So, the actor, Phillip Seymour Hoffman dies of a heroin overdose. And the news drones on- the tragedy. The horror. And, sure it is. For his family etc.,Phillip Seymour Hoffman in the Big LebowskiWhy am I talking up this celebrity death? As readers here know, I don't do celebrity news. But I will jump at an opportunity when one is so conveniently presented to talk about the far bigger issue that is not being addressed in all the dirt being dished on one drug addicted celebrity. A subject that others should be more familiar with too.First of all, generally speaking, the absurdity of the “war on drugs” Usually when there is a ‘war’ on something, anything, really. It is not a war against any one thing. But is really a war in support of somethingSo the war on terror? Is a war of terror. The war on drugs? Is a war for drugs. Yes a war for drugs!Their use. Their global spread. The profits. Money for covert ops and destabilization campaigns. Money for the banksters and the corrupt institution of private central banking. And all the damage that industry brings. Families destroyed. Communities destroyed. Nations destroyed. On purpose. By design.Phillip Seymour Hoffman's overdose is an opportunity to remind persons who may be unaware just where it is this problem originates. I will sum it up in just a few short words- The Military Industrial Drug, Banking and Terror Complex. That's it folks. Without that drug money wars could not be waged, nations destabilized and banks might fail. Hell the world would likely be a much better place...If we, the masses, want to understand why it is that - Heroin's Resurgence (is) Sparked by Cheap Cost, Easy Access-We have to look most recently at NATO and the invasion of Afghanistan
Heroin, suspected of killing actor Philip Seymour Hoffman this weekend, has for years been a forgotten drug, overtaken by abuse of prescription painkillers. Now it’s back, and in a big way. Heroin-related deaths jumped 84 percent in New York City from 2010 to 2012
Heroin today is cheaper and more easily obtained than prescription painkillers whose use has been limited by federal and state laws that tighten doctor and patient access. A bag of heroin sells for about $10 on Long Island, while the equivalent amount of Vicodin costs $30, Reynolds said.
“If you shut down the supply and don’t deal with demand, people turn to heroin,” he said by telephone. Nationally, heroin use increased 79 percent from 2007 to 2012, with 669,000 people in the U.S. reporting they used the drug, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health released in 2013.
Why has heroin become cheaper and more accessible?Afghanistan: Afghan heroin & the CIAThe World’s #1 Narco-State
Drug trafficking is the largest global commodity in profits after the oil and arms trade, consequently, “immediately following the October 2001 invasion opium markets were restored. Opium prices spiraled. By early 2002, the domestic price of opium in Afghanistan (in dollars/kg) was almost 10 times higher than in 2000.”[15] The Anglo-American invasion of Afghanistan successfully restored the drug trade. The Guardian recently reported that, “In 2007 Afghanistan had more land growing drugs than Colombia, Bolivia and Peru combined.”[16].
The scourge of heroin can be connected to the invasion of Afghanistan by the imperial west...5. Who Profits from the Drug Trade?
