You think you're not slaves, that you love. The mind to find existence
of your current lives is structured by the American industrial place, so it leaves
you're really questioning everything you thought you knew. And this sense of separation,
that sense of isolation, is the thing that is within you and me.
It makes us feel alien to everything else that's outside of us. So that
is why as you sit there within your body and you look out through your
eyeballs and you listen through your ears, you look around you, everything else
is not you, and you don't fit. You're listening to Up is Down
with Dean Ryder. There's little doubt about the scale of Afghanistan's opiate crisis.
We saw the darkness of addiction firsthand under the police sucked up bridge in the
Afghan capital carb The Taliban say they'll end addiction and put an end to the
drug trade too, but drug problems at home are only one reason the Taliban
wants to impose its opium ban. Since the regime returned to power after the
chaotic withdrawal of the US and its allies, the Afghan economy has slumped,
hit by multiple crises. The Taliban hope there's a ban on opium would lead
to the easing of Western sanctions and the unfreezing of Afghan assets. In the
early nineties, the Taliban's policy was to ban poppy growing outright, but by
the time they seized Carbal in nineteen ninety six, their approach had relaxed.
They recognized the economic potential of poppy growing, lifted the ban and placed high
taxes on the crop. Production quickly increased, growing more than fifty percent in
just two years, But in two thousand the ban was back again for the
same reason as today, to get Western sanctions lifted. That policy change hit
global supplies of heroin by an estimated seventy five percent, but just a year
later there have been a series of terrorist attacks in the United States. Nine
eleven reshaped the world entirely. Under pressure from farmers, the Taliban had again
relaxed their ban on growing hobby. Now they were the West's public enemy number
one because they had hosted the nine eleven master minds. NATO forces invaded in
two thousand and one and removed the Taliban from power for two decades, but
under Western backed Afghan governments, the drugs trade thrived back in power again and
in need of money. Afghans are unemployed and hungry. The country has suffered
years of drought and there's no money to rebuild after decades of war. Afghanistan's
economy is teetering on the edge, but without opium and other drugs, it
would be much worse. The country made up to two point seven billion dollars
from opiates in twenty twenty one. That's fourteen percent of the country's GDP.
It's by far Afghanistan's biggest export adds the value of all legal exports together,
and it's still way behind opiates at just nine percent of GDP. And what's
important to Afghanistan's economy is crucial to the global supply of illegal drugs. The
country produces eighty five percent of the world's supply of opium. The twenty twenty
one opium harvest was the fifth year in a row where production hit more than
six thousand tons, which could potentially yield up to three hundred and twenty tons
of pure heroine traffic to markets worldwide. Ninety five percent of heroin that makes
it onto the UK streets originates from Afghanistan. Afghanistan is also the word second
largest supplier of cannabis resin, also known as hashish, and is becoming a
major methamphetamine producer, which has been described as an emerging global threat by the
UM. A global threat with a domestic workforce. Poppy farming is so widespread
that a third of all rural villages grow the crop. It's estimated that it
supports one hundred and ninety thousand full time jobs. If the Taliban go through
with its ban, not only will it have to replace a large part of
its economy, but nearly two hundred thousand people will be looking for alternative work
to support themselves and their families. The big test for the Taliban and their
authority will come this October when the next crop of poppies is due to be
planted, a crop worth potentially billions to the global drugs trade and to Afghanistan's
own economy. So will the Taliban stop the farmers from planting the crop.
It might be that they find they simply can't afford to well. Come back
to another episode the Uppest Down Podcast with me your neighbor, your friend,
your shadow, your enemy. Mister Diana Miner coming at you from the chalet.
The evening is creeping in here. I believe it's. This is my
second podcast I'm recording today. I just did that big old transmission creep episode
of Hope you guys like that. It was a good one. I think
it was one of the better episodes I've done in a while, kind of
the old style of UPPs down. And here we're doing this thing. Because
I was about to wrap it up for the night, but I decided to
just stay on the mic. I was looking through some media and some news,
and I found this great article on RT. Because you know, I
love me some RT. I love me some carrying water for Putin and so
this episode. I didn't think I was gonna do a show about this,
and maybe I'm just gonna record it anyway, because I don't know if I'm
actually going to produce it. Maybe I will, maybe I won't, who
knows. But this article was produced today, April eleventh. The Taliban did
one year where Washington couldn't in twenty sparking new panic. The ban on Afghan
poppy cultivation is set to hit Europe's heroin supplies. So I'm you know,
I'm looking at this article. It's not very long, so I'm just gonna
read it. This is gonna be kind of a reading episode. As it
turns out, there's this article, and then there's a few links to some
other things, some of their sources and citations that I think I want to
hit on too, because I think this is an interesting little little phenomenon,
little little happening, little event. If Taliban's actually and I think it's,
it's very loose ended, because they have as much interest in the illicit opium
trade as anyone else, especially our own CIA backed narco traffickers of the government
over here. They have just as much interest as anyone else to want to
keep that ship rolling. So there's nuances within this ban, you know,
as you've heard in that little clip in the beginning, there was a ban
in the nineties that had some good effects on controlling the drug abuse and use
in Afghanistan, and just I think kind of like testing the waters of the
market. Then again in two thousand that was huge, and then of course
we took over for twenty years and spiked all the all the prices and production
went way out out out of this world level of production and price increase and
availability, and we just took the helm on it. And now the Taliban
are deciding to They did this band a year ago, so the only videos
I could find were nothing newer than seven months ago, about a year ago,
and they're talking about how they're going to do these bands. They're going
to grandfather in all the poppy farmers who had already seeded that previous year's crop
or that year's crop. But they don't want any new seating going on because
there actually is a really huge heroin problem in Afghanistan. I didn't really know
how bad it is, but it's just as bad as we have here.
I mean, I would say it's arguable, but per capita, obviously we
have a lot more because we just have more people. But it's pretty bad
there, and they don't like that kind of stuff. And I don't know
what I think about the Taliban. I don't really have any opinion. Honestly.
I think they're interesting because they're a group, and you know, I
like to just look and observe and criticize groups. That's just what I like
to do. So they're another one that I find fascinated because you know,
we've been told forever that they are such bad guys, and then they were
good guys, and then they're bad guys, and then they're good guys,
and now they're just kind of like just these guys out there, but they're
putting the band on the poppy, which is gonna be huge, as you
can imagine, as you can probably tell or surmise, I forgot if they
mentioned it, and that little video clip, but that's gonna really really catapult
de fentanyl production in China. And it's interesting to me that a year ago,
just about a year ago, maybe a little bit more, they were
foreign ministers from China from the CCP hanging out with the Taliban and forming and
reforming your relations turns out that Afghanistan in particular and the Taliban more recently,
have had long ties with China and CCP, going back all the way to
the fifties. So Afghanistan, for sure, Taliban have only really had any
kind of place in that conversation since the nineties when they were in control of
the region, and then now they're they're reforming their negotiations and talks with their
old friends. I mean, like twenty year hiatus because we went in there
and decimated everything and took over the markets and created this failed narco state,
which we'll read about. But yeah, so now they're back in business working
with CCP. I don't know, maybe there's some sort of weird conspiracy connection
between the banning and the huge impact it's going to have on the poppy that
goes around the world. Was heroin and all the other pure opiates in the
pharmaceutical industries, but then that's going to really put a huge push on the
synthetics. And that's also you know that means fentanyl, and the fentanyl that
we know is being produced in Mexico specifically for American export. Only know this
because we covered that in Narco theology. That's going to be huge. Man.
So if you think you've had enough fentinyl now, get ready. There's
going to be a lot more flooding the streets, probably within the next year,
because the effects of last year's ban hasn't really been felt yet because there's
still so much supply and surplus from the two decades of US back drug trafficking
control over the region, So there's so much supply that no one's feeling the
pinch yet. But since they stopped growing most of the poppy in Afghanistan a
year ago, the effects are going to start rolling in pretty soon. Within
the next year, and that means there's going to be a huge demand for
mixing things with different type of opium mixers and fentyl. Fentyl is going to
be huge, and all kinds of ways to continue to bastardize and sit the
size fentyl and any other kind of opiate. So if you think it's bad
now, it's only going to get worse. And I hate to be the
bearer of bad news, but like I keep saying, I'm looking to try
to find good things going out there, and you know, every time I
see something, I feel like every time I do something, man, it's
just not good enough, you know, Like I just can't quite get over.
I'm working the best I can to try to make positive changes in my
life, and I'm trying not to have much detrimental effect on anyone else around
me. It's impossible, though, you know, but I'm I'm just trying
to do the best that I can out there. And I'm so fucking glad
I'm not an opium user. Man, I'm so glad I'm not a junkie
or a drug addict or someone who uses drugs. I'm so glad that my
fun with all that stuff I never even did hard stuff like heroin, but
my fun with drugs was over a long, long time ago. And I'm
just so grateful because I couldn't imagine being addicted to opiates right now in the
United States, except for it'd be a heyday because it'd be free. Basically,
it'd be cheap, or it'd be everywhere, and it'd be completely you
know, our society is getting so conditioned to just living with this. You
know, this weird se called it an epidemic of massive opiate abuse, and
now, I mean it's like he used to be the oxycontins and now it's
Fentnel is just Jesus christ Man. So yeah, it's going to get a
lot worse. I'm not trying to see that, but that's just what's there,
you know. I just I'm calling it as I see it. So
I'm gonna go ahead and start reading this article called the Taliban did in one
year Washington couldn't in twenty, sparking new panic the band on Afghan poppy cultivation
is set to hit Europe's heroin supplies. This is written by Rachel Marsden.
It's been nearly a year since the Taliban banned Afghan poppy farming used for the
production of opioids. The impact of the move is set to hit global markets
sometime soon. Given the delay from farm to customer, you'd think that would
bring a welcome sigh of relief. Apparently not. Reports are now suggesting that
a lack of Afghan heroin on the global market and a reduction of available natural
opioids like heroin could lead to increased use of synthetic opioids like fentyl. If
that's the case, then it's only because Washington and the West are about as
competent at curtailing skyrocketing drug overdose deaths as they were at tackling the cultivation of
Afghan opioids back when they had control of the country. Synthetic opioids from China
and Mexico are increasingly being used, as are those procured through prescriptions within America's
own healthcare system. Over the course of the US led global War on Terror
that kicked off in Afghanistan in two thousand and one, heroin ovadoses in the
US and elsewhere have spiked. Despite having control over the country and its government
for two decades, Washington not only failed to curtail farming and exports of Afghan
opium, but oversaw an increase. In February two thousand and four, then
US Assistant Secretary for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, Robert Charles, outlined
a new policy for countering what he calls narco terrorism in Afghanistan before Congress.
He cited a desire to assist the US back to Afghan government with its objective
to quote eliminate opium poppy cultivation and trade in ten years end quote. The
project would involve deploying CIA linked usaid to poppy growing areas to help find alternative
farming solutions, but there have always been strong doubts over the sincerity of such
efforts. A US Department of Justice policy paper from nineteen ninety one accuses the
CIA of quote complicity and the narcotics trade in Afghanistan, underscoring that covert CIA
operations in Afghanistan, for example, have transformed South Asia from a self contained
opium zone into a major supplier of heroin for the world market. The CIA
would certainly be in a position to know, having backed Mujahidin Jihadis fighters against
the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during the Cold War, while the trafficking occurred right
under its nose. Apparently, some old habits sty hard. In two thousand
and ten, former director of the Federal Drug Control Service of Russia, Viktor
Ivanov, met with NATO officials to request a mandate for destroying the poppy fields,
citing thirty thousand opium related deaths in Russia. Quote we cannot be in
a situation where we remove the only source of income of people who live in
the second poorest country in the world without being without being able to provide them
with an alternative end quote, NATO spokesman James Operturi replied. According to Reuters,
clearly they just weren't that interested. It now seems that the US and
NATO counterinsurgency emissions served in part as a cover for safeguarding and protecting the opium
fields from destruction, which the Taliban had already gone about doing before the two
thousand and one US invasion. Propping up Western proxies doesn't come cheap, and
something simply aren't fit for the accounting books back home. It's no secret that
the CIA has a history of using narcotic traffic king to support US interests abroad,
while simultaneously accusing the local opposition of doing just that. From Nicaragua and
Haiti to Southeast Asia, Indo China, and even in France. According to
a State Department fact sheet from the pre two thousand and one archives, Taliban
poppy cultivation bands quote lacked credibility, Yet it was Washington's public proclamations of eradication
that never came to fruition. Similarly, Washington laughably charged Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro
with narco terrorism partnership with the FARC for the past twenty years end quote in
March of twenty twenty. This was despite Washington's unconditional backing of South American ally
Colombia, an actual narco state whose cocaine production exploded under the leadership of former
President Ivan Duquet, even as President Joe Biden introduced him at the White House
in twenty twenty two as quote, my friend Biden then also added quote,
We've known each other for a long time, and we were reminiscing about how
far back we go. I've been deeply engaged with the relationship with Columbia for
a long time, going back more than twenty years to that old plan Colombia
end quote. It's funny that Biden should mention Plan Colombia, a US backed
multibillion dollar program to fight drugs and insurgency in the country, which is largely
considered to be a counter narcotics failure. It didn't even really produce lasting encounter
insurgency results, according to members of former President Barack Obama's own administration, concluding
that quote, our collective failure to control either drug abuse or drug trafficking has
exacted an enormous human toll end quote. Washington has historically been both disingenuous and
incompetent when it comes to fighting illicit drug use. The fact that the Taliban
finally has an opportunity to do what Washington was never able or willing to do,
despite claims to the contrary, closes once spigot. However, it won't
save Washington from its own failure years on the drug front. So that's kind
of a you know, it's a hit piece, but it's a good one.
I think that's a great little article. It's got some information, but
there's not that much context for people like myself who don't really know how far
back this goes. And so I did find some fairly fairly newish within this
last year. Decent video and a decent article, and actually I got a
few different articles because there's a couple of links here within this article that we're
gonna we're gonna check out here. So here's an article from Politico. It's
about two weeks ago. It's when it was written. It was I don't
know when it was published exactly, but probably the same day, who cares.
It's about two weeks ago. Politico Taliban poppy bands puts Europe on fentanyl
alert. Drug users can switch to more dangerous synthetic blah blah blah, blah
blah blah blah. The cool part is that there's really neat ai that will
read this article for us, so you don't have to listen to me.
You can listen into a weird of course, proper English robot voice. All
right, all right, this is a good little article though. It's got
a lot of context as to what's going on with the supply now, what
the conditions look like appropriate for launching another fentinyl campaign, like a big one,
and how that's going to affect other countries in and around the region of
Afghanistan. Plus the international market. So it's a good little spot. I
know, I know what you're gonna say. I know you're gonna say,
oh my god, Dan, it's political. You can't read that garbage.
I not really take this shit super seriously. I just put it out there
because this is the information that we're given. I think there's a lot of
tells you can pick up if you're reading these things, if you're watching these
guys talk, you can always tell their tells. They're pretty easy, which
you recognize that it's all just a huge lie and a scam, you know
what, not to believe in what makes a little bit of sense. There's
some things in this article that I think makes some sense. I think this
is actually fairly decent reporting, as they're not celebrating all the woke policies of
this type of a move, which is pretty good. So that tells me
they're at least trying to stay outside of that cash cow for a minute.
So I'm just going to play at the article and you can hate me.
It's about seven minutes long. I'm sorry, but it's a good one.
It's a good article. You just gotta just pay attention if you're interested.
If not, then I do on the wire. If ick on listening to
this Get a Life Taliban poppy band puts Europe on fentanyl alert. Drug users
could switch to more dangerous synthetic opioids as heroin supply dries up. Europe's heroine
market could soon be in for a supply shock, and experts fear the gap
could be filled by something much worse. Almost all heroin consumed in Europe comes
from Afghanistan, where the Taliban have imposed a ban on poppy cultivation that will
take effect in the coming weeks. The likely poppy shortage could make it more
profitable for criminals to manufacture synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl, to be sold
to desperate addicts denied their hit of heroin. That in turn presents a serious
public health risk, as synthetic opioids tend to be much stronger than natural heroine
fifty times stronger in the case of fentonyl. That means it's much easier to
overdose. Fentinyl claims tends of thousands of lives in America each year. The
Taliban banned poppy cultivation in April twenty twenty two, after resting back control of
Afghanistan from the US backed government in twenty twenty one. The twenty twenty two
crop was exempted, meaning the results will start to be seen with this year's
April harvest. It takes between a year and eighteen months for the harvest to
reach the European market as heroine, giving governments until next year before the impact
starts to be felt. If the Taliban band does result in a dramatic reduction
in heroine produced from opiean poppy, that could create a possibility of us seeing
more synthetic opioids, said Paul Griffiths, scientific director of the European Monitoring Center
for Drugs and Drug Addiction IMSTER. It seems strange to say this, but
almost in terms of synthetics, the higher availability of heroin at the moment is
arguably a protective factor, said Griffiths. History backs up his fears. The
Taliban previously banned opium in two thousand, causing a herrow and shortage in Europe.
Not long after, pentonyl surfaced for the first time on the continent.
From the early two thousands onwards, we had a problem with fentonyl in the
Baltics Estonia, particularly where it was responsible for quite high levels of drug related
deaths and was quite a long term intractable problem there, Griffiths said. By
twenty seventeen, Estonia's fentanyl crisis was over as intense law enforcement initiatives shut down
many of the producers located in the country, but Estonia still has the highest
proportion of fatal overdoses involving fentanyl in the EU, according to figures provided to
Politico by the EMSTER A lesson from America for an idea of just how dangerous
synthetic opioids can be looked to America. More than fifty eight thousand people died
from phentinyl overdoses there in twenty twenty, compared to ninety seven in the EU.
By twenty twenty two, the US figure for synthetic opioid deaths mostly attributed
to phentenyl had increased to sixty eight thousand. There are some important differences,
however. America's opioid epidemic stems from large number of prescriptions doled out for pain
management in the nineteen nineties. This led to overdoses on pain medication itself,
as well as an increase in addiction, leading to illicit heroin use. Since
then, pentomyl has penetrated the broader US illicit drug market. According to the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention c DC, it can be found blended into
many illicit substances, from counterfeit xanox an anxiety medication, to recreational drugs,
including MDMA, cocaine, and even cannabis. The fastest growing group for overdose
deaths as teenagers. By contrast, far few Europeans have become addicted via prescription
medication, meaning the main risk group is likely to be the far smaller number
of heroin addicts. There's also much less of an established illegal manufacturing base for
synthetic opioids in Europe. In many countries, prescribing rates are not necessarily less
than in the US, but it doesn't spill over to the illicitopioid use or
illegally manufactured opiates, said Aunt Shelkans, professor at Radbad University Medical School in
the Netherlands, in a letter published in medical journal The Lancet in October.
Shelkans and colleagues pointed to the widespread availability of healthcare in Europe as a protective
factor. This is both because it gives patient success to affordable interventions such as
hip or knee replacements rather than them needing to rely on opioids to alleviate chronic
pain. And because it provides addiction care, including a PoID substitution treatment,
others agree the healthcare system is an important infrastructure to prevent and treat people that
become addicted, said Nora Volkov, director of the US based National Institute on
Drug Abuse. Now, I just got to interrupt here for a couple of
minutes and just point out the bullshit gaslighting that Politico is trying to serve you
right now with those last little statements about how important it is that the NHS,
the National Health Service I guess in the UK, is there to provide
all these different interventions for people to keep them off the needle and things like
that. The nationalized healthcare system is just so great when we know it's like
it's like a year long wait list and there's only like approved medicines and approved
practices, and of course you can't even walk in the doorway even think about
going to go see a doctor now unless you've been jabbed four or five,
six times. And the same thing goes here in the US. They touted
themselves here in the US. Is like, our national policy on drugs is
to keep people from addiction. Is like, it's the fucking healthcare system that
made people addicted. It was the pharma drug pushers that were incentivizing and giving
people bonuses to get people addicted. They were changing the language. They were
changing the language, not the formulas, but the language of the formulas to
get people to believe that it was non addictive. I mean, there is
that whole Hulu series that was badass called Dope Sick. It's fucking great series.
It'll tell you. It lays it all out there. And I know
it's TV, it's predictive programming whatever, it's Hulu, it's fucking entertainment.
It's true. It's true though, it's all true. What happened with the
Purdue family and everything. I mean, it's just such a joke. And
then here they pat themselves on their back talking about how hard they work keeping
people off the needle, when it's their job, dude, it was their
fucking job to put people on the needle. It's their job to put people
on massive amounts of overprescribed opioid painkillers to where they would get addicted. And
then start doing dope. It just pisses me off when they gaslight like that
in the article, and the AI voice doesn't help because it all just kind
of drones into one kind of song, you know, one sort of droning
little vibration. You don't really catch that shit, but I catch it,
and it just pisses me off. The level of just gaslighting that these people
do talking about how wonderful it is to health. The healthcare system is responsible
for almost all of this drug addiction and overdosing that we're seeing, not only
because they make it available, they incentivize people to sell it and to do
it, they make it the only option, They lie about its addictive qualities,
and then they also pump you full of all kinds of shit in your
water and your food and all the other pharmaceuticals that you're on. Because everyone's
on drugs. It just makes them have to have more further interventions and further
interventions until you just get to this mission creep, which I think is probably
the goal. I don't know it just that shit just pisses me off.
So that's my little insertion there. Don't believe that bullshit at all. So
if there's bullshit right there in this article. Maybe this whole article is bull
It's hard to determine. Like once you catch a bullshit lie and a gaslight,
everything becomes suspect. At that point, everything is questionable, you know,
And I have to have a shade of doubt on everything that I read
at that point. And it's just it sucks, guys. It's almost like
you can't believe anything you see you're here, even with your own fucking eyes
or ears. It's just it's incredibly difficult to parse the reality from this bullshit
that they hand you. Okay, back to the article. Sorry. The
healthcare system is an important infrastructure to prevent and treat people that become addicted,
said Nora Volkoff, director of the US based National Institute on Drug Abuse.
It is key to actually avert a crisis like the one that we're living in
the United States with fentanyl. Despite this, Wolkoff believes that as markets for
fentanyl becomes saturated in North America, Europe could be the next target for trafficking
the drug. There is nothing that says Europe is immune to these drugs entering
their borders, she said, mixing it up. It's a worry echoed by
Europe's Drugs Agency, which together with Europol, runs an early warning system to
keep track of illicit substances making their way unto the EU. Recent analysis from
the ms TO shows that the amount of fentanyl appearing on the European market is
declining, but there's a growing number of new opioids. The market is adapting
to the US pressure and Chinese action to reduce fentanyl, and what we are
seeing is other new synthetic opioids appearing. These are initially uncontrolled, they're difficult
to detect, people aren't aware of them, and there again still highly potent,
said Griffiths. Europol spokesperson Jenopjennorth believes the danger for europe liies and fentanyl
mixes. It's probably unlikely that a drug called fentanyl or China white, China
doll or sudden death or whatever it's called, we'll just pop up on the
European market, Opjennorth said. What we might see here and they're a next
year as groups trying to cut another drug with fentanyl mix it creates new markets.
Knowing that fentanyl is cheap and highly addictive. Nevertheless, Objenov believes that
international cooperation and continued monitoring will be effective and keeping fentanyl contained and that ye
a poor law, local agencies could quickly respond. More than fifty eight thousand
people died from fentonel overdoses in the US in twenty twenty. Ultimately, one
factor may serve in Europe's favor. Time here we had a ten year time
lag or something. Shelkin said. In the beginning, the idea in the
US was these opiates, if you prescribe them, are not addictive. By
the time that it came to Europe, we had these very important lessons from
them that these are not harmless. It's just the advantage of having somebody else
go first, he said. Yep. So they're bracing for impact. They're
bracing for impact. Fentyl download is happening. It's going to be pretty quick,
but it's just pretty gnarly, you know. And I just think it's
pretty interesting that the CCP and Taliban hooked up last year and you know,
reforming their old relationships, their old ties. I wonder if the fentanyl production
has anything to do with that. I mean, I imagine that Afghanistan,
like I said, they probably want to quash their own their own drug consumption
in their own country. But it's just funny that the the Chinese Communist Party's
fentanyl production export only to the US exclusively, you know. And now the
the alternative, the good opium, the good heroine, is going to be
very very limited, which is going to make it extremely expensive and very hard
to get. It's going to up the demand, and then of course the
supply is going to show up, and it's going to be lots of lots
more killing and wars going on there. So I don't know if there's really
much more to be said. There's another shortish kind of video from a deutschevella
which talks about in a slightly different light, but it's it's good further background.
I'm gonna go ahead and play that. It's also about six to seven
minutes, not super long, but it's a good little it's a good little
video. Georgia Villa does pretty good work, honestly. Armed Taliban fighters stand
guard as a tractor tears up a field of poppies in Washier District in southern
Hellman Province. Afghanistan's rulers issued an edict in early April banning the cultivation of
the poppy the raw material required for opium, morphine and heroin production. Now
the campaign is beginning. Afghan opium supplies over eighty percent of all users globally.
The international community has been demanding more control of drug production since the Taliban
retook the country last year. Our Supreme Leader has strictly ordered the ban on
cultivating poppies, so those who are acting against it and continue to see it
and cultivate it will be arrested and tried according to Sharia laws in relevant courts.
Rids front. For the farmers whose fields are being destroyed, it's a
different story. They fear their livelihoods will be ruined. At a time of
growing poverty. We are facing drought and don't have big farming fields, so
seeding and cultivating crops other than the opium poppy doesn't earn us anything. If
we're not allowed to grow this crop, we won't earn anything. The new
eradication campaign is mainly targeting those who planted their crops after the ban was announced.
Others who planted earlier succeeded in harvesting, going from plant to plant,
slicing the poppy's bulb, then scooping up the sap that oozes out the raw
material for opium. We were not aware of any order to ban the cultivation
of poppies, and these poppy feels were seated before any order was issued.
