in 1763 and was later expanded in the 19th century. This provided a working model for other states to copy. Prussia introduced this model of education so as to produce more obedient soldiers or serf.

Serfdom is the status of peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism. It was a condition of bondage which developed primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe and lasted in some countries until the mid-19th century.

Feudalism is a grouping of legal and military customs, prevalent in medieval Europe, which flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, or any similar grouping of legal and military customs. Simply defined, it was a system for structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.

Manorialism was an essential element of feudal society, was the organizing principle of rural economy that originated in the villa system of the Late Roman Empire, was widely practiced in medieval western and parts of central Europe, and was slowly replaced by the advent of a money-based market economy.

A market economy is an economy in which decisions regarding investment, production and distribution are based on supply and demand, and prices of goods and services are determined in a free price system utilizing voluntary exchange.
 Frederick II  reigned over the Kingdom of Prussia from 1740 until 1786. The third Hohenzollern king, Frederick is best known for his military victories, his reorganization of Prussian armies.

In 1852, the Massachusetts General Court passed a law requiring every town to create and operate a grammar school. Fines were imposed on parents who did not send their children to school and the government took the power to take children away from their parents and apprentice them to others if government officials decided that the parents were "unfit to have the children educated properly".

Compulsory education was not part of early American society, which relied instead on church-run private schools that mostly charged fees for tuition. The spread of compulsory attendance in the Massachusetts tradition throughout America, especially for Native Americans, has been credited to General Richard Henry Pratt. 

Pratt used techniques developed on Native Americans in a prisoner of war camp in Fort Marion, Augustine, Florida, to force demographic minorities across America into government schools. His prototype was the   Carlisle Indian Industrial School

The Compulsory Education Act or Oregon School Law was a 1922 law in the U.S. state of Oregon that required school age children to attend only public schools. The United States Supreme Court later struck down the law as unconstitutional. The Masonic Grand Lodge of Oregon sponsored a bill to require all school-age children to attend public schools. With support also of the state Ku Klux Klan and 1922 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Walter M. Pierce, the Compulsory Education Law was passed by a vote of 115,506 to 103,685. 

Pope Pius XI, in 1929, explicitly referenced this Supreme Court case in his encyclical Divini illius magistri on Catholic education. He quoted this part of the case, which says:

"The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right coupled with the high duty, to recognize, and prepare him for additional duties. parochial schools, the state thus forced such schools to close. "

Authoritarianism is a form of government characterized by absolute or blind obedience to authority, as against individual freedom and related to the expectation of unquestioning obedience.

Department of Education was created in 1867 but was soon demoted to an Office in 1868. As an agency not represented in the president's cabinet, it quickly became a relatively minor bureau in the Department of the Interior. In 1939, the bureau was transferred to the Federal Security Agency, where it was renamed the Office of Education. In 1953, the Federal Security Agency was upgraded to cabinet-level status as the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was passed as a part of President Lyndon B. Johnson's "War on Poverty" and has been the most far-reaching federal legislation affecting education ever passed by Congress. 

Lyndon B. Johnson August 27, 1908 – January 22, 1973, often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States 1963–1969, a position he assumed after his service as the 37th Vice President 1961–1963. Johnson, a Democrat from Texas, served as a United States Representative from 1937 to 1949 and as a United States Senator from 1949 to 1961

The act is an extensive statute that funds primary and secondary education, while explicitly forbidding the establishment of a national curriculum. As mandated in the act, the funds are authorized for professional development, instructional materials, for resources to support educational programs, and for parental involvement promotion. The act was originally authorized through 1965. The government has reauthorized the act every five years since its enactment. 

The current reauthorization of ESEA is the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, named and proposed by President George W. Bush. The ESEA also allows military recruiters access to 11th and 12th grade students' names, addresses, and telephone listings when requested.

Education reform in the United States since the 1980s has been largely driven by the setting of academic standards for what students should know and be able to do. These standards can then be used to guide all other system components. 

