Ep 136: A New Dope

You think you're not slaves, that you love. The mind to find existence of your current lives is structured by the American industrial place, so it leaves you're really questioning everything you thought you knew. And this sense of separation, that sense of isolation, is the thing that is within you and me.

It makes us feel alien to everything else that's outside of us. So that is why as you sit there within your body and you look out through your eyeballs and you listen through your ears, you look around you, everything else is not you, and you don't fit. You're listening to Up is Down with Dean Ryder. There's little doubt about the scale of Afghanistan's opiate crisis.

We saw the darkness of addiction firsthand under the police sucked up bridge in the Afghan capital carb The Taliban say they'll end addiction and put an end to the drug trade too, but drug problems at home are only one reason the Taliban wants to impose its opium ban. Since the regime returned to power after the chaotic withdrawal of the US and its allies, the Afghan economy has slumped, hit by multiple crises. The Taliban hope there's a ban on opium would lead

to the easing of Western sanctions and the unfreezing of Afghan assets. In the early nineties, the Taliban's policy was to ban poppy growing outright, but by the time they seized Carbal in nineteen ninety six, their approach had relaxed. They recognized the economic potential of poppy growing, lifted the ban and placed high taxes on the crop. Production quickly increased, growing more than fifty percent in just two years, But in two thousand the ban was back again for the

same reason as today, to get Western sanctions lifted. That policy change hit global supplies of heroin by an estimated seventy five percent, but just a year later there have been a series of terrorist attacks in the United States. Nine eleven reshaped the world entirely. Under pressure from farmers, the Taliban had again relaxed their ban on growing hobby. Now they were the West's public enemy number

one because they had hosted the nine eleven master minds. NATO forces invaded in two thousand and one and removed the Taliban from power for two decades, but under Western backed Afghan governments, the drugs trade thrived back in power again and in need of money. Afghans are unemployed and hungry. The country has suffered years of drought and there's no money to rebuild after decades of war. Afghanistan's economy is teetering on the edge, but without opium and other drugs, it

would be much worse. The country made up to two point seven billion dollars from opiates in twenty twenty one. That's fourteen percent of the country's GDP. It's by far Afghanistan's biggest export adds the value of all legal exports together, and it's still way behind opiates at just nine percent of GDP. And what's important to Afghanistan's economy is crucial to the global supply of illegal drugs. The

country produces eighty five percent of the world's supply of opium. The twenty twenty one opium harvest was the fifth year in a row where production hit more than six thousand tons, which could potentially yield up to three hundred and twenty tons of pure heroine traffic to markets worldwide. Ninety five percent of heroin that makes

it onto the UK streets originates from Afghanistan. Afghanistan is also the word second largest supplier of cannabis resin, also known as hashish, and is becoming a major methamphetamine producer, which has been described as an emerging global threat by the UM. A global threat with a domestic workforce. Poppy farming is so widespread that a third of all rural villages grow the crop. It's estimated that it

supports one hundred and ninety thousand full time jobs. If the Taliban go through with its ban, not only will it have to replace a large part of its economy, but nearly two hundred thousand people will be looking for alternative work to support themselves and their families. The big test for the Taliban and their authority will come this October when the next crop of poppies is due to be planted, a crop worth potentially billions to the global drugs trade and to Afghanistan's

own economy. So will the Taliban stop the farmers from planting the crop. It might be that they find they simply can't afford to well. Come back to another episode the Uppest Down Podcast with me your neighbor, your friend, your shadow, your enemy. Mister Diana Miner coming at you from the chalet. The evening is creeping in here. I believe it's. This is my second podcast I'm recording today. I just did that big old transmission creep episode

of Hope you guys like that. It was a good one. I think it was one of the better episodes I've done in a while, kind of the old style of UPPs down. And here we're doing this thing. Because I was about to wrap it up for the night, but I decided to just stay on the mic. I was looking through some media and some news, and I found this great article on RT. Because you know, I love me some RT. I love me some carrying water for Putin and so

this episode. I didn't think I was gonna do a show about this, and maybe I'm just gonna record it anyway, because I don't know if I'm actually going to produce it. Maybe I will, maybe I won't, who knows. But this article was produced today, April eleventh. The Taliban did one year where Washington couldn't in twenty sparking new panic. The ban on Afghan poppy cultivation is set to hit Europe's heroin supplies. So I'm you know, I'm looking at this article. It's not very long, so I'm just gonna

read it. This is gonna be kind of a reading episode. As it turns out, there's this article, and then there's a few links to some other things, some of their sources and citations that I think I want to hit on too, because I think this is an interesting little little phenomenon,

little little happening, little event. If Taliban's actually and I think it's, it's very loose ended, because they have as much interest in the illicit opium trade as anyone else, especially our own CIA backed narco traffickers of the government over here. They have just as much interest as anyone else to want to

keep that ship rolling. So there's nuances within this ban, you know, as you've heard in that little clip in the beginning, there was a ban in the nineties that had some good effects on controlling the drug abuse and use in Afghanistan, and just I think kind of like testing the waters of the

market. Then again in two thousand that was huge, and then of course we took over for twenty years and spiked all the all the prices and production went way out out out of this world level of production and price increase and availability, and we just took the helm on it. And now the Taliban are deciding to They did this band a year ago, so the only videos I could find were nothing newer than seven months ago, about a year ago,

and they're talking about how they're going to do these bands. They're going to grandfather in all the poppy farmers who had already seeded that previous year's crop or that year's crop. But they don't want any new seating going on because there actually is a really huge heroin problem in Afghanistan. I didn't really know how bad it is, but it's just as bad as we have here. I mean, I would say it's arguable, but per capita, obviously we

have a lot more because we just have more people. But it's pretty bad there, and they don't like that kind of stuff. And I don't know what I think about the Taliban. I don't really have any opinion. Honestly. I think they're interesting because they're a group, and you know, I like to just look and observe and criticize groups. That's just what I like

to do. So they're another one that I find fascinated because you know, we've been told forever that they are such bad guys, and then they were good guys, and then they're bad guys, and then they're good guys, and now they're just kind of like just these guys out there, but they're putting the band on the poppy, which is gonna be huge, as you can imagine, as you can probably tell or surmise, I forgot if they mentioned it, and that little video clip, but that's gonna really really catapult

de fentanyl production in China. And it's interesting to me that a year ago, just about a year ago, maybe a little bit more, they were foreign ministers from China from the CCP hanging out with the Taliban and forming and reforming your relations turns out that Afghanistan in particular and the Taliban more recently, have had long ties with China and CCP, going back all the way to

the fifties. So Afghanistan, for sure, Taliban have only really had any kind of place in that conversation since the nineties when they were in control of the region, and then now they're they're reforming their negotiations and talks with their old friends. I mean, like twenty year hiatus because we went in there and decimated everything and took over the markets and created this failed narco state, which we'll read about. But yeah, so now they're back in business working

