Paul Joseph Watson
Friday, November 20, 2009
Not content with savaging American taxpayers with two huge new financial burdens during an economic recession, in the form of health care reform and cap and trade, close allies of Barack Obama have proposed a new war surtax that will force Americans to foot the bill for the cost of protecting opium fields in Afghanistan, paying off drug lords, and bribing the Taliban.
Warning that the cost of occupying Afghanistan is a threat to the Democrats’ plan to overhaul health care, lawmakers have announced their plan to make Americans pay an additional war tax that will be taken directly from their income, never mind the fact that around 36 per cent of federal taxes already go to paying for national defense.
“Regardless of whether one favors the war or not, if it is to be fought, it ought to be paid for,” the lawmakers, all prominent Democratic allies of Obama, said in a joint statement on the “Share The Sacrifice Act of 2010 (PDF),” reports AFP.
The move is being led by the appropriately named House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey, Representative John Murtha, who chairs that panel’s defense subcommittee; and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank.
The tax would apply to anyone earning as little as $22,600 per year in 2011.
The proposal is described as “heavily symbolic” with little chance of passing, but it once again illustrates the hypocrisy of an administration that swept to power on the promise of “change” to the Neo-Con imperial agenda and a resolve to reduce U.S. military involvement overseas. In reality, there are more troops in Iraq and Afghanistan now under Obama that at any time during the Bush administration.
At the height of the Bush administration’s 2007 “surge” in Iraq, there were 26,000 US troops in Afghanistan and 160,000 in Iraq, a total of 186,000.
According to DoD figures cited by The Washington Post last month, there are now around 189,000 and rising deployed in total. There are now 68,000 troops in Afghanistan, over double the amount deployed there when Bush left office.
What precisely would this extra tax be used to pay for? Namely, bribing the Taliban, paying off CIA drug lords, and protecting heroin-producing opium fields.
Numerous reports over the past two weeks have confirmed that the U.S. military is paying off the Taliban with bags of gold to prevent them from attacking vehicle convoys, proving that there is no real “war” in Afghanistan, merely a business agreement that allows the occupiers to continue their lucrative control of record opium exports while they finalize construction of dozens of new military bases from which to launch new wars.
The Afghan opium trade has exploded since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, following a lull after the Taliban had imposed a crackdown. According to the U.N., the drug trade is now worth $65 billion. Afghanistan produces 92 per cent of the world’s opium, with the equivalent of at least 3,500 tonnes leaving the country each year.
This racket is secured by drug kingpins like the brother of disputed president Hamid Karzai. As a New York Times report revealed last month, Ahmed Wali Karzai, a Mafia-like figure who expanded his influence over the drug trade with the aid of U.S. efforts to eliminate his competitors, is on the CIA payroll.
As Professor Michel Chossudovsky has highlighted in a series of essays, the explosion of opium production after the invasion was about the CIA’s drive to restore the lucrative Golden Crescent opium trade that was in place during the time when the Agency were funding the Mujahideen rebels to fight the Soviets, and flood the streets of America and Britain with cheap heroin, destroying lives while making obscene profits.
Any war surtax will merely go straight to maintaining the agenda that Obama inherited from Bush, the continued looting of Afghanistan under the pretext of a “war on terror” that, as revelations about bribing the Taliban prove, doesn’t even exist.
Afghanistan opium poppy cultivation 1994-2007
The Taliban has almost eradicated the poppy fields. No sooner did the war begin and the poppy fields wee reborn.
Children work the poppy fields young as 8 or 9
Narco-Nation Building
By Paul L. Williams, Ph.D
July 7 2009
Hey, guys, don’t pick the poppies.
That’s the order from the Obama Administration to the 4,000 Marines presently engaged in Operation Khanjar or “Strike of the Sword,” an invasion of the Taliban infested Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan.
The Marines of Bravo’s Company 1st Platoon sleep beside groves of poppies Troops of the 2nd Platoon walk through the fields on strict orders not to swat the heavy opium bulbs. The Afghan farmers and laborers, who are engaged in scraping the resin from the bulbs, smile and wave at the passing soldiers.
The Helmand province is the world’s largest cultivator of opium poppies – the crop used to make heroin.
Afghanistan grew 93 percent of the world’s poppy crop last year, with Helmand alone responsible for more than half of the opium production in the country, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Heroin, as it turns out, represents the only staple of the Afghan economy. The country manufactures no domestic products for exportation and the rocky terrain yields no cash crops – – except, of course, the poppies.
