WEBVTT

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You think you're not slaves, that
you love. The mind to find existence

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of your current lives is structured by
the American industrial place, so it leaves

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you're really questioning everything you thought you
knew. And this sense of separation,

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that sense of isolation, is the
thing that is within you and me.

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It makes us feel alien to everything
else that's outside of us. So that

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is why as you sit there within
your body and you look out through your

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eyeballs and you listen through your ears, you look around you, everything else

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is not you, and you don't
fit. You're listening to Up is Down

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with Dean Ryder. There's little doubt
about the scale of Afghanistan's opiate crisis.

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We saw the darkness of addiction firsthand
under the police sucked up bridge in the

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Afghan capital carb The Taliban say they'll
end addiction and put an end to the

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drug trade too, but drug problems
at home are only one reason the Taliban

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wants to impose its opium ban.
Since the regime returned to power after the

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chaotic withdrawal of the US and its
allies, the Afghan economy has slumped,

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hit by multiple crises. The Taliban
hope there's a ban on opium would lead

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to the easing of Western sanctions and
the unfreezing of Afghan assets. In the

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early nineties, the Taliban's policy was
to ban poppy growing outright, but by

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the time they seized Carbal in nineteen
ninety six, their approach had relaxed.

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They recognized the economic potential of poppy
growing, lifted the ban and placed high

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taxes on the crop. Production quickly
increased, growing more than fifty percent in

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just two years, But in two
thousand the ban was back again for the

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same reason as today, to get
Western sanctions lifted. That policy change hit

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global supplies of heroin by an estimated
seventy five percent, but just a year

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later there have been a series of
terrorist attacks in the United States. Nine

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eleven reshaped the world entirely. Under
pressure from farmers, the Taliban had again

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relaxed their ban on growing hobby.
Now they were the West's public enemy number

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one because they had hosted the nine
eleven master minds. NATO forces invaded in

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two thousand and one and removed the
Taliban from power for two decades, but

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under Western backed Afghan governments, the
drugs trade thrived back in power again and

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in need of money. Afghans are
unemployed and hungry. The country has suffered

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years of drought and there's no money
to rebuild after decades of war. Afghanistan's

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economy is teetering on the edge,
but without opium and other drugs, it

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would be much worse. The country
made up to two point seven billion dollars

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from opiates in twenty twenty one.
That's fourteen percent of the country's GDP.

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It's by far Afghanistan's biggest export adds
the value of all legal exports together,

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and it's still way behind opiates at
just nine percent of GDP. And what's

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important to Afghanistan's economy is crucial to
the global supply of illegal drugs. The

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country produces eighty five percent of the
world's supply of opium. The twenty twenty

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one opium harvest was the fifth year
in a row where production hit more than

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six thousand tons, which could potentially
yield up to three hundred and twenty tons

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of pure heroine traffic to markets worldwide. Ninety five percent of heroin that makes

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it onto the UK streets originates from
Afghanistan. Afghanistan is also the word second

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largest supplier of cannabis resin, also
known as hashish, and is becoming a

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major methamphetamine producer, which has been
described as an emerging global threat by the

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UM. A global threat with a
domestic workforce. Poppy farming is so widespread

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that a third of all rural villages
grow the crop. It's estimated that it

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supports one hundred and ninety thousand full
time jobs. If the Taliban go through

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with its ban, not only will
it have to replace a large part of

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its economy, but nearly two hundred
thousand people will be looking for alternative work

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to support themselves and their families.
The big test for the Taliban and their

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authority will come this October when the
next crop of poppies is due to be

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planted, a crop worth potentially billions
to the global drugs trade and to Afghanistan's

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own economy. So will the Taliban
stop the farmers from planting the crop.

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It might be that they find they
simply can't afford to well. Come back

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to another episode the Uppest Down Podcast
with me your neighbor, your friend,

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your shadow, your enemy. Mister
Diana Miner coming at you from the chalet.

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The evening is creeping in here.
I believe it's. This is my

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second podcast I'm recording today. I
just did that big old transmission creep episode

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of Hope you guys like that.
It was a good one. I think

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it was one of the better episodes
I've done in a while, kind of

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the old style of UPPs down.
And here we're doing this thing. Because

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I was about to wrap it up
for the night, but I decided to

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just stay on the mic. I
was looking through some media and some news,

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and I found this great article on
RT. Because you know, I

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love me some RT. I love
me some carrying water for Putin and so

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this episode. I didn't think I
was gonna do a show about this,

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and maybe I'm just gonna record it
anyway, because I don't know if I'm

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actually going to produce it. Maybe
I will, maybe I won't, who

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knows. But this article was produced
today, April eleventh. The Taliban did

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one year where Washington couldn't in twenty
sparking new panic. The ban on Afghan

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poppy cultivation is set to hit Europe's
heroin supplies. So I'm you know,

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I'm looking at this article. It's
not very long, so I'm just gonna

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read it. This is gonna be
kind of a reading episode. As it

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turns out, there's this article,
and then there's a few links to some

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other things, some of their sources
and citations that I think I want to

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hit on too, because I think
this is an interesting little little phenomenon,

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little little happening, little event.
If Taliban's actually and I think it's,

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it's very loose ended, because they
have as much interest in the illicit opium

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trade as anyone else, especially our
own CIA backed narco traffickers of the government

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over here. They have just as
much interest as anyone else to want to

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keep that ship rolling. So there's
nuances within this ban, you know,

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as you've heard in that little clip
in the beginning, there was a ban

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in the nineties that had some good
effects on controlling the drug abuse and use

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in Afghanistan, and just I think
kind of like testing the waters of the

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market. Then again in two thousand
that was huge, and then of course

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we took over for twenty years and
spiked all the all the prices and production

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went way out out out of this
world level of production and price increase and

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availability, and we just took the
helm on it. And now the Taliban

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are deciding to They did this band
a year ago, so the only videos

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I could find were nothing newer than
seven months ago, about a year ago,

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and they're talking about how they're going
to do these bands. They're going

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to grandfather in all the poppy farmers
who had already seeded that previous year's crop

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or that year's crop. But they
don't want any new seating going on because

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there actually is a really huge heroin
problem in Afghanistan. I didn't really know

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how bad it is, but it's
just as bad as we have here.

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I mean, I would say it's
arguable, but per capita, obviously we

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have a lot more because we just
have more people. But it's pretty bad

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there, and they don't like that
kind of stuff. And I don't know

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what I think about the Taliban.
I don't really have any opinion. Honestly.

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I think they're interesting because they're a
group, and you know, I

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like to just look and observe and
criticize groups. That's just what I like

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to do. So they're another one
that I find fascinated because you know,

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we've been told forever that they are
such bad guys, and then they were

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good guys, and then they're bad
guys, and then they're good guys,

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and now they're just kind of like
just these guys out there, but they're

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putting the band on the poppy,
which is gonna be huge, as you

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can imagine, as you can probably
tell or surmise, I forgot if they

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mentioned it, and that little video
clip, but that's gonna really really catapult

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de fentanyl production in China. And
it's interesting to me that a year ago,

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just about a year ago, maybe
a little bit more, they were

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foreign ministers from China from the CCP
hanging out with the Taliban and forming and

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reforming your relations turns out that Afghanistan
in particular and the Taliban more recently,

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have had long ties with China and
CCP, going back all the way to

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the fifties. So Afghanistan, for
sure, Taliban have only really had any

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kind of place in that conversation since
the nineties when they were in control of

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the region, and then now they're
they're reforming their negotiations and talks with their

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old friends. I mean, like
twenty year hiatus because we went in there

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and decimated everything and took over the
markets and created this failed narco state,

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which we'll read about. But yeah, so now they're back in business working

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with CCP. I don't know,
maybe there's some sort of weird conspiracy connection

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between the banning and the huge impact
it's going to have on the poppy that

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goes around the world. Was heroin
and all the other pure opiates in the

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pharmaceutical industries, but then that's going
to really put a huge push on the

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synthetics. And that's also you know
that means fentanyl, and the fentanyl that

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we know is being produced in Mexico
specifically for American export. Only know this

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because we covered that in Narco theology. That's going to be huge. Man.

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So if you think you've had enough
fentinyl now, get ready. There's

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going to be a lot more flooding
the streets, probably within the next year,

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because the effects of last year's ban
hasn't really been felt yet because there's

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still so much supply and surplus from
the two decades of US back drug trafficking

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control over the region, So there's
so much supply that no one's feeling the

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pinch yet. But since they stopped
growing most of the poppy in Afghanistan a

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year ago, the effects are going
to start rolling in pretty soon. Within

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the next year, and that means
there's going to be a huge demand for

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mixing things with different type of opium
mixers and fentyl. Fentyl is going to

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be huge, and all kinds of
ways to continue to bastardize and sit the

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size fentyl and any other kind of
opiate. So if you think it's bad

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now, it's only going to get
worse. And I hate to be the

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bearer of bad news, but like
I keep saying, I'm looking to try

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to find good things going out there, and you know, every time I

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see something, I feel like every
time I do something, man, it's

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just not good enough, you know, Like I just can't quite get over.

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I'm working the best I can to
try to make positive changes in my

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life, and I'm trying not to
have much detrimental effect on anyone else around

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me. It's impossible, though,
you know, but I'm I'm just trying

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to do the best that I can
out there. And I'm so fucking glad

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I'm not an opium user. Man, I'm so glad I'm not a junkie

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or a drug addict or someone who
uses drugs. I'm so glad that my

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fun with all that stuff I never
even did hard stuff like heroin, but

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my fun with drugs was over a
long, long time ago. And I'm

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just so grateful because I couldn't imagine
being addicted to opiates right now in the

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United States, except for it'd be
a heyday because it'd be free. Basically,

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it'd be cheap, or it'd be
everywhere, and it'd be completely you

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know, our society is getting so
conditioned to just living with this. You

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know, this weird se called it
an epidemic of massive opiate abuse, and

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now, I mean it's like he
used to be the oxycontins and now it's

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Fentnel is just Jesus christ Man.
So yeah, it's going to get a

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lot worse. I'm not trying to
see that, but that's just what's there,

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you know. I just I'm calling
it as I see it. So

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I'm gonna go ahead and start reading
this article called the Taliban did in one

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year Washington couldn't in twenty, sparking
new panic the band on Afghan poppy cultivation

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is set to hit Europe's heroin supplies. This is written by Rachel Marsden.

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It's been nearly a year since the
Taliban banned Afghan poppy farming used for the

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production of opioids. The impact of
the move is set to hit global markets

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sometime soon. Given the delay from
farm to customer, you'd think that would

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bring a welcome sigh of relief.
Apparently not. Reports are now suggesting that

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a lack of Afghan heroin on the
global market and a reduction of available natural

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opioids like heroin could lead to increased
use of synthetic opioids like fentyl. If

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that's the case, then it's only
because Washington and the West are about as

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competent at curtailing skyrocketing drug overdose deaths
as they were at tackling the cultivation of

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Afghan opioids back when they had control
of the country. Synthetic opioids from China

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and Mexico are increasingly being used,
as are those procured through prescriptions within America's

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own healthcare system. Over the course
of the US led global War on Terror

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that kicked off in Afghanistan in two
thousand and one, heroin ovadoses in the

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US and elsewhere have spiked. Despite
having control over the country and its government

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for two decades, Washington not only
failed to curtail farming and exports of Afghan

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opium, but oversaw an increase.
In February two thousand and four, then

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US Assistant Secretary for International Narcotics and
Law Enforcement Affairs, Robert Charles, outlined

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a new policy for countering what he
calls narco terrorism in Afghanistan before Congress.