We're upset because our crop was ready for harvest before we became aware of the
ban. The ban comes as Afghanistan's economy has collapsed. Cut off from international
funding since the Taliban takeover, most of the population struggles to afford food,
and the country has been suffering its worst droves in years. Around eighty percent
of livelihoods in Afghanistan depend on agriculture. Farmers are forced to ask themselves what
can replace the opium poppy as a source of income. There is no easy
answer, and let's get more on this from journalist Ali Latifi, who joined
me now from Kabold with more Ali, we had been speaking about this back
in April when the Taliban said they wouldn't be enforcing their poppy band, but
now it seems they are. What has changed, well, the way they
had framed it is that for people who had already planted, they weren't going
to get in their way. But what they were trying to do is keep
from new crops and new harvests being planted. So this may be part of
that, saying that you know last year's crops, will let them go,
and you know, whatever happens with them, happens with them, but we
don't want any new crops. That seems to be the only that makes sense
at this point as to why they're starting now, And in that case,
it seems to follow through what they've been saying about it. So what exactly
are they hoping to achieve by cracking down on poppy cultivation. Is it really
a motivation to try and cut down the amount of opium that it's produced in
Afghanistan or there are other motivations here. I mean, I think there are
several motivations. One thing that's great pr right again, it's the one thing
that they could do if they could actually accomplish it. It's something that they
could do that the Republic was unable to do. You know, the Republic,
with all of its funding, with all of its bign backing for twenty
years, was not able to eradicate the poppy cultivation. And if you're the
Talibon, what you will say is one of the reasons. Although the Taliban
definitely had a hand in the drug trade in Afghanistan. But if you're the
Taliban, what you'll say is, well, the former government was heavily involved
in the drug trade. You know, you had MPs, you had ministers,
you had governors, you had police, all kinds of different officials and
people connected to the government who are accused of having an alleged hand in the
drug trade. So what they can say now is, hey, because we've
gotten rid of the corruption, now we can enforce this and get rid of
this, of course, again ignoring the fact that they themselves also had a
hand in it over the last twenty years. So it comes down to good
pr again. And it also could be something about their relationships with the neighbors,
you know, because Eaton and Pakistan, both of which they're very good
with. Even Turkey, also a nation that they're very good with, has
complained a lot about drugs coming out of Afhanistan. Now they don't talk about
how their own drug mafias are involved and are you making it possible? But
it's another way of trying to bring assurance two regional neighbors that we're taking an
issue seriously and that we're able to crack down on this. So it's a
lot of good talking points for them, but following up with it is very,
very difficult. But the route of the problem remains unaddressed, it doesn't
it. I mean that there really isn't a viable, profitable alternative to poppy
cultivation in Afghanistan for the thousands of four farmers, right, And this is
so So there's a few things. One it's that there is no viable alternative.
I remember years ago at a usmbassy event where the usmbac is basically threw
up its hands and said, our drug war and Avlanistan didn't succeed. You
know, they said that no lisit crop can ever, no legal crop can
ever compete with an illegal product. And it's true. On the one hand,
you know, when something is illegal, you know that the market dictates
the price in ridiculous sorts of ways and in very exorbitant ways. And then
in terms of alternatives, you need to lay the groundwork for those alternatives and
you need to have the markets and the support for it. So the former
government, they tried pomegranates, they tried saffron, they tried alo vera,
all sorts of things. But what was the problem was that they didn't have
proper markets within the country to sell those products. And they also didn't have
proper agreements with other countries to make sure that our products made it out and
were sold into the world market. So you would have farmers who were harvesting
and who were planting these different crops and plants and things like that and vegetables,
and yet they really didn't have anywhere to sell it, and there was
so much regional competition in these markets. So it really takes you know,
if you have to support that movement, you have to support that market.
So if you want if you want it to be pomegranates, then you have
to make sure that Avhanistan's pomegranates are exported to the UAE, that they're exported
to Turkey, that they're exported to other countries as well, and that they
are properly sold within Then that takes a lot of work that again the former
Republic couldn't do or didn't want to do. I don't know either couldn't or
didn't. And now you know, the Taliban will have to try and do
the same thing, because if you can't sell your alternative product, then you're
going to go to the easiest thing, you know, the thing that you
know you will absolutely be able to sell the no matter what. Yeah,
I had no idea that the Taliban We're trying to grow alternative crops in place
of opium for years and there's no markets. No one wanted to Everyone is
like, dude, we got all these things on lock. You guys got
that sweet sweet dope, Like that's what you do good. You do that
one thing and you do it really, really, really good. So we
don't want any other ship. We want that sweet dope. Don't sucks,
because you know, obviously they don't. They don't want that. They don't
want that to be their cash crop as long as there's so many sanctions.
And I guess that's the whole point of it is why they're trying to ban
these things so they can get some of these US sanctions lifted so they can
actually start to do business internationally supposedly. I don't know. I just think
it's kind of an interesting little thing going on right now, and it's very
quiet, and it all just equals tons and tons of more fentanyl and other
kinds of synthetic opioid's flooding our streets and killing people and getting into everyone's like
their coke and even their weed and things like that. I mean, it's
pretty scary people that I know that do drugs like I worry about them because
that shit's just everywhere. It's crazy. So I hope that provided a little
bit of text to the news of the puppy band. You guys can bear
with me a little bit longer. I have another article that was originally published
in Mint Press News June twenty fifth, twenty twenty one. It's entitled Geopolitics,
Profit and Poppies, How the CIA turned Afghanistan into a failed narco state.
I'm going to go ahead and try to read it, and if I
start stumbling over my words and it ends up going on and on and on,
then I think I'm just going to cut it out. So time code
is at forty minutes ish. The COVID nineteen pandemic has been a death knell
to so many industries in Afghanistan. Charities and aid agencies have even warned that
the economic dislocation could spark widespread famine, but one sector is still booming,
the illicit opium trade. Last year saw Afghan opium poppy cultivation grow by over
a third, while counter narcotics operations dropped off a cliff. The country is
said to be the source of over ninety percent of the world's illicit opium,
from which heroin and other opioids are made. Our land is under cultivation for
opium in Afghanistan than is used for coca production across all of Latin America,
with the creation of the drugs said to directly employ around half a million people.
This is a far cry from the nineteen seventies, when poppy production was
minimal and largely for domestic consumption. But this change in nineteen seventy nine when
the CIA launched Operations Cyclone the widespread funding Afghan Mujahadeen militias in an attempt to
bleed dry the then recent Soviet invasion. Over the next ten years, the
CIA worked closely with its Pakistani counterpart, the ISI to funnel two billion dollars
worth of arms and assistance to these groups, including the now infamous Osama bin
Laden, tim Osman, and other warlords known for such atrocity as a throwing
acid in the faces of unveiled women oh Man. A lot of these things
were debunked to be a Jean provocateurs. That whole acid face thing quote from
statements by US Ambassador to Iran, Richard Helms. There was little heroin production
in Central Asia by the mid seventies, Professor Alfred McCoy, author of the
Politics of Heroine, CIA complicity in the global drug trade, told Mint Press.
