The Politics Of Heroin : CIA Complicity In The ... 2021
Several physicians experiment with treatments for heroin addiction. Dr. Alexander Lambert and Charles B. Towns tout their popular cure as the most "advanced, effective and compassionate cure" for heroin addiction. The cure consistedof a 7 day regimen, which included a five day purge of heroin from the addict's system withdoses of belladonna delirium.
The politics of heroin : CIA complicity in the ...
The single largest heroin seizure is madein Bangkok. The U.S. suspects that the 2,400-pound shipment of heroin, en route to New York City, originated from the Golden Triangle region, controlled by drug warlord, Khun Sa.
It is undisputed that individuals like Meneses and Blandon, who had ties to the Contrasor were Contra sympathizers, were convicted of drug trafficking, either in the UnitedStates or Central America. There is also undeniable evidence that certain groupsassociated with the Contras engaged in drug trafficking. The pervasiveness of suchactivities within the Contra movement and the United States government's knowledge ofthose activities, however, are still the subject of debate, and it is beyond the scope ofthe OIG's investigation, which we describe below. Yet it is noteworthy that, asinteresting as the story of Contras and illicit drug deals may be, it was not the catalystfor the public's or the media's interest in the Dark Alliance series. Investigations intothe alleged connection between Contras and cocaine dealing were conducted and articleswere printed in the late 1980s, at a time when interest in the Iran-Contra story wascresting. Neither those investigations nor the published articles tracking the allegationssparked a firestorm of outrage comparable to that created by the Dark Alliance series. Thefuror over the Mercury News series was driven by the allegations of thegovernment's complicity in cocaine deals within black communities. If the Dark Allianceseries had been limited to reporting on Contras, it seems unlikely that the groundswell ofpress and public attention would have occurred.
It's impossible to believe that the Central Intelligence Agency didn't know about the Contras' fund-raising activities in Los Angeles, considering that the agency was bankrolling, recruiting and essentially running the Contra operation. The CIA has a long history of embarrassing the country it is supposed to work for, from the Bay of Pigs in Cuba to the jungles of Vietnam. But no action that we know of can compare to the agency's complicity, however tacit, in the drug trade that devastated whole communities in our own country.
McCoy: Narcotics and addiction are not simply products of social deviance or individual weakness. Narcotics are major global commodities, and commodities are the building blocks of modern life. They shape our culture. They shape our politics. Whether we encourage trade in a particular commodity or attempt to prohibit it, both acts are intensely political.
a. The opium trade has existed in Southeast Asia for generations. This trade depended upon the market, and until recently the market for Southeast Asian opium was in Southeast Asia. The increase in the opium trade and the appearance of heroin were a result of the increased market, in part due to the presence of large American military forces in Vietnam.
B. The Mafia: I find it somewhat unnerving that the CIA is so confident of its immunity to public scrutiny that it no longer even bothers to contest the fact that it provided important political support for both the Sicilian Mafia and the Corsican narcotics syndicates of Marseilles. It is sharply significant that by refusing to comment on evidence in my book, the CIA is in effect admitting for the first time that it was allied with the founding father of the Marseilles postwar heroin industry, Barthélémy Guerini.
Moreover, the huge refinery at Ban Houei Tap in northwest Laos also operated for almost two years without being disturbed by the CIA because its owner was the commander-in-chief of the Royal Laotian Army, General Ouane Rattikone. This laboratory had a capacity to refine some 3.6 tons of heroin annually (estimates of total current US consumption range from six to ten tons a year) and supplied most of the heroin for GI addicts in South Vietnam. Moreover, large shipments of its output stamped with its distinctive Double U-O Globe brand label have begun turning up in the United States. And yet the CIA did absolutely nothing about it.
One of the aspects that is little discussed when talking about the war in Afghanistan was the successful policy of eradicating poppy cultivation and controlling heroin production during the Taliban's rule from 1996 to 2001.
When they came to power in 1996, after the defeat of the Soviet Union and intense warfare between different tribal groups, an estimated 82,000 hectares of poppy were planted in Afghanistan. This all changed when the regime banned the planting and production of heroin on Afghan territory with draconian measures. The area under cultivation was then reduced to 8,000 hectares.
The US gamble in Afghanistan was not to consolidate a strong state and government in accordance with the historical, tribal and cultural particularities of Afghan society, but rather to consolidate a state with the vision of the West in the service of its strategic interests in Central Asia. It was its strategic interests that led to Afghanistan becoming the world's leading heroin producer within two decades. It is estimated that Afghanistan produces 95% of the world's heroin, an increase that has an explanation: it is a business controlled by networks allied to the CIA and the Pentagon, whose profits have been key to consolidating US interests in Asia and played a key role in the development of the occupation policy.
There are reports and testimonies on how the CIA transformed Afghanistan into a narco-economy and a kleptocracy with the governments of Presidents Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, both elected through electoral fraud promoted by the White House. There are also reports of the involvement of members of the US military, mercenary groups and contractors involved in trafficking heroin produced in the Afghan provinces.
The Washington Post revealed that an Australian intelligence officer involved in NATO operations testified that US military convoys were being used to transport drug shipments to Pakistani ports. The Washington Post, also revealