[Marxism] 85 per cent of all drugs produced in Afghanistan are shipped out by US aircraft
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://presscore.ca/2011/?p=753 85 per cent of all drugs produced in Afghanistan are shipped out by US aircraft. Posted by PCLatest news, World newsWednesday, December 22nd, 2010 85 per cent of all drugs produced in Afghanistan is being shipped aboard US aircraft. Foreign diplomats have stated that the United States military buy drugs from local Afghan drug lords who deal with field commanders overseeing eradication of drug production. The administration of President Hamid Karzai, including his two brothers, Kajum Karzai and Akhmed Vali Karzai, are involved in the CIA controlled narcotics trade – one of the main reasons why the U.S. installed Karzai as De facto president of Afghanistan. “The Americans are working hard to keep narco business flourishing in both countries,” says Mikhail Khazin, president of the consultancy firm Niakon. “They consistently destroy the local infrastructure, pushing the local population to look for illegal means of subsistence. And the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] provides protection to drug trafficking.” U.S. freelance writer Dave Gibson recalled in an article published in the American Chronicle what a U.S. foreign intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, revealed of the CIA’s record of involvement with the international drug trade. The official said: “The CIA did almost the identical thing during the Vietnam War, which had catastrophic consequences – the increase in the heroin trade in the USA beginning in the 1970s is directly attributable to the CIA. The CIA has been complicit in the global drug trade for years, so I guess they just want to carry on their favourite business.” The New York Times, May 20, 2001 Taliban’s Ban On Poppy A Success, U.S. Aides Say UNITED NATIONS, May 18 — The first American narcotics experts to go to Afghanistan under Taliban rule have concluded that the movement’s ban on opium-poppy cultivation appears to have wiped out the world’s largest crop in less than a year, officials said today. The American findings confirm earlier reports from the United Nations drug control program that Afghanistan, which supplied about three-quarters of the world’s opium and most of the heroin reaching Europe, had ended poppy planting in one season. Under a U.S. and NATO occupation that wiped out Opium trade has been revived. Reuters, Feb 19, 2009 Afghan 2008 opium crop was second biggest: U.N. report Afghanistan’s opium harvest … 2008 … was … the second biggest on record, a United Nations body declared. While the area under cultivation was reduced by a fifth, better yields meant production dropped only 6 percent to 7,700 tons, after a record 8,200 tons in 2007, the U.N.’s International Narcotics Control Board said in its annual report. More than seven years after the U.S.-led invasion, Afghanistan still grows more than 90 percent of the world’s illegal opium poppies, the source of heroin. NATO forces are not allowed to eradicate crops although NATO allies agreed … to allow their soldiers to carry out direct attacks on Afghan drug lords and laboratories. Afghan officials let drug traffickers operate with impunity and those who do target the opium trade risk their lives, the report said. Last year (2008), 78 officials trying to eradicate opium crops were killed, six times the toll in 2007. Air America Afghanistan Air America was an American passenger and cargo airline established in 1950 and covertly owned and operated by the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Special Activities Division from 1950 to 1976. It supplied and supported US covert operations in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Air America transported opium and heroin on behalf of Hmong leader Vang Pao. This has been supported by former Laos CIA paramilitary Anthony Poshepny, former Air America pilots, U.S. diplomats, former DEA agents, Congressional oversight committees and other people involved in the war. University of Georgia historian William M. Leary claims that this was done without the airline employees’ direct knowledge (except for those employees that said they did know about it), and that the airline itself did not trade in drugs (only transported them). Air America officially disbanded on June 30, 1976, and was later purchased by Evergreen International Airlines, which continues to provide support for U.S. covert operations. Today Air America has been revived by the CIA, this time using U.S. military aircraft to transport the illegal drugs out of Afghanistan and into the United States. Short URL: http://presscore.ca/2011/?p=753 Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] 85 per cent of all drugs produced in Afghanistan are shipped out by US aircraft
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == At 10:00 09/01/11 -0500, Greg McDonald wrote: http://presscore.ca/2011/?p=753 85 per cent of all drugs produced in Afghanistan are shipped out by US aircraft. Posted by PCLatest news, World newsWednesday, December 22nd, 2010 I'm sorry to disappoint anyone, but this article is almost certainly bullshit, from a bullshit website. It does not have an identified author, and cites no verifiable sources. Of course it contains certain elements of truth regarding the hypocrisy of the charges against the Taliban for profiting from the heroin trade, and the involvement of Ahmed Wali Karzai. But this article is from a conspiracy website, and every single article I saw on that site is extremely suspect or just plain wrong. Especially the health/medical articles! I would have expected the poster of this article to have checked to see if the website has any legitimacy at all and/or if the information in the article could be verified or had even been published by a reputable source. Just posting articles you run across based on their shock value not only wastes our time, but provides us with misinformation which we might repeat (since we thought it was from a source that had been recommended), thus making fools of ourselves (and lowering our public credibility) when the claims prove unfounded. - Jeff Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] 85 per cent of all drugs produced in Afghanistan are shipped out by US aircraft
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Perhaps Jeff will like this one better: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175225/alfred_mccoy_afghanistan_as_a_drug_war On Sun, Jan 9, 2011 at 2:50 PM, Jeff meis...@xs4all.nl wrote: == Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == At 10:00 09/01/11 -0500, Greg McDonald wrote: http://presscore.ca/2011/?p=753 85 per cent of all drugs produced in Afghanistan are shipped out by US aircraft. Posted by PCLatest news, World newsWednesday, December 22nd, 2010 I'm sorry to disappoint anyone, but this article is almost certainly bullshit, from a bullshit website. It does not have an identified author, and cites no verifiable sources. Of course it contains certain elements of truth regarding the hypocrisy of the charges against the Taliban for profiting from the heroin trade, and the involvement of Ahmed Wali Karzai. But this article is from a conspiracy website, and every single article I saw on that site is extremely suspect or just plain wrong. Especially the health/medical articles! I would have expected the poster of this article to have checked to see if the website has any legitimacy at all and/or if the information in the article could be verified or had even been published by a reputable source. Just posting articles you run across based on their shock value not only wastes our time, but provides us with misinformation which we might repeat (since we thought it was from a source that had been recommended), thus making fools of ourselves (and lowering our public credibility) when the claims prove unfounded. - Jeff Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/gregmc59%40gmail.com Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] 85 per cent of all drugs produced in Afghanistan are shipped out by US aircraft
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == At 15:54 09/01/11 -0500, Mark Lause wrote: Please elaborate, Jeff. I agree with you down the line on your rationale for making this point, Well my rationale with respect to the article itself is that it was unsourced, unsigned, and a bit far-fetched. But my judgement of the website was based on skimming the other articles posted on it. In that respect I would rather turn the question around: can you find a single article on that site with information that you know to be accurate? If not, then I don't think I'm hasty in judging this article as having no more credibility than the website's health/medical misinformation (using sunscreen gives you cancer, don't take aspirin to lower your fever, Detoxifying benzene cures AIDS) or technology claims (government suppressed invention which supplies free energy and the 200 mpg car invented in 1933) and other familiar conspiracy theory material. but I don't find this listed at snopes, urban legend and the other sites identifying such fake news... Well maybe those sites have a suggestion box you could write to. But although this IS a conspiracy theory site, one funny thing about it: it is not a right-wing site at all. It seems sort of geared to appeal to leftists only, which IMO makes it yet more dangerous since it will just get people on OUR side making fools of ourselves Also: At 16:04 09/01/11 -0500, Greg McDonald wrote: Perhaps Jeff will like this one better: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175225/alfred_mccoy_afghanistan_as_a_drug_war Well yes, much better inasmuch as it's basically believable (though I'm not well enough informed on the subject to really judge its accuracy). For instance, it makes the point that: In each of these conflicts, Washington has tolerated drug trafficking by its Afghan allies as the price of military success -- a policy of benign neglect that has helped make Afghanistan today the world's number one narco-state. That's seems a lot more believable than 85% of Afghan heroin shipped out by US aircraft, don't you think? Not as shocking, but I'd rather run with the truth than a much more shocking statistic that someone made up and wrote down for our misinformation. - Jeff Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] 85 per cent of all drugs produced in Afghanistan are shipped out by US aircraft