But with the start of the CIA Secret War, opium production along the
Afghanistan Pakistan border searched and refineries soon dotted the landscape. Trucks loaded with US
taxpayer funded weapons would travel from Pakistan into its neighbor to the west, returning
filled to the brim with opium for the new refineries, their deadly product ending
up on streets worldwide. With the influx of Afghan opium in the nineteen eighties,
Jeffries Saint Clair, co author of White Out the CIA Drugs and the
Press, alleges heroin addiction more than doubled in the United States. In order
to finance the resistance for a protracted period, dou Mujahadeen had to come up
with the livelihood beyond the weapons of the CIA was providing, McCoy said,
noting that the weapons issued could not feed the fighters families nor reimburse them for
lost labor. Quote, So what the resistant spiders did was they turned to
opium. Afghanistan had about one hundred tons of opium produced every year in the
nineteen seventies. By eighty nine and nineteen ninety, at the end of that
ten year CIA operation, that minimal amount of opium one hundred tons per annum
had turned into a major amount two thousand tons a year, and was already
about seventy five percent of the world's illicit opium trade. The CIA achieved its
goal of giving the USSR its Vietnam, the Soviets, failing to quash the
Mujahadeen rebellion by the time they finally pulled out in nineteen eighty nine, But
American money and weapons also turned Afghanistan into a dangerously unstable place full of warring
factions that used opium to fund their battles for internal supremacy. By nineteen ninety
nine, annual production had risen to forty six hundred tons. The Taliban eventually
emerged as the dominant force in the country and attempted to gain international legitimacy by
stamping out the trade. In this they were remarkably successful. A two thousand
ban a two thousand ban on opium cultivation by the Taliban led government led to
an almost overnight drop to just one hundred and eighty five tons harvested the following
year, as frightened farmers chose not to risk attracting their wrath. The Taliban
had hoped that the eradication program would win favor in Washington and entice the United
States to provide humanitarian aid, but unfortunately history had other ideas. On September
eleventh, two thousand and one, the US experienced a massive case of blowback
has been Laudon's forces launched attacks on New York and Washington. The US ignored
the Taliban's offered to hand them over to a third party, instead opting to
invade the country. Less than a month after the plans hit the World Trade
Center, US troops were patrolling the fields of Afghanistan. Yeah. Do less
than a month later they were on top of it. It's just, oh
my god, you guys so obvious. It's just so obvious and clear that
the whole thing just move in there and just take over that racket for twenty
years and then boom, we got so much dope just coming out of our
ears all over this country. Man, Like the oxyconton stuff, the Purdue
family stuff, and now the fentanyl stuff and the cartels, and the Chinese
is like God Cia behind all that, Okay, the world's first true narco
state. The effect of the occupation was to expand drug production to unprecedented new
proportions, Afghanistan becoming and Professor McCoy's estimation, the world's first true narco state.
McCoy notes that by two thousand and eight, opium was responsible for well
over half of the country's gross domestic product. By comparison, even in Colombia's
darkest days, cocaine accounted for only three percent of its GDP. It's a
completely different world. I mean Colombia, in Afghana, Panistan, you're talking
about lush rainforest, jungles, fruit, vegetables, cattle. I mean there's
livestock out. I mean this crazy amount of livestock, timber industry. There's
so much resources in Colombia. Afghanistan has got ship, dude, they got
sand and rocks, that's it. And poppy. That's all they have.
So of course the poppy is going to be over half the GDP of that
country. There's nothing else to sell, there's nothing else to make. They
don't do anything else, that's all that they have. It's a desert and
then there's poppy So anyway, today the United Nations estimates that around sixty three
hundred tons of opium and rising is produced yearly, with two hundred and twenty
four thousand hectares an area almost the side of Rhode Island planted with poppy fields.
But even while it was financing a widespread and deadly aerial spraying campaign in
Colombia, the United States refused to countenance the same policy in Afghanistan. They
say, quote, and we've heard this quote earlier in the show, we
cannot be in a situation where we remove the only source of income of people
who live in the second poorest country in the world without without being able to
provide them with an alternative, said Nato. I think I stumbled in the
same place. So isn't that funny, Like we just sanctioned the fuck out
of this country so that they're absolutely like the poorest country in the world.
I think, like the second poorest nation in the entire world. We sanctioned
the fuck out of him. We give him this pariah stigma for decades and
decades and decades, and some of it's on their own thing. We make
it so no one can eat, no one can live, no one can
have any money, nothing can do anything but grow poppy. And then we
say, oh, now you can't grow their poppy. How could we.
We've been trying to spray and kill these plants for decades other countries Russia,
but no, no, no, we can't do that. Not everyone agreed,
however, that a passionate commitment to defending the quality of life of the
poorest was the actual reason for rejecting the policy. Matthew Hoe, a former
captain of the US Marine Corps, is one skeptic. Hoe told Mint Press
that airborne fumigation was not carried out because it would be outside the control of
Afghan government officials who were deeply implicated in the drug trade, owning poppy fields
and production plants themselves. They were afraid that if they went to aerial eradication,
the US pilots would just eradicate willy nilly and a lot of their own
poppy fields would be hit. In two thousand and nine, Hoe resigned in
protests from his position. Resigned in protests Nice from his position at the State
Department and Zabel Province over the government's continued occupation of Afghanistan, He told the
Mint Press. Quote, NATO forces were more or less guarding poppy fields and
poppy production under the guise of counterinsurgency. The logic was, we don't want
to take away the livelihoods of the people. Quote. But really what we
were doing at that point was protecting the wealth of our friends in power in
Afghanistan. That's what it was. According to Hoe, there were widespread disillusionment
within the military, among service members who had to risk their lives on a
day to day basis. They would say, what are we doing here?
This is bullshit? It was a sentiment among their rank and file. The
heroin trade implicated virtually everyone in power, including Afghan President Ahmed Kazar's brother Ahmed
Wali, among the biggest and most notorious drug kingmans in the south of the
country, a man widely understood to be in the pay of the CIA.
Ahmed Wali. Yeah, for sure, there's documents and citations to back that
up in this article that maybe I'll throw those in the show notes too.
US attempts to stymy the opium trades, such as the policy of paying domestic
militias to destroy poppy fields often backfired. Locals came up with ways of profiting,
such as refraining from planting in one area, collecting large sums of money
from occupying forces, and using that clap using that cash to plant elsewhere,
effectively getting paid both to plant and not to plant. Even worse, local
warlords and drug bossles would destroy their rival scrops and collect money from the US
for doing so, leaving themselves both enriched and in a stronger position than before,
having gained NATO forces favor. One notable example of this is a local
strongman, ghoul Agashrazai, who eradicated his competitors Crops and Nagar Province while quietly
leaving his own and Candahar Province untouched. But all the usaw was a local
politician seemingly committed is stamping out in illegal drug trade. They therefore showered him
with money and other privileges. We literally gave the guy ten million in cash
for rubbing out his own competition. Host said, if you were going to
write a movie about this, they'd say this is just too far fetched.
No one's going to believe this. Nothing is this insane or stupid. But
that is the way it is. Quote I totally believe that that is exactly
how we do things. It's like that other meme man that Mima says,
this is how the government works. It's a picture of a pan on a
stove where an actual egg is cracked and is on the stove. The shell
is in the pan and the handle of the pan is over the open burner.
Like it's just completely backwards and fucked up. Like that's exactly how the
government runs. And so to say that this is too far fetched. No
one's going to believe that. No one, none of us here are this
insane or stupid. But that's the way it is. I believe it.
