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North Korea Is a Large Opium Producer Just Like Afghanistan — But That’s None of Your Business
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Nearly 16 years later, Afghanistan’s lucrative drug trafficking business is still roaring along unhindered, and — with U.S. troops literally guarding the occupied nation’s 90-percent share of the world’s opium supply — potential competitors rightly seemed scarce.
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That is, until North Korea just said ‘no’ to the Drug War.
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“In its early stage, the Kim Jong-un regime declared a war against drugs, getting rid of poppy fields,” Kang Cheol-hwan, president of the defector organization, North Korea Strategy Center, told Yonhap News Agency last month. “But now they are cultivating them again.”
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In an August 2011 interview with NPR, Ma Young Ae — a defector and former North Korean spy who lives in Virginia — explained she “worked for Kim Jong Il’s internal police force. Her job was was to track down drug smugglers. That sounds like pretty normal law enforcement, except for one difference. She was supposed to stop small-time Korean drug dealers in order to protect the biggest drug dealer in the country: the North Korean government.
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Kim Jong-il’s son and successor instead chose to fight the war on drugs — until the Chinese Commerce Ministry suspended imports of coal from February through the end of the year, in response to one of Pyongyang’s contentious ballistic missiles tests.
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Faced with the rapid loss of hard currency and an uphill battle to fund the regime’s activities — coal comprised an estimated 40 percent of North Korea’s exports to China — Kim Jong-un appears to have cozied to the wallet-stuffing possibilities the prized poppy provides.
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Noting the war on drugs had already failed, Kang added, “The North is cultivating poppy fields again for drug smuggling as a way to secure funds to manage its regime.”
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It must be duly noted, America’s opioid epidemic mushroomed only after U.S. troops invaded Afghanistan.
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“Within six months of the U.S. invasion,” wrote Matthieu Aikins for the December 4, 2014, Rolling Stone, “the warlords we backed were running the opium trade, and the spring of 2002 saw a bumper harvest of 3,400 tons.”
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Just prior to boots and bombs hitting the ground, opium production in Afghanistan fell to an impressive low of 185 pounds — all-too ironically, thanks to Taliban efforts to eradicate the entire supply of opium poppies.
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Mint Press News’ Mnar Muhawesh wrote last year, “The War in Afghanistan saw the country’s practically dead opium industry expanded dramatically. By 2014, Afghanistan was producing twice as much opium as it did in 2000. By 2015, Afghanistan was the source of 90 percent of the world’s opium poppy.”
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Claiming terrorism as the impetus for invading Afghanistan would be at least as absurd as the Drug Enforcement Agency claiming the global War on Drugs has been a success. Taliban forces have returned in strength to the nation whose opium poppies are guarded by U.S. troops — who are putatively present to fight in the ongoing War on Terror.
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After a moment deeply pondering the last point, it’s imperative to address current events — specifically, U.S. military vessels already present in the South and East China Seas, amid dangerously high tensions with North Korea.
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Daily Archives: April 20, 2017
Facebook Developing ‘Type With Your Brain’ Silent Speech Technology » Alex Jones’ Infowars: There’s a war on for your mind!
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it is already possible to type words with an implant surgically implanted in your head, albeit at a significantly slower speed, this is not what Facebook is aiming for, as such technology “simply won’t scale.”
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The system will be based on optical imaging technology which will track the changes in neuron activity that occurs when we speak and almost instantly convert them into words on a smartphone screen. Facebook has set the ambitious goal of developing the silent speech interface over the course of the next two years.
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you will be able to “type from your brain about 5 times faster than your type on your phone today.”
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“Our brains produce enough data to stream 4 HD movies every second. The problem is that the best way we have to get information out into the world – speech – can only transmit about the same amount of data as a 1980s modem,”
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While some people are already creeped out at the prospect of having a “mind-reading” device on the market, Dugan assured the conference audience that the technology will be designed only to share thoughts that “you have already decided to send to the speech center of your brain.”
“It’s not about decoding random thoughts,” she said at the conference on Wednesday, as cited by the Guardian.
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Slow down on the technology, it’s bad enough children aren’t learning cursive in school, with this they won’t need to learn to write,” Kathy Klein wrote.
“Brilliant idea! Except we now have so many people who are unable to write, or sign their names. Now we’ll have those who are unable to write, and type,” Sherry Samaroo said.
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Cicada Deep Dive | I Am Cicada
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Cicada Deep Dive | I Am Cicada
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What if we could build a totally decentralized, secure, private internet right on top of the old one? Then after twelve months of intensive design work we realized, we can actually build this thing.
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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Think with me on this one. Go back 200-300 years and travel to America. What do you see? Fast forward 20 years and now what do you see? Fast forward another 20 and take a look around. Keep doing this. Eventually, the need to organize or create a government arrises. Cyber space (the internet) is being looked at like that. Cicada is a great way to harness the potential of this new world we call the Internet. It is 1776 again but Cicada is a system that weeds out much of the corruption that such ventures have a tendency to attract.
New Evidence that Syrian Gas Story Was Fabricated by the White House
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DownWithTyranny!: New Evidence that Syrian Gas Story Was Fabricated by the White House
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First, British scientists were given samples from the alleged gas attack that contained traces of sarin. The presence of sarin had previously been doubted, since first-responders were videoed handling victims with their bare hands (see image at the top), actions that would have killed them if sarin were present on the victims’ bodies. On this evidence — the discovery of sarin in samples given to analysts — British UN Ambassador Matthew Rycroft concurs with the U.S. that Assad’s responsibility for a gas attack is "highly likely." In other words, an estimation.
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Second, a small crater that was said to have been made by a sarin-containing munitions blast has been studied by Dr. Theodore Postol, professor emeritis at MIT, and he showed that the blast dispersal pattern is "more consistent with the possibility that the munition was placed on the ground rather than dropped from a plane." Postol continues, "Analysis of the debris as shown in the photographs cited by the White House clearly indicates that the munition was almost certainly placed on the ground with an external detonating explosive on top of it that crushed the container so as to disperse the alleged load of sarin [downward]."
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The Story to This Point
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As Porter notes: "Exposure to smoke munitions that create phosphine gas when in contact with moisture can cause neurological symptoms that mimic those of sarin, because they both damage the body’s ability to produce the enzyme cholinesterase."
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if Gareth Porter and his sources are right, the U.S. military knew everything they needed to know to understand that the reason they gave for launching the Tomahawk strike was false. That they knowingly lied, in other words.
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New Evidence that the Trump Administration Lied about Assad’s Role
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Theodore Postol is the former Chair of the MIT Security Studies Department and was called as an expert witness in a lawsuit against the National Missile Defense Program. This is his area of expertise
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This report provides unambiguous evidence that the White House Intelligence Report (WHR) of April 11, 2017 contains false and misleading claims that could not possibly have been accepted in any professional review by impartial intelligence experts. The WHR was produced by the National Security Council under the oversight of the National Security Advisor, Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster [emphasis added (GP)].much more at this site.
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