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) is a United States Act of Congress that is a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which included Title I, the government's flagship aid program for disadvantaged students. NCLB supports standards-based education reform based on the premise that setting high standards and establishing measurable goals can improve individual outcomes in education.

The Act requires states to develop assessments in basic skills. To receive federal school funding, states must give these assessments to all students at select grade levels. The Act does not assert a national achievement standard. Each individual state develops its own standards. NCLB expanded the federal role in public education through annual testing, annual academic progress, report cards, teacher qualifications, and funding changes.

The bill passed in the U.S. Congress with bipartisan support. 

Under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA) of 2001, which amended the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), High schools that receive federal funds must provide certain student contact information to military recruiters upon request and must allow recruiters to have the same access to students as employers and colleges.

Experiential learning is the process of making meaning from direct experience, "learning from experience". Any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts may be considered educational... 

Experience is the knowledge or mastery of an subject or event gained through involvement in or exposure to it.

Autodidacticism (also autodidactism) or self-education is the act of teaching oneself about a subject or subjects in which one has had little to no formal education. Many notable contributions have been made by autodidacts.

Autodidactism is often complemented by learning in classrooms and other social settings. Many autodidacts seek instruction and guidance from experts, friends, teachers, parents, siblings, and community.

The term has its roots in the Ancient Greek words autós, or "self"and didaktikos, meaning "teaching".

Homeschooling, also known as home education, is the education of children outside the formal settings of public or private schools and is usually undertaken directly by parents or tutors. 

THE IRON TRIANGLE

truthNproof…“indisputable evidence is our weapon; unity is our power”

The Iron triangle consist of the policy-making relationship among the congressional committees, the bureaucracy, and interest groups. An iron triangle is pork-barrel policies that benefit a small segment of the population. Pork barrel is the appropriation of government spending for localized projects secured solely or primarily to bring money to a representative's district. 

Appropriation from Latin appropriare, "to make one's own" is the act of setting apart something for its application to a particular usage, to the exclusion of all other uses.  

A bureaucracy is a body of non-elective government officials and/or an administrative policy-making group. Historically, bureaucracy referred to government administration managed by departments staffed with nonelected officials. In modern parlance, bureaucracy refers to the administrative system governing any large institution.

The concept of an iron triangle is that bureaucratic agencies, as political entities, seek to create and consolidate their own power base. An agency's power is determined by its constituency, not by its consumers. 

Constituents are politically active members sharing a common interest or goal, consumers are the expected recipients of goods or services provided by a governmental bureaucracy and are often identified in an agency's written goals or mission statement.

Private or special interest groups, on the other hand, possess considerable power as they tend to be well-organized, have plenty of resources, are easily mobilized, and are extremely active in political affairs, through voting, campaign contributions, and lobbying, as well as proposing legislation themselves.

Bureaucratic power is exercised in the Congress, and particularly in congressional committees and subcommittees. By aligning itself with selected constituencies, an agency may be able to affect policy outcomes directly in these committees and subcommittees. This is where an iron triangle may manifest itself. Bureaucratic dysfunction may seem real but not necessarily so and may be caused by alliances formed between the agency and its constituency. 

The official goals of an agency may appear to be prevented or ignored altogether at the expense of the citizens it is designed  to serve...

The Military–Industrial–Congressional Complex, comprises the policy and monetary relationships which exist between legislators, national armed forces, and the arms industry that supports them. These relationships include political contributions, political approval for military spending, lobbying to support bureaucracies, and oversight of the industry. It is a type of iron triangle. The term is most often used in reference to the system behind the military of the United States, where it gained popularity after its use in the farewell address of President Dwight D. Eisenhower on January 17, 1961, though the term is applicable to any country with a similarly developed infrastructure. 

http://youtu.be/Jib1B2cyWpE
Dwight D. Eisenhower (October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was the 34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army during World War II and served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe; he had responsibility for planning and supervising the invasion of North Africa in Operation Torch in 1942–43 and the successful invasion of France and Germany in 1944–45 from the Western Front. In 1951, he became the first supreme commander of NATO.