McCoy noted that the Taliban is one of the prime beneficiaries of the drug trade
and used it to increase their power and vanquish the US quote that booming opium
production and the US failure to curb it provided the bulk of the financing for
Taliban, who captured a significant but unknown share of the local profits from the
drug traffic, which they used to fund guerrilla operations over the past twenty years,
becoming a determinative factor in the US defeat in Afghanistan. The needle and
the damage done it is not particularly difficult to grow opium. Opium poppies flourish
in warm and dry conditions away from the damp and the wind. Consequently,
they have found a fertile home across much of Central and Western Asia. The
plant has flourished in Afghanistan, particularly in southern provinces like Helmand, close to
the tripoint where Afghanistan meets Pakistan and Iran. Much of the irrigation system and
Helman was underwritten by USAID, an organization that acts as the CIA's public facing
front. Oh my god, so yeah, the CIA's USAID was an underwriter
for all that infrastructure to put in the irrigation systems in Hellman. In full
bloom, the poppy fuels look spectacular, with beautiful flowers of vibrant pink,
red or white. Underneath the flowers one can find a large seed pod.
Farmers harvest these, draining them of a sap which dries into a resin.
This is often transported out of the country through the so called Southern Route via
Pakistan or Iran, but as with any pipeline, much of the product is
spilled along the way, causing an epidemic of addiction across the region. The
effect on the Afghan population has been nothing short of a disaster. The technical
The technological revolution and its aftermath has been a disaster for the United States.
Between two thousand and five and two thousand team, the number of adult drug
users jumped from nine hundred thousand to two point four million in ten years,
from one to two and a half. That's a one hundred and fifty percent
increase crazy, according to the United Nations, which according to the UN,
so you fuck that, which estimates that almost one in three households are directly
affected by addiction. While Afghanistan also produces copious amounts of marijuana and methamphetamine opioids
of the druga choice for most, with around nine percent of the adult population
and a growing number of children addicted to them. Added to this has been
a spike in HIV cases as users share needles. Professor Julian Mercille, author
of Cruel Harvest US intervention in the Afghan drug trade, told the Mint Press.
Only contributing further to the despair has been twenty years of war in US
occupation. The number of Afghans living in poverty arose from nine point one million
in two thousand and seven to nineteen point three million in two sixteen. A
recent poll conducted by Gallup found that Afghans are the saddest people on earth,
with nearly nine and ten respondents suffering and zero percent of the population thriving.
In their own words, when asked to rate their lives out of a score
of ten, Afghans gave an average answer of two point seven, a record
low for any country studied. Worse still, when asked to predict the quality
of life in five years, their mean answer was even lower two point three.
So we're right on track with Afghanistan around here, like there's nothing good
coming man. What's the quality of life going to be in five years from
now? Even lower? Man? The effects of the CIA operation to bleed
the Soviets dry in Afghanistan have also produced a humanitarian crisis in neighboring Pakistan.
As McCoy noted, in the late nineteen seventies, Pakistan had barely any heroin
addics, but by nineteen eighty five, Pakistani government statistics reported over one point
two million, turning the two nations into quote the global eper center of the
drugs trade almost overnight. The problem has only grown since at twenty thirteen UN
report estimated that almost seven million Pakistani's use drugs, with four point two five
million requiring urgent treatment for dependency issues. Nearly two and a half million of
these people were abusing heroin or other opioids. Around seven hundred people die every
day from overdoses. The highest rate of dependency is unsurprisingly in provinces on the
Afghan border, where heroin is manufactured. The same United Nations study notes that
eleven percent of people in the northwest province of Khaiber Paktanwa use illicit substances,
primarily heroin. The drug crisis, of course, is also a medical crisis,
with overstretched public hospitals filled with drug related maladies. The social stigma of
addiction has ripped families apart, while the money and power illicit drugs have brought
has turned many towns into hot spots of violence. Iran has a similar number
of opioid users, generally estimated at between two and three million. In towns
close to the Afghan Pakistani border, a gram of opium can be bought with
loose change between a quarter and fifty cents. Thus, despite the extremely harsh
penalties for drug possession and distribution on the official books, the country has the
highest addiction rate in the world. On a micro level, addiction tears apart
families and ruins lives. On an international scale. However, the opium boom
is replaced has placed an entire region under significant strain. Therefore, one consequence
of the US policy in the Middle East, from supporting jihadas to occupying nations,
has been to unleash a worldwide opium addiction that has made a few people
fantastically wealthy and destroyed the lives of tens of millions of people domestic despair.
The boom in production has also led to a worldwide disaster. In the past
decade, opioid related deaths increased by seventy one percent globally. According to the
UN, Much of the product grown by Afghan warlords end up on Western streets.
Quote. I don't see how it can be a coincidence that you have
that explosive growth and poppy production in Afghanistan and then you have the worldwide opioid
epidemic hostated, a connection that raises the questions of whether users in Berlin,
Boston, or Brazil should be seen as victims of the war in Afghanistan,
as much as fallen soldiers are. If so, the numbers would be staggering.
Nearly eight hundred and forty one thousand Americans have died of a drug overdose
since the war in Afghanistan began, including more than seventy thousand and two and
twenty nineteen alone. The majority of these have involved opioids. Officially, the
DA claims that essentially all illicit opioids entering the US are grown in Latin America.
Ho however, finds the Sun convincing. When you look at their own
information and their own reports on the illicit opioid production and hectorage in Mexico and
South America, it's clear that there is not enough production in the Western hemisphere
to meet the demand for illicit opiates in the US. He told the MIT
press. A dirty history. The US government has a long history, or
you have directly involving itself with the worldwide narcotics trade. In Colombia. It
worked with President Alvaro Uribey on a national on a nationwide drug war, even
as internal US documents identified Uribe as one of the nation's most important drug traffickers,
an employee of the infamous Medaine cartel, and a close personal friend of
drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. Profits from drug running funded Uribe's elections election runs in
two thousand and two and two thousand and six. General Manuel Noriega was also
a key ally of the US. For many years, the Panamanian was on
the CIA payroll, despite Washington knowing he was involved in drug trafficking since at
least nineteen seventy two. When he became de facto dictator of Panama in nineteen
eighty four, little changed, but the director of the Drug Enforcement Agency initially
praised him for his vigorous anti drug trafficking policy. Eventually, however, the
US decided to invade the country and capture Noriega, sentencing him to forty years
in federal prison for drug crimes largely committed while he was still in the CIA's
pay At the same time as this was going on, investigative journalist Gary Webb
exposed how the CIA helped funded dirty war against Nicaragua was left as government through
sales of crack cocaine to black neighborhoods across the United States, linking far right
paramilitary armies with US drug kingpins like Rick Ross. To this day, the
US government continues to support Honduran strongman Juan Orlando Hernandez, despite their president's well
established connection to the cocaine trade. Earlier this year, a US court sentenced
hernandez brother Tony to life in prison for international drug smuggling, while Wuan himself
was unindicted co conspiracor was an unindicted co conspirator in the case. Nevertheless,
god man sold out by his own brother. Damn. Nevertheless, President Hernandez
has proven himself effective as suppressing the anti imperialist left inside his country and cementing
the US back two thousand and nine military coup, one reason he is unlikely
to face charges in any near future. Using the illegal drug trade and the
profits from it to fund imperial objectives. It's been a constant of great empires
going back for centuries. For instance, in the nineteen forties and fifties,
the French Empire utilized opium crops in the so called Golden Triangle region of Indo
China in order to help beat back a growing Vietnamese independence movement. Yeah we
know about that too. Going further back, the British use its opium machine
to subdue and economically conquer much of China. Britain's insatiable thirst for Chinese tea
was beginning to bankrupt the country as the China. That's a really interesting story.