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == With McCoy it is not really necessary to read between the lines, but his argument is a bit more nuanced. He says pretty much the same thing as the original article I posted, except he doesn't put a figure on it. But in terms of the website you are of course correct. The webpage is not very credible. I read the article because a FB friend had posted it. I did not even look at the website. My bad. BUT, I posted this particular article because I was familiar with McCoy's work, having read his books. I note you picked a paragraph from the second article, the one by McCoy, and quoted it out of context, to make it appear that McCoy is somehow agnostic on CIA involvement in Afghan heroin trafficking The paragraph below, taken from the same article, is much more damning: To defeat the Taliban in the aftermath of 9/11, the CIA successfully mobilized former warlords long active in the heroin trade to seize towns and cities across eastern Afghanistan. In other words, the Agency and its local allies created ideal conditions for reversing the Taliban's opium ban and reviving the drug traffic. Only weeks after the collapse of the Taliban, officials were reporting an outburst of poppy planting in the heroin-heartlands of Helmand and Nangarhar. At a Tokyo international donors' conference in January 2002, Hamid Karzai, the new Prime Minister put in place by the Bush administration, issued a pro forma ban on opium growing -- without any means of enforcing it against the power of these resurgent local warlords. And of course it is not far-fetched to assume the CIA is involved in transport, as McCoy states they were in Vietnam. So if you have read his book on Vietnam, the CIA, heroin, and Air America, you would of course find the article itself credible, which I did, and still do. Greg On Sun, Jan 9, 2011 at 5:50 PM, Jeff meis...@xs4all.nl wrote: At 15:54 09/01/11 -0500, Mark Lause wrote: Please elaborate, Jeff. I agree with you down the line on your rationale for making this point, Well my rationale with respect to the article itself is that it was unsourced, unsigned, and a bit far-fetched. But my judgement of the website was based on skimming the other articles posted on it. In that respect I would rather turn the question around: can you find a single article on that site with information that you know to be accurate? If not, then I don't think I'm hasty in judging this article as having no more credibility than the website's health/medical misinformation (using sunscreen gives you cancer, don't take aspirin to lower your fever, Detoxifying benzene cures AIDS) or technology claims (government suppressed invention which supplies free energy and the 200 mpg car invented in 1933) and other familiar conspiracy theory material. but I don't find this listed at snopes, urban legend and the other sites identifying such fake news... Well maybe those sites have a suggestion box you could write to. But although this IS a conspiracy theory site, one funny thing about it: it is not a right-wing site at all. It seems sort of geared to appeal to leftists only, which IMO makes it yet more dangerous since it will just get people on OUR side making fools of ourselves Also: At 16:04 09/01/11 -0500, Greg McDonald wrote: Perhaps Jeff will like this one better: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175225/alfred_mccoy_afghanistan_as_a_drug_war Well yes, much better inasmuch as it's basically believable (though I'm not well enough informed on the subject to really judge its accuracy). For instance, it makes the point that: In each of these conflicts, Washington has tolerated drug trafficking by its Afghan allies as the price of military success -- a policy of benign neglect that has helped make Afghanistan today the world's number one narco-state. That's seems a lot more believable than 85% of Afghan heroin shipped out by US aircraft, don't you think? Not as shocking, but I'd rather run with the truth than a much more shocking statistic that someone made up and wrote down for our misinformation. - Jeff Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] 85 per cent of all drugs produced in Afghanistan are shipped out by US aircraft
