Transcript of the above video:

The producer of these videos who is standing behind this camera is currently laughing at me for the title of this video which I just told him a moment ago. Yeah, we are talking the Lord of War, that is Viktor Bout and this American woman, let me double check her name, her name is Brittney Griner, I don't know how to pronounce it correctly and I am going to call her the Lady of Weed. So let me go ahead and quote this from CBS News, cbsnews.com, quoting directly from the article: Britney Griner arrives in U.S. following her release by Russia. Quoting directly: "The WNBA star, who was held for months in Russian prisons on drug charges, was released Thursday in a one-for-one prisoner swap for notorious International arms dealer Viktor Bout, bringing an end to an ordeal that sparked intense high-level negotiations between the Washington and the Moscow to secure her freedom." and I found this via Google news but it comes from cbsnews.com.

So a couple of things going on here. Yeah I guess it's a snarky title but the Lady of Weed I thought was kind of, because it wasn't drug charges, it was apparently Cannabis vaping oil that she was caught with in Russia. This is not a major crime okay let's be clear here. Let me also declare I am not intending to make light of what Mrs. Griner went through, I believe she's married, what Mrs. Griner went through. I am sure it has been harrowing and we are certainly glad to have her back in the States, it is great that she is out of custody. 

Now on to the Lord of War here, Viktor Bout and I have got to be honest with you I did not make this video, I didn't actually particularly want to make this video. The purpose of this channel is not really just sort of news or entertainment or anything like that. I like to keep it within the bailiwick of Thailand and specifically legal issues arising in Thailand. Well I really followed the Viktor Bout case and it's really making me feel old right now going back to how long ago this was occurring because I want to say we are talking like 2009 something like this, when he was going through fighting extradition to the United States, through the Thai Court system. I remember blogging, BLOGGING kids, blogging about this frequently. It was a major story in the Thai Press at the time and the English language press here in Thailand on this kind of ongoing saga of Viktor Bout, it was really interesting to watch and then the ultimate sort of conclusion being that he ended up in US custody which there is a whole lot of opacity that kind of surrounds all that. I'm not going to get into that in this video but it really is kind of an odd conclusion to Viktor Bout's story that he sort of starts off as the Lord of War if you have ever seen that film by Nicholas cage, then he ends up fighting extradition here in Thailand only to end up in the United States in custody, only to be traded for a WNBA player who was caught with a pretty minimal, I think by anyone any stretch of the imagination you can say was a pretty minimal amount of Cannabis oil I guess it was that she was using to vape. It seems a little bit of a lopsided, I mean what's that movie, Bridge of Spies where they do the swap; Frances Gary Powers who was flying a spy plane over Russia, they trade him for what was his name, Abel, I can't even remember his last name, he was a Russian spy in America, at least allegedly in the movie, I believe he was in real life whatever but I can't remember his last name but this was a trade between like, yeah I think it was a pretty even swap. If you look at the two people involved, it was a pretty even swap. Now who knows what's going on behind the scenes in this whole thing. There's a great movie from the I think it's the late 80s the early 90s, I think it is like '90 or '91 called Company Business, it's got Gene Hackman in it, a really fascinating movie. It involves a swap similar to this one. Now a whole lot of things go on that I don't think were going on here because the plot of movie is that the swap breaks down and antics ensue and they have to deal with all this stuff but there was an element to it in that movie, where there was more than met the eye to the actual swap. Now again what is being reported is that this is a "one-for-one" prisoner swap which that may be the case. I have no idea, no insights whatsoever but it would never shock me if 20 years from now, we learned that "oh there was other things, this was sort of if you will, the tip of the iceberg of an overall bigger trade, there were other things going on sort of under the surface", it wouldn't shock me at all. It wouldn't really shock me to learn it was just a true one-for-one. I know people were pretty upset about Mrs. Griner being stuck in a Russian jail, she wasn't in Thailand at all. As noted in other videos on this channel cannabis is not on the narcotics list so this would not have been a problem for her had her WNBA team come through Bangkok, so just FYI on that. 

But long story short, I'm sure it was not a pleasant experience there; I'm sure US officials exerted high priority to get her back. I don't really know the background, I am not going to claim to. I just think it is interesting because I have followed Viktor Bout for a long time coming from Thailand and every time I kind of see him in the news, he kind of piques my interest not out of any other real curiosity or interest than just he was here and it was a high profile legal case at the time and that is sort of what has come up. But man you are talking about a long strange trip for this guy, like I said from being sort of the Lord of War to going through extradition in Thailand to hanging out in a prison cell for I don't know over a decade in the United States and then now being traded for a WNBA star who was caught with cannabis vaping materials and they were each sent back to their respective countries. Boy that is an interesting story to say the least.