The term is sometimes used more broadly to include the entire network of contracts and flows of money and resources among individuals as well as corporations and institutions of the defense contractors, The Pentagon, the Congress and executive branch. A parallel system is that of the military–industrial–media complex, along with the more distant politico-media complex and prison–industrial complex. The first modern military–industrial complexes arose in Britain, France and Germany in the 1880s and 1890s as part of the increasing need to defend their empires. 

 Daniel Guérin, in his 1936 book Fascism and Big Business, about the fascist government support to heavy industry. It can be defined as, "an informal and changing coalition of groups with vested psychological, moral, and material interests in the continuous development and maintenance of high levels of weaponry, in preservation of colonial markets and in military-strategic conceptions of internal affairs." 

Franz Leopold Neumann's book Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism in 1942, a study of how Nazism came into a position of power in a democratic state.

Total world spending on military expenses in 2008 was about $1.50 trillion US dollars. 50% of this total, roughly $700 billion US dollars, was spent by the United States. The privatization of the production and invention of military technology also leads to a complicated relationship with significant research and development of many technologies.

 The military budget of the United States for the 2009 fiscal year was about $500 billion. Adding emergency discretionary spending and supplemental spending brings the sum to $700 billion. This does not include many military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department budget. 

Overall the United States government is spending about $1 trillion annually on defense-related purposes.The defense industry tends to contribute heavily to incumbent members of Congress. In a 2012 news story, Salon reported, "Despite a decline in global arms sales in 2010 due to recessionary pressures, the U.S. increased its market share, accounting for a whopping 53 percent of the trade that year. Last year saw the U.S. on pace to deliver more than $46 billion in foreign arms sales.

 The politico-media complex (PMC) is a name given to the close interaction between media networks and the relationships between a state's political and ruling class. The media industries dependency on corporations and political special interest groups and agencies such as CIA, FBI, and Law Enforcement. The term PMC is often used to name the secret or illegal relationships between governments or individual politicians and the media industry in an attempt to manipulate rather than inform the people. There is recent evidence to suggest that newer media portals as opposed to those outlets of 'traditional' mainstream media are turning, more readily, to using the PMC framework in critical analysis and interpretation of media behavior.

 The mass media are diversified media technologies that are intended to reach a large audience by mass communication. The technologies through which this communication takes place varies to distribute their information. There are conglomerate organizations that control these technologies, such as television stations and publishing companies.

 Mainstream media (MSM) are the largest distribution channels, which therefore represent what the majority of media consumers are likely to encounter. The term also represents the media influence of thought and action.

 Large news conglomerates, including newspapers and broadcast media, which underwent successive mergers in the U.S. and elsewhere at an increasing rate beginning in the 1990s, are often referenced by the term. 

This concentration of media ownership has raised concerns of a homogenization of viewpoints presented to news consumers. Consequently, the term mainstream mediahas been widely used in conversation and the blogosphere, often in oppositional, pejorative, or dismissive senses, in discussion of the mass media and media bias.

 According to philosopher Noam Chomsky, media organizations such as CBS and The New York Times set the tone for other smaller news organizations by creating conversations that cascade down to smaller news organizations lacking the resources to do individual research and coverage, the primary method of which is through the Associated Press, from which many member or subscribing organizations get their news. This results in a recycling effect ,wherein organic thought is left to the mainstream that choose the conversation and smaller organizations recite absent of a variance in perspective.

 Agenda-Setting Theory describes the ability of the news media to influence the importance of topics on the public agenda. If a news item is covered frequently and prominently the audience will regard the issue as more important. Agenda-setting theory was formally developed by Dr. Max McCombs and Dr. Donald Shaw in a study on the 
1968 presidential election. In the 1968 "Chapel Hill study," McCombs and Shaw demonstrated a strong correlation  between what 100 residents of Chapel Hill, North Carolina thought was the most important election issue and what the local and national news media reported was the most important issue. 