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He cited a desire to assist the
US back to Afghan government with its objective

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to quote eliminate opium poppy cultivation and
trade in ten years end quote. The

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project would involve deploying CIA linked usaid
to poppy growing areas to help find alternative

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farming solutions, but there have always
been strong doubts over the sincerity of such

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efforts. A US Department of Justice
policy paper from nineteen ninety one accuses the

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CIA of quote complicity and the narcotics
trade in Afghanistan, underscoring that covert CIA

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operations in Afghanistan, for example,
have transformed South Asia from a self contained

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opium zone into a major supplier of
heroin for the world market. The CIA

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would certainly be in a position to
know, having backed Mujahidin Jihadis fighters against

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the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during the
Cold War, while the trafficking occurred right

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under its nose. Apparently, some
old habits sty hard. In two thousand

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and ten, former director of the
Federal Drug Control Service of Russia, Viktor

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Ivanov, met with NATO officials to
request a mandate for destroying the poppy fields,

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citing thirty thousand opium related deaths in
Russia. Quote we cannot be in

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a situation where we remove the only
source of income of people who live in

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the second poorest country in the world
without being without being able to provide them

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with an alternative end quote, NATO
spokesman James Operturi replied. According to Reuters,

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clearly they just weren't that interested.
It now seems that the US and

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NATO counterinsurgency emissions served in part as
a cover for safeguarding and protecting the opium

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fields from destruction, which the Taliban
had already gone about doing before the two

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thousand and one US invasion. Propping
up Western proxies doesn't come cheap, and

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something simply aren't fit for the accounting
books back home. It's no secret that

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the CIA has a history of using
narcotic traffic king to support US interests abroad,

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while simultaneously accusing the local opposition of
doing just that. From Nicaragua and

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Haiti to Southeast Asia, Indo China, and even in France. According to

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a State Department fact sheet from the
pre two thousand and one archives, Taliban

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poppy cultivation bands quote lacked credibility,
Yet it was Washington's public proclamations of eradication

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that never came to fruition. Similarly, Washington laughably charged Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro

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with narco terrorism partnership with the FARC
for the past twenty years end quote in

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March of twenty twenty. This was
despite Washington's unconditional backing of South American ally

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Colombia, an actual narco state whose
cocaine production exploded under the leadership of former

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President Ivan Duquet, even as President
Joe Biden introduced him at the White House

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in twenty twenty two as quote,
my friend Biden then also added quote,

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We've known each other for a long
time, and we were reminiscing about how

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far back we go. I've been
deeply engaged with the relationship with Columbia for

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a long time, going back more
than twenty years to that old plan Colombia

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end quote. It's funny that Biden
should mention Plan Colombia, a US backed

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multibillion dollar program to fight drugs and
insurgency in the country, which is largely

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considered to be a counter narcotics failure. It didn't even really produce lasting encounter

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insurgency results, according to members of
former President Barack Obama's own administration, concluding

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that quote, our collective failure to
control either drug abuse or drug trafficking has

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exacted an enormous human toll end quote. Washington has historically been both disingenuous and

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incompetent when it comes to fighting illicit
drug use. The fact that the Taliban

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finally has an opportunity to do what
Washington was never able or willing to do,

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despite claims to the contrary, closes
once spigot. However, it won't

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save Washington from its own failure years
on the drug front. So that's kind

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of a you know, it's a
hit piece, but it's a good one.

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00:18:04.759 --> 00:18:07.160
I think that's a great little article. It's got some information, but

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there's not that much context for people
like myself who don't really know how far

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00:18:12.039 --> 00:18:18.759
back this goes. And so I
did find some fairly fairly newish within this

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00:18:18.839 --> 00:18:26.880
last year. Decent video and a
decent article, and actually I got a

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00:18:26.880 --> 00:18:30.680
few different articles because there's a couple
of links here within this article that we're

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gonna we're gonna check out here.
So here's an article from Politico. It's

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about two weeks ago. It's when
it was written. It was I don't

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00:18:38.920 --> 00:18:41.599
know when it was published exactly,
but probably the same day, who cares.

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00:18:41.599 --> 00:18:47.559
It's about two weeks ago. Politico
Taliban poppy bands puts Europe on fentanyl

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00:18:47.640 --> 00:18:51.599
alert. Drug users can switch to
more dangerous synthetic blah blah blah, blah

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00:18:51.599 --> 00:18:56.200
blah blah blah. The cool part
is that there's really neat ai that will

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read this article for us, so
you don't have to listen to me.

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00:18:59.480 --> 00:19:03.240
You can listen into a weird of
course, proper English robot voice. All

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00:19:03.319 --> 00:19:07.359
right, all right, this is
a good little article though. It's got

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00:19:07.880 --> 00:19:12.960
a lot of context as to what's
going on with the supply now, what

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00:19:14.000 --> 00:19:18.559
the conditions look like appropriate for launching
another fentinyl campaign, like a big one,

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00:19:18.319 --> 00:19:23.440
and how that's going to affect other
countries in and around the region of

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Afghanistan. Plus the international market.
So it's a good little spot. I

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00:19:27.559 --> 00:19:30.240
know, I know what you're gonna
say. I know you're gonna say,

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00:19:30.240 --> 00:19:33.119
oh my god, Dan, it's
political. You can't read that garbage.

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00:19:33.519 --> 00:19:37.799
I not really take this shit super
seriously. I just put it out there

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00:19:37.839 --> 00:19:41.200
because this is the information that we're
given. I think there's a lot of

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00:19:41.200 --> 00:19:44.880
tells you can pick up if you're
reading these things, if you're watching these

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00:19:44.880 --> 00:19:48.200
guys talk, you can always tell
their tells. They're pretty easy, which

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00:19:48.200 --> 00:19:51.559
you recognize that it's all just a
huge lie and a scam, you know

252
00:19:51.640 --> 00:19:53.480
what, not to believe in what
makes a little bit of sense. There's

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00:19:53.519 --> 00:19:56.039
some things in this article that I
think makes some sense. I think this

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00:19:56.160 --> 00:20:03.400
is actually fairly decent reporting, as
they're not celebrating all the woke policies of

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00:20:03.440 --> 00:20:06.960
this type of a move, which
is pretty good. So that tells me

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00:20:07.000 --> 00:20:10.599
they're at least trying to stay outside
of that cash cow for a minute.

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00:20:10.960 --> 00:20:12.000
So I'm just going to play at
the article and you can hate me.

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00:20:12.039 --> 00:20:15.359
It's about seven minutes long. I'm
sorry, but it's a good one.

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00:20:15.400 --> 00:20:18.240
It's a good article. You just
gotta just pay attention if you're interested.

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00:20:18.240 --> 00:20:21.160
If not, then I do on
the wire. If ick on listening to

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00:20:21.200 --> 00:20:26.160
this Get a Life Taliban poppy band
puts Europe on fentanyl alert. Drug users

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00:20:26.160 --> 00:20:33.440
could switch to more dangerous synthetic opioids
as heroin supply dries up. Europe's heroine

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00:20:33.480 --> 00:20:37.519
market could soon be in for a
supply shock, and experts fear the gap

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could be filled by something much worse. Almost all heroin consumed in Europe comes

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from Afghanistan, where the Taliban have
imposed a ban on poppy cultivation that will

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take effect in the coming weeks.
The likely poppy shortage could make it more

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profitable for criminals to manufacture synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl, to be sold

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00:20:56.200 --> 00:21:00.759
to desperate addicts denied their hit of
heroin. That in turn presents a serious

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public health risk, as synthetic opioids
tend to be much stronger than natural heroine

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fifty times stronger in the case of
fentonyl. That means it's much easier to

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overdose. Fentinyl claims tends of thousands
of lives in America each year. The

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Taliban banned poppy cultivation in April twenty
twenty two, after resting back control of

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Afghanistan from the US backed government in
twenty twenty one. The twenty twenty two

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crop was exempted, meaning the results
will start to be seen with this year's

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April harvest. It takes between a
year and eighteen months for the harvest to

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reach the European market as heroine,
giving governments until next year before the impact

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starts to be felt. If the
Taliban band does result in a dramatic reduction

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00:21:45.519 --> 00:21:51.319
in heroine produced from opiean poppy,
that could create a possibility of us seeing

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00:21:51.359 --> 00:21:56.640
more synthetic opioids, said Paul Griffiths, scientific director of the European Monitoring Center

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00:21:56.680 --> 00:22:02.279
for Drugs and Drug Addiction IMSTER.
It seems strange to say this, but

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00:22:02.400 --> 00:22:07.279
almost in terms of synthetics, the
higher availability of heroin at the moment is

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arguably a protective factor, said Griffiths. History backs up his fears. The

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00:22:12.480 --> 00:22:18.359
Taliban previously banned opium in two thousand, causing a herrow and shortage in Europe.

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Not long after, pentonyl surfaced for
the first time on the continent.

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From the early two thousands onwards,
we had a problem with fentonyl in the

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00:22:26.519 --> 00:22:33.400
Baltics Estonia, particularly where it was
responsible for quite high levels of drug related

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00:22:33.480 --> 00:22:37.920
deaths and was quite a long term
intractable problem there, Griffiths said. By

288
00:22:37.920 --> 00:22:45.599
twenty seventeen, Estonia's fentanyl crisis was
over as intense law enforcement initiatives shut down

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00:22:45.720 --> 00:22:49.480
many of the producers located in the
country, but Estonia still has the highest

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00:22:49.480 --> 00:22:56.039
proportion of fatal overdoses involving fentanyl in
the EU, according to figures provided to

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00:22:56.079 --> 00:23:02.119
Politico by the EMSTER A lesson from
America for an idea of just how dangerous

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00:23:02.119 --> 00:23:07.759
synthetic opioids can be looked to America. More than fifty eight thousand people died

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from phentinyl overdoses there in twenty twenty, compared to ninety seven in the EU.

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By twenty twenty two, the US
figure for synthetic opioid deaths mostly attributed

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00:23:18.319 --> 00:23:23.039
to phentenyl had increased to sixty eight
thousand. There are some important differences,

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00:23:23.039 --> 00:23:30.359
however. America's opioid epidemic stems from
large number of prescriptions doled out for pain

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00:23:30.440 --> 00:23:34.519
management in the nineteen nineties. This
led to overdoses on pain medication itself,

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as well as an increase in addiction, leading to illicit heroin use. Since

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00:23:40.400 --> 00:23:45.480
then, pentomyl has penetrated the broader
US illicit drug market. According to the

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00:23:45.519 --> 00:23:49.519
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention c
DC, it can be found blended into

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00:23:49.559 --> 00:23:56.200
many illicit substances, from counterfeit xanox
an anxiety medication, to recreational drugs,

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00:23:56.240 --> 00:24:02.920
including MDMA, cocaine, and even
cannabis. The fastest growing group for overdose

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00:24:03.000 --> 00:24:07.720
deaths as teenagers. By contrast,
far few Europeans have become addicted via prescription

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00:24:07.799 --> 00:24:12.160
medication, meaning the main risk group
is likely to be the far smaller number

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00:24:12.200 --> 00:24:18.720
of heroin addicts. There's also much
less of an established illegal manufacturing base for

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00:24:18.759 --> 00:24:23.920
synthetic opioids in Europe. In many
countries, prescribing rates are not necessarily less

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00:24:23.920 --> 00:24:29.160
than in the US, but it
doesn't spill over to the illicitopioid use or

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00:24:29.200 --> 00:24:34.559
illegally manufactured opiates, said Aunt Shelkans, professor at Radbad University Medical School in

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00:24:34.559 --> 00:24:40.079
the Netherlands, in a letter published
in medical journal The Lancet in October.

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00:24:40.799 --> 00:24:45.960
Shelkans and colleagues pointed to the widespread
availability of healthcare in Europe as a protective

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00:24:45.960 --> 00:24:51.599
factor. This is both because it
gives patient success to affordable interventions such as

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00:24:51.720 --> 00:24:56.680
hip or knee replacements rather than them
needing to rely on opioids to alleviate chronic

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pain. And because it provides addiction
care, including a PoID substitution treatment,

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00:25:02.200 --> 00:25:07.559
others agree the healthcare system is an
important infrastructure to prevent and treat people that

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00:25:07.720 --> 00:25:12.039
become addicted, said Nora Volkov,
director of the US based National Institute on

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00:25:12.160 --> 00:25:15.279
Drug Abuse. Now, I just
got to interrupt here for a couple of

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00:25:15.319 --> 00:25:22.039
minutes and just point out the bullshit
gaslighting that Politico is trying to serve you

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00:25:22.160 --> 00:25:27.200
right now with those last little statements
about how important it is that the NHS,

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00:25:27.319 --> 00:25:33.200
the National Health Service I guess in
the UK, is there to provide

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00:25:33.200 --> 00:25:38.119
all these different interventions for people to
keep them off the needle and things like

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00:25:38.160 --> 00:25:41.640
that. The nationalized healthcare system is
just so great when we know it's like

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00:25:41.920 --> 00:25:48.880
it's like a year long wait list
and there's only like approved medicines and approved

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00:25:48.920 --> 00:25:52.039
practices, and of course you can't
even walk in the doorway even think about

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00:25:52.039 --> 00:25:55.240
going to go see a doctor now
unless you've been jabbed four or five,

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00:25:55.400 --> 00:25:57.440
six times. And the same thing
goes here in the US. They touted

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00:25:57.480 --> 00:26:00.799
themselves here in the US. Is
like, our national policy on drugs is

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00:26:00.880 --> 00:26:04.000
to keep people from addiction. Is
like, it's the fucking healthcare system that

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00:26:04.079 --> 00:26:08.759
made people addicted. It was the
pharma drug pushers that were incentivizing and giving

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00:26:08.759 --> 00:26:14.000
people bonuses to get people addicted.
They were changing the language. They were

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00:26:14.079 --> 00:26:18.640
changing the language, not the formulas, but the language of the formulas to

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00:26:18.759 --> 00:26:22.079
get people to believe that it was
non addictive. I mean, there is

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00:26:22.119 --> 00:26:26.200
that whole Hulu series that was badass
called Dope Sick. It's fucking great series.

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00:26:26.240 --> 00:26:29.640
It'll tell you. It lays it
all out there. And I know

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00:26:29.720 --> 00:26:33.880
it's TV, it's predictive programming whatever, it's Hulu, it's fucking entertainment.

335
00:26:33.359 --> 00:26:37.279
It's true. It's true though,
it's all true. What happened with the

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00:26:37.880 --> 00:26:41.680
Purdue family and everything. I mean, it's just such a joke. And

337
00:26:41.680 --> 00:26:45.319
then here they pat themselves on their
back talking about how hard they work keeping

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00:26:45.359 --> 00:26:48.920
people off the needle, when it's
their job, dude, it was their

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00:26:48.960 --> 00:26:52.079
fucking job to put people on the
needle. It's their job to put people

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00:26:52.119 --> 00:26:56.359
on massive amounts of overprescribed opioid painkillers
to where they would get addicted. And

341
00:26:56.400 --> 00:27:00.319
then start doing dope. It just
pisses me off when they gaslight like that

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00:27:00.440 --> 00:27:04.000
in the article, and the AI
voice doesn't help because it all just kind

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00:27:04.000 --> 00:27:07.720
of drones into one kind of song, you know, one sort of droning

344
00:27:07.759 --> 00:27:11.480
little vibration. You don't really catch
that shit, but I catch it,

345
00:27:11.839 --> 00:27:15.480
and it just pisses me off.
The level of just gaslighting that these people

346
00:27:15.480 --> 00:27:19.839
do talking about how wonderful it is
to health. The healthcare system is responsible

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00:27:21.519 --> 00:27:26.279
for almost all of this drug addiction
and overdosing that we're seeing, not only

348
00:27:26.319 --> 00:27:30.200
because they make it available, they
incentivize people to sell it and to do

349
00:27:30.240 --> 00:27:33.440
it, they make it the only
option, They lie about its addictive qualities,

350
00:27:33.759 --> 00:27:37.880
and then they also pump you full
of all kinds of shit in your

351
00:27:37.920 --> 00:27:41.880
water and your food and all the
other pharmaceuticals that you're on. Because everyone's

352
00:27:41.920 --> 00:27:45.920
on drugs. It just makes them
have to have more further interventions and further

353
00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:48.359
interventions until you just get to this
mission creep, which I think is probably

354
00:27:48.359 --> 00:27:52.200
the goal. I don't know it
just that shit just pisses me off.

355
00:27:52.240 --> 00:27:56.000
So that's my little insertion there.
Don't believe that bullshit at all. So

356
00:27:56.039 --> 00:27:59.920
if there's bullshit right there in this
article. Maybe this whole article is bull

357
00:28:00.480 --> 00:28:03.160
It's hard to determine. Like once
you catch a bullshit lie and a gaslight,

358
00:28:04.039 --> 00:28:08.079
everything becomes suspect. At that point, everything is questionable, you know,

359
00:28:08.160 --> 00:28:11.200
And I have to have a shade
of doubt on everything that I read

360
00:28:11.200 --> 00:28:15.119
at that point. And it's just
it sucks, guys. It's almost like

361
00:28:15.279 --> 00:28:18.400
you can't believe anything you see you're
here, even with your own fucking eyes

362
00:28:18.880 --> 00:28:26.640
or ears. It's just it's incredibly
difficult to parse the reality from this bullshit

363
00:28:26.720 --> 00:28:30.000
that they hand you. Okay,
back to the article. Sorry. The

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00:28:30.119 --> 00:28:33.960
healthcare system is an important infrastructure to
prevent and treat people that become addicted,

365
00:28:34.519 --> 00:28:40.279
said Nora Volkoff, director of the
US based National Institute on Drug Abuse.

366
00:28:40.759 --> 00:28:44.039
It is key to actually avert a
crisis like the one that we're living in

367
00:28:44.079 --> 00:28:48.599
the United States with fentanyl. Despite
this, Wolkoff believes that as markets for

368
00:28:48.640 --> 00:28:53.799
fentanyl becomes saturated in North America,
Europe could be the next target for trafficking

369
00:28:53.799 --> 00:28:59.240
the drug. There is nothing that
says Europe is immune to these drugs entering

370
00:28:59.279 --> 00:29:03.920
their borders, she said, mixing
it up. It's a worry echoed by

371
00:29:03.960 --> 00:29:08.720
Europe's Drugs Agency, which together with
Europol, runs an early warning system to

372
00:29:08.799 --> 00:29:14.720
keep track of illicit substances making their
way unto the EU. Recent analysis from

373
00:29:14.720 --> 00:29:18.720
the ms TO shows that the amount
of fentanyl appearing on the European market is

374
00:29:18.759 --> 00:29:23.240
declining, but there's a growing number
of new opioids. The market is adapting

375
00:29:23.240 --> 00:29:27.720
to the US pressure and Chinese action
to reduce fentanyl, and what we are

376
00:29:27.759 --> 00:29:33.799
seeing is other new synthetic opioids appearing. These are initially uncontrolled, they're difficult

377
00:29:33.799 --> 00:29:38.160
to detect, people aren't aware of
them, and there again still highly potent,

378
00:29:38.400 --> 00:29:45.079
said Griffiths. Europol spokesperson Jenopjennorth believes
the danger for europe liies and fentanyl

379
00:29:45.119 --> 00:29:51.480
mixes. It's probably unlikely that a
drug called fentanyl or China white, China

380
00:29:51.519 --> 00:29:55.440
doll or sudden death or whatever it's
called, we'll just pop up on the

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00:29:55.480 --> 00:30:00.319
European market, Opjennorth said. What
we might see here and they're a next

382
00:30:00.400 --> 00:30:04.039
year as groups trying to cut another
drug with fentanyl mix it creates new markets.

383
00:30:04.079 --> 00:30:10.200
Knowing that fentanyl is cheap and highly
addictive. Nevertheless, Objenov believes that

384
00:30:10.279 --> 00:30:15.319
international cooperation and continued monitoring will be
effective and keeping fentanyl contained and that ye

385
00:30:15.400 --> 00:30:21.400
a poor law, local agencies could
quickly respond. More than fifty eight thousand

386
00:30:21.440 --> 00:30:26.000
people died from fentonel overdoses in the
US in twenty twenty. Ultimately, one

387
00:30:26.119 --> 00:30:30.680
factor may serve in Europe's favor.
Time here we had a ten year time

388
00:30:30.759 --> 00:30:36.039
lag or something. Shelkin said.
In the beginning, the idea in the

389
00:30:36.160 --> 00:30:40.319
US was these opiates, if you
prescribe them, are not addictive. By

390
00:30:40.319 --> 00:30:44.000
the time that it came to Europe, we had these very important lessons from

391
00:30:44.000 --> 00:30:48.319
them that these are not harmless.
It's just the advantage of having somebody else

392
00:30:48.359 --> 00:30:52.920
go first, he said. Yep. So they're bracing for impact. They're

393
00:30:52.119 --> 00:30:59.759
bracing for impact. Fentyl download is
happening. It's going to be pretty quick,

394
00:31:00.079 --> 00:31:02.519
but it's just pretty gnarly, you
know. And I just think it's

395
00:31:02.599 --> 00:31:10.079
pretty interesting that the CCP and Taliban
hooked up last year and you know,

396
00:31:10.200 --> 00:31:15.240
reforming their old relationships, their old
ties. I wonder if the fentanyl production

397
00:31:15.279 --> 00:31:18.240
has anything to do with that.
I mean, I imagine that Afghanistan,

398
00:31:18.359 --> 00:31:22.559
like I said, they probably want
to quash their own their own drug consumption

399
00:31:22.799 --> 00:31:29.759
in their own country. But it's
just funny that the the Chinese Communist Party's

400
00:31:29.799 --> 00:31:34.599
fentanyl production export only to the US
exclusively, you know. And now the

401
00:31:34.599 --> 00:31:38.000
the alternative, the good opium,
the good heroine, is going to be

402
00:31:38.799 --> 00:31:42.319
very very limited, which is going
to make it extremely expensive and very hard

403
00:31:42.359 --> 00:31:45.200
to get. It's going to up
the demand, and then of course the

404
00:31:45.240 --> 00:31:48.759
supply is going to show up,
and it's going to be lots of lots

405
00:31:48.799 --> 00:31:52.519
more killing and wars going on there. So I don't know if there's really

406
00:31:52.599 --> 00:31:57.880
much more to be said. There's
another shortish kind of video from a deutschevella

407
00:31:59.079 --> 00:32:04.279
which talks about in a slightly different
light, but it's it's good further background.

