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    Dead Cows for Piranhas: A Perilous Journey Inside the Drug Trade
    Unavailable
    Dead Cows for Piranhas: A Perilous Journey Inside the Drug Trade
    Unavailable
    Dead Cows for Piranhas: A Perilous Journey Inside the Drug Trade
    Ebook408 pages5 hours

    Dead Cows for Piranhas: A Perilous Journey Inside the Drug Trade

    By Hazel Friedman

    5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    A high-octane journey into the brutal underworld of the South African and transnational drug trade.

    Journalist Hazel Friedman was on assignment in Thailand to document the stories of the increasing number of South Africans convicted as drug mules when she made a horrifying discovery. Many of the drug traffickers are in fact decoys.

    These individuals find themselves coerced or deceived into drug running. The ‘dead cows’ are set up to be arrested, thereby allowing professional mules carrying much larger quantities of drugs to slip past undetected.

    Through the heartbreaking accounts of the prisoners, Friedman became convinced that the decoys should not be viewed as perpetrators of narcotics trafficking. Her own high-risk investigations – including an attempt to get recruited as a drug mule (filmed with a secret camera), as well as trying to track down the middlemen – appeared to confirm this.

    She concluded that many drug mules are victims of human trafficking – as pawns readily sacrificed in a profit-driven war waged by global drug barons.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJonathan Ball Publishers
    Release dateOct 30, 2014
    ISBN9781868425341
    Unavailable
    Dead Cows for Piranhas: A Perilous Journey Inside the Drug Trade
    Author

    Hazel Friedman

    Hazel Friedman is a multi-award winning journalist. She is currently a Senior Producer with Special Assignment (SABC3). She is also the author of Hijack! – a critically acclaimed ‘faction’ novel about carjacking syndicates. She has written the definitive monograph of South African artist, Norman Catherine, and collaborated with veteran South African photojournalist Jurgen Schadeberg.

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    Reviews for Dead Cows for Piranhas

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    • 5/5
      I've always believed if you want to sell more books, an interesting title or cover go a long way in building interest. In fact it usually holds more sway with me than reviews. With a title like "Dead Cows for Piranhas" the author was certainly off to a good start. I actually heard about this book from a fiction book I read by Paul Mendelson who is an author who writes a series about a policeman in South Africa. I have often wondered how much his series was based on fact, and after reading this book and seeing what is currently going on in South Africa, I have to wonder if if reality is truly stranger than fiction.The premise of this book is how intertwined drug trafficking and human trafficking are, who the players are, and what happens to the victims.The title of this book references the decoys (dead cows) who set up to fail in their mission to smuggle drugs through airports so bigger amounts get through. Nearly all of these decoys have no idea the mess they have gotten themselves into until it is too late.What makes this book fascinating is it exposes a part of the drug world we in America do not really experience, what with all the world drug suppliers right on our southern border.The book really exposes how the South African government treats its citizens who are victimized from the beginning are set up to fail and are arrested and wind up in prison in various third world hellish places. The treatment of the dead cows is appalling, and the South African government couldn't give a shit.It also exposes the reader to just how inept and corrupt the South African government is both before and after apartheid. The government's behavior was and still is truly criminal.Dead Cows for Piranhas is an eye opener to what can happen when something that sounds too good to be true is, and the horrible price people pay for the rest of their life, the complicity that world governments play in the absurd, losing battle known as the "War on Drugs", how deeply involved an enormous group of Nigerians and their network is in drug trafficking around the world, and the sorry pathetic response countries like south Africa exhibit towards its own people who are affected by this terrible side of human suffering.This is an excellent book.