UN:Heroin production to reach record high

[alvin]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070306/...w_.xFs3p5w24cA

The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime predicted that last year's harvest record would be broken by an increase in 15 provinces, including Helmand — the world's largest poppy-growing region and the scene of a growing number of attacks by Taliban fighters who use opium to fund their insurgency.

Antonio Maria Costa, UNODC executive director, said the increase in the south was a result of security problems. Many southern regions have no government presence, and farmers act with impunity. Taliban fighters protect opium growers and transport and tax the crop, he said.

Opium cultivation has surged since the ouster of the Taliban in late 2001. Under strong international pressure, the former regime had enforced an effective ban on poppy growing by threatening to jail farmers — virtually eradicating the crop in 2000.

These highlighted statements contradict each other. Is this the same Taliban that eradicated poppy culivation in 2000(right before the invasion) or is it a "new & improved" Taliban that protect opium growers? Are they FOR the eradication of opium or are they AGAINST the eradication of opium?

President Hamid Karzai has vowed to rid Afghanistan of opium. International donors are directing hundreds of millions of dollars in development aid to rural areas to make it profitable for farmers to grow wheat, or plant orchards. Eradication teams have stepped up their campaign to destroy opium poppies in the fields before harvest.

Costa said a system of incentives for farmers in the north was working well, but that only 1 percent of $100 million in assistance funds had been dispersed by the Afghan government and the international community.

This again is contradictory. If Karzai(supported by the US government btw) is so committed to getting rid of opium why is it that such a small percentage of assistance actually reach the farmers??? Maybe the fact that the monetary reward that comes with the traffic of opium far outweighs the reward of eradication.

Afghan drug production already accounts for more than 90 percent of global supply of opium, the raw material for heroin.

Seems like Afghanistan has the market cornered when it comes to opium.

The option to destroy the poppy using herbicides was offered to Afghanistan...they refused
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,...ld/afghanistan

President Hamid Karzai's cabinet decided Sunday to hold off on using chemicals for now, said Said Mohammad Azam, spokesman for Afghanistan's Ministry of Counter Narcotics.

"There will be no ground spraying this year," Azam told The Associated Press.

Azam said there would be an increased effort to destroy poppy crops with "traditional" techniques — typically sending teams of laborers into fields to batter down or plow in the plants before they can be harvested.

"If it works, that is fine," Azam said. "If it does not, next year ground spraying will be in the list of options."

Karzai told foreign and Afghan officials this week that if Afghanistan's poppy crop is not reduced this year he would allow spraying in 2008, according to a Western official who requested anonymity because of the matter's sensitivity

Again another contradiction. First Karzai says that spraying will be an "option" in 2008 and then says he will allow spraying in 2008....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...120101654.html

Any disruption of the drug trade has enormous implications for Afghanistan's economic and political stability. Although its relative strength in the overall economy has diminished as other sectors have expanded in recent years, narcotics is a $2.6 billion-a-year industry that this year provided more than a third of the country's gross domestic product. Farmers who cultivate opium poppies receive only a small percentage of the profits, but U.S. officials estimate the crop provides up to 12 times as much income per acre as conventional farming, and there is violent local resistance to eradication.

So if the drug trade is so "enormous" to the Afghan ecomomy and farmers receive little profit, just who IS making the profit from it???

Opium cultivation was outlawed during Taliban rule in the late 1990s and was nearly eliminated by 2001. After the overthrow of the Taliban government by U.S. forces in the fall of that year, the Bush administration said that keeping a lid on production was among its highest priorities. But corruption and alliances formed by Washington and the Afghan government with anti-Taliban tribal chieftains, some of whom are believed to be deeply involved in the trade, undercut the effort.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai recently noted that "once we thought terrorism was Afghanistan's biggest enemy" but said that now "poppy, its cultivation and drugs are Afghanistan's major enemy."

WARNING: CONTRADICTION ALERT!!! Let me get this straight, the biggest enemy, the "terrorists" eliminate the cultivation of opium. Then Bush says that "keeping a lid on production" is his "highest" priority. Then the Afghan president says that the "terror" of opium production is a bigger enemy than the "terror" of the Taliban...how phucked up is that??? And to top it off those very same Taliban that almost eliminated the opium are now accused of being involved in it's traffic...

And this leads us right back to the meeting of US officials with the Taliban back in 2000.
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ASIANOW....us/index.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Although the United States has frequently criticized Afghanistan's Taliban regime, members of the Islamic government will be in Washington on Friday to meet with State Department officials.

Undersecretary for Political Affairs Thomas Pickering and Carl Inderfurth, assistant secretary for South Asian affairs, will meet with several Taliban members, including Deputy Foreign Minister Abdur Rahman Zahid, senior U.S. officials said.

The meeting, scheduled for 11 a.m. at the State Department, will "run the gamut of issues of concern" in the relationship between the United States and the Taliban, including narcotics trafficking and terrorism, the officials said.