with CCP. I don't know, maybe there's some sort of weird conspiracy connection between the banning and the huge impact it's going to have on the poppy that goes around the world. Was heroin and all the other pure opiates in the pharmaceutical industries, but then that's going to really put a huge push on the synthetics. And that's also you know that means fentanyl, and the fentanyl that we know is being produced in Mexico specifically for American export. Only know this

because we covered that in Narco theology. That's going to be huge. Man. So if you think you've had enough fentinyl now, get ready. There's going to be a lot more flooding the streets, probably within the next year, because the effects of last year's ban hasn't really been felt yet because there's still so much supply and surplus from the two decades of US back drug trafficking control over the region, So there's so much supply that no one's feeling the

pinch yet. But since they stopped growing most of the poppy in Afghanistan a year ago, the effects are going to start rolling in pretty soon. Within the next year, and that means there's going to be a huge demand for mixing things with different type of opium mixers and fentyl. Fentyl is going to be huge, and all kinds of ways to continue to bastardize and sit the size fentyl and any other kind of opiate. So if you think it's bad

now, it's only going to get worse. And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but like I keep saying, I'm looking to try to find good things going out there, and you know, every time I see something, I feel like every time I do something, man, it's just not good enough, you know, Like I just can't quite get over. I'm working the best I can to try to make positive changes in my life, and I'm trying not to have much detrimental effect on anyone else around

me. It's impossible, though, you know, but I'm I'm just trying to do the best that I can out there. And I'm so fucking glad I'm not an opium user. Man, I'm so glad I'm not a junkie or a drug addict or someone who uses drugs. I'm so glad that my fun with all that stuff I never even did hard stuff like heroin, but my fun with drugs was over a long, long time ago. And I'm just so grateful because I couldn't imagine being addicted to opiates right now in the

United States, except for it'd be a heyday because it'd be free. Basically, it'd be cheap, or it'd be everywhere, and it'd be completely you know, our society is getting so conditioned to just living with this. You know, this weird se called it an epidemic of massive opiate abuse, and now, I mean it's like he used to be the oxycontins and now it's Fentnel is just Jesus christ Man. So yeah, it's going to get a lot worse. I'm not trying to see that, but that's just what's there,

you know. I just I'm calling it as I see it. So I'm gonna go ahead and start reading this article called the Taliban did in one year Washington couldn't in twenty, sparking new panic the band on Afghan poppy cultivation is set to hit Europe's heroin supplies. This is written by Rachel Marsden. It's been nearly a year since the Taliban banned Afghan poppy farming used for the production of opioids. The impact of the move is set to hit global markets

sometime soon. Given the delay from farm to customer, you'd think that would bring a welcome sigh of relief. Apparently not. Reports are now suggesting that a lack of Afghan heroin on the global market and a reduction of available natural

opioids like heroin could lead to increased use of synthetic opioids like fentyl. If that's the case, then it's only because Washington and the West are about as competent at curtailing skyrocketing drug overdose deaths as they were at tackling the cultivation of Afghan opioids back when they had control of the country. Synthetic opioids from China and Mexico are increasingly being used, as are those procured through prescriptions within America's

own healthcare system. Over the course of the US led global War on Terror that kicked off in Afghanistan in two thousand and one, heroin ovadoses in the US and elsewhere have spiked. Despite having control over the country and its government for two decades, Washington not only failed to curtail farming and exports of Afghan

opium, but oversaw an increase. In February two thousand and four, then US Assistant Secretary for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, Robert Charles, outlined a new policy for countering what he calls narco terrorism in Afghanistan before Congress. He cited a desire to assist the US back to Afghan government with its objective

to quote eliminate opium poppy cultivation and trade in ten years end quote. The project would involve deploying CIA linked usaid to poppy growing areas to help find alternative farming solutions, but there have always been strong doubts over the sincerity of such

efforts. A US Department of Justice policy paper from nineteen ninety one accuses the CIA of quote complicity and the narcotics trade in Afghanistan, underscoring that covert CIA operations in Afghanistan, for example, have transformed South Asia from a self contained

opium zone into a major supplier of heroin for the world market. The CIA would certainly be in a position to know, having backed Mujahidin Jihadis fighters against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during the Cold War, while the trafficking occurred right under its nose. Apparently, some old habits sty hard. In two thousand and ten, former director of the Federal Drug Control Service of Russia, Viktor Ivanov, met with NATO officials to request a mandate for destroying the poppy fields,

citing thirty thousand opium related deaths in Russia. Quote we cannot be in a situation where we remove the only source of income of people who live in the second poorest country in the world without being without being able to provide them with an alternative end quote, NATO spokesman James Operturi replied. According to Reuters,

clearly they just weren't that interested. It now seems that the US and NATO counterinsurgency emissions served in part as a cover for safeguarding and protecting the opium fields from destruction, which the Taliban had already gone about doing before the two thousand and one US invasion. Propping up Western proxies doesn't come cheap, and

something simply aren't fit for the accounting books back home. It's no secret that the CIA has a history of using narcotic traffic king to support US interests abroad, while simultaneously accusing the local opposition of doing just that. From Nicaragua and

Haiti to Southeast Asia, Indo China, and even in France. According to a State Department fact sheet from the pre two thousand and one archives, Taliban poppy cultivation bands quote lacked credibility, Yet it was Washington's public proclamations of eradication that never came to fruition. Similarly, Washington laughably charged Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro with narco terrorism partnership with the FARC for the past twenty years end quote in

March of twenty twenty. This was despite Washington's unconditional backing of South American ally Colombia, an actual narco state whose cocaine production exploded under the leadership of former President Ivan Duquet, even as President Joe Biden introduced him at the White House in twenty twenty two as quote, my friend Biden then also added quote, We've known each other for a long time, and we were reminiscing about how

far back we go. I've been deeply engaged with the relationship with Columbia for a long time, going back more than twenty years to that old plan Colombia end quote. It's funny that Biden should mention Plan Colombia, a US backed multibillion dollar program to fight drugs and insurgency in the country, which is largely

considered to be a counter narcotics failure. It didn't even really produce lasting encounter insurgency results, according to members of former President Barack Obama's own administration, concluding that quote, our collective failure to control either drug abuse or drug trafficking has exacted an enormous human toll end quote. Washington has historically been both disingenuous and

incompetent when it comes to fighting illicit drug use. The fact that the Taliban finally has an opportunity to do what Washington was never able or willing to do, despite claims to the contrary, closes once spigot. However, it won't save Washington from its own failure years on the drug front. So that's kind of a you know, it's a hit piece, but it's a good one.

