Opium cultivation out of control, U.N. says
(Just like the bad old days...)
Opium cultivation out of control, U.N. says
Afghan crops total 92 percent of world’s supply, exceed global consumption
Updated: 3:59 p.m. CT Sept 2, 2006
KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghanistan’s world-leading opium cultivation rose a “staggering” 60 percent this year, the U.N. anti-drugs chief announced Saturday in urging the government to crack down on big traffickers and remove corrupt officials and police.
The record crop yielded 6,100 tons of opium, or enough to make 610 tons of heroin — outstripping the demand of the world’s heroin users by a third, according to U.N. figures.
Officials warned that the illicit trade is undermining the Afghan government, which is under attack by Islamic militants that a U.S.-led offensive helped drive from power in late 2001 for harboring Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida bases.
“The news is very bad. On the opium front today in some of the provinces of Afghanistan, we face a state of emergency,” Antonio Maria Costa, chief of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said at a news conference. “In the southern provinces, the situation is out of control.”
He talked with reporters after presenting results of the U.N. survey to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who voiced “disappointment” over the figures. “Our efforts to fight narcotics have proved inadequate,” Karzai said in a statement.
With the economy struggling, there are not enough jobs and many Afghans say they have to grow opium poppies to feed their families. The trade already accounts for at least 35 percent of Afghanistan’s economy, financing warlords and insurgents.
Threat to democracy?
The top U.S. narcotics official here said the opium trade is a threat to the country’s fledgling democracy.
“This country could be taken down by this whole drugs problem,” Doug Wankel told reporters. “We have seen what can come from Afghanistan, if you go back to 9/11. Obviously the U.S. does not want to see that again.”
The bulk of the opium increase was in lawless Helmand province, where cultivation rose 162 percent and accounted for 42 percent of the Afghan crop. The province has been wracked by the surge in attacks by Taliban-led militants that has produced the worst fighting in five years.
Opium-growing increased despite the injection of hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid to fight the drug over the past two years. Costa criticized the international effort and said foreign aid was “plagued by huge overhead costs” in its administration.
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Gov't, Business & Narcotics: A Review of the Past
How Government Works with Business in Organized Crime:
Using Narcotics to Destroy America From Within
and Fund Black Ops
Outside the Oversight of Congress and the American People
----
The Dark Alliance:
Gary Webb's Incendiary 1996 San Jose Mercury News Exposé
http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/webb.html
See the book here: http://www.sevenstories.com/book/index.cfm/GCOI/58322100705890
-- -- -- -- --
“Real Deal News Vs Fake News"
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0203/S00126.htm
"Ahh F-- 'em, Jack, by the time they win in court, we will be gone anyway."
“Fake news is about omission. Free press is about utility.”
“How has the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal done?.... I will tell you how they have done. They have made lots of money for transnational organized crime, black budget operations and large corporations. As for their obligations to their readers, they are guilty of criminal negligence constituting fraud.”
-- -- -- --
The CIA and Drugs: An Assortment of Files Compiled by Mike Ruppert
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/index.html
-- -- -- --
"CitiGroup's Rubin: Banking on Terror"
by Al Giordano, Narco News
http://www.narconews.com/Issue14/whitecollarterror1.html
---- --
The Boodle Boys
by Kris Millegan
Part I - http://ctrl.org/boodleboys/boodleboys1.html
Part II - http://ctrl.org/boodleboys/boddlesboys2.html
-- --
(Video/HBO) The Sopranos: Episode 46
http://www.the-sopranos.com/episodes/episodes4.htm
4th Season Disc 2 #7 –
Brian lays out a way to use bogus real estate deals to con money out of the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development...
reality or fiction?
-- -- --
The TV show is fiction. Here is the reality:
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/economy/ethnic_cleansing_usa.html
The CIA & Drugs as Ethnic Cleansing
-- --
Books:
"Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy: A Study of the Asian Opium Trade 1750-1950"
by Carl A. Trocki
"Friends In High Places : The Bechtel Story : The Most Secret Corporation and How It Engineered the World"
by Layton McCartney
"The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group" by Dan Briody
"The Halliburton Agenda : The Politics of Oil and Money"
by Dan Briody
"The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade" by Alfred W. McCoy
"Barry and the Boys: The CIA, the Mob & America's Secret History" by Daniel Hopsicker
"The Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network" by Ari Ben-Menashe
"American Power and Organized Crime",
by Michael Woodiwiss, University of Toronto Press (c2001)
"A License to Steal: Asset Forfeiture",
by Leonard W.Levy
---- --
Media Silence & Complicity
"Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press"
by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey Sinclair
http://www.versobooks.com/books/cdef/c-titles/cockburn_alex_whiteout.shtml
-- -- --
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0504/S00241.htm
Anatomy of a SWAT
“… a complex series of seemingly unrelated actions by a series of governmental agencies, including agencies of judicial, executive and legislative branches, often with the participation and assistance of private individual or corporate informants, to profit from the destruction, silencing, asset seizure or blackmail of an individual or company who is out of favor or has offended some individual or group in power. The purpose of the swat operation is to satisfy the goals of one or more private special interest groups or governmental covert operations, or both…. I have spent the last seven years of my practice witnessing, and attempting to deal with, the legal aspects of swat operations apparently conducted at both federal and state levels, in all branches of government, with the assistance of government contractors and unwitting participants alike.”
See also the book:
"The Professional Paranoid" by H. Michael Sweeney
(especially useful if they really are after you)
-- -- --
RJR TakeoverWars– The Next Episode"
The European Union Sues RJR Tobacco for Two Decades of Global Money Laundering for Colombian Drug Lords, Russian Mafia, Italian Mafia, Saddam Hussein's Family & New York Real Estate Investors.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0211/S00167.htm
Articles on the RJR Case and Other Tobacco Company Lawsuits:
Lower court told to reconsider EU, RJR cigarette-smuggling cases, journalnow.com, May 3, 2005
http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ/MGArticle/WSJ_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031782486779&path=!business&s=1037645507703%20
Tobacco Companies Linked to Criminal Organizations in Cigarette Smuggling, The Center for Public Integrity
http://www.public-i.org/report.aspx?aid=359&sid=100
Cigarette Case, CBCnews Disclosure, Broadcast: April 8, 2003 http://www.cbc.ca/disclosure/archives/030408_smoke/resources.html
-- -- --
"The Ultimate New Business Cold Call: NYSE Exchange Chief Pitches Colombian Rebel Forces"
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/economy/nyse_drugs.html
oh, and a tip of the cap...
I should bring it full circle by adding this video:
http://www.gnn.tv/videos/viewer.php?id=1&n=1