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == At 19:04 09/01/11 -0500, Greg McDonald wrote: I note you picked a paragraph from the second article, the one by McCoy, and quoted it out of context, to make it appear that McCoy is somehow agnostic on CIA involvement in Afghan heroin trafficking No not at all, that's a misinterpretation. I just grabbed that paragraph as a summary/conclusion of the article and contrasted it with the one from the conspiracy site. I'm sure McCoys article about this is accurate as it was in Vietnam. But the 85% claim was bullshit and you should have noted that when you first read it: how would someone come to such a numerical estimate anyway even if it were approximately true? But thanks for the McCoy article! - Jeff from the same article, is much more damning: To defeat the Taliban in the aftermath of 9/11, the CIA successfully mobilized former warlords long active in the heroin trade to seize towns and cities across eastern Afghanistan. In other words, the Agency and its local allies created ideal conditions for reversing the Taliban's opium ban and reviving the drug traffic. Only weeks after the collapse of the Taliban, officials were reporting an outburst of poppy planting in the heroin-heartlands of Helmand and Nangarhar. At a Tokyo international donors' conference in January 2002, Hamid Karzai, the new Prime Minister put in place by the Bush administration, issued a pro forma ban on opium growing -- without any means of enforcing it against the power of these resurgent local warlords. And of course it is not far-fetched to assume the CIA is involved in transport, as McCoy states they were in Vietnam. So if you have read his book on Vietnam, the CIA, heroin, and Air America, you would of course find the article itself credible, which I did, and still do. Greg On Sun, Jan 9, 2011 at 5:50 PM, Jeff meis...@xs4all.nl wrote: At 15:54 09/01/11 -0500, Mark Lause wrote: Please elaborate, Jeff. I agree with you down the line on your rationale for making this point, Well my rationale with respect to the article itself is that it was unsourced, unsigned, and a bit far-fetched. But my judgement of the website was based on skimming the other articles posted on it. In that respect I would rather turn the question around: can you find a single article on that site with information that you know to be accurate? If not, then I don't think I'm hasty in judging this article as having no more credibility than the website's health/medical misinformation (using sunscreen gives you cancer, don't take aspirin to lower your fever, Detoxifying benzene cures AIDS) or technology claims (government suppressed invention which supplies free energy and the 200 mpg car invented in 1933) and other familiar conspiracy theory material. but I don't find this listed at snopes, urban legend and the other sites identifying such fake news... Well maybe those sites have a suggestion box you could write to. But although this IS a conspiracy theory site, one funny thing about it: it is not a right-wing site at all. It seems sort of geared to appeal to leftists only, which IMO makes it yet more dangerous since it will just get people on OUR side making fools of ourselves Also: At 16:04 09/01/11 -0500, Greg McDonald wrote: Perhaps Jeff will like this one better: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175225/alfred_mccoy_afghanistan_as_a_drug _war Well yes, much better inasmuch as it's basically believable (though I'm not well enough informed on the subject to really judge its accuracy). For instance, it makes the point that: In each of these conflicts, Washington has tolerated drug trafficking by its Afghan allies as the price of military success -- a policy of benign neglect that has helped make Afghanistan today the world's number one narco-state. That's seems a lot more believable than 85% of Afghan heroin shipped out by US aircraft, don't you think? Not as shocking, but I'd rather run with the truth than a much more shocking statistic that someone made up and wrote down for our misinformation. - Jeff Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/meisner%40xs4all.nl Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] 85 per cent of all drugs produced in Afghanistan are shipped out by US aircraft
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I won't quibble with you over numbers. Let's leave that to the CIA bean counters. If you think the McCoy article was good, you should really check out his book, The Politics of Heroin. It's meticulously documented. And his new book on the Philippines is excellent. Greg On Sun, Jan 9, 2011 at 7:22 PM, Jeff meis...@xs4all.nl wrote: At 19:04 09/01/11 -0500, Greg McDonald wrote: I note you picked a paragraph from the second article, the one by McCoy, and quoted it out of context, to make it appear that McCoy is somehow agnostic on CIA involvement in Afghan heroin trafficking No not at all, that's a misinterpretation. I just grabbed that paragraph as a summary/conclusion of the article and contrasted it with the one from the conspiracy site. I'm sure McCoys article about this is accurate as it was in Vietnam. But the 85% claim was bullshit and you should have noted that when you first read it: how would someone come to such a numerical estimate anyway even if it were approximately true? But thanks for the McCoy article! - Jeff from the same article, is much more damning: To defeat the Taliban in the aftermath of 9/11, the CIA successfully mobilized former warlords long active in the heroin trade to seize towns and cities across eastern Afghanistan. In other words, the Agency and its local allies created ideal conditions for reversing the Taliban's opium ban and reviving the drug traffic. Only weeks after the collapse of the Taliban, officials were reporting an outburst of poppy planting in the heroin-heartlands of Helmand and Nangarhar. At a Tokyo international donors' conference in January 2002, Hamid Karzai, the new Prime Minister put in place by the Bush administration, issued a pro forma ban on opium growing -- without any means of enforcing it against the power of these resurgent local warlords. And of course it is not far-fetched to assume the CIA is involved in transport, as McCoy states they were in Vietnam. So if you have read his book on Vietnam, the CIA, heroin, and Air America, you would of course find the article itself credible, which I did, and still do. Greg Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] 85 per cent of all drugs produced in Afghanistan are shipped out by US aircraft
