A report by Human Rights Watch is accusing the Military Government in Burma of forcing children as young as ten to enlist into its military.

From the International Herald Tribune:

According to a report that was to be released Wednesday, the military, struggling to meet recruiting quotas, is buying, kidnapping and terrorizing boys as young as 10 to join its ranks.

The report by Human Rights Watch, the New York-based rights group, says military recruiters and civilian brokers scour train stations, bus stations, markets and other public places for boys and coerce them to volunteer. Some may simply disappear without their families’ knowledge and spend years on the front lines of a brutal war against ethnic insurgencies.

Read the report here.

The Globe and Mail has reported on the increase in smuggled cigarettes in Canada, causing an estimated $1 Billion (Canadian) loss in tax revenue.

The article reported that the cigarettes that are smuggled are not branded cigarettes, but rather, simple cigarettes without a name.

The key difference between the early 1990s and today is that the scheme no longer uses brand-name, legally manufactured tobacco. Instead, 90 per cent of the cigarettes are illegal, no-name smokes manufactured on the U.S. side of the Akwesasne reserve near Cornwall, Ont.

In an interview, RCMP Sergeant Michael Harvey of the Central St. Lawrence Valley detachment said the leaders of the scheme are not natives, but rather Montreal and Toronto-based biker gangs such as the Hells Angels, as well as Asian gangs and the Mafia.

The following picture is of these “no-name” cigarettes found by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

(Photo courtesy of Globe and Mail and RCMP)

From the Washington Post:

Colombian drug kingpins in league with corrupt Venezuelan military officers are increasingly using this country as a way station for smuggling cocaine to the United States and Europe, according to Colombian and U.S. officials. The Bush administration’s dismal relations with Venezuela’s government have made matters worse, anti-drug agencies say, paralyzing counternarcotics cooperation.

Venezuela does not cultivate the leaf from which cocaine is derived. Instead, this country on South America’s northern fringe, along with Ecuador and Central America, has long been a stopover for cocaine produced in neighboring Colombia, the world’s top producer.

ABC’s Nightline had  a segment on Friday regarding sharks and the practice of cutting the fins off of sharks and dumping the body back into the water.

According to Stewart, there is a huge demand for shark fins in Asia because it is the key ingredient in shark fin soup, which is considered a symbol of wealth. Because of China’s recent economic boom, people can afford it and they can’t get enough.  

“Shark fin soup is a symbol of wealth. It serves as a sign of respect,” Stewart said. “It becomes a ubiquitous dish at weddings, banquets and business dinners. Because of that, a single pound of fin is $200 to $400.

New York Times Op-Ed Columnist Bob Herbert wrote a piece this weekend about the hidden trade in women.

As a society, we’re repelled by the slavery of old. But the wholesale transport of women and girls across international borders and around the U.S. — to serve as prostitutes under conditions that in most cases are coercive at best — stirs very little outrage.

Leaf through the Yellow Pages in some American cities and you’ll find pages upon pages of ads: “Korean Girl, 18 — Affordable.” “Korean and Japanese Dolls — Full Service.” “Barely Legal China Doll — Pretty and Petite.”

The Internet and magazines have staggering numbers of similar ads. Thousands upon thousands of women have been brought here from Asia and elsewhere and funneled into the sex trade, joining those who are already here and in the business but unable to keep up with the ferocious demand.

This human merchandise — whether imported or domestic — is still paraded, inspected and treated like animals.

The Washington Post is reporting that Mexican Police are estimating that 100 percent of guns used in drug-related killings in Mexico are smuggled in from the Untied States.

The guns pass into Mexico through the “ant trail,” the nickname for the steady stream of people who each slip two or three weapons across the border every day. The “ants” — along with larger smuggling operations — are feeding a rapidly expanding arms race between Mexican drug cartels.

The U.S. weapons — as many as 2,000 enter Mexico each day, according to a Mexican government study — are crucial tools in an astoundingly barbaric war between rival cartels that has cost 4,000 lives in the past 18 months and sent law enforcement agencies in Washington and Mexico City into crisis mode.

In 2006, up to 2,500 drug related homicides occurred in Mexico.  This year, as of July, more than 1,400 people have been killed.

The Associated Press has an article out today highlighting the difficulties facing the organized crime families in the Untied States.

At the mob’s peak in the late 1950s, more than two dozen families operated nationwide. Disputes were settled by the Commission, a sort of gangland Supreme Court. Corporate change came in a spray of gunfire. This was the mob of “The Godfather” celebrated in pop culture.

Today, Mafia families in former strongholds like Cleveland, Los Angeles and Tampa are gone. La Cosa Nostra — our thing, as its initiates called the mob — is in serious decline everywhere but New York City. And even there, things aren’t so great: Two of New York’s five crime families are run in absentia by bosses behind bars.

Although membership is currently down, the organizations are still able to generate money on the black market.

The mob of the 21st century still makes money the old-fashioned way: gambling, loan-sharking, shakedowns. Three Genovese family associates were busted this month for extorting or robbing businessmen in New York and New Jersey, making off with $1 million.

There are other, more modern scams: The Gambino family collected $230 million in fraudulent credit card fees linked to pornographic Web sites. Another crooked plan grossed more than $420 million when calls made to “free” phone services triggered unauthorized monthly fees on victims’ phone bills.

From the Dow Jones wire:

Italy’s counterfeit goods market that sells everything from knock-off designer sunglasses to contraband DVDs generated about EUR7.2 billion in sales in 2006, national retailers’ association Confcommercio said Wednesday on its Web site.

Based on today’s exchange rate, that figures comes out to $10.25 Billion.

Out of the total market figure, 3.3 Billion Euros ($4.6 Billion) were spent on counterfeit clothes and accessories.

A column in The Bulletin Online argues that the current assumptions regarding the trafficking of nuclear materials is incorrect.

Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley writes that the belief that a nuclear black market exists in the former Soviet Union is based on false premises.

The supposed nuclear black market in the former Soviet Union lacks an important component of any market: an established clientele. According to the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies’s Illicit Trafficking Database and publications, most nuclear transactions are conducted by isolated suppliers–primarily economic opportunists–who have no clients at the outset, and blindly probe the underground world to identify potential buyers.

In addition, incidents that are classified as nuclear trafficking generally entails small amounts of radioactive mateirals.

Additionally, the vast majority of materials involved in documented trafficking transactions have no application in a nuclear weapon or dirty bomb, and their value is typically overestimated. Fifty percent of trafficking incidents between 2001 and 2006 concerned radioactive orphan sources, contaminated scrap metal, and radioactive isotopes. Accounts of these incidents rarely indicate the exact quantity or quality of the radioactive material, making it difficult to evaluate the significance of the incident; the analysis of these cases showed, however, that most of them involve industrial instruments that typically contain small quantities of radioactive material.

See more information at our Nuclear Materials Smuggling page.

According to a report from the BBC, the Italian Mafia is generating a huge amount of money from its extortion rackets. 

The Mafia has turned into one of Italy’s biggest business enterprises with a turnover of more than $120bn (£60bn) a year, a new report says.

The report, prepared by Italy’s leading retailer’s association, warns of growing Mafia influence in the south.

It estimates that 7% of Italy’s output is filtered off by organised crime.