I think that's a great little article. It's got some information, but there's not that much context for people like myself who don't really know how far back this goes. And so I did find some fairly fairly newish within this last year. Decent video and a decent article, and actually I got a few different articles because there's a couple of links here within this article that we're gonna we're gonna check out here. So here's an article from Politico. It's

about two weeks ago. It's when it was written. It was I don't know when it was published exactly, but probably the same day, who cares. It's about two weeks ago. Politico Taliban poppy bands puts Europe on fentanyl alert. Drug users can switch to more dangerous synthetic blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah. The cool part is that there's really neat ai that will read this article for us, so you don't have to listen to me. You can listen into a weird of course, proper English robot voice. All

right, all right, this is a good little article though. It's got a lot of context as to what's going on with the supply now, what the conditions look like appropriate for launching another fentinyl campaign, like a big one, and how that's going to affect other countries in and around the region of Afghanistan. Plus the international market. So it's a good little spot. I know, I know what you're gonna say. I know you're gonna say, oh my god, Dan, it's political. You can't read that garbage.

I not really take this shit super seriously. I just put it out there because this is the information that we're given. I think there's a lot of tells you can pick up if you're reading these things, if you're watching these guys talk, you can always tell their tells. They're pretty easy, which you recognize that it's all just a huge lie and a scam, you know what, not to believe in what makes a little bit of sense. There's

some things in this article that I think makes some sense. I think this is actually fairly decent reporting, as they're not celebrating all the woke policies of this type of a move, which is pretty good. So that tells me they're at least trying to stay outside of that cash cow for a minute. So I'm just going to play at the article and you can hate me. It's about seven minutes long. I'm sorry, but it's a good one. It's a good article. You just gotta just pay attention if you're interested.

If not, then I do on the wire. If ick on listening to this Get a Life Taliban poppy band puts Europe on fentanyl alert. Drug users could switch to more dangerous synthetic opioids as heroin supply dries up. Europe's heroine market could soon be in for a supply shock, and experts fear the gap could be filled by something much worse. Almost all heroin consumed in Europe comes from Afghanistan, where the Taliban have imposed a ban on poppy cultivation that will

take effect in the coming weeks. The likely poppy shortage could make it more profitable for criminals to manufacture synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl, to be sold to desperate addicts denied their hit of heroin. That in turn presents a serious public health risk, as synthetic opioids tend to be much stronger than natural heroine fifty times stronger in the case of fentonyl. That means it's much easier to

overdose. Fentinyl claims tends of thousands of lives in America each year. The Taliban banned poppy cultivation in April twenty twenty two, after resting back control of Afghanistan from the US backed government in twenty twenty one. The twenty twenty two crop was exempted, meaning the results will start to be seen with this year's

April harvest. It takes between a year and eighteen months for the harvest to reach the European market as heroine, giving governments until next year before the impact starts to be felt. If the Taliban band does result in a dramatic reduction in heroine produced from opiean poppy, that could create a possibility of us seeing more synthetic opioids, said Paul Griffiths, scientific director of the European Monitoring Center

for Drugs and Drug Addiction IMSTER. It seems strange to say this, but almost in terms of synthetics, the higher availability of heroin at the moment is arguably a protective factor, said Griffiths. History backs up his fears. The Taliban previously banned opium in two thousand, causing a herrow and shortage in Europe. Not long after, pentonyl surfaced for the first time on the continent.

From the early two thousands onwards, we had a problem with fentonyl in the Baltics Estonia, particularly where it was responsible for quite high levels of drug related

deaths and was quite a long term intractable problem there, Griffiths said. By twenty seventeen, Estonia's fentanyl crisis was over as intense law enforcement initiatives shut down many of the producers located in the country, but Estonia still has the highest proportion of fatal overdoses involving fentanyl in the EU, according to figures provided to Politico by the EMSTER A lesson from America for an idea of just how dangerous

synthetic opioids can be looked to America. More than fifty eight thousand people died from phentinyl overdoses there in twenty twenty, compared to ninety seven in the EU. By twenty twenty two, the US figure for synthetic opioid deaths mostly attributed to phentenyl had increased to sixty eight thousand. There are some important differences, however. America's opioid epidemic stems from large number of prescriptions doled out for pain

management in the nineteen nineties. This led to overdoses on pain medication itself, as well as an increase in addiction, leading to illicit heroin use. Since then, pentomyl has penetrated the broader US illicit drug market. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention c DC, it can be found blended into many illicit substances, from counterfeit xanox an anxiety medication, to recreational drugs, including MDMA, cocaine, and even cannabis. The fastest growing group for overdose

deaths as teenagers. By contrast, far few Europeans have become addicted via prescription medication, meaning the main risk group is likely to be the far smaller number of heroin addicts. There's also much less of an established illegal manufacturing base for

synthetic opioids in Europe. In many countries, prescribing rates are not necessarily less than in the US, but it doesn't spill over to the illicitopioid use or illegally manufactured opiates, said Aunt Shelkans, professor at Radbad University Medical School in the Netherlands, in a letter published in medical journal The Lancet in October. Shelkans and colleagues pointed to the widespread availability of healthcare in Europe as a protective

factor. This is both because it gives patient success to affordable interventions such as hip or knee replacements rather than them needing to rely on opioids to alleviate chronic pain. And because it provides addiction care, including a PoID substitution treatment, others agree the healthcare system is an important infrastructure to prevent and treat people that become addicted, said Nora Volkov, director of the US based National Institute on

Drug Abuse. Now, I just got to interrupt here for a couple of minutes and just point out the bullshit gaslighting that Politico is trying to serve you right now with those last little statements about how important it is that the NHS, the National Health Service I guess in the UK, is there to provide all these different interventions for people to keep them off the needle and things like

that. The nationalized healthcare system is just so great when we know it's like it's like a year long wait list and there's only like approved medicines and approved practices, and of course you can't even walk in the doorway even think about going to go see a doctor now unless you've been jabbed four or five, six times. And the same thing goes here in the US. They touted themselves here in the US. Is like, our national policy on drugs is

to keep people from addiction. Is like, it's the fucking healthcare system that made people addicted. It was the pharma drug pushers that were incentivizing and giving people bonuses to get people addicted. They were changing the language. They were changing the language, not the formulas, but the language of the formulas to get people to believe that it was non addictive. I mean, there is that whole Hulu series that was badass called Dope Sick. It's fucking great series.