By comparing the salience of issues in news content with the public's perceptions of the most important election issue, McCombs and Shaw were able to determine the degree to which the media determines public opinion. Since the 1968 study, published in a 1972 edition of Public Opinion Quarterly, more than 400 studies have been published on the agenda-setting function of the mass media, and the theory continues to be regarded as relevant.

In public relations, spin is a form of propaganda, achieved through providing an interpretation of an event or campaign to persuade public opinion in favor or against a certain organization or public figure. While traditional public relations may also rely on creative presentation of the facts, "spin" often implies disingenuous, deceptive and highly manipulative tactics.

Edward Bernays has been called the "Father of Spin". As Larry Tye describes in his book The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and The Birth of Public Relations, Bernays was able to help tobacco and alcohol companies use techniques to make certain behaviors more socially acceptable in the 20th-century United States. 

 

Edward Edward Louis Bernays (November 22, 1891 − March 9, 1995) was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations". He combined the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud. 
He felt this manipulation was necessary in society, which he regarded as irrational and dangerous as a result of the "herd instinct" that Trotter had described

THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

truthNproof…“indisputable evidence is our weapon; unity is our power”       Prison–Industrial Complex (PIC) is used to attribute the rapid expansion of the US inmate population to the political influence of private prison companies and businesses that supply goods and services to government prison agencies. Such groups include corporations that contract prison labor, construction companies, surveillance technology vendors, companies that operate prison food services and medical facilities, private probation companies, lawyers, and lobby groups that represent them.     Incarceration in the US is one of the main forms of punishment. The US has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world. in 2009 743 adults were incarcerated per 1000,000 population.  A 2014 report published by the National Research Council asserts that the prison population of the United States "is by far the largest in the world. Just under one-quarter of the world's prisoners are held in American prisons."In addition, there were 70,792 juveniles in juvenile detention in 2010. According to a 2014 report by Human Rights Watch, "tough-on-crime" laws adopted since the 1980s have filled U.S. prisons with mostly nonviolent offenders.   The signing of the Rockefeller drug laws in May 1973 by New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller is considered to be the beginning of the Prison Industrial Complex. The laws established strict mandatory prison sentences for the sale or possession of illegal narcotics.       Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller (July 8, 1908 – January 26, 1979) was an American businessman, philanthropist, public servant, and politician. He served as the 41st Vice President of the United States (1974–1977) under President Gerald Ford, and as the 49th Governor of New York (1959–1973). He also served in the administrations of Presidents Franklin Roosevelt regarding Latin America and Dwight Eisenhower regarding welfare programs. A member of the wealthy Rockefeller family, he was also a noted art collector, as well as administrator of Rockefeller Center.   In 2011, a study by the National Education Policy Center found that zero-tolerance policies across the nation were increasing suspension rates, with students being accused of offenses such as attendance violations, dress code violations, cell phone use, and other minor offenses. They found that zero-tolerance policies put children, particularly black and Latino children, on a path of truancy and likely incarceration.  More and more schools are being sanctioned for poor performance under the No Child Left Behind Act.   A private prison or for-profit prison is a place in which individuals are physically confined or interned by a third party that is contracted by a government agency. Private prison companies typically enter into contractual agreements with governments that commit prisoners and then pay a per diem or monthly rate for each prisoner in the facility. The privatization of prisons refers both to the takeover of existing public facilities as well as the building and operation of new and additional prisons by for-profit companies.   As the prison population grows, a rising rate of incarceration feeds small and large businesses such as providers of furniture, transportation, food, clothes and medical services, construction and communication firms.    