408
00:32:04.279 --> 00:32:07.079
I'm gonna go ahead and play that. It's also about six to seven

409
00:32:07.119 --> 00:32:09.480
minutes, not super long, but
it's a good little it's a good little

410
00:32:09.559 --> 00:32:15.119
video. Georgia Villa does pretty good
work, honestly. Armed Taliban fighters stand

411
00:32:15.160 --> 00:32:19.400
guard as a tractor tears up a
field of poppies in Washier District in southern

412
00:32:19.400 --> 00:32:24.440
Hellman Province. Afghanistan's rulers issued an
edict in early April banning the cultivation of

413
00:32:24.480 --> 00:32:30.079
the poppy the raw material required for
opium, morphine and heroin production. Now

414
00:32:30.079 --> 00:32:36.519
the campaign is beginning. Afghan opium
supplies over eighty percent of all users globally.

415
00:32:36.960 --> 00:32:40.319
The international community has been demanding more
control of drug production since the Taliban

416
00:32:40.359 --> 00:32:46.680
retook the country last year. Our
Supreme Leader has strictly ordered the ban on

417
00:32:46.759 --> 00:32:51.480
cultivating poppies, so those who are
acting against it and continue to see it

418
00:32:51.519 --> 00:32:55.319
and cultivate it will be arrested and
tried according to Sharia laws in relevant courts.

419
00:32:59.359 --> 00:33:02.880
Rids front. For the farmers whose
fields are being destroyed, it's a

420
00:33:02.880 --> 00:33:07.920
different story. They fear their livelihoods
will be ruined. At a time of

421
00:33:07.960 --> 00:33:13.519
growing poverty. We are facing drought
and don't have big farming fields, so

422
00:33:13.559 --> 00:33:16.920
seeding and cultivating crops other than the
opium poppy doesn't earn us anything. If

423
00:33:16.920 --> 00:33:22.799
we're not allowed to grow this crop, we won't earn anything. The new

424
00:33:22.839 --> 00:33:27.880
eradication campaign is mainly targeting those who
planted their crops after the ban was announced.

425
00:33:28.720 --> 00:33:32.119
Others who planted earlier succeeded in harvesting, going from plant to plant,

426
00:33:32.519 --> 00:33:37.720
slicing the poppy's bulb, then scooping
up the sap that oozes out the raw

427
00:33:37.799 --> 00:33:44.880
material for opium. We were not
aware of any order to ban the cultivation

428
00:33:44.920 --> 00:33:47.680
of poppies, and these poppy feels
were seated before any order was issued.

429
00:33:49.160 --> 00:33:52.680
We're upset because our crop was ready
for harvest before we became aware of the

430
00:33:52.720 --> 00:33:59.640
ban. The ban comes as Afghanistan's
economy has collapsed. Cut off from international

431
00:33:59.640 --> 00:34:04.359
funding since the Taliban takeover, most
of the population struggles to afford food,

432
00:34:04.599 --> 00:34:07.880
and the country has been suffering its
worst droves in years. Around eighty percent

433
00:34:07.920 --> 00:34:13.679
of livelihoods in Afghanistan depend on agriculture. Farmers are forced to ask themselves what

434
00:34:13.760 --> 00:34:16.480
can replace the opium poppy as a
source of income. There is no easy

435
00:34:16.519 --> 00:34:22.719
answer, and let's get more on
this from journalist Ali Latifi, who joined

436
00:34:22.719 --> 00:34:27.159
me now from Kabold with more Ali, we had been speaking about this back

437
00:34:27.199 --> 00:34:30.599
in April when the Taliban said they
wouldn't be enforcing their poppy band, but

438
00:34:30.719 --> 00:34:37.400
now it seems they are. What
has changed, well, the way they

439
00:34:37.400 --> 00:34:42.119
had framed it is that for people
who had already planted, they weren't going

440
00:34:42.159 --> 00:34:45.320
to get in their way. But
what they were trying to do is keep

441
00:34:45.360 --> 00:34:49.679
from new crops and new harvests being
planted. So this may be part of

442
00:34:49.719 --> 00:34:52.239
that, saying that you know last
year's crops, will let them go,

443
00:34:52.360 --> 00:34:55.039
and you know, whatever happens with
them, happens with them, but we

444
00:34:55.119 --> 00:35:00.880
don't want any new crops. That
seems to be the only that makes sense

445
00:35:00.280 --> 00:35:05.760
at this point as to why they're
starting now, And in that case,

446
00:35:05.800 --> 00:35:10.159
it seems to follow through what they've
been saying about it. So what exactly

447
00:35:10.199 --> 00:35:15.960
are they hoping to achieve by cracking
down on poppy cultivation. Is it really

448
00:35:15.119 --> 00:35:19.639
a motivation to try and cut down
the amount of opium that it's produced in

449
00:35:19.679 --> 00:35:24.400
Afghanistan or there are other motivations here. I mean, I think there are

450
00:35:24.440 --> 00:35:29.000
several motivations. One thing that's great
pr right again, it's the one thing

451
00:35:29.039 --> 00:35:31.679
that they could do if they could
actually accomplish it. It's something that they

452
00:35:31.679 --> 00:35:35.800
could do that the Republic was unable
to do. You know, the Republic,

453
00:35:35.840 --> 00:35:37.880
with all of its funding, with
all of its bign backing for twenty

454
00:35:37.960 --> 00:35:43.000
years, was not able to eradicate
the poppy cultivation. And if you're the

455
00:35:43.039 --> 00:35:45.960
Talibon, what you will say is
one of the reasons. Although the Taliban

456
00:35:45.079 --> 00:35:49.679
definitely had a hand in the drug
trade in Afghanistan. But if you're the

457
00:35:49.679 --> 00:35:52.800
Taliban, what you'll say is,
well, the former government was heavily involved

458
00:35:52.800 --> 00:35:55.559
in the drug trade. You know, you had MPs, you had ministers,

459
00:35:55.559 --> 00:36:00.679
you had governors, you had police, all kinds of different officials and

460
00:36:00.840 --> 00:36:05.119
people connected to the government who are
accused of having an alleged hand in the

461
00:36:05.199 --> 00:36:08.280
drug trade. So what they can
say now is, hey, because we've

462
00:36:08.320 --> 00:36:12.760
gotten rid of the corruption, now
we can enforce this and get rid of

463
00:36:12.800 --> 00:36:15.239
this, of course, again ignoring
the fact that they themselves also had a

464
00:36:15.239 --> 00:36:20.280
hand in it over the last twenty
years. So it comes down to good

465
00:36:20.320 --> 00:36:23.840
pr again. And it also could
be something about their relationships with the neighbors,

466
00:36:23.920 --> 00:36:28.119
you know, because Eaton and Pakistan, both of which they're very good

467
00:36:28.119 --> 00:36:30.199
with. Even Turkey, also a
nation that they're very good with, has

468
00:36:30.199 --> 00:36:35.719
complained a lot about drugs coming out
of Afhanistan. Now they don't talk about

469
00:36:35.719 --> 00:36:39.320
how their own drug mafias are involved
and are you making it possible? But

470
00:36:39.400 --> 00:36:44.840
it's another way of trying to bring
assurance two regional neighbors that we're taking an

471
00:36:44.840 --> 00:36:49.199
issue seriously and that we're able to
crack down on this. So it's a

472
00:36:49.199 --> 00:36:52.480
lot of good talking points for them, but following up with it is very,

473
00:36:52.599 --> 00:36:57.840
very difficult. But the route of
the problem remains unaddressed, it doesn't

474
00:36:57.840 --> 00:37:02.239
it. I mean that there really
isn't a viable, profitable alternative to poppy

475
00:37:02.239 --> 00:37:08.960
cultivation in Afghanistan for the thousands of
four farmers, right, And this is

476
00:37:09.000 --> 00:37:13.039
so So there's a few things.
One it's that there is no viable alternative.

477
00:37:13.079 --> 00:37:16.599
I remember years ago at a usmbassy
event where the usmbac is basically threw

478
00:37:16.639 --> 00:37:20.960
up its hands and said, our
drug war and Avlanistan didn't succeed. You

479
00:37:21.000 --> 00:37:23.719
know, they said that no lisit
crop can ever, no legal crop can

480
00:37:23.719 --> 00:37:28.920
ever compete with an illegal product.
And it's true. On the one hand,

481
00:37:28.920 --> 00:37:30.800
you know, when something is illegal, you know that the market dictates

482
00:37:30.800 --> 00:37:36.719
the price in ridiculous sorts of ways
and in very exorbitant ways. And then

483
00:37:36.760 --> 00:37:39.920
in terms of alternatives, you need
to lay the groundwork for those alternatives and

484
00:37:39.960 --> 00:37:43.480
you need to have the markets and
the support for it. So the former

485
00:37:43.559 --> 00:37:46.880
government, they tried pomegranates, they
tried saffron, they tried alo vera,

486
00:37:47.000 --> 00:37:51.679
all sorts of things. But what
was the problem was that they didn't have

487
00:37:52.679 --> 00:37:55.239
proper markets within the country to sell
those products. And they also didn't have

488
00:37:55.280 --> 00:38:00.719
proper agreements with other countries to make
sure that our products made it out and

489
00:38:00.760 --> 00:38:05.760
were sold into the world market.
So you would have farmers who were harvesting

490
00:38:05.800 --> 00:38:10.280
and who were planting these different crops
and plants and things like that and vegetables,

491
00:38:10.280 --> 00:38:13.639
and yet they really didn't have anywhere
to sell it, and there was

492
00:38:13.679 --> 00:38:17.239
so much regional competition in these markets. So it really takes you know,

493
00:38:17.280 --> 00:38:22.280
if you have to support that movement, you have to support that market.

494
00:38:22.280 --> 00:38:24.039
So if you want if you want
it to be pomegranates, then you have

495
00:38:24.079 --> 00:38:29.079
to make sure that Avhanistan's pomegranates are
exported to the UAE, that they're exported

496
00:38:29.119 --> 00:38:32.280
to Turkey, that they're exported to
other countries as well, and that they

497
00:38:32.280 --> 00:38:37.400
are properly sold within Then that takes
a lot of work that again the former

498
00:38:37.480 --> 00:38:42.000
Republic couldn't do or didn't want to
do. I don't know either couldn't or

499
00:38:42.000 --> 00:38:45.760
didn't. And now you know,
the Taliban will have to try and do

500
00:38:45.800 --> 00:38:50.119
the same thing, because if you
can't sell your alternative product, then you're

501
00:38:50.119 --> 00:38:52.639
going to go to the easiest thing, you know, the thing that you

502
00:38:52.719 --> 00:38:54.719
know you will absolutely be able to
sell the no matter what. Yeah,

503
00:38:54.760 --> 00:39:00.639
I had no idea that the Taliban
We're trying to grow alternative crops in place

504
00:39:00.679 --> 00:39:06.039
of opium for years and there's no
markets. No one wanted to Everyone is

505
00:39:06.039 --> 00:39:07.360
like, dude, we got all
these things on lock. You guys got

506
00:39:07.400 --> 00:39:09.800
that sweet sweet dope, Like that's
what you do good. You do that

507
00:39:09.880 --> 00:39:13.559
one thing and you do it really, really, really good. So we

508
00:39:13.559 --> 00:39:16.599
don't want any other ship. We
want that sweet dope. Don't sucks,

509
00:39:16.679 --> 00:39:20.679
because you know, obviously they don't. They don't want that. They don't

510
00:39:20.679 --> 00:39:24.239
want that to be their cash crop
as long as there's so many sanctions.