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Greg replied: I won't quibble with you over numbers. Let's leave that to the CIA bean counters. If you think the McCoy article was good, you should really check out his book, The Politics of Heroin. It's meticulously documented. And his new book on the Philippines is excellent. And, while we're at it, I wonder if anyone can steer me to good source documenting the current Mexican war on its citizens; the role of the drug cartels; and any potential connections with the U.S. government or military? I have read quite a few accounts indicating the devastating effects of Mexican military repression of its citizens as it seems to pretend to counter the drug trade. I just wonder if there are any viable in-depth analyses. Thanks for the edifying interchange on the conspiracy website; there are elaborators that sometimes do get it right and it is instructive to keep reminding oneself to check the sources. Manuel Greg On Sun, Jan 9, 2011 at 7:22 PM, Jeff meis...@xs4all.nl wrote: At 19:04 09/01/11 -0500, Greg McDonald wrote: I note you picked a paragraph from the second article, the one by McCoy, and quoted it out of context, to make it appear that McCoy is somehow agnostic on CIA involvement in Afghan heroin trafficking No not at all, that's a misinterpretation. I just grabbed that paragraph as a summary/conclusion of the article and contrasted it with the one from the conspiracy site. I'm sure McCoys article about this is accurate as it was in Vietnam. But the 85% claim was bullshit and you should have noted that when you first read it: how would someone come to such a numerical estimate anyway even if it were approximately true? But thanks for the McCoy article! - Jeff from the same article, is much more damning: To defeat the Taliban in the aftermath of 9/11, the CIA successfully mobilized former warlords long active in the heroin trade to seize towns and cities across eastern Afghanistan. In other words, the Agency and its local allies created ideal conditions for reversing the Taliban's opium ban and reviving the drug traffic. Only weeks after the collapse of the Taliban, officials were reporting an outburst of poppy planting in the heroin-heartlands of Helmand and Nangarhar. At a Tokyo international donors' conference in January 2002, Hamid Karzai, the new Prime Minister put in place by the Bush administration, issued a pro forma ban on opium growing -- without any means of enforcing it against the power of these resurgent local warlords. And of course it is not far-fetched to assume the CIA is involved in transport, as McCoy states they were in Vietnam. So if you have read his book on Vietnam, the CIA, heroin, and Air America, you would of course find the article itself credible, which I did, and still do. Greg Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/mtomas3%40hotmail.com Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] 85 per cent of all drugs produced in Afghanistan are shipped out by US aircraft
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Sun, Jan 9, 2011 at 8:00 PM, Manuel Barrera mtom...@hotmail.com wrote: Greg replied: I won't quibble with you over numbers. Let's leave that to the CIA bean counters. If you think the McCoy article was good, you should really check out his book, The Politics of Heroin. It's meticulously documented. And his new book on the Philippines is excellent. And, while we're at it, I wonder if anyone can steer me to good source documenting the current Mexican war on its citizens; the role of the drug cartels; and any potential connections with the U.S. government or military? I have read quite a few accounts indicating the devastating effects of Mexican military repression of its citizens as it seems to pretend to counter the drug trade. I just wonder if there are any viable in-depth analyses. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-29/banks-financing-mexico-s-drug-cartels-admitted-in-wells-fargo-s-u-s-deal.html http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/06/report-wachovia-bank-helped-launder-mexican-drug-money/1 http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/banksters-laundered-mexican-cartel-drug-money http://www.narconews.com/ Narco news has lots of info on US complicity in Mexican drug trade, militarization, etc. Greg Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