Earlier this month in New York, the United States took part in the "six-plus-two" working group on Afghanistan, which included Afghan neighbors and Russia. After the meeting, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright criticized the Taliban's sanction of drug trafficking, its support for terrorism and its "deplorable human rights record."

Take a close look at Madeleine Albright's "criticism" of the Taliban's "sanction of drug trafficking". The word "sanction" can mean either to reward/allow or to punish. It has been proven that the Taliban passed laws against the cultivation of opium, so in essence the Taliban passed laws "to punish" drug trafficking and this is what Madeleine Albright is critizing. This meeting took place in Washington in 2000 because something had to be done to keep the flow of drugs constant and the Taliban was a THREAT TO THE DRUG PIPELINE.


sanction
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sanction

Word History: Occasionally, a word can have contradictory meanings. Such a case is represented by sanction, which can mean both "to allow, encourage" and "to punish so as to deter." It is a borrowing from the Latin word sānctiō, meaning "a law or decree that is sacred or inviolable." In English, the word is first recorded in the mid-1500s in the meaning "law, decree," but not long after, in about 1635, it refers to "the penalty enacted to cause one to obey a law or decree." Thus from the beginning two fundamental notions of law were wrapped up in it: law as something that permits or approves and law that forbids by punishing. From the noun, a verb sanction was created in the 18th century meaning "to allow by law," but it wasn't until the second half of the 20th century that it began to mean "to punish (for breaking a law). " English has a few other words that can refer to opposites, such as the verbs dust (meaning both "to remove dust from" and "to put dust on") and trim (meaning both "to cut something away" and "to add something as an ornament").

They even realize this in Britain
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.../15/wafg15.xml

The Government was accused of self-delusion last night over the Army's mission in Afghanistan after a Foreign Office minister admitted that the campaign against the Taliban was responsible for a bumper opium crop.

[TheAmazon]

Hell ya, those Afghans are trying to eat and live, period.

[Hubb]

wow thats rocket science

drug wars never work

[Martin Esco]

they also never end.

[alvin]

And if anyone was paying attention...

how did the Taliban know about Cheney's visit to Afghanistan if it was an "unannounced" visit? How does a supposed "terrorist" group have forewarningof a visit by a Vice-President when the average American isn't even privy to that type of information?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6399527.stm

The Taleban said they carried out the attack and that the attacker was trying to get to Mr Cheney, who was on an unannounced visit to the region.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapc....ap/index.html

A purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, said Cheney was the target of the attack.

"We knew that Dick Cheney would be staying inside the base," Ahmadi told The Associated Press by telephone. "The attacker was trying to reach Cheney."

Mitchell noted that Cheney's overnight stay occurred only after a meeting with Karzai on Monday was canceled because of bad weather.

"I think it's a far-fetched allegation," he said, referring to the Taliban claim. "The vice president wasn't even supposed to be here overnight, so this would have been a surprise to everybody."

White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said she could not confirm that the Taliban was behind the attack.

So if it was a last minute decision to stay at the base overnight, and the Taliban had no prior information that Cheney was present at the base...the Taliban really LUCKED OUT with the attack.

What are the odds of a RANDOM ATTACK on the base where the Vice-President stayed overnight AT THE LAST MINUTE on an UNANNOUNCED VISIT???

[david austin]

TERROR

[alvin]

Some more fishy stuff...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070307/...fghan_violence

Speaking by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location, Qassim said the Taliban has 8,000 to 9,000 fighters in Helmand province, including some 4,000 in the north, where NATO launched its largest-ever offensive Tuesday. He said all the fighters were Afghan, denying reports of hundreds of foreign fighters in the region.

I thought satellite calls can be tracked and traced to the point of origin??? And you tell me that they couldn't find this guys "undisclosed location"???

[PETA]

Originally Posted by alvin

Some more fishy stuff...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070307/...fghan_violence

I thought satellite calls can be tracked and traced to the point of origin??? And you tell me that they couldn't find this guys "undisclosed location"???

That means that the reporter didn't report or the called didn't say... not that the location couldn't be determined.

Besides, aren't you one of the chief deplorers of the Bush administration's trashing of the 4th amendment through tracking phone calls?

I don't think you get to complain that the adminstration can't do what you get upset about them doing.

[alvin]

Originally Posted by xian

That means that the reporter didn't report or the called didn't say... not that the location couldn't be determined.

Besides, aren't you one of the chief deplorers of the Bush administration's trashing of the 4th amendment through tracking phone calls?

I don't think you get to complain that the adminstration can't do what you get upset about them doing.

UNDISCLOSED means...

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/undisclosed

undisclosed

adjective
not made known

If the Taliban commanders location wasn't known don't you think the term that should have been used would have been "unknown location"?