It'll tell you. It lays it all out there. And I know it's TV, it's predictive programming whatever, it's Hulu, it's fucking entertainment. It's true. It's true though, it's all true. What happened with the Purdue family and everything. I mean, it's just such a joke. And then here they pat themselves on their back talking about how hard they work keeping people off the needle, when it's their job, dude, it was their fucking job to put people on the needle. It's their job to put people

on massive amounts of overprescribed opioid painkillers to where they would get addicted. And then start doing dope. It just pisses me off when they gaslight like that in the article, and the AI voice doesn't help because it all just kind of drones into one kind of song, you know, one sort of droning little vibration. You don't really catch that shit, but I catch it, and it just pisses me off. The level of just gaslighting that these people

do talking about how wonderful it is to health. The healthcare system is responsible for almost all of this drug addiction and overdosing that we're seeing, not only because they make it available, they incentivize people to sell it and to do it, they make it the only option, They lie about its addictive qualities, and then they also pump you full of all kinds of shit in your water and your food and all the other pharmaceuticals that you're on. Because everyone's

on drugs. It just makes them have to have more further interventions and further interventions until you just get to this mission creep, which I think is probably the goal. I don't know it just that shit just pisses me off. So that's my little insertion there. Don't believe that bullshit at all. So if there's bullshit right there in this article. Maybe this whole article is bull It's hard to determine. Like once you catch a bullshit lie and a gaslight,

everything becomes suspect. At that point, everything is questionable, you know, And I have to have a shade of doubt on everything that I read at that point. And it's just it sucks, guys. It's almost like you can't believe anything you see you're here, even with your own fucking eyes or ears. It's just it's incredibly difficult to parse the reality from this bullshit

that they hand you. Okay, back to the article. Sorry. The healthcare system is an important infrastructure to prevent and treat people that become addicted, said Nora Volkoff, director of the US based National Institute on Drug Abuse. It is key to actually avert a crisis like the one that we're living in the United States with fentanyl. Despite this, Wolkoff believes that as markets for fentanyl becomes saturated in North America, Europe could be the next target for trafficking

the drug. There is nothing that says Europe is immune to these drugs entering their borders, she said, mixing it up. It's a worry echoed by Europe's Drugs Agency, which together with Europol, runs an early warning system to keep track of illicit substances making their way unto the EU. Recent analysis from the ms TO shows that the amount of fentanyl appearing on the European market is

declining, but there's a growing number of new opioids. The market is adapting to the US pressure and Chinese action to reduce fentanyl, and what we are seeing is other new synthetic opioids appearing. These are initially uncontrolled, they're difficult to detect, people aren't aware of them, and there again still highly potent, said Griffiths. Europol spokesperson Jenopjennorth believes the danger for europe liies and fentanyl

mixes. It's probably unlikely that a drug called fentanyl or China white, China doll or sudden death or whatever it's called, we'll just pop up on the European market, Opjennorth said. What we might see here and they're a next year as groups trying to cut another drug with fentanyl mix it creates new markets.

Knowing that fentanyl is cheap and highly addictive. Nevertheless, Objenov believes that international cooperation and continued monitoring will be effective and keeping fentanyl contained and that ye a poor law, local agencies could quickly respond. More than fifty eight thousand people died from fentonel overdoses in the US in twenty twenty. Ultimately, one factor may serve in Europe's favor. Time here we had a ten year time lag or something. Shelkin said. In the beginning, the idea in the

US was these opiates, if you prescribe them, are not addictive. By the time that it came to Europe, we had these very important lessons from them that these are not harmless. It's just the advantage of having somebody else go first, he said. Yep. So they're bracing for impact. They're bracing for impact. Fentyl download is happening. It's going to be pretty quick,

but it's just pretty gnarly, you know. And I just think it's pretty interesting that the CCP and Taliban hooked up last year and you know, reforming their old relationships, their old ties. I wonder if the fentanyl production has anything to do with that. I mean, I imagine that Afghanistan, like I said, they probably want to quash their own their own drug consumption in their own country. But it's just funny that the the Chinese Communist Party's

fentanyl production export only to the US exclusively, you know. And now the the alternative, the good opium, the good heroine, is going to be very very limited, which is going to make it extremely expensive and very hard to get. It's going to up the demand, and then of course the supply is going to show up, and it's going to be lots of lots more killing and wars going on there. So I don't know if there's really

much more to be said. There's another shortish kind of video from a deutschevella which talks about in a slightly different light, but it's it's good further background. I'm gonna go ahead and play that. It's also about six to seven minutes, not super long, but it's a good little it's a good little video. Georgia Villa does pretty good work, honestly. Armed Taliban fighters stand guard as a tractor tears up a field of poppies in Washier District in southern

Hellman Province. Afghanistan's rulers issued an edict in early April banning the cultivation of the poppy the raw material required for opium, morphine and heroin production. Now the campaign is beginning. Afghan opium supplies over eighty percent of all users globally. The international community has been demanding more control of drug production since the Taliban

retook the country last year. Our Supreme Leader has strictly ordered the ban on cultivating poppies, so those who are acting against it and continue to see it and cultivate it will be arrested and tried according to Sharia laws in relevant courts. Rids front. For the farmers whose fields are being destroyed, it's a different story. They fear their livelihoods will be ruined. At a time of growing poverty. We are facing drought and don't have big farming fields, so

seeding and cultivating crops other than the opium poppy doesn't earn us anything. If we're not allowed to grow this crop, we won't earn anything. The new eradication campaign is mainly targeting those who planted their crops after the ban was announced. Others who planted earlier succeeded in harvesting, going from plant to plant, slicing the poppy's bulb, then scooping up the sap that oozes out the raw

material for opium. We were not aware of any order to ban the cultivation of poppies, and these poppy feels were seated before any order was issued. We're upset because our crop was ready for harvest before we became aware of the ban. The ban comes as Afghanistan's economy has collapsed. Cut off from international funding since the Taliban takeover, most of the population struggles to afford food, and the country has been suffering its worst droves in years. Around eighty percent

of livelihoods in Afghanistan depend on agriculture. Farmers are forced to ask themselves what can replace the opium poppy as a source of income. There is no easy answer, and let's get more on this from journalist Ali Latifi, who joined me now from Kabold with more Ali, we had been speaking about this back in April when the Taliban said they wouldn't be enforcing their poppy band, but

now it seems they are. What has changed, well, the way they had framed it is that for people who had already planted, they weren't going to get in their way. But what they were trying to do is keep from new crops and new harvests being planted. So this may be part of that, saying that you know last year's crops, will let them go, and you know, whatever happens with them, happens with them, but we

don't want any new crops. That seems to be the only that makes sense at this point as to why they're starting now, And in that case, it seems to follow through what they've been saying about it. So what exactly are they hoping to achieve by cracking down on poppy cultivation. Is it really a motivation to try and cut down the amount of opium that it's produced in Afghanistan or there are other motivations here. I mean, I think there are