511
00:39:24.239 --> 00:39:27.559
And I guess that's the whole point
of it is why they're trying to ban

512
00:39:27.679 --> 00:39:30.559
these things so they can get some
of these US sanctions lifted so they can

513
00:39:30.639 --> 00:39:35.679
actually start to do business internationally supposedly. I don't know. I just think

514
00:39:35.679 --> 00:39:38.480
it's kind of an interesting little thing
going on right now, and it's very

515
00:39:38.559 --> 00:39:43.760
quiet, and it all just equals
tons and tons of more fentanyl and other

516
00:39:43.840 --> 00:39:47.400
kinds of synthetic opioid's flooding our streets
and killing people and getting into everyone's like

517
00:39:47.840 --> 00:39:51.880
their coke and even their weed and
things like that. I mean, it's

518
00:39:51.920 --> 00:39:54.599
pretty scary people that I know that
do drugs like I worry about them because

519
00:39:54.639 --> 00:39:59.599
that shit's just everywhere. It's crazy. So I hope that provided a little

520
00:39:59.599 --> 00:40:02.960
bit of text to the news of
the puppy band. You guys can bear

521
00:40:04.039 --> 00:40:07.679
with me a little bit longer.
I have another article that was originally published

522
00:40:07.719 --> 00:40:14.400
in Mint Press News June twenty fifth, twenty twenty one. It's entitled Geopolitics,

523
00:40:14.519 --> 00:40:17.800
Profit and Poppies, How the CIA
turned Afghanistan into a failed narco state.

524
00:40:19.719 --> 00:40:21.480
I'm going to go ahead and try
to read it, and if I

525
00:40:21.519 --> 00:40:23.719
start stumbling over my words and it
ends up going on and on and on,

526
00:40:23.840 --> 00:40:27.960
then I think I'm just going to
cut it out. So time code

527
00:40:28.119 --> 00:40:32.400
is at forty minutes ish. The
COVID nineteen pandemic has been a death knell

528
00:40:32.440 --> 00:40:37.199
to so many industries in Afghanistan.
Charities and aid agencies have even warned that

529
00:40:37.239 --> 00:40:43.079
the economic dislocation could spark widespread famine, but one sector is still booming,

530
00:40:43.239 --> 00:40:47.559
the illicit opium trade. Last year
saw Afghan opium poppy cultivation grow by over

531
00:40:47.599 --> 00:40:52.159
a third, while counter narcotics operations
dropped off a cliff. The country is

532
00:40:52.199 --> 00:40:55.719
said to be the source of over
ninety percent of the world's illicit opium,

533
00:40:55.760 --> 00:41:00.400
from which heroin and other opioids are
made. Our land is under cultivation for

534
00:41:00.440 --> 00:41:06.239
opium in Afghanistan than is used for
coca production across all of Latin America,

535
00:41:06.480 --> 00:41:09.840
with the creation of the drugs said
to directly employ around half a million people.

536
00:41:12.239 --> 00:41:15.519
This is a far cry from the
nineteen seventies, when poppy production was

537
00:41:15.599 --> 00:41:20.599
minimal and largely for domestic consumption.
But this change in nineteen seventy nine when

538
00:41:20.639 --> 00:41:25.760
the CIA launched Operations Cyclone the widespread
funding Afghan Mujahadeen militias in an attempt to

539
00:41:25.880 --> 00:41:30.719
bleed dry the then recent Soviet invasion. Over the next ten years, the

540
00:41:30.800 --> 00:41:37.800
CIA worked closely with its Pakistani counterpart, the ISI to funnel two billion dollars

541
00:41:37.800 --> 00:41:42.599
worth of arms and assistance to these
groups, including the now infamous Osama bin

542
00:41:42.719 --> 00:41:47.159
Laden, tim Osman, and other
warlords known for such atrocity as a throwing

543
00:41:47.199 --> 00:41:51.880
acid in the faces of unveiled women
oh Man. A lot of these things

544
00:41:51.920 --> 00:41:57.800
were debunked to be a Jean provocateurs. That whole acid face thing quote from

545
00:41:57.840 --> 00:42:01.559
statements by US Ambassador to Iran,
Richard Helms. There was little heroin production

546
00:42:01.599 --> 00:42:06.360
in Central Asia by the mid seventies, Professor Alfred McCoy, author of the

547
00:42:06.400 --> 00:42:10.239
Politics of Heroine, CIA complicity in
the global drug trade, told Mint Press.

548
00:42:10.679 --> 00:42:15.840
But with the start of the CIA
Secret War, opium production along the

549
00:42:15.880 --> 00:42:22.239
Afghanistan Pakistan border searched and refineries soon
dotted the landscape. Trucks loaded with US

550
00:42:22.320 --> 00:42:27.360
taxpayer funded weapons would travel from Pakistan
into its neighbor to the west, returning

551
00:42:27.440 --> 00:42:30.800
filled to the brim with opium for
the new refineries, their deadly product ending

552
00:42:30.880 --> 00:42:36.199
up on streets worldwide. With the
influx of Afghan opium in the nineteen eighties,

553
00:42:36.280 --> 00:42:39.280
Jeffries Saint Clair, co author of
White Out the CIA Drugs and the

554
00:42:39.320 --> 00:42:46.079
Press, alleges heroin addiction more than
doubled in the United States. In order

555
00:42:46.119 --> 00:42:51.400
to finance the resistance for a protracted
period, dou Mujahadeen had to come up

556
00:42:51.440 --> 00:42:54.840
with the livelihood beyond the weapons of
the CIA was providing, McCoy said,

557
00:42:54.880 --> 00:43:00.400
noting that the weapons issued could not
feed the fighters families nor reimburse them for

558
00:43:00.440 --> 00:43:04.440
lost labor. Quote, So what
the resistant spiders did was they turned to

559
00:43:04.440 --> 00:43:07.760
opium. Afghanistan had about one hundred
tons of opium produced every year in the

560
00:43:07.840 --> 00:43:12.400
nineteen seventies. By eighty nine and
nineteen ninety, at the end of that

561
00:43:12.480 --> 00:43:16.599
ten year CIA operation, that minimal
amount of opium one hundred tons per annum

562
00:43:16.599 --> 00:43:22.239
had turned into a major amount two
thousand tons a year, and was already

563
00:43:22.280 --> 00:43:27.960
about seventy five percent of the world's
illicit opium trade. The CIA achieved its

564
00:43:27.960 --> 00:43:31.039
goal of giving the USSR its Vietnam, the Soviets, failing to quash the

565
00:43:31.119 --> 00:43:36.519
Mujahadeen rebellion by the time they finally
pulled out in nineteen eighty nine, But

566
00:43:36.599 --> 00:43:40.920
American money and weapons also turned Afghanistan
into a dangerously unstable place full of warring

567
00:43:42.000 --> 00:43:47.039
factions that used opium to fund their
battles for internal supremacy. By nineteen ninety

568
00:43:47.079 --> 00:43:52.239
nine, annual production had risen to
forty six hundred tons. The Taliban eventually

569
00:43:52.280 --> 00:43:58.119
emerged as the dominant force in the
country and attempted to gain international legitimacy by

570
00:43:58.159 --> 00:44:04.000
stamping out the trade. In this
they were remarkably successful. A two thousand

571
00:44:04.079 --> 00:44:09.239
ban a two thousand ban on opium
cultivation by the Taliban led government led to

572
00:44:09.280 --> 00:44:14.559
an almost overnight drop to just one
hundred and eighty five tons harvested the following

573
00:44:14.639 --> 00:44:20.280
year, as frightened farmers chose not
to risk attracting their wrath. The Taliban

574
00:44:20.360 --> 00:44:23.559
had hoped that the eradication program would
win favor in Washington and entice the United

575
00:44:23.559 --> 00:44:30.840
States to provide humanitarian aid, but
unfortunately history had other ideas. On September

576
00:44:30.880 --> 00:44:35.559
eleventh, two thousand and one,
the US experienced a massive case of blowback

577
00:44:35.760 --> 00:44:39.280
has been Laudon's forces launched attacks on
New York and Washington. The US ignored

578
00:44:39.280 --> 00:44:44.000
the Taliban's offered to hand them over
to a third party, instead opting to

579
00:44:44.039 --> 00:44:50.519
invade the country. Less than a
month after the plans hit the World Trade

580
00:44:50.559 --> 00:44:53.039
Center, US troops were patrolling the
fields of Afghanistan. Yeah. Do less

581
00:44:53.039 --> 00:44:57.920
than a month later they were on
top of it. It's just, oh

582
00:44:57.960 --> 00:45:06.719
my god, you guys so obvious. It's just so obvious and clear that

583
00:45:06.840 --> 00:45:10.199
the whole thing just move in there
and just take over that racket for twenty

584
00:45:10.239 --> 00:45:14.760
years and then boom, we got
so much dope just coming out of our

585
00:45:14.800 --> 00:45:20.079
ears all over this country. Man, Like the oxyconton stuff, the Purdue

586
00:45:20.119 --> 00:45:23.559
family stuff, and now the fentanyl
stuff and the cartels, and the Chinese

587
00:45:23.840 --> 00:45:31.800
is like God Cia behind all that, Okay, the world's first true narco

588
00:45:31.880 --> 00:45:37.119
state. The effect of the occupation
was to expand drug production to unprecedented new

589
00:45:37.159 --> 00:45:43.320
proportions, Afghanistan becoming and Professor McCoy's
estimation, the world's first true narco state.

590
00:45:43.800 --> 00:45:46.159
McCoy notes that by two thousand and
eight, opium was responsible for well

591
00:45:46.199 --> 00:45:51.880
over half of the country's gross domestic
product. By comparison, even in Colombia's

592
00:45:51.920 --> 00:45:55.760
darkest days, cocaine accounted for only
three percent of its GDP. It's a

593
00:45:55.760 --> 00:46:00.280
completely different world. I mean Colombia, in Afghana, Panistan, you're talking

594
00:46:00.280 --> 00:46:06.960
about lush rainforest, jungles, fruit, vegetables, cattle. I mean there's

595
00:46:07.039 --> 00:46:10.880
livestock out. I mean this crazy
amount of livestock, timber industry. There's

596
00:46:10.960 --> 00:46:15.280
so much resources in Colombia. Afghanistan
has got ship, dude, they got

597
00:46:15.320 --> 00:46:20.440
sand and rocks, that's it.
And poppy. That's all they have.

598
00:46:20.639 --> 00:46:23.920
So of course the poppy is going
to be over half the GDP of that

599
00:46:23.960 --> 00:46:27.800
country. There's nothing else to sell, there's nothing else to make. They

600
00:46:27.800 --> 00:46:30.480
don't do anything else, that's all
that they have. It's a desert and

601
00:46:30.519 --> 00:46:37.599
then there's poppy So anyway, today
the United Nations estimates that around sixty three

602
00:46:37.719 --> 00:46:40.760
hundred tons of opium and rising is
produced yearly, with two hundred and twenty

603
00:46:40.760 --> 00:46:45.880
four thousand hectares an area almost the
side of Rhode Island planted with poppy fields.

604
00:46:47.079 --> 00:46:52.119
But even while it was financing a
widespread and deadly aerial spraying campaign in

605
00:46:52.159 --> 00:46:57.320
Colombia, the United States refused to
countenance the same policy in Afghanistan. They

606
00:46:57.360 --> 00:47:00.400
say, quote, and we've heard
this quote earlier in the show, we

607
00:47:00.440 --> 00:47:04.679
cannot be in a situation where we
remove the only source of income of people

608
00:47:04.679 --> 00:47:08.239
who live in the second poorest country
in the world without without being able to

609
00:47:08.280 --> 00:47:12.679
provide them with an alternative, said
Nato. I think I stumbled in the

610
00:47:12.719 --> 00:47:15.039
same place. So isn't that funny, Like we just sanctioned the fuck out

611
00:47:15.039 --> 00:47:20.199
of this country so that they're absolutely
like the poorest country in the world.