Wall Street and Big BanksMichel Chossudovsky describes the heroin trade as a “hierarchy of prices,” with the drug’s street price, (what it is sold for in largely Western cities around the world), is 80 to 100 times the price paid to the farmers who cultivate it in Afghanistan.[25] The IMF reported that in the late 1990s, money laundering accounted for 2-5% of the world’s GDP, and that a large percentage of the 590 billion to 1.5 trillion dollars in annual money laundering is “directly linked to the trade in narcotics.” This lucrative trade in narcotics produces profits which are “laundered in the numerous offshore banking havens in Switzerland, Luxembourg, the British Channel Islands, the Cayman Islands and some 50 other locations around the globe.” These offshore havens “are controlled by major Western banks and financial institutions” which “have a vested interest in maintaining and sustaining the drug trade.”[26]
The big banks profit handsomely from the drug trade. This has been reported on more then one occasionSo let's flashback to a couple of my older postsOne from 09- Wow, Drug money flowed into banks!Really the drug money did more then flow into the banks... it kept the banks afloatThere was so much of it going around. And it still does, today.This was not a one off.Then in 2010- US banks' role in Mexican drug tradeIf you have the time to dig a bit more I am quite certain much, much more information can be found linking the banks to the drug trade
U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Noel Rodriguez, a team leader with Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team 6, communicates with an adjacent squad while on patrol in Sangin, Helmand province, Afghanistan,
The images all come from an article at Global Research- American troops protecting Afghan opium- Occupation leads to an all time high in Heroin productionNow let's listen to Part 2 of an interview with Rick RozoffOh and thanks to karin for directing me to this excellent interview last week. I enjoyed it!In all actuality...... you should listen to all 4 parts but for this post I will focus specifically on Part 2All four parts add up to about an hour of listening time.PART 1,PART 2,PART 3, PART 4Quoting from the transcript for Part 2
Robles: Two points I’d like to make and then you can continue any way you’d like. You said you wanted to speak about the human toll, the heroin wreaks on the world. The US taxpayers have spent, as far as I know, the figures I saw were about $7 billion in fighting narcotics production; opium production, heroin production – in Afghanistan. I believe that figure is correct, if I’m wrong, please, tell me. So, they weren’t there to stop heroin production. They weren’t there to get rid of the Taliban, while making secret deals with them and they are going to come back in power even more powerful than they were before. So, what was the real point of 12 years in Afghanistan then?
Rozoff: Well, I mean, I know what the answer to that is, but it is not what generally is offered as an explanation for the invasion, the occupation of Afghanistan. To read between the lines slightly all one needs to do, is read Anders Fogh Rasmussen or any other NATO official on their website. I invite people to visit the NATO website, it is where you are going to find out the truth but you may have to decipher it a bit.And what you hear again and again is that Afghanistan has proven the testing ground or the training ground for a developing interoperability between NATO members and partners. Again, over 50 nations provided military forces for NATO in the ongoing war in Afghanistan. And what NATO walks away from… the Afghans of course have suffered a disastrous period, the region likewise and the world security has certainly not gained in any manner from the spot, NATO has walked away by having fused or integrated military units from 50 different countries.People without any sense of history may not appreciate the significance of that fact, but for a moment, you know, the act of belligerence, even in WW II, for example, I’d be surprised if formally there were more than 20 on the side of the allies and now you’ve got 50 serving in one country, under one military command – NATO. That’s what NATO used Afghanistan for. It was simply a training ground for consolidating an international military strike force, what is referred to as the NATO Response Force, the nucleus of which will be this 50-nation alliance that NATO was able to put together inside Afghanistan.On the question of the human toll of heroin, I’ll be brief on that but I’ll be personal. I worked in the past as a substance abuse counselor. I worked at methadone maintenance clinic. I know what heroin addiction does to people. I’ve seen young women out prostituting themselves. I’ve seen young babies left in their own feces and so forth as their parents are hunting down a fix. I know what heroin does to people. And if you multiply that on the level of hundreds of thousands or millions and this is what is happening, this is the untold cost of the Afghan war.And you don’t have to look too far. The Russian Government will tell you what the figures are in their own country in heroin deaths and heroin addiction. The Iranian Government will tell you the same. I’m sure the five nations of Central Asia can say something similar. I’m sure that Pakistan and India are suffering this as well. And this is going to take generations to rectify.
Robles: It is an insidious cycle, and I’d really like you to comment on this as well, the whole heroin cycle includes the cultivators, the farmers – right? It begins with them, it ends up with somebody dying in a stairwell in Chicago with a dirty needle in their vein or something. But in between you’ve got government officials, you’ve got even US diplomats, maybe, you’ve got the CIA, you’ve got NATO officials and everyone is making money of it. How much do you think the US and NATO have profited from the entire heroin scheme in Afghanistan?
Rozoff: That’s rich ground for speculation. I would reference I think, as you were talking about the golden triangle earlier, Alfred McCoy he is a Professor, or was at least, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He wrote a book on just that topic, about the Southeast Asia during the war in Indo-China.
Robles: I’ve actually read that.
