....or so Rohan says.
Anyway I am reading this book at the moment called Mr Nice. Anyone heard of it? It's about a guy called Howard Marks. Apparently he is Britain's biggest and most famous dope smuggler. He was a smuggler from 1974 till 1988 when the DEA busted him and successfully extradited him from Spain to the US to face charges. During the mid 1980s, Howard Marks had forty-three aliases, eighty-nine phone lines, and twenty five companies trading throughout the world. He was laundering money through most of these companies and using it to buy hash from Amsterdam, Pakistan/Afghanistan, Columbia, The Philippines, Bangkok, Vietnam and Germany. At the height of his career he was responsible for trafficking 10% of the worlds marijuana!
His story is certainly entertaining...the sh*t this guy pulls is impressive...but I can't really say I LIKE the man, but then it is very hard to dislike him completely. He is certainly charming and full of dashing bravado, but his fatal flaw in my opinion is that he is fundamentally selfish. I can't stand selfish people! Howard sees everything from Howard's point of view and while he will empathise with those who agree with him, he can't seem to understand why drugs aren't legal and what on earth he could possibly be arrested for!! He subjects his wife and kids to a life on the run, while they are living in 5 star luxury all the way, they are still on the run and when the DEA finally catches up with him, both he and his wife are slung in jail while the kids are shipped around various friends and relatives (some of whom are abusive) and deprived of seeing their mother for years on end.
I read an interview with Judy (his wife) and their 3 kids....the oldest daughter is a criminal lawyer, the second daughter is a yoga instructor (Howard credits yoga as one of the tools that helped him through his jail term) and the son is studying Spanish (Howard lived in Mallorca Palma Spain for the 10 odd years leading up to his arrest). It was very interesting to read about the psychological effects his behaviour has had on Judy and the kids. A good book for seeing how the other half live and hearing of their escapades from their own mouths. If you would like a fascinating sociological read, then this is your book. I would warn you however to keep reminding yourself what Howard's occupation is and read between the lines of his rather ego-centric story. He admits to megalomania leanings, and I think this book is a perfect example of this!
Just as a side note: He is the strangest looking man ever! I don't mean he has like physical deformities, he just never looks the same in any two pictures. He has very heavy features and they seem to almost move around his face so he never looks the same. Check him out here
2 comments:
It's impressive you've written such a long article with absolutely no relevance to the title. Well Done!
Thank you for noticing! I had no intention of writing an article on spirit fingers and their merits...while that would be fascinating in it's own right, it was more because G'Nick made me promise to put that in a post!
Don't you think it just captures the essence of life?
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