612
00:47:20.239 --> 00:47:23.199
I think, like the second poorest
nation in the entire world. We sanctioned

613
00:47:23.199 --> 00:47:28.480
the fuck out of him. We
give him this pariah stigma for decades and

614
00:47:28.559 --> 00:47:30.679
decades and decades, and some of
it's on their own thing. We make

615
00:47:30.679 --> 00:47:32.800
it so no one can eat,
no one can live, no one can

616
00:47:32.880 --> 00:47:36.519
have any money, nothing can do
anything but grow poppy. And then we

617
00:47:36.559 --> 00:47:39.320
say, oh, now you can't
grow their poppy. How could we.

618
00:47:39.320 --> 00:47:45.480
We've been trying to spray and kill
these plants for decades other countries Russia,

619
00:47:45.800 --> 00:47:49.079
but no, no, no,
we can't do that. Not everyone agreed,

620
00:47:49.119 --> 00:47:52.239
however, that a passionate commitment to
defending the quality of life of the

621
00:47:52.280 --> 00:47:55.639
poorest was the actual reason for rejecting
the policy. Matthew Hoe, a former

622
00:47:55.679 --> 00:48:00.480
captain of the US Marine Corps,
is one skeptic. Hoe told Mint Press

623
00:48:00.559 --> 00:48:04.559
that airborne fumigation was not carried out
because it would be outside the control of

624
00:48:04.719 --> 00:48:08.760
Afghan government officials who were deeply implicated
in the drug trade, owning poppy fields

625
00:48:08.760 --> 00:48:14.760
and production plants themselves. They were
afraid that if they went to aerial eradication,

626
00:48:14.920 --> 00:48:17.199
the US pilots would just eradicate willy
nilly and a lot of their own

627
00:48:17.280 --> 00:48:21.960
poppy fields would be hit. In
two thousand and nine, Hoe resigned in

628
00:48:21.960 --> 00:48:25.920
protests from his position. Resigned in
protests Nice from his position at the State

629
00:48:25.960 --> 00:48:30.880
Department and Zabel Province over the government's
continued occupation of Afghanistan, He told the

630
00:48:30.960 --> 00:48:35.719
Mint Press. Quote, NATO forces
were more or less guarding poppy fields and

631
00:48:35.719 --> 00:48:39.440
poppy production under the guise of counterinsurgency. The logic was, we don't want

632
00:48:39.440 --> 00:48:43.639
to take away the livelihoods of the
people. Quote. But really what we

633
00:48:43.639 --> 00:48:46.039
were doing at that point was protecting
the wealth of our friends in power in

634
00:48:46.079 --> 00:48:52.360
Afghanistan. That's what it was.
According to Hoe, there were widespread disillusionment

635
00:48:52.400 --> 00:48:54.599
within the military, among service members
who had to risk their lives on a

636
00:48:54.679 --> 00:48:58.280
day to day basis. They would
say, what are we doing here?

637
00:48:58.320 --> 00:49:01.400
This is bullshit? It was a
sentiment among their rank and file. The

638
00:49:01.519 --> 00:49:07.280
heroin trade implicated virtually everyone in power, including Afghan President Ahmed Kazar's brother Ahmed

639
00:49:07.360 --> 00:49:12.280
Wali, among the biggest and most
notorious drug kingmans in the south of the

640
00:49:12.320 --> 00:49:16.119
country, a man widely understood to
be in the pay of the CIA.

641
00:49:16.199 --> 00:49:22.400
Ahmed Wali. Yeah, for sure, there's documents and citations to back that

642
00:49:22.519 --> 00:49:24.519
up in this article that maybe I'll
throw those in the show notes too.

643
00:49:25.280 --> 00:49:30.280
US attempts to stymy the opium trades, such as the policy of paying domestic

644
00:49:30.320 --> 00:49:35.239
militias to destroy poppy fields often backfired. Locals came up with ways of profiting,

645
00:49:35.400 --> 00:49:38.239
such as refraining from planting in one
area, collecting large sums of money

646
00:49:38.280 --> 00:49:43.639
from occupying forces, and using that
clap using that cash to plant elsewhere,

647
00:49:44.000 --> 00:49:47.599
effectively getting paid both to plant and
not to plant. Even worse, local

648
00:49:47.639 --> 00:49:52.880
warlords and drug bossles would destroy their
rival scrops and collect money from the US

649
00:49:52.960 --> 00:49:57.719
for doing so, leaving themselves both
enriched and in a stronger position than before,

650
00:49:58.079 --> 00:50:02.239
having gained NATO forces favor. One
notable example of this is a local

651
00:50:02.280 --> 00:50:08.840
strongman, ghoul Agashrazai, who eradicated
his competitors Crops and Nagar Province while quietly

652
00:50:08.880 --> 00:50:14.760
leaving his own and Candahar Province untouched. But all the usaw was a local

653
00:50:14.800 --> 00:50:19.960
politician seemingly committed is stamping out in
illegal drug trade. They therefore showered him

654
00:50:20.000 --> 00:50:23.039
with money and other privileges. We
literally gave the guy ten million in cash

655
00:50:23.079 --> 00:50:27.280
for rubbing out his own competition.
Host said, if you were going to

656
00:50:27.280 --> 00:50:30.440
write a movie about this, they'd
say this is just too far fetched.

657
00:50:30.440 --> 00:50:34.239
No one's going to believe this.
Nothing is this insane or stupid. But

658
00:50:34.360 --> 00:50:39.320
that is the way it is.
Quote I totally believe that that is exactly

659
00:50:39.320 --> 00:50:43.239
how we do things. It's like
that other meme man that Mima says,

660
00:50:43.280 --> 00:50:45.159
this is how the government works.
It's a picture of a pan on a

661
00:50:45.239 --> 00:50:52.000
stove where an actual egg is cracked
and is on the stove. The shell

662
00:50:52.159 --> 00:50:54.519
is in the pan and the handle
of the pan is over the open burner.

663
00:50:54.960 --> 00:50:59.519
Like it's just completely backwards and fucked
up. Like that's exactly how the

664
00:50:59.559 --> 00:51:02.320
government runs. And so to say
that this is too far fetched. No

665
00:51:02.320 --> 00:51:05.559
one's going to believe that. No
one, none of us here are this

666
00:51:05.599 --> 00:51:07.880
insane or stupid. But that's the
way it is. I believe it.

667
00:51:09.320 --> 00:51:14.079
McCoy noted that the Taliban is one
of the prime beneficiaries of the drug trade

668
00:51:14.239 --> 00:51:19.239
and used it to increase their power
and vanquish the US quote that booming opium

669
00:51:19.239 --> 00:51:22.000
production and the US failure to curb
it provided the bulk of the financing for

670
00:51:22.079 --> 00:51:27.320
Taliban, who captured a significant but
unknown share of the local profits from the

671
00:51:27.360 --> 00:51:30.639
drug traffic, which they used to
fund guerrilla operations over the past twenty years,

672
00:51:30.880 --> 00:51:37.239
becoming a determinative factor in the US
defeat in Afghanistan. The needle and

673
00:51:37.320 --> 00:51:43.960
the damage done it is not particularly
difficult to grow opium. Opium poppies flourish

674
00:51:44.000 --> 00:51:47.159
in warm and dry conditions away from
the damp and the wind. Consequently,

675
00:51:47.199 --> 00:51:51.840
they have found a fertile home across
much of Central and Western Asia. The

676
00:51:52.000 --> 00:51:57.559
plant has flourished in Afghanistan, particularly
in southern provinces like Helmand, close to

677
00:51:57.559 --> 00:52:01.559
the tripoint where Afghanistan meets Pakistan and
Iran. Much of the irrigation system and

678
00:52:01.639 --> 00:52:07.039
Helman was underwritten by USAID, an
organization that acts as the CIA's public facing

679
00:52:07.119 --> 00:52:15.079
front. Oh my god, so
yeah, the CIA's USAID was an underwriter

680
00:52:15.199 --> 00:52:20.440
for all that infrastructure to put in
the irrigation systems in Hellman. In full

681
00:52:20.480 --> 00:52:23.360
bloom, the poppy fuels look spectacular, with beautiful flowers of vibrant pink,

682
00:52:23.400 --> 00:52:27.920
red or white. Underneath the flowers
one can find a large seed pod.

683
00:52:28.360 --> 00:52:30.920
Farmers harvest these, draining them of
a sap which dries into a resin.

684
00:52:31.280 --> 00:52:36.320
This is often transported out of the
country through the so called Southern Route via

685
00:52:36.400 --> 00:52:39.519
Pakistan or Iran, but as with
any pipeline, much of the product is

686
00:52:39.519 --> 00:52:45.400
spilled along the way, causing an
epidemic of addiction across the region. The

687
00:52:45.480 --> 00:52:50.880
effect on the Afghan population has been
nothing short of a disaster. The technical

688
00:52:51.840 --> 00:52:57.800
The technological revolution and its aftermath has
been a disaster for the United States.

689
00:52:58.079 --> 00:53:00.599
Between two thousand and five and two
thousand team, the number of adult drug

690
00:53:00.679 --> 00:53:05.960
users jumped from nine hundred thousand to
two point four million in ten years,

691
00:53:07.039 --> 00:53:09.519
from one to two and a half. That's a one hundred and fifty percent

692
00:53:09.599 --> 00:53:15.639
increase crazy, according to the United
Nations, which according to the UN,

693
00:53:15.800 --> 00:53:20.199
so you fuck that, which estimates
that almost one in three households are directly

694
00:53:20.199 --> 00:53:25.320
affected by addiction. While Afghanistan also
produces copious amounts of marijuana and methamphetamine opioids

695
00:53:25.320 --> 00:53:29.880
of the druga choice for most,
with around nine percent of the adult population

696
00:53:30.079 --> 00:53:34.159
and a growing number of children addicted
to them. Added to this has been

697
00:53:34.159 --> 00:53:38.159
a spike in HIV cases as users
share needles. Professor Julian Mercille, author

698
00:53:38.199 --> 00:53:44.599
of Cruel Harvest US intervention in the
Afghan drug trade, told the Mint Press.

699
00:53:44.880 --> 00:53:47.719
Only contributing further to the despair has
been twenty years of war in US

700
00:53:47.760 --> 00:53:52.159
occupation. The number of Afghans living
in poverty arose from nine point one million

701
00:53:52.199 --> 00:53:58.639
in two thousand and seven to nineteen
point three million in two sixteen. A

702
00:53:58.719 --> 00:54:02.039
recent poll conducted by Gallup found that
Afghans are the saddest people on earth,

703
00:54:02.119 --> 00:54:07.920
with nearly nine and ten respondents suffering
and zero percent of the population thriving.

704
00:54:08.039 --> 00:54:12.440
In their own words, when asked
to rate their lives out of a score

705
00:54:12.440 --> 00:54:15.719
of ten, Afghans gave an average
answer of two point seven, a record

706
00:54:15.800 --> 00:54:21.480
low for any country studied. Worse
still, when asked to predict the quality

707
00:54:21.519 --> 00:54:27.280
of life in five years, their
mean answer was even lower two point three.