Penal labour is a generic term for various kinds of unfree labour which prisoners are required to perform, typically manual labour.  Federal Prison Industries (UNICOR or FPI) is a wholly owned United States government corporation created in 1934 that uses penal labour from the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to produce goods and services.  Convict leasing was a system of penal labor practiced in the Southern United States beginning with the emancipation of slaves at the end of the American Civil War in 1865, peaking around 1880, and officially ending in the last state, Alabama, in 1928. Convict leasing was a system of penal labor practiced in the Southern United States, beginning with the emancipation of slaves at the end of the American Civil War in 1865, peaking around 1880, and officially ending in the last state, Alabama, in 1928.  Drug prohibition law is prohibition-based law by which governments prohibit, except under licence, the production, supply, and possession of many, but not all, substances which are recognized as drugs, and which corresponds to international treaty commitments in the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs 1961, the Convention on Psychotropic Substances 1971, and the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic     Drugs and Psychotropic Substances 1988.   The illegal drug trade is a global black market dedicated to the cultivation, manufacturing, distribution and sale of drugs that are subject to drug prohibition laws. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade,except under license, of many types of drugs through the use of drug prohibition laws.   A UN report said, "the global drug trade generated an estimated US $321.6 billion in 2003." With a world GDP of US$36 trillion in the same year, the illegal drug trade may be estimated as nearly 1% of total global trade. Consumption of illegal drugs is widespread globally.  War on Drugs is an American term commonly applied to a campaign of prohibition of drugs, military aid, and military intervention, with the stated aim being to define and reduce the illegal drug trade. This initiative includes a set of drug policies that are intended to discourage the production, distribution, and consumption of what participating governments and the UN define as illegal psychoactive drugs.   The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been involved in several drug trafficking operations. Some of these reports claim that congressional evidence indicates that the CIA worked with groups which it knew were involved in drug trafficking, so that these groups would provide them with useful intelligence and material support, in exchange for allowing their criminal activities to continue, and impeding or preventing their arrest, indictment, and imprisonment by U.S. law enforcement agencies.   According to Rodney Campbell, an editorial assistant to Nelson Rockefeller, during World War II, the United States Navy, concerned that strikes and labor disputes in U.S. eastern shipping ports would disrupt wartime logistics, released the mobster Lucky Luciano from prison, and collaborated with him to help the mafia take control of those ports. Labor union members were terrorized and murdered as a means of preventing labor unrest and ensuring smooth shipping of supplies to Europe.   In order to prevent Communist party members from being elected in Italy following World War II, the CIA worked closely with the Sicilian Mafia, protecting them and assisting in their worldwide heroin smuggling operations in exchange for the mafia's assistance with assassinating, torturing, and beating leftist political organizers. Charles "Lucky" Luciano born Salvatore Lucania (November 24, 1897 – January 26, 1962), was a Sicilian-born American mobster. Luciano is considered the father of modern organized crime in the United States for splitting New York City into five different Mafia crime families and the establishment of the first Commission. He was the first official boss of the modern Genovese crime family. He was, along with his associate Meyer Lansky, instrumental in the development of the National Crime Syndicate in the United States. Luciano is considered by many to have been the most powerful American Mafia boss of all time.  The Sicilian Mafia (also known as Cosa Nostra, in English "Our Thing") is a criminal syndicate in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering. Each group, known as a "family", "clan", or "cosca", claims sovereignty over a territory, usually a town or village or a neighbourhood (borgata) of a larger city, in which it operates its rackets. Its members call themselves "men of honour", although the public often refers to them as "mafiosi".   The CIA supported various Afghan rebel commanders, such as Mujahideen leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who were fighting against the government of Afghanistan and the forces of the Soviet Union which were its supporters.