So it means that the top Taliban commander was calling from a location not made known to reporters??? So it's obvious that SOMEBODY at the top knows where these Taliban "leaders" are supposedly hiding, and if they are such a threat(like everyone has been fed to believe) why haven't the artillery been called in to subdue them?

point to ponder...
If the Taliban knew where Cheney was going to be (in SPITE OF the fact that only a SELECT FEW were in the know of his exact movements) in order to launch an attack against him and you have a Taliban commander speaking to the press(?) from a location "not made known" and the US fails to launch an attack against a supposed high level "terrorist"...makes one wonder just what is going on.

Besides, aren't you one of the chief deplorers of the Bush administration's trashing of the 4th amendment through tracking phone calls?

I don't think this Taliban guy is in the United States so where and how does the 4th amendment apply? And besides didn't Bush give himself "special powers" since America is at "war" and the usual rules don't apply here, according to Bush that is.

[zerojunkie]

lol

[alvin]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070307/...fghan_violence

And another revelation to the "true nature" of this whole sordid affair...

Operation Achilles, comprising some 4,500 NATO and 1,000 Afghan troops, is focused on securing lawless regions of northern Helmand — the world's biggest poppy-growing region.

I thought the usual targets in a strike like this are "military" based. Is this a "war on terror" or a large scale DRUG WAR...Crips vs. Bloods x 1,000,000. Seems like this "Operation" is about who gets to "control" the worlds heroin business.

Maybe Cheney was in Afghanistan looking into the "business" and the Taliban put a "hit" out on him...wow, the Sopranos don't get any better than this...

And NATO even says who they are after...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...120101654.html

It is truly the Achilles' heel of Afghanistan," Gen. James L. Jones, the supreme allied commander for NATO, said in a recent speech at the Council on Foreign Relations. Afghanistan is NATO's biggest operation, with more than 30,000 troops. Drug cartels with their own armies engage in regular combat with NATO forces deployed in Afghanistan, he said. "It would be wrong to say that this is just the Taliban. I think I need to set that record straight," he added.

You have the NATO supreme commander saying that the Taliban and the drug cartels are two separate beasts. You have this OPERATION ACHILLES which is about to take place in opium central which has NOTHING TO DO WITH "TERROR" OR THE TALIBAN...but EVERYTHING to do with DRUGS!!!

[alvin]

And if anyone has been paying attention...

The next generation of heroin addicts are now being "groomed"...


"Cheese". Starting them out young...
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...s-heroin_x.htm

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/popup?id=2851491

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcont...e.14701ad.html

Same drug, different package. Younger dealers, too.

Law enforcement experts say high school kids – some of whom are gang members – appear to make up the loosely organized packagers and sellers of "cheese," the latest incarnation of heroin making its way into mostly Hispanic schools in northwest Dallas.

The heroin that is being cut with Tylenol PM to make cheese comes from the same sources that have been funneling the drug north from Mexico for years, according to police. But cheese represents the latest attempt to hook a new generation of customers, most of whom grew up with "Just Say No" commercials and are, by and large, averse to sticking needles in their arms – the traditional delivery method for heroin.

And just WHO is this cheese being marketed to?
Young Hispanics.

And what's going to happen when these young people become addicted and they are in need of a fix?
Increase in crime.

And where will these NEW inmates be held?
in prisons.

And who was contracted to build new prisons?
KBR(Halliburton)

And who is linked DIRECTLY to Halliburton?
Cheney

And WHO just was in Afghanistan?
Cheney

And how will this heroin get a foothold into the "heartland" of America more readily?
Think NAFTA SuperHighway

[alvin]

Go back and ponder just what the term "controlled substances" really means. Whoever ''controls" them... controls the price, controls who sells them, controls trafficking, controls who gets caught selling them, controls penalties & prison terms(ie. the disparity in sentencing for crack vs. cocaine), controls drug "laws"...etc.,

This "cheese" influx mirrors the start of the crack epidemic back in the '80's(to a tee). Get them hooked on a cheap product and then let the killing start and have the law enforcement and legal systems handle the rest.

[alvin]

History of the poppy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLnPiqvJ0jc

[alvin]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2282617.stm

Latest estimates suggest that poppy cultivation has increased by up to 1,400% since the removal of the Taleban regime at the end of last year.

So the removal of the Taliban had the desired effects on the international supply of opium for the traffickers...all done with the help of the US military.

Drugscope says heroin production in Afghanistan is likely to climb this year to between 1,900 and 2,700 tons.

This compares with a figure of just 185 tons in 2001, following the ban on opium cultivation introduced by the former Taleban regime.

That resulted in a 95% drop in production.

Isn't this around the same time that the Taliban was tagged as "public enemy number one" and the "terrorist" rhetoric was heightened?

And now you can see(I hope) how they are creating new markets for the additional supply of opium created by this "war on terror" with the introduction of "cheese".