708
00:54:27.400 --> 00:54:30.239
So we're right on track with Afghanistan
around here, like there's nothing good

709
00:54:30.239 --> 00:54:34.360
coming man. What's the quality of
life going to be in five years from

710
00:54:34.400 --> 00:54:39.840
now? Even lower? Man?
The effects of the CIA operation to bleed

711
00:54:39.840 --> 00:54:45.159
the Soviets dry in Afghanistan have also
produced a humanitarian crisis in neighboring Pakistan.

712
00:54:45.599 --> 00:54:50.599
As McCoy noted, in the late
nineteen seventies, Pakistan had barely any heroin

713
00:54:50.639 --> 00:54:54.119
addics, but by nineteen eighty five, Pakistani government statistics reported over one point

714
00:54:54.119 --> 00:54:59.079
two million, turning the two nations
into quote the global eper center of the

715
00:54:59.159 --> 00:55:05.199
drugs trade almost overnight. The problem
has only grown since at twenty thirteen UN

716
00:55:05.280 --> 00:55:09.199
report estimated that almost seven million Pakistani's
use drugs, with four point two five

717
00:55:09.280 --> 00:55:15.119
million requiring urgent treatment for dependency issues. Nearly two and a half million of

718
00:55:15.159 --> 00:55:20.159
these people were abusing heroin or other
opioids. Around seven hundred people die every

719
00:55:20.239 --> 00:55:24.440
day from overdoses. The highest rate
of dependency is unsurprisingly in provinces on the

720
00:55:24.480 --> 00:55:30.440
Afghan border, where heroin is manufactured. The same United Nations study notes that

721
00:55:30.480 --> 00:55:37.039
eleven percent of people in the northwest
province of Khaiber Paktanwa use illicit substances,

722
00:55:37.079 --> 00:55:40.639
primarily heroin. The drug crisis,
of course, is also a medical crisis,

723
00:55:40.719 --> 00:55:45.199
with overstretched public hospitals filled with drug
related maladies. The social stigma of

724
00:55:45.239 --> 00:55:50.119
addiction has ripped families apart, while
the money and power illicit drugs have brought

725
00:55:50.159 --> 00:55:53.519
has turned many towns into hot spots
of violence. Iran has a similar number

726
00:55:53.519 --> 00:55:59.039
of opioid users, generally estimated at
between two and three million. In towns

727
00:55:59.079 --> 00:56:02.119
close to the Afghan Pakistani border,
a gram of opium can be bought with

728
00:56:02.239 --> 00:56:07.639
loose change between a quarter and fifty
cents. Thus, despite the extremely harsh

729
00:56:07.639 --> 00:56:10.840
penalties for drug possession and distribution on
the official books, the country has the

730
00:56:10.920 --> 00:56:15.519
highest addiction rate in the world.
On a micro level, addiction tears apart

731
00:56:15.559 --> 00:56:20.840
families and ruins lives. On an
international scale. However, the opium boom

732
00:56:20.920 --> 00:56:24.960
is replaced has placed an entire region
under significant strain. Therefore, one consequence

733
00:56:24.960 --> 00:56:30.119
of the US policy in the Middle
East, from supporting jihadas to occupying nations,

734
00:56:30.320 --> 00:56:34.000
has been to unleash a worldwide opium
addiction that has made a few people

735
00:56:34.119 --> 00:56:40.480
fantastically wealthy and destroyed the lives of
tens of millions of people domestic despair.

736
00:56:42.480 --> 00:56:45.719
The boom in production has also led
to a worldwide disaster. In the past

737
00:56:45.800 --> 00:56:51.679
decade, opioid related deaths increased by
seventy one percent globally. According to the

738
00:56:51.760 --> 00:56:55.239
UN, Much of the product grown
by Afghan warlords end up on Western streets.

739
00:56:55.679 --> 00:56:59.599
Quote. I don't see how it
can be a coincidence that you have

740
00:56:59.719 --> 00:57:04.519
that explosive growth and poppy production in
Afghanistan and then you have the worldwide opioid

741
00:57:04.559 --> 00:57:08.199
epidemic hostated, a connection that raises
the questions of whether users in Berlin,

742
00:57:08.400 --> 00:57:13.119
Boston, or Brazil should be seen
as victims of the war in Afghanistan,

743
00:57:13.400 --> 00:57:16.800
as much as fallen soldiers are.
If so, the numbers would be staggering.

744
00:57:17.199 --> 00:57:22.000
Nearly eight hundred and forty one thousand
Americans have died of a drug overdose

745
00:57:22.000 --> 00:57:25.559
since the war in Afghanistan began,
including more than seventy thousand and two and

746
00:57:25.639 --> 00:57:32.320
twenty nineteen alone. The majority of
these have involved opioids. Officially, the

747
00:57:32.440 --> 00:57:37.639
DA claims that essentially all illicit opioids
entering the US are grown in Latin America.

748
00:57:37.800 --> 00:57:40.920
Ho however, finds the Sun convincing. When you look at their own

749
00:57:40.960 --> 00:57:45.719
information and their own reports on the
illicit opioid production and hectorage in Mexico and

750
00:57:45.760 --> 00:57:51.079
South America, it's clear that there
is not enough production in the Western hemisphere

751
00:57:51.119 --> 00:57:53.519
to meet the demand for illicit opiates
in the US. He told the MIT

752
00:57:53.599 --> 00:58:00.119
press. A dirty history. The
US government has a long history, or

753
00:58:00.159 --> 00:58:04.559
you have directly involving itself with the
worldwide narcotics trade. In Colombia. It

754
00:58:04.679 --> 00:58:08.000
worked with President Alvaro Uribey on a
national on a nationwide drug war, even

755
00:58:08.039 --> 00:58:14.960
as internal US documents identified Uribe as
one of the nation's most important drug traffickers,

756
00:58:15.199 --> 00:58:19.719
an employee of the infamous Medaine cartel, and a close personal friend of

757
00:58:19.800 --> 00:58:27.079
drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. Profits from
drug running funded Uribe's elections election runs in

758
00:58:27.079 --> 00:58:30.440
two thousand and two and two thousand
and six. General Manuel Noriega was also

759
00:58:30.519 --> 00:58:35.320
a key ally of the US.
For many years, the Panamanian was on

760
00:58:35.400 --> 00:58:38.920
the CIA payroll, despite Washington knowing
he was involved in drug trafficking since at

761
00:58:38.960 --> 00:58:44.719
least nineteen seventy two. When he
became de facto dictator of Panama in nineteen

762
00:58:44.760 --> 00:58:49.679
eighty four, little changed, but
the director of the Drug Enforcement Agency initially

763
00:58:49.760 --> 00:58:53.519
praised him for his vigorous anti drug
trafficking policy. Eventually, however, the

764
00:58:53.639 --> 00:58:59.480
US decided to invade the country and
capture Noriega, sentencing him to forty years

765
00:58:59.480 --> 00:59:02.679
in federal prison for drug crimes largely
committed while he was still in the CIA's

766
00:59:02.760 --> 00:59:07.559
pay At the same time as this
was going on, investigative journalist Gary Webb

767
00:59:07.599 --> 00:59:13.119
exposed how the CIA helped funded dirty
war against Nicaragua was left as government through

768
00:59:13.159 --> 00:59:17.639
sales of crack cocaine to black neighborhoods
across the United States, linking far right

769
00:59:17.719 --> 00:59:23.159
paramilitary armies with US drug kingpins like
Rick Ross. To this day, the

770
00:59:23.239 --> 00:59:30.159
US government continues to support Honduran strongman
Juan Orlando Hernandez, despite their president's well

771
00:59:30.280 --> 00:59:35.280
established connection to the cocaine trade.
Earlier this year, a US court sentenced

772
00:59:35.320 --> 00:59:39.119
hernandez brother Tony to life in prison
for international drug smuggling, while Wuan himself

773
00:59:39.199 --> 00:59:45.920
was unindicted co conspiracor was an unindicted
co conspirator in the case. Nevertheless,

774
00:59:46.039 --> 00:59:52.079
god man sold out by his own
brother. Damn. Nevertheless, President Hernandez

775
00:59:52.079 --> 00:59:57.519
has proven himself effective as suppressing the
anti imperialist left inside his country and cementing

776
00:59:57.559 --> 01:00:00.760
the US back two thousand and nine
military coup, one reason he is unlikely

777
01:00:00.800 --> 01:00:06.280
to face charges in any near future. Using the illegal drug trade and the

778
01:00:06.320 --> 01:00:09.320
profits from it to fund imperial objectives. It's been a constant of great empires

779
01:00:09.360 --> 01:00:14.039
going back for centuries. For instance, in the nineteen forties and fifties,

780
01:00:14.119 --> 01:00:17.679
the French Empire utilized opium crops in
the so called Golden Triangle region of Indo

781
01:00:17.800 --> 01:00:23.000
China in order to help beat back
a growing Vietnamese independence movement. Yeah we

782
01:00:23.079 --> 01:00:28.000
know about that too. Going further
back, the British use its opium machine

783
01:00:28.039 --> 01:00:32.800
to subdue and economically conquer much of
China. Britain's insatiable thirst for Chinese tea

784
01:00:32.960 --> 01:00:37.440
was beginning to bankrupt the country as
the China. That's a really interesting story.

785
01:00:38.119 --> 01:00:42.440
I would like to do a show
about that, honestly. About the

786
01:00:43.039 --> 01:00:47.480
opium war is what started it,
the whole Chinese tea obsession, and it

787
01:00:47.920 --> 01:00:52.519
goes back pretty good. There's a
really good book. I believe it's called

788
01:00:52.519 --> 01:00:58.159
A Botany of Desire. I think
it's Michael Pollen. I think that's what

789
01:00:58.280 --> 01:01:00.239
I think that's the book it's in. But he goes into a huge deconstruction

790
01:01:00.280 --> 01:01:05.320
of that whole thing. It's very
fascinating. So anyway, Britain's insatiable thirst

791
01:01:05.320 --> 01:01:08.039
for Chinese tea was beginning to bankrupt
the country, and the Chinese would accept

792
01:01:08.119 --> 01:01:13.320
only gold or silver as payment.
It therefore used the power of its navy

793
01:01:13.360 --> 01:01:17.039
to force China to seed Hong Kong, from which Britain began flooding China with

794
01:01:17.119 --> 01:01:22.519
opium. It grew in its own
possessions in Southeast Asia, in South Asia.

795
01:01:22.840 --> 01:01:24.199
So I'm going to read that again
because I kind of got a little

796
01:01:24.199 --> 01:01:30.519
clunky over there. Britain's insatiable thirst
for Chinese teeth was beginning to bankrupt the

797
01:01:30.559 --> 01:01:32.760
country. So they love that tea
so much. They were spending too much

798
01:01:32.760 --> 01:01:37.760
money on it, and the Chinese
would only accept gold and silver as payment

799
01:01:37.039 --> 01:01:42.119
for all that tea. It therefore
used the power of its navy, the

800
01:01:42.159 --> 01:01:46.599
British navy, to force China to
seed Hong Kong, making an independent nation,

801
01:01:47.159 --> 01:01:52.639
from which Britain began flooding China with
opium. It grew in its possessions

802
01:01:52.679 --> 01:01:58.320
in South Asia. So Britain had
all these like possession, little tiny little

803
01:01:58.400 --> 01:02:02.719
nations, little little country's, little
areas, I guess they're occupations, and

804
01:02:02.800 --> 01:02:07.199
they were all outside of Hong Kong. And so they forced China to seed

805
01:02:07.320 --> 01:02:14.440
Hong Kong as an independent state,
and then Britain just began flooding it through

806
01:02:14.760 --> 01:02:20.320
flooding China through Hong Kong with all
the opium. And that's what's just,

807
01:02:20.960 --> 01:02:23.719
oh my god, that's what they
did. The humanitarian impact of the opium

808
01:02:23.760 --> 01:02:28.639
war was staggering. By eighteen eighty, the British were inundated, were inundating

809
01:02:28.719 --> 01:02:32.599
China with over sixty five hundred tons
of opium every year, equivalent to many

810
01:02:32.719 --> 01:02:38.039
billions of doses, causing massive social
and economic dislocation. This, China struggled

811
01:02:38.039 --> 01:02:44.119
to cope with a crippling empire wild
wide addiction. Today, many Chinese still

812
01:02:44.119 --> 01:02:47.679
refer to the era as the Century
of humiliation. In India and Pakistan to

813
01:02:49.079 --> 01:02:52.880
the effect was no less dramatic,
as colonists forced farmers into planting inedible poppy

814
01:02:52.920 --> 01:02:59.519
fields and then later tea rather than
subsistence crops, causing waves of huge famines,

815
01:02:59.719 --> 01:03:04.239
the frequency of which had never been
seen before. Oh my god.