The poppies fuel the great jihad against the United States and the Western world. More than 3,500 tons of raw opium is gleaned from the poppy crops every year, producing annual revenues for the Taliban and al Qaeda that range from $5 billion to $16 billion.
Destroying the fields could very well put an end to terrorist activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
But the Obama Administration remains intent upon protecting the poppies so that the Afghan farmers and local drug lords can reap the benefits of what purports to be a bumper crop.
Many Marines in the field are scratching their heads over the situation.
Jason Striuszko a journalist embedded with the U.S. Marines in Garmser, reports that many of the leathernecks are scratching their heads at the apparent contradictions — calling in airstrikes and artillery on the elusive Taliban while assuring farmers and drug lords that they will protect the poppies.
“Of course,” Striuszko says, “those fields will be harvested and some money likely used to help fuel the Taliban, and the Marines are thinking, essentially, ‘huh?’”
“It’s kind of weird. We’re coming over here to fight the Taliban. We see this. We know it’s bad. But at the same time we know it’s the only way locals can make money,” said 1st Lt. Adam Lynch, 27, of Barnstable, Mass.
Richard Holbrooke, the Obama Administration’s top envoy in Afghanistan, says that poppy eradication – for years a cornerstone of U.S. and U.N. anti-drug efforts in the country – has only resulted in driving Afghan farmers into the hands of the Taliban.
The new approach, Holbrooke maintains, will try to wean the farmers of the lucrative cash crop by giving them help to grow other produce, like wheat, corn and pomegranates.
Most of the 33,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan operate in the east, where the poppy problem is not as great. But the 2,400-strong 24th Marines, have taken the field in this southern growing region during harvest season.
An expert on Afghanistan’s drug trade, Barnett Rubin, complained that the Marines are being put in such a situation by a “one-dimensional” military policy that fails to integrate political and economic considerations into long-range planning.
“All we hear is, not enough troops, send more troops,” said Rubin, a professor at New York University. “Then you send in troops with no capacity for assistance, no capacity for development, no capacity for aid, no capacity for governance.”
Staff Sgt. Jeremy Stover, whose platoon is sleeping beside a poppy crop planted in the interior courtyard of a mud-walled compound, said the Marines’ mission is to get rid of the “bad guys,” and “the locals aren’t the bad guys.”
“Poppy fields in Afghanistan are the cornfields of Ohio,” said Stover, 28, of Marion, Ohio. “When we got here they were asking us if it’s OK to harvest poppy and we said, ‘Yeah, just don’t use an AK-47.’”
U.S. soldiers inspect a cache of opium that was seized at a border police station on the outskirts of Herat, October 23 2007. Afghan border police in the western Afghan city have seized 644 kilograms of opium. Afghanistan accounts for over 93 percent of the world’s supply of opium, the main ingredient in heroin, a lucrative trade whose proceeds in part fund some of the Taliban-led insurgency. AFP PHOTO/STR (Photo credit should read STR/AFP/Getty Images)
They don’t tell you about this, about Afghanistan’s growing domestic drug problem – an estimated 1.5 million addicts, including 120,000 women, according to the Ministry of Narcotics – all those advocates of legalizing the country’s robust opium crop – a yield that provides some 93 per cent of the world’s heroin. This heroin, which is refined opium, ends up on streets across the globe but also is destroying families here. Source
They also fail to mention the problem now in Iran , Iraq,
Russia, Europe and North America.
There are millions of new heroin addicts around the world.
Karima leaned to one side and rubbed her temples with half-painted pink fingernails. The smile that was wide and infectious for her visitors had now surrendered to the internal darkness that ruled her addiction.
The day had started like most in her life: With an opium tea that she drinks to “feel happy.” On bad days, she needs it three or four times.
Karima is 13.
She is bright, and confident, but left school during fourth grade. From the two narrow rooms they call home in an otherwise abandoned building, she cannot see a future that is either clean or normal — a hard assessment for a girl who is barely a teenager.
“There is no one but me to support the family and we have nothing to live easily,” she said. “I feel sad most of the time and the tea makes me feel better.”
Her mother, Najiba, raised five children on a steady diet of narcotics to ease their hunger pains and winter chills and her own grief from losing a son. The whole family has been through drug treatment — twice — and Najiba claims to be healthy.
Karima is still addicted. She buys the drugs herself with money from her father and boils the opium tea the way her mother long did for her.