I would like to do a show about that, honestly. About the
opium war is what started it, the whole Chinese tea obsession, and it
goes back pretty good. There's a really good book. I believe it's called
A Botany of Desire. I think it's Michael Pollen. I think that's what
I think that's the book it's in. But he goes into a huge deconstruction
of that whole thing. It's very fascinating. So anyway, Britain's insatiable thirst
for Chinese tea was beginning to bankrupt the country, and the Chinese would accept
only gold or silver as payment. It therefore used the power of its navy
to force China to seed Hong Kong, from which Britain began flooding China with
opium. It grew in its own possessions in Southeast Asia, in South Asia.
So I'm going to read that again because I kind of got a little
clunky over there. Britain's insatiable thirst for Chinese teeth was beginning to bankrupt the
country. So they love that tea so much. They were spending too much
money on it, and the Chinese would only accept gold and silver as payment
for all that tea. It therefore used the power of its navy, the
British navy, to force China to seed Hong Kong, making an independent nation,
from which Britain began flooding China with opium. It grew in its possessions
in South Asia. So Britain had all these like possession, little tiny little
nations, little little country's, little areas, I guess they're occupations, and
they were all outside of Hong Kong. And so they forced China to seed
Hong Kong as an independent state, and then Britain just began flooding it through
flooding China through Hong Kong with all the opium. And that's what's just,
oh my god, that's what they did. The humanitarian impact of the opium
war was staggering. By eighteen eighty, the British were inundated, were inundating
China with over sixty five hundred tons of opium every year, equivalent to many
billions of doses, causing massive social and economic dislocation. This, China struggled
to cope with a crippling empire wild wide addiction. Today, many Chinese still
refer to the era as the Century of humiliation. In India and Pakistan to
the effect was no less dramatic, as colonists forced farmers into planting inedible poppy
fields and then later tea rather than subsistence crops, causing waves of huge famines,
the frequency of which had never been seen before. Oh my god.
So yeah, A lot of people talk about the fentanyl thing being Chinese,
the Chinese revenge for that century of humiliation. I buy that for sure.
I mean, they're making this particular substance export only strictly to the US exclusively.
And look what's happened to our country with the fentanyl. Just the fentanyl,
dude. I remember seeing fentanyl friends of mine overdosing on it, like
almost thirty years ago. It's been around and it's just getting worse, millions
of losers. The story is much more nuanced than some CIA controls the world's
drugs quote conspiracy theories make out there are no US soldiers loading up Afghan cards
with opium. However, many commanders are knowingly enabling warlords. Who do that
exact thing. The US military and CIA bear a large responsibility for the opium
production boom in Afghanistan, Professor Merci said, explaining quote post nine to eleven.
They basically allied themselves with a lot of Afghan strongmen and warlords who happen
to be involved in some way in drug production and trafficking. Those individuals were
acting as local allies for the US and NATO and therefore were largely protected from
retribution or arrest for drug trafficking themselves because they were allies with the US at
the time, So that still echoes around. We're still feeling it from the
ground. The war in Afghanistan has looked a lot like the war on drugs
in Latin America and previous colonial campaigns in Asia, with a rapid militarization of
the area and the empowerment of pliant local elites which immediately began to embezzle the
massive profits that quietly disappear into black holes, all the while millions of people
pay the price suffering inside a militarized death zone and turning to drugs as a
coping mechanism. And the story of the opium boom, there are a few
winners, but millions upon millions of losers. Oh, end of the article.
So that's I think that's a good little piece there. It's from the
Mint Press. It was republished in the Monthly Review. It's a good article.
It kind of wraps up a lot of the information that I think is
relative and pertinent. But yeah, China, the Chinese revenge. I think
they're working tidy real close with Afghanistan right now, and I think that they're
really trying to put the squeeze and that capacity on the US and just the
West in general. I mean, look what we've done. We've done so
much horrible shit to that country. We've meant the century of humiliation. And
of course, I mean China has us by the balls no matter which way,
every which way from Sunday, from the products that we can't stop using,
the stupid plastic shit that they make that we can't seem to get people,
we can't pay people to make, so we pay those guys hardly anything,
the phones, and then of course there's all the TikTok stuff. I
mean, it's just crazy. And of course we need, like, you
know, some big bad guy. We got to have a boogeyman someone standing
in for that position. So China fits perfectly into that. But I'm not
afraid of China. I don't think China's going to ruin the United States.
I just think it's very interesting how they are working so closely with real active
narco states and they're just like no qualms whatsoever. Like we're gonna work tightly
with these guys. We're working with the Mexican cartels, and we're gonna work
with the Taliban and get our relationships nice and tight. So I don't know,
expect more fentyl and more fentyl related injury, death and maniacism happening.
More crazy maniacs high as shit on fentnyl talking to their zippers and just dying.
I mean, it's I follow a lot of people on Twitter. There's
guys that are just doing homeless intervention all the time, and some of those
videos are just They're just insane. Man. It's just crazy out there.
And I'm so grateful that I'm healthy and happy and I don't have a drug
addiction. And I mean, I have habits, bad habits. Everyone has
them. I have mine. I try to keep them in check. I've
kind of reignited some former habits that I don't necessarily think I need. I
don't know why they just kind of started coming up, but at least I'm
aware of it now and recognizing it as a bad habit that is unnecessary.
So I'm more empowered now to cut that back out of my life where it
should be than I was before, when I never even considered it a habit.
I just considered it a lifestyle. So in any case, I hope
this all finds you well, happy and healthy wherever you are having a great
night or day. I appreciate all you guys listening to the show. I
appreciate the Patreon supporters. I really really do. It makes a huge difference.
I don't have a ton of people on the pledges, but the ones
I do, they're the ones that have always been there, and there's a
couple of new ones that have come up. So I want to say welcome
and thank you. It really means a lot to know that there's a good,
small little tribe of people out there who are willing to support the work
that I do on this show. It takes a lot of time. It's
not cheap. Time is money, and if I'm not out there and making
money man, I'm trying to make shows. Sometimes days and weeks and weeks
go by where I don't make anything and I feel bad. But today was
the day where I had a chance to actually make a couple of shows and
get him out there. So I hope you enjoy them. I hope you
find this information interesting and you want to share it along. I'm gonna try
to keep notes on all this stuff and include all the things I was reading
and all the links and put them in the show notes so you can do
your own research. Okay, guys, I'm gonna wrap it up because I'm
getting that cotton mouth and I need to eat. Have a great nat or
day wherever you are, and we'll talk again soon. Audiosa to say I
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