816
01:03:04.320 --> 01:03:07.159
So yeah, A lot of people
talk about the fentanyl thing being Chinese,

817
01:03:07.239 --> 01:03:13.239
the Chinese revenge for that century of
humiliation. I buy that for sure.

818
01:03:13.880 --> 01:03:20.760
I mean, they're making this particular
substance export only strictly to the US exclusively.

819
01:03:21.559 --> 01:03:24.559
And look what's happened to our country
with the fentanyl. Just the fentanyl,

820
01:03:24.679 --> 01:03:29.079
dude. I remember seeing fentanyl friends
of mine overdosing on it, like

821
01:03:29.159 --> 01:03:35.039
almost thirty years ago. It's been
around and it's just getting worse, millions

822
01:03:35.119 --> 01:03:40.199
of losers. The story is much
more nuanced than some CIA controls the world's

823
01:03:40.239 --> 01:03:45.400
drugs quote conspiracy theories make out there
are no US soldiers loading up Afghan cards

824
01:03:45.400 --> 01:03:51.719
with opium. However, many commanders
are knowingly enabling warlords. Who do that

825
01:03:51.880 --> 01:03:57.320
exact thing. The US military and
CIA bear a large responsibility for the opium

826
01:03:57.320 --> 01:04:01.559
production boom in Afghanistan, Professor Merci
said, explaining quote post nine to eleven.

827
01:04:01.760 --> 01:04:06.119
They basically allied themselves with a lot
of Afghan strongmen and warlords who happen

828
01:04:06.159 --> 01:04:11.920
to be involved in some way in
drug production and trafficking. Those individuals were

829
01:04:11.960 --> 01:04:15.760
acting as local allies for the US
and NATO and therefore were largely protected from

830
01:04:15.800 --> 01:04:21.000
retribution or arrest for drug trafficking themselves
because they were allies with the US at

831
01:04:21.000 --> 01:04:28.760
the time, So that still echoes
around. We're still feeling it from the

832
01:04:28.800 --> 01:04:30.800
ground. The war in Afghanistan has
looked a lot like the war on drugs

833
01:04:30.840 --> 01:04:35.760
in Latin America and previous colonial campaigns
in Asia, with a rapid militarization of

834
01:04:35.800 --> 01:04:42.119
the area and the empowerment of pliant
local elites which immediately began to embezzle the

835
01:04:42.159 --> 01:04:46.079
massive profits that quietly disappear into black
holes, all the while millions of people

836
01:04:46.119 --> 01:04:51.039
pay the price suffering inside a militarized
death zone and turning to drugs as a

837
01:04:51.119 --> 01:04:55.800
coping mechanism. And the story of
the opium boom, there are a few

838
01:04:55.800 --> 01:05:00.400
winners, but millions upon millions of
losers. Oh, end of the article.

839
01:05:00.519 --> 01:05:05.320
So that's I think that's a good
little piece there. It's from the

840
01:05:05.360 --> 01:05:10.960
Mint Press. It was republished in
the Monthly Review. It's a good article.

841
01:05:11.400 --> 01:05:13.760
It kind of wraps up a lot
of the information that I think is

842
01:05:13.800 --> 01:05:18.320
relative and pertinent. But yeah,
China, the Chinese revenge. I think

843
01:05:18.360 --> 01:05:23.760
they're working tidy real close with Afghanistan
right now, and I think that they're

844
01:05:23.760 --> 01:05:28.480
really trying to put the squeeze and
that capacity on the US and just the

845
01:05:28.559 --> 01:05:30.960
West in general. I mean,
look what we've done. We've done so

846
01:05:31.039 --> 01:05:35.440
much horrible shit to that country.
We've meant the century of humiliation. And

847
01:05:35.480 --> 01:05:39.199
of course, I mean China has
us by the balls no matter which way,

848
01:05:39.199 --> 01:05:42.679
every which way from Sunday, from
the products that we can't stop using,

849
01:05:43.000 --> 01:05:45.320
the stupid plastic shit that they make
that we can't seem to get people,

850
01:05:45.400 --> 01:05:48.440
we can't pay people to make,
so we pay those guys hardly anything,

851
01:05:48.800 --> 01:05:53.440
the phones, and then of course
there's all the TikTok stuff. I

852
01:05:53.480 --> 01:05:55.840
mean, it's just crazy. And
of course we need, like, you

853
01:05:55.880 --> 01:05:59.360
know, some big bad guy.
We got to have a boogeyman someone standing

854
01:05:59.400 --> 01:06:03.199
in for that position. So China
fits perfectly into that. But I'm not

855
01:06:03.320 --> 01:06:06.760
afraid of China. I don't think
China's going to ruin the United States.

856
01:06:06.840 --> 01:06:14.239
I just think it's very interesting how
they are working so closely with real active

857
01:06:14.320 --> 01:06:17.800
narco states and they're just like no
qualms whatsoever. Like we're gonna work tightly

858
01:06:17.880 --> 01:06:20.880
with these guys. We're working with
the Mexican cartels, and we're gonna work

859
01:06:20.880 --> 01:06:27.199
with the Taliban and get our relationships
nice and tight. So I don't know,

860
01:06:27.320 --> 01:06:31.840
expect more fentyl and more fentyl related
injury, death and maniacism happening.

861
01:06:31.880 --> 01:06:40.719
More crazy maniacs high as shit on
fentnyl talking to their zippers and just dying.

862
01:06:40.760 --> 01:06:43.400
I mean, it's I follow a
lot of people on Twitter. There's

863
01:06:43.559 --> 01:06:46.280
guys that are just doing homeless intervention
all the time, and some of those

864
01:06:46.360 --> 01:06:50.119
videos are just They're just insane.
Man. It's just crazy out there.

865
01:06:50.159 --> 01:06:55.119
And I'm so grateful that I'm healthy
and happy and I don't have a drug

866
01:06:55.119 --> 01:06:58.480
addiction. And I mean, I
have habits, bad habits. Everyone has

867
01:06:58.519 --> 01:07:00.800
them. I have mine. I
try to keep them in check. I've

868
01:07:00.880 --> 01:07:05.519
kind of reignited some former habits that
I don't necessarily think I need. I

869
01:07:05.719 --> 01:07:10.840
don't know why they just kind of
started coming up, but at least I'm

870
01:07:10.880 --> 01:07:14.639
aware of it now and recognizing it
as a bad habit that is unnecessary.

871
01:07:14.679 --> 01:07:16.960
So I'm more empowered now to cut
that back out of my life where it

872
01:07:17.000 --> 01:07:20.599
should be than I was before,
when I never even considered it a habit.

873
01:07:20.639 --> 01:07:26.440
I just considered it a lifestyle.
So in any case, I hope

874
01:07:26.639 --> 01:07:30.119
this all finds you well, happy
and healthy wherever you are having a great

875
01:07:30.199 --> 01:07:32.079
night or day. I appreciate all
you guys listening to the show. I

876
01:07:32.079 --> 01:07:38.159
appreciate the Patreon supporters. I really
really do. It makes a huge difference.

877
01:07:38.360 --> 01:07:41.760
I don't have a ton of people
on the pledges, but the ones

878
01:07:41.840 --> 01:07:44.519
I do, they're the ones that
have always been there, and there's a

879
01:07:44.519 --> 01:07:45.599
couple of new ones that have come
up. So I want to say welcome

880
01:07:45.639 --> 01:07:49.360
and thank you. It really means
a lot to know that there's a good,

881
01:07:49.360 --> 01:07:53.760
small little tribe of people out there
who are willing to support the work

882
01:07:53.760 --> 01:07:56.719
that I do on this show.
It takes a lot of time. It's

883
01:07:56.800 --> 01:08:00.599
not cheap. Time is money,
and if I'm not out there and making

884
01:08:00.679 --> 01:08:03.480
money man, I'm trying to make
shows. Sometimes days and weeks and weeks

885
01:08:03.480 --> 01:08:08.039
go by where I don't make anything
and I feel bad. But today was

886
01:08:08.039 --> 01:08:11.599
the day where I had a chance
to actually make a couple of shows and

887
01:08:11.639 --> 01:08:14.519
get him out there. So I
hope you enjoy them. I hope you

888
01:08:14.559 --> 01:08:17.760
find this information interesting and you want
to share it along. I'm gonna try

889
01:08:17.760 --> 01:08:21.560
to keep notes on all this stuff
and include all the things I was reading

890
01:08:21.600 --> 01:08:24.760
and all the links and put them
in the show notes so you can do

891
01:08:24.800 --> 01:08:28.600
your own research. Okay, guys, I'm gonna wrap it up because I'm

892
01:08:28.640 --> 01:08:31.159
getting that cotton mouth and I need
to eat. Have a great nat or

893
01:08:31.239 --> 01:08:57.680
day wherever you are, and we'll
talk again soon. Audiosa to say I

894
01:08:57.840 --> 01:09:08.079
got him on day on the song
Madawa feeling Adada that you get a Sha

895
01:09:08.560 --> 01:09:20.760
horror Donna day horror, say horry, Mr Roya Husu to Hawaiisa mean notes

896
01:09:21.800 --> 01:09:36.520
can be best Manna Bara how honey
dish for him most and Dasar Rosina Muda

897
01:09:36.600 --> 01:09:50.720
had Smar parsation has to gates to
him, Adama car Azamneskandarusa was breast on

898
01:09:50.840 --> 01:10:04.199
your han Chansh. I'm focus chicken
ham right sho mikunamak you honhause, I

899
01:10:04.479 --> 01:10:11.479
was so all them all about my
bama. I got it easy, gets

900
01:10:12.079 --> 01:10:17.560
hammaroo come to he was a shot
at him, but oh yes, why

901
01:10:17.640 --> 01:10:30.439
not she carram I'm ray yak you
honey tony mandata. Don't you take walking

902
01:10:32.439 --> 01:10:41.079
na hana No, but ye nabih
shot my zo him because she does.

903
01:10:41.119 --> 01:10:49.119
Ama On, I'm a lot to
know. But the marsh game pass mos

904
01:10:50.119 --> 01:11:02.680
honah and the bitch gonna cat broke
about jap But as he asked, Sam

905
01:11:02.880 --> 01:11:28.159
June Nakasha, one neighbors one New
Yorkers. As far as I'm a long

906
01:11:28.279 --> 01:11:35.039
question question, I'm a long question
nd Audio Talisim as well, my joy

907
01:11:35.119 --> 01:11:35.439
I was on