Her wild-eyed youngest sister, Raisa, is three years old and clicks her tongue while fidgeting with a red patent purse. Raisa had opium in her veins before she was born. Najiba cut her off months ago, but Raisa remembers the “dizzy” tea and craves it. I asked her why.
“Because I miss it,” she said in the tiniest voice. “I like it.” Source
Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials. Source
Opium production is one of the chief sources of revenue for the warlords that occupy the Afghan parliament and is one of the main reasons why the government is seen as corrupt by the Afghan people. As long as NATO continues to bomb civilians in an effort to extend the control of those warlords, the Afghan people will continue to join the resistance to the foreign occupation.
This reality led to the recent resignation of Matthew Hoh, a former US army captain and Foreign Service official in Zabul province. Hoh resigned because he said that the presence of the foreign troops was the main reason why the resistance was growing and he believed that the war needed to end. Source
They have never connected Bin Laden to 9/11
Bin Laden has been dead since December of 2001
9/11 was just an excuse to go to war in Afghanistan nothing more.
The results of the invasion of Afghanistan is devastating to say the least.
The radiation will have a very devastating impact on Afghans. The testing proved the use of radioactive weapons. Source
The end result will be as it is in Iraq and other countries Nato and the US have invaded.
Doctors report “unprecedented” rise in deformities, cancers in Iraq
Kosovo
Since its dealings with the Meo tribesmen in Laos during the Vietnam era, the CIA has protected narcotics traffic in key locations in order partly to finance its covert operations. The scale of international narcotics traffic today is such that major US banks such as Citigroup are reported to derive a significant share of their profits from laundering the proceeds. Source
CIA Drug Operations a little history
Pipelines in the Middle East Afghanistan included/ Maps as well
Drug money used as a geopolitics weapon by CIA-RAW-Mossad
March 12, 2010
By Brig Asif Haroon Raja
US Administration under George Bush senior had formulated New World Order in 1989 in anticipation to assuming world leadership. Among several aspects how to go about harnessing world resources and to micro manage world affairs, Islam was identified as the next threat to US interests after the imminent collapse of communism which by that time was gasping for breath. Afghanistan figured high in US security paradigm. After the Taliban captured power in 1996 and declared Sharia and refused to abide by terms and conditions of US economic tycoons with regard to shipment of oil and gas from Central Asia through Afghanistan, it was circled for invasion in 1997. In August 1998, Osama bin Laden’s camps in Khost province of Afghanistan were struck by cruise missiles. In July 2001, some high US officials declared that Afghanistan would be invaded in October that year. Going by this sequence of events, it becomes evident that neo-cons in connivance with Jews manufactured 9/11 to achieve their global ambitions. Jewish controlled media played a key role in triggering world wide condemnation of 9/11 attacks and in fomenting hatred against Muslims among the non-Muslim world.
9/11 was an excuse to formulate draconian laws and policies of pre-emption and unilateralism. Terrorism became the most sinful and unforgivable offence. Under the buzzword of terrorism, world cooperation was harnessed to fight global war on terror and supposedly free the world from this menace which in their view posed the biggest threat to world security. Freedom movements within Muslim world were converted into terrorism and terrorism became synonymous to Islam. Al-Qaeda was created from nowhere and transformed into a faceless monster that would appear like a ghost in all areas of US interest. Islamic threat was demonized to justify existence of NATO that had lost its rationale and locus standi after end of Cold War and expiry of Warsaw Pact in 1991.
Afghanistan was not invaded to avenge terror attacks allegedly master minded by Afghanistan based Osama bin Laden and those who harbored him. The real intention was to convert Afghanistan into a permanent US military station wherefrom it could promote its strategic interests. These interests included tapping unexplored mineral resources of Central Asia and shipping gas and oil to Europe and USA through Afghanistan and Pakistan; monitoring China and Russia; remaining within turn round distance of Persian Gulf; preventing Iran from going nuclear and affecting a regime change of its choice; subverting and denuclearizing Pakistan; making India the regional policeman; restoring and controlling world largest supply of opium for world heroin markets and to use drugs as a geopolitics weapon against opponents, especially Russia. In pursuit of its multiple objectives Afghanistan was ruthlessly destroyed and till to-date has not been vacated.
CIA has a track record of using drug money to support its covert operations all over the world. It toppled Mossadeq led regime in Iran in 1953. It armed Iraqi Kurds in 1975 to destabilize Iraqi regime. It also used drug money to back Contras movement in Nicaragua in 1980 to bring democracy. Cocaine being the most sought drug became the favorite production of CIA. Unprecedented volume of cocaine trafficking took place in the 1980s but no eyebrow was raised in Washington. Drug money was extensively utilized by CIA to finance Afghan jihad against Soviet troops in Afghanistan from 1979 till 1989. Commercial production of opium began in 1980s, replacing cocaine with heroin and this new product flooded the US and European markets. By the time Afghan war came to an end, Afghanistan had become the second largest opium producing country. Its production rate had swelled to 1350 metric tons.
When the Taliban under Mullah Omar captured power in 1996, the Islamic regime carried out host of social reforms including imposition of ban on opium production. There was steep decline in this practice for the first time. The Taliban during their rule till October 2001 suffered from worst economic crisis due to severe sanctions imposed by USA and western countries but they never used opium to build their economy. Interestingly, this ban became one of the core reasons for the US to invade Afghanistan.
Afghanistan has now become a narco-state and the largest opium producing country in the world. Younger brother of Hamid Karzai Ahmad Wali Karzai in Kandahar has been the main player exporting heroin to Europe through Turkmenistan. Indian Embassy in Kabul has been working as the coordinating centre for drug trade. Countries like Pakistan and Iran lying in the path of drug trade route are the worst affected since drugs destroy social norms and values as they have in the west. It has made a debilitating impact on societal fabric. By 2008, 8000 metric tons had been exported to world markets. Afghanistan is producing 8250 metric tons per year, which makes 90-92% of world opium supply. Illegal opium production is worth $ 65 billions. Afghan warlords involved are deeply involved in enriching their coffers through drug trade.
While international drug mafia is fully controlled by Zionists, CIA is complicit in global drug trade. Without active support of Pentagon and CIA, it is simply not possible to export opium in thousands of tons. Free licenses are liberally issued to drug producers and traffickers. There are credible reports that US military planes have been made use of and even some coffins were filled with heroin instead of bodies. Truckloads of heroin transfer heroin daily. Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, silenced for years by George W. Bush Administration, testified to the use of NATO planes transporting drugs as well as international terrorists.
Under the pretext of hunting al-Qaeda, CIA has made deep inroads in Pakistan. Drug money is not only used by CIA to finance its illegal operations in Pakistan and elsewhere but also US economy also which because of economic crunch is badly in need of liquidity in its banks that are closing down at an alarming rate. Russia has lashed out at US and NATO for refusing to destroy poppy crops in Afghanistan and not fighting drug production which implies that raw drug sources will remain sacrosanct. The US however puts blame on Taliban for poppy cultivation in Afghanistan for financing insurgency and to snatch this source, it has mounted massive offensive in Helmand, a stronghold of Taliban and major opium growing region.
Under the pretext of hunting al-Qaeda, CIA has made deep inroads in Pakistan. Drug money is not only used by CIA to finance its illegal operations in Pakistan and elsewhere but also US economy also which because of economic crunch is badly in need of liquidity in its banks that are closing down at an alarming rate. Russia has lashed out at US and NATO for refusing to destroy poppy crops in Afghanistan and not fighting drug production which implies that raw drug sources will remain sacrosanct. The US however puts blame on Taliban for poppy cultivation in Afghanistan for financing insurgency and to snatch this source, it has mounted massive offensive in Helmand, a stronghold of Taliban and major opium growing region.
Like the CIA, RAW and Mossad are also heavily involved in narcotic business. Indian drug barons have cultivated close ties with Afghan drug warlords and with Laos which is among the leading drug trading country. India ranks fifth largest illegal opium producing country in the world. Illicit poppy is being cultivated in large quantity in Himachal Pradesh, Arunchal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Mizoram. India is using profits made out of drug trafficking towards covert operation in Pakistan. Operation aimed at destabilizing Pakistan codenamed CIT X had been jointly conceived by RAW and Mossad for which criminal elements, mercenaries and drug mafia were engaged. 57 training camps were established in East Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Assam, Gujarat, Rajasthan and occupied Kashmir to train and launch terrorists inside Pakistan. Training was imparted to dissident elements from MQM, Jiye Sindh Mahaz, Jiye Sindh Students Federation and Baloch nationalists and other nationalist groups. Source
The so called war on drugs also fuels the US prisons. The more drugs on the streets the more profit and slaves for prisons.
The Prison Industry in the United States Costs Taxpayers Billions
Just added this November 7 2012
A few facts, new and old.
Afghanistan, Heroin, Addiction, Death
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