Rozoff: Good, talk about it! Inevitably, all the other plagues follow in the track of war; famine, disease, drug addiction, prostitution, dislocation. It is as sure as the night follows day you are going to find that. However, there is a more insidious side that you are alluding to, which is that one way of in the post WW II period of financing counterinsurgency groups that are artificially governmental in nature is through the drug trade.
This occurred in central America, it has occurred in south America, it has occurred in Indo-China, it has occurred in the Balkans, it is occurring currently in south and central Asia where cutthroat mercenary outfits do the dirty work, particularly for the CIA, and in return are allowed to run narcotics trafficking, perhaps, in conjunction with US military forces, as a way of paying themselves outside of the congressionally scrutinized budget. You know, it is a slush fund or a secret budget of some sort. We just have to assume that’s going on.There has been discussion, I think there’s even been some degree of proof that there is a drug route that goes now from Afghanistan possibly through the air base in Manas in Kirgizstan fairly directly into the Balkans, probably Kosovo. And we know that criminal gangs or syndicates affiliated with the putative government of Kosovo, of Hashim Thaçi, have been directly implicated in running the preponderance of the drug trade throughout Europe. So, it would seem logical that opium, cultivated, farmed, semi-processed in Afghanistan or even processed into heroin and other by-products would then make their way into the drugs circuit in the Balkans, and from there to the West. It is more than a likely possibility.
Robles: So, this is going through… out of US military installations in Afghanistan to the US base possibly in Kosovo you think or… ?Rozoff: There has been a discussion about that. And it seems plausible, at the very least. We are talking about the transit center of Manas in Kirgizstan, which is supposed to be closed down finally next year, unless the US raises the bid, as they’ve done in the past to maintain it yet further. But assuming that’s closed down, the US has modernized and expanded several air bases within Afghanistan itself – the Bagram Air Base north of the capital, Shindand near the Iranian border and other places and the US has no intention of vacating those bases ever, I think it is safe in assuming.
So, amongst other things that provide them probably long enough and big enough runways to accommodate strategic aircraft, should the US want to position such in the center of the south Asian region, but also cargo planes – they can bring anything in or out of the country as they choose, much as Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo. It is not under any international supervision. The Kosovo force, the NATO military force in Afghanistan is, at least nominally, under the UN mandate but the US military base in Kosovo – Camp Bondsteel, as far as I know, is not inspected by anybody.There’s been speculation by the Russian officials that if the US chooses to place nuclear weapons, say tactical nuclear weapons closer to the Russian border or the Iranian border, they could do so in Kosovo without anyone being wised up. So, why not narcotics?
Robles: This collusion in narcotics trafficking has been very well documented and proven. And it doesn’t matter how many times Oliver North said “I have no recollection” I mean, this is a fact of their operations.Rozoff: Yes, war is a filthy business. It is one that by definition really is without ethics. And if Congress puts up even a titular or nominal opposition in any way or demands any sort of supervision of activities, then the Oliver Norths of the world find some way of getting it done otherwise. And that if means arms to terrorist gangs in central America going south and those same cargo planes coming back with marihuana and cocaine coming north, then what is the objection from the point of view of somebody who is willing to kill innocent people. I mean, if murder is justifiable, then what crime is not?
I could go on. And on. And on, with this subject. It's a huge subject because it is an expansive problem. It's a problem that more people need to be aware of. It is not just a problem of bad people becoming addicted. That's the end result. It's a global corruption issue. And the people who die and the families that mourn those losses along with the society that is destroyed are all casualties of the military industrial drug and terror complex. And perhaps in my naivete or faith in humanity or hope for humankind by making people aware of this issue, people will choose not to become so much more cannon fodder? I don't know? Maybe that is too simplistic? Or maybe I just prefer to see people built up rather then torn down.Whatever the case may be- here is hoping as always- awareness is empowering
Updated from jo6pac, with thanks!jo6pacFebruary 4, 2014 at 1:23 PMSounds like the good o days.Yup, the ones that never really went away. Because.... there is a history of this type of activityAnd joe mentions an important piece of history. One that cost a real investigative journalist his life.Dark Alliance: The story behind the crack explosion