several motivations. One thing that's great pr right again, it's the one thing that they could do if they could actually accomplish it. It's something that they could do that the Republic was unable to do. You know, the Republic, with all of its funding, with all of its bign backing for twenty years, was not able to eradicate the poppy cultivation. And if you're the Talibon, what you will say is one of the reasons. Although the Taliban

definitely had a hand in the drug trade in Afghanistan. But if you're the Taliban, what you'll say is, well, the former government was heavily involved in the drug trade. You know, you had MPs, you had ministers, you had governors, you had police, all kinds of different officials and people connected to the government who are accused of having an alleged hand in the

drug trade. So what they can say now is, hey, because we've gotten rid of the corruption, now we can enforce this and get rid of this, of course, again ignoring the fact that they themselves also had a hand in it over the last twenty years. So it comes down to good pr again. And it also could be something about their relationships with the neighbors, you know, because Eaton and Pakistan, both of which they're very good with. Even Turkey, also a nation that they're very good with, has

complained a lot about drugs coming out of Afhanistan. Now they don't talk about how their own drug mafias are involved and are you making it possible? But it's another way of trying to bring assurance two regional neighbors that we're taking an issue seriously and that we're able to crack down on this. So it's a lot of good talking points for them, but following up with it is very, very difficult. But the route of the problem remains unaddressed, it doesn't

it. I mean that there really isn't a viable, profitable alternative to poppy cultivation in Afghanistan for the thousands of four farmers, right, And this is so So there's a few things. One it's that there is no viable alternative. I remember years ago at a usmbassy event where the usmbac is basically threw up its hands and said, our drug war and Avlanistan didn't succeed. You know, they said that no lisit crop can ever, no legal crop can

ever compete with an illegal product. And it's true. On the one hand, you know, when something is illegal, you know that the market dictates the price in ridiculous sorts of ways and in very exorbitant ways. And then in terms of alternatives, you need to lay the groundwork for those alternatives and you need to have the markets and the support for it. So the former government, they tried pomegranates, they tried saffron, they tried alo vera,

all sorts of things. But what was the problem was that they didn't have proper markets within the country to sell those products. And they also didn't have proper agreements with other countries to make sure that our products made it out and were sold into the world market. So you would have farmers who were harvesting and who were planting these different crops and plants and things like that and vegetables, and yet they really didn't have anywhere to sell it, and there was

so much regional competition in these markets. So it really takes you know, if you have to support that movement, you have to support that market. So if you want if you want it to be pomegranates, then you have to make sure that Avhanistan's pomegranates are exported to the UAE, that they're exported to Turkey, that they're exported to other countries as well, and that they are properly sold within Then that takes a lot of work that again the former

Republic couldn't do or didn't want to do. I don't know either couldn't or didn't. And now you know, the Taliban will have to try and do the same thing, because if you can't sell your alternative product, then you're going to go to the easiest thing, you know, the thing that you know you will absolutely be able to sell the no matter what. Yeah, I had no idea that the Taliban We're trying to grow alternative crops in place of opium for years and there's no markets. No one wanted to Everyone is

like, dude, we got all these things on lock. You guys got that sweet sweet dope, Like that's what you do good. You do that one thing and you do it really, really, really good. So we don't want any other ship. We want that sweet dope. Don't sucks, because you know, obviously they don't. They don't want that. They don't want that to be their cash crop as long as there's so many sanctions.

And I guess that's the whole point of it is why they're trying to ban these things so they can get some of these US sanctions lifted so they can actually start to do business internationally supposedly. I don't know. I just think it's kind of an interesting little thing going on right now, and it's very quiet, and it all just equals tons and tons of more fentanyl and other kinds of synthetic opioid's flooding our streets and killing people and getting into everyone's like

their coke and even their weed and things like that. I mean, it's pretty scary people that I know that do drugs like I worry about them because that shit's just everywhere. It's crazy. So I hope that provided a little bit of text to the news of the puppy band. You guys can bear with me a little bit longer. I have another article that was originally published

in Mint Press News June twenty fifth, twenty twenty one. It's entitled Geopolitics, Profit and Poppies, How the CIA turned Afghanistan into a failed narco state. I'm going to go ahead and try to read it, and if I start stumbling over my words and it ends up going on and on and on, then I think I'm just going to cut it out. So time code

is at forty minutes ish. The COVID nineteen pandemic has been a death knell to so many industries in Afghanistan. Charities and aid agencies have even warned that the economic dislocation could spark widespread famine, but one sector is still booming, the illicit opium trade. Last year saw Afghan opium poppy cultivation grow by over a third, while counter narcotics operations dropped off a cliff. The country is said to be the source of over ninety percent of the world's illicit opium,

from which heroin and other opioids are made. Our land is under cultivation for opium in Afghanistan than is used for coca production across all of Latin America, with the creation of the drugs said to directly employ around half a million people. This is a far cry from the nineteen seventies, when poppy production was

minimal and largely for domestic consumption. But this change in nineteen seventy nine when the CIA launched Operations Cyclone the widespread funding Afghan Mujahadeen militias in an attempt to

bleed dry the then recent Soviet invasion. Over the next ten years, the CIA worked closely with its Pakistani counterpart, the ISI to funnel two billion dollars worth of arms and assistance to these groups, including the now infamous Osama bin Laden, tim Osman, and other warlords known for such atrocity as a throwing acid in the faces of unveiled women oh Man. A lot of these things were debunked to be a Jean provocateurs. That whole acid face thing quote from

statements by US Ambassador to Iran, Richard Helms. There was little heroin production in Central Asia by the mid seventies, Professor Alfred McCoy, author of the Politics of Heroine, CIA complicity in the global drug trade, told Mint Press. But with the start of the CIA Secret War, opium production along the

Afghanistan Pakistan border searched and refineries soon dotted the landscape. Trucks loaded with US taxpayer funded weapons would travel from Pakistan into its neighbor to the west, returning filled to the brim with opium for the new refineries, their deadly product ending up on streets worldwide. With the influx of Afghan opium in the nineteen eighties, Jeffries Saint Clair, co author of White Out the CIA Drugs and the

Press, alleges heroin addiction more than doubled in the United States. In order to finance the resistance for a protracted period, dou Mujahadeen had to come up with the livelihood beyond the weapons of the CIA was providing, McCoy said, noting that the weapons issued could not feed the fighters families nor reimburse them for lost labor. Quote, So what the resistant spiders did was they turned to opium. Afghanistan had about one hundred tons of opium produced every year in the

nineteen seventies. By eighty nine and nineteen ninety, at the end of that ten year CIA operation, that minimal amount of opium one hundred tons per annum had turned into a major amount two thousand tons a year, and was already

about seventy five percent of the world's illicit opium trade. The CIA achieved its goal of giving the USSR its Vietnam, the Soviets, failing to quash the Mujahadeen rebellion by the time they finally pulled out in nineteen eighty nine, But American money and weapons also turned Afghanistan into a dangerously unstable place full of warring factions that used opium to fund their battles for internal supremacy. By nineteen ninety

nine, annual production had risen to forty six hundred tons. The Taliban eventually emerged as the dominant force in the country and attempted to gain international legitimacy by stamping out the trade. In this they were remarkably successful. A two thousand ban a two thousand ban on opium cultivation by the Taliban led government led to an almost overnight drop to just one hundred and eighty five tons harvested the following

year, as frightened farmers chose not to risk attracting their wrath. The Taliban had hoped that the eradication program would win favor in Washington and entice the United States to provide humanitarian aid, but unfortunately history had other ideas. On September eleventh, two thousand and one, the US experienced a massive case of blowback

has been Laudon's forces launched attacks on New York and Washington. The US ignored the Taliban's offered to hand them over to a third party, instead opting to invade the country. Less than a month after the plans hit the World Trade Center, US troops were patrolling the fields of Afghanistan. Yeah. Do less than a month later they were on top of it. It's just, oh

my god, you guys so obvious. It's just so obvious and clear that the whole thing just move in there and just take over that racket for twenty years and then boom, we got so much dope just coming out of our ears all over this country. Man, Like the oxyconton stuff, the Purdue family stuff, and now the fentanyl stuff and the cartels, and the Chinese is like God Cia behind all that, Okay, the world's first true narco

state. The effect of the occupation was to expand drug production to unprecedented new proportions, Afghanistan becoming and Professor McCoy's estimation, the world's first true narco state. McCoy notes that by two thousand and eight, opium was responsible for well over half of the country's gross domestic product. By comparison, even in Colombia's darkest days, cocaine accounted for only three percent of its GDP. It's a

completely different world. I mean Colombia, in Afghana, Panistan, you're talking about lush rainforest, jungles, fruit, vegetables, cattle. I mean there's livestock out. I mean this crazy amount of livestock, timber industry. There's so much resources in Colombia. Afghanistan has got ship, dude, they got sand and rocks, that's it. And poppy. That's all they have. So of course the poppy is going to be over half the GDP of that

country. There's nothing else to sell, there's nothing else to make. They don't do anything else, that's all that they have. It's a desert and then there's poppy So anyway, today the United Nations estimates that around sixty three hundred tons of opium and rising is produced yearly, with two hundred and twenty four thousand hectares an area almost the side of Rhode Island planted with poppy fields. But even while it was financing a widespread and deadly aerial spraying campaign in

Colombia, the United States refused to countenance the same policy in Afghanistan. They say, quote, and we've heard this quote earlier in the show, we cannot be in a situation where we remove the only source of income of people who live in the second poorest country in the world without without being able to provide them with an alternative, said Nato. I think I stumbled in the

same place. So isn't that funny, Like we just sanctioned the fuck out of this country so that they're absolutely like the poorest country in the world. I think, like the second poorest nation in the entire world. We sanctioned the fuck out of him. We give him this pariah stigma for decades and decades and decades, and some of it's on their own thing. We make it so no one can eat, no one can live, no one can have any money, nothing can do anything but grow poppy. And then we

say, oh, now you can't grow their poppy. How could we. We've been trying to spray and kill these plants for decades other countries Russia, but no, no, no, we can't do that. Not everyone agreed, however, that a passionate commitment to defending the quality of life of the poorest was the actual reason for rejecting the policy. Matthew Hoe, a former

captain of the US Marine Corps, is one skeptic. Hoe told Mint Press that airborne fumigation was not carried out because it would be outside the control of Afghan government officials who were deeply implicated in the drug trade, owning poppy fields and production plants themselves. They were afraid that if they went to aerial eradication, the US pilots would just eradicate willy nilly and a lot of their own poppy fields would be hit. In two thousand and nine, Hoe resigned in

protests from his position. Resigned in protests Nice from his position at the State Department and Zabel Province over the government's continued occupation of Afghanistan, He told the Mint Press. Quote, NATO forces were more or less guarding poppy fields and poppy production under the guise of counterinsurgency. The logic was, we don't want to take away the livelihoods of the people. Quote. But really what we were doing at that point was protecting the wealth of our friends in power in

Afghanistan. That's what it was. According to Hoe, there were widespread disillusionment within the military, among service members who had to risk their lives on a day to day basis. They would say, what are we doing here?

This is bullshit? It was a sentiment among their rank and file. The heroin trade implicated virtually everyone in power, including Afghan President Ahmed Kazar's brother Ahmed Wali, among the biggest and most notorious drug kingmans in the south of the country, a man widely understood to be in the pay of the CIA. Ahmed Wali. Yeah, for sure, there's documents and citations to back that up in this article that maybe I'll throw those in the show notes too.

US attempts to stymy the opium trades, such as the policy of paying domestic militias to destroy poppy fields often backfired. Locals came up with ways of profiting, such as refraining from planting in one area, collecting large sums of money from occupying forces, and using that clap using that cash to plant elsewhere,

effectively getting paid both to plant and not to plant. Even worse, local warlords and drug bossles would destroy their rival scrops and collect money from the US for doing so, leaving themselves both enriched and in a stronger position than before, having gained NATO forces favor. One notable example of this is a local strongman, ghoul Agashrazai, who eradicated his competitors Crops and Nagar Province while quietly leaving his own and Candahar Province untouched. But all the usaw was a local

politician seemingly committed is stamping out in illegal drug trade. They therefore showered him with money and other privileges. We literally gave the guy ten million in cash for rubbing out his own competition. Host said, if you were going to write a movie about this, they'd say this is just too far fetched. No one's going to believe this. Nothing is this insane or stupid. But that is the way it is. Quote I totally believe that that is exactly

how we do things. It's like that other meme man that Mima says, this is how the government works. It's a picture of a pan on a stove where an actual egg is cracked and is on the stove. The shell is in the pan and the handle of the pan is over the open burner. Like it's just completely backwards and fucked up. Like that's exactly how the government runs. And so to say that this is too far fetched. No one's going to believe that. No one, none of us here are this

insane or stupid. But that's the way it is. I believe it. McCoy noted that the Taliban is one of the prime beneficiaries of the drug trade and used it to increase their power and vanquish the US quote that booming opium production and the US failure to curb it provided the bulk of the financing for Taliban, who captured a significant but unknown share of the local profits from the drug traffic, which they used to fund guerrilla operations over the past twenty years,

becoming a determinative factor in the US defeat in Afghanistan. The needle and the damage done it is not particularly difficult to grow opium. Opium poppies flourish in warm and dry conditions away from the damp and the wind. Consequently, they have found a fertile home across much of Central and Western Asia. The plant has flourished in Afghanistan, particularly in southern provinces like Helmand, close to

the tripoint where Afghanistan meets Pakistan and Iran. Much of the irrigation system and Helman was underwritten by USAID, an organization that acts as the CIA's public facing front. Oh my god, so yeah, the CIA's USAID was an underwriter for all that infrastructure to put in the irrigation systems in Hellman. In full bloom, the poppy fuels look spectacular, with beautiful flowers of vibrant pink, red or white. Underneath the flowers one can find a large seed pod.

Farmers harvest these, draining them of a sap which dries into a resin. This is often transported out of the country through the so called Southern Route via Pakistan or Iran, but as with any pipeline, much of the product is spilled along the way, causing an epidemic of addiction across the region. The effect on the Afghan population has been nothing short of a disaster. The technical The technological revolution and its aftermath has been a disaster for the United States.

Between two thousand and five and two thousand team, the number of adult drug users jumped from nine hundred thousand to two point four million in ten years, from one to two and a half. That's a one hundred and fifty percent increase crazy, according to the United Nations, which according to the UN, so you fuck that, which estimates that almost one in three households are directly

affected by addiction. While Afghanistan also produces copious amounts of marijuana and methamphetamine opioids of the druga choice for most, with around nine percent of the adult population and a growing number of children addicted to them. Added to this has been a spike in HIV cases as users share needles. Professor Julian Mercille, author of Cruel Harvest US intervention in the Afghan drug trade, told the Mint Press. Only contributing further to the despair has been twenty years of war in US

occupation. The number of Afghans living in poverty arose from nine point one million in two thousand and seven to nineteen point three million in two sixteen. A recent poll conducted by Gallup found that Afghans are the saddest people on earth, with nearly nine and ten respondents suffering and zero percent of the population thriving. In their own words, when asked to rate their lives out of a score of ten, Afghans gave an average answer of two point seven, a record

low for any country studied. Worse still, when asked to predict the quality of life in five years, their mean answer was even lower two point three. So we're right on track with Afghanistan around here, like there's nothing good coming man. What's the quality of life going to be in five years from now? Even lower? Man? The effects of the CIA operation to bleed the Soviets dry in Afghanistan have also produced a humanitarian crisis in neighboring Pakistan.

As McCoy noted, in the late nineteen seventies, Pakistan had barely any heroin addics, but by nineteen eighty five, Pakistani government statistics reported over one point two million, turning the two nations into quote the global eper center of the drugs trade almost overnight. The problem has only grown since at twenty thirteen UN report estimated that almost seven million Pakistani's use drugs, with four point two five

million requiring urgent treatment for dependency issues. Nearly two and a half million of these people were abusing heroin or other opioids. Around seven hundred people die every day from overdoses. The highest rate of dependency is unsurprisingly in provinces on the Afghan border, where heroin is manufactured. The same United Nations study notes that eleven percent of people in the northwest province of Khaiber Paktanwa use illicit substances,

primarily heroin. The drug crisis, of course, is also a medical crisis, with overstretched public hospitals filled with drug related maladies. The social stigma of addiction has ripped families apart, while the money and power illicit drugs have brought has turned many towns into hot spots of violence. Iran has a similar number of opioid users, generally estimated at between two and three million. In towns close to the Afghan Pakistani border, a gram of opium can be bought with

loose change between a quarter and fifty cents. Thus, despite the extremely harsh penalties for drug possession and distribution on the official books, the country has the highest addiction rate in the world. On a micro level, addiction tears apart families and ruins lives. On an international scale. However, the opium boom

is replaced has placed an entire region under significant strain. Therefore, one consequence of the US policy in the Middle East, from supporting jihadas to occupying nations, has been to unleash a worldwide opium addiction that has made a few people fantastically wealthy and destroyed the lives of tens of millions of people domestic despair. The boom in production has also led to a worldwide disaster. In the past

decade, opioid related deaths increased by seventy one percent globally. According to the UN, Much of the product grown by Afghan warlords end up on Western streets. Quote. I don't see how it can be a coincidence that you have that explosive growth and poppy production in Afghanistan and then you have the worldwide opioid epidemic hostated, a connection that raises the questions of whether users in Berlin, Boston, or Brazil should be seen as victims of the war in Afghanistan,

as much as fallen soldiers are. If so, the numbers would be staggering. Nearly eight hundred and forty one thousand Americans have died of a drug overdose since the war in Afghanistan began, including more than seventy thousand and two and twenty nineteen alone. The majority of these have involved opioids. Officially, the DA claims that essentially all illicit opioids entering the US are grown in Latin America.

Ho however, finds the Sun convincing. When you look at their own information and their own reports on the illicit opioid production and hectorage in Mexico and South America, it's clear that there is not enough production in the Western hemisphere to meet the demand for illicit opiates in the US. He told the MIT press. A dirty history. The US government has a long history, or

you have directly involving itself with the worldwide narcotics trade. In Colombia. It worked with President Alvaro Uribey on a national on a nationwide drug war, even as internal US documents identified Uribe as one of the nation's most important drug traffickers, an employee of the infamous Medaine cartel, and a close personal friend of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. Profits from drug running funded Uribe's elections election runs in

two thousand and two and two thousand and six. General Manuel Noriega was also a key ally of the US. For many years, the Panamanian was on the CIA payroll, despite Washington knowing he was involved in drug trafficking since at least nineteen seventy two. When he became de facto dictator of Panama in nineteen eighty four, little changed, but the director of the Drug Enforcement Agency initially

praised him for his vigorous anti drug trafficking policy. Eventually, however, the US decided to invade the country and capture Noriega, sentencing him to forty years in federal prison for drug crimes largely committed while he was still in the CIA's pay At the same time as this was going on, investigative journalist Gary Webb exposed how the CIA helped funded dirty war against Nicaragua was left as government through

sales of crack cocaine to black neighborhoods across the United States, linking far right paramilitary armies with US drug kingpins like Rick Ross. To this day, the US government continues to support Honduran strongman Juan Orlando Hernandez, despite their president's well established connection to the cocaine trade. Earlier this year, a US court sentenced hernandez brother Tony to life in prison for international drug smuggling, while Wuan himself

was unindicted co conspiracor was an unindicted co conspirator in the case. Nevertheless, god man sold out by his own brother. Damn. Nevertheless, President Hernandez has proven himself effective as suppressing the anti imperialist left inside his country and cementing the US back two thousand and nine military coup, one reason he is unlikely to face charges in any near future. Using the illegal drug trade and the profits from it to fund imperial objectives. It's been a constant of great empires

going back for centuries. For instance, in the nineteen forties and fifties, the French Empire utilized opium crops in the so called Golden Triangle region of Indo China in order to help beat back a growing Vietnamese independence movement. Yeah we know about that too. Going further back, the British use its opium machine to subdue and economically conquer much of China. Britain's insatiable thirst for Chinese tea

was beginning to bankrupt the country as the China. That's a really interesting story. I would like to do a show about that, honestly. About the opium war is what started it, the whole Chinese tea obsession, and it goes back pretty good. There's a really good book. I believe it's called A Botany of Desire. I think it's Michael Pollen. I think that's what I think that's the book it's in. But he goes into a huge deconstruction

of that whole thing. It's very fascinating. So anyway, Britain's insatiable thirst for Chinese tea was beginning to bankrupt the country, and the Chinese would accept only gold or silver as payment. It therefore used the power of its navy to force China to seed Hong Kong, from which Britain began flooding China with opium. It grew in its own possessions in Southeast Asia, in South Asia. So I'm going to read that again because I kind of got a little

clunky over there. Britain's insatiable thirst for Chinese teeth was beginning to bankrupt the country. So they love that tea so much. They were spending too much money on it, and the Chinese would only accept gold and silver as payment for all that tea. It therefore used the power of its navy, the British navy, to force China to seed Hong Kong, making an independent nation, from which Britain began flooding China with opium. It grew in its possessions

in South Asia. So Britain had all these like possession, little tiny little nations, little little country's, little areas, I guess they're occupations, and they were all outside of Hong Kong. And so they forced China to seed Hong Kong as an independent state, and then Britain just began flooding it through flooding China through Hong Kong with all the opium. And that's what's just, oh my god, that's what they did. The humanitarian impact of the opium

war was staggering. By eighteen eighty, the British were inundated, were inundating China with over sixty five hundred tons of opium every year, equivalent to many billions of doses, causing massive social and economic dislocation. This, China struggled to cope with a crippling empire wild wide addiction. Today, many Chinese still

refer to the era as the Century of humiliation. In India and Pakistan to the effect was no less dramatic, as colonists forced farmers into planting inedible poppy fields and then later tea rather than subsistence crops, causing waves of huge famines, the frequency of which had never been seen before. Oh my god. So yeah, A lot of people talk about the fentanyl thing being Chinese, the Chinese revenge for that century of humiliation. I buy that for sure.

I mean, they're making this particular substance export only strictly to the US exclusively. And look what's happened to our country with the fentanyl. Just the fentanyl, dude. I remember seeing fentanyl friends of mine overdosing on it, like almost thirty years ago. It's been around and it's just getting worse, millions of losers. The story is much more nuanced than some CIA controls the world's drugs quote conspiracy theories make out there are no US soldiers loading up Afghan cards

with opium. However, many commanders are knowingly enabling warlords. Who do that exact thing. The US military and CIA bear a large responsibility for the opium production boom in Afghanistan, Professor Merci said, explaining quote post nine to eleven. They basically allied themselves with a lot of Afghan strongmen and warlords who happen

to be involved in some way in drug production and trafficking. Those individuals were acting as local allies for the US and NATO and therefore were largely protected from retribution or arrest for drug trafficking themselves because they were allies with the US at the time, So that still echoes around. We're still feeling it from the

ground. The war in Afghanistan has looked a lot like the war on drugs in Latin America and previous colonial campaigns in Asia, with a rapid militarization of the area and the empowerment of pliant local elites which immediately began to embezzle the massive profits that quietly disappear into black holes, all the while millions of people pay the price suffering inside a militarized death zone and turning to drugs as a coping mechanism. And the story of the opium boom, there are a few

winners, but millions upon millions of losers. Oh, end of the article. So that's I think that's a good little piece there. It's from the Mint Press. It was republished in the Monthly Review. It's a good article. It kind of wraps up a lot of the information that I think is

relative and pertinent. But yeah, China, the Chinese revenge. I think they're working tidy real close with Afghanistan right now, and I think that they're really trying to put the squeeze and that capacity on the US and just the West in general. I mean, look what we've done. We've done so

much horrible shit to that country. We've meant the century of humiliation. And of course, I mean China has us by the balls no matter which way, every which way from Sunday, from the products that we can't stop using, the stupid plastic shit that they make that we can't seem to get people, we can't pay people to make, so we pay those guys hardly anything, the phones, and then of course there's all the TikTok stuff. I mean, it's just crazy. And of course we need, like, you

know, some big bad guy. We got to have a boogeyman someone standing in for that position. So China fits perfectly into that. But I'm not afraid of China. I don't think China's going to ruin the United States. I just think it's very interesting how they are working so closely with real active narco states and they're just like no qualms whatsoever. Like we're gonna work tightly with these guys. We're working with the Mexican cartels, and we're gonna work

with the Taliban and get our relationships nice and tight. So I don't know, expect more fentyl and more fentyl related injury, death and maniacism happening. More crazy maniacs high as shit on fentnyl talking to their zippers and just dying. I mean, it's I follow a lot of people on Twitter. There's guys that are just doing homeless intervention all the time, and some of those videos are just They're just insane. Man. It's just crazy out there.

And I'm so grateful that I'm healthy and happy and I don't have a drug addiction. And I mean, I have habits, bad habits. Everyone has them. I have mine. I try to keep them in check. I've kind of reignited some former habits that I don't necessarily think I need. I don't know why they just kind of started coming up, but at least I'm aware of it now and recognizing it as a bad habit that is unnecessary.

So I'm more empowered now to cut that back out of my life where it should be than I was before, when I never even considered it a habit. I just considered it a lifestyle. So in any case, I hope this all finds you well, happy and healthy wherever you are having a great night or day. I appreciate all you guys listening to the show. I appreciate the Patreon supporters. I really really do. It makes a huge difference.

I don't have a ton of people on the pledges, but the ones I do, they're the ones that have always been there, and there's a couple of new ones that have come up. So I want to say welcome and thank you. It really means a lot to know that there's a good, small little tribe of people out there who are willing to support the work that I do on this show. It takes a lot of time. It's not cheap. Time is money, and if I'm not out there and making

money man, I'm trying to make shows. Sometimes days and weeks and weeks go by where I don't make anything and I feel bad. But today was the day where I had a chance to actually make a couple of shows and get him out there. So I hope you enjoy them. I hope you find this information interesting and you want to share it along. I'm gonna try to keep notes on all this stuff and include all the things I was reading and all the links and put them in the show notes so you can do

your own research. Okay, guys, I'm gonna wrap it up because I'm getting that cotton mouth and I need to eat. Have a great nat or day wherever you are, and we'll talk again soon. Audiosa to say I got him on day on the song Madawa feeling Adada that you get a Sha horror Donna day horror, say horry, Mr Roya Husu to Hawaiisa mean notes can be best Manna Bara how honey dish for him most and Dasar Rosina Muda had Smar parsation has to gates to him, Adama car Azamneskandarusa was breast on

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