[3] Historian Alfred W. McCoy stated that: In most cases, the CIA's role involved various forms of complicity, tolerance or studied ignorance about the trade, not any direct culpability in the actual trafficking ... [t]he CIA did not handle heroin, but it did provide its drug lord allies with transport, arms, and political protection. In sum, the CIA's role in the Southeast Asian heroin trade involved indirect complicity rather than direct culpability. In order to provide covert funds for the Kuomintang (KMT) forces loyal to General Chiang Kai-shek, who were fighting the Chinese communists under Mao Zedong, the CIA helped the KMT smuggle opium from China and Burma to Bangkok, Thailand, by providing airplanes owned by one of their front businesses, Air America.   KMT general Sun Li Ren took charge of these forces, which controlled a region in between Burma and Thailand, but were eventually forced out of the area.   Released on April 13, 1989 the Kerry Committee report concluded that members of the U.S. State Department "who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking... and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers." The oldest Mexican Cartel, the Guadalajara cartel, was benefited by the CIA for having connections with the Honduran drug lord Juan Matta-Ballesteros, a CIA asset, who was the head of SETCO, an airline used for smuggling drugs into the US and also used to transport military supplies and personnel for the Nicaraguan Contras, using funds from the accounts established by Oliver North.”   A number of allegations have been written about and several local, state, and federal investigations have taken place related to the notion of the Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport as a CIA drop point in large scale cocaine trafficking beginning in the latter part of the 1980s.    The topic has received some press coverage that has included allegations of awareness, participation and/or coverup involvement of figures such as future presidents Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush, as well as future Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Saline County prosecutor Dan Harmon (who was convicted of numerous felonies including drug and racketeering charges in 1997. The Mena airport was also associated with Adler Berriman (Barry) Seal, an American drug smuggler and aircraft pilot who flew covert flights for the CIA and the Medellín Cartel.  In 1989, the United States invaded Panama as part of Operation Just Cause, which involved 25,000 American troops. Gen. Manuel Noriega, head of government of Panama, had been giving military assistance to Contra groups in Nicaragua at the request of the U.S.—which, in exchange, allowed him to continue his drug-trafficking activities—which they had known about since the 1960s. When the DEA tried to indict Noriega in 1971, the CIA prevented them from doing so. The CIA, which was then directed by future president George H. W. Bush, provided Noriega with hundreds of thousands of dollars per year as payment for his work in Latin America.   The CIA, in spite of objections from the Drug Enforcement Administration, allowed at least one ton of nearly pure cocaine to be shipped into Miami International Airport. The CIA claimed to have done this as a way of gathering information about Colombian drug cartels, but the cocaine ended up being sold on the street.   In November 1993, the former head of the DEA, Robert C. Bonner appeared on 60 Minutes and criticized the CIA for allowing several tons of pure cocaine to be smuggled into the U.S. via Venezuela without first notifying and securing the approval of the DEA.     In November 1996, a Miami grand jury indicted former Venezuelan anti-narcotics chief and longtime CIA asset, General Ramon Guillen Davila, who was smuggling many tons of cocaine into the United States from a Venezuelan warehouse owned by the CIA. In his trial defense, Guillen claimed that all of his drug smuggling operations were approved by the CIA. Ricky Donnell Ross (born May 3, 1960), better known as "Freeway" Rick Ross, is an American author and convicted drug trafficker best known for the drug empire he presided over in Los Angeles, California, in the early to mid 1980s. Ross's capture was facilitated by his main source, drug lord Oscar Danilo Blandón, who set up Ross. Blandón had close ties with the Contras, and had met with Contra leader Enrique Bermúdezon several occasions. Blandón was the link between the CIA and Contras during the Iran-Contra affair. Gary Webb interviewed Ross several times before breaking the story in 1996. Ross claims that the reason he was unfairly tried initially was because of his involvement in the scandal. Blandón received a 24-month sentence for his drug trafficking charges, and following his release, was hired by the Drug Enforcement Administration where he was salaried at US$42,000. The INS was ordered to grant Blandón a green card, despite the criminal convictions, to allow him to work for the DEA. The DEA has claimed they no longer employ Blandón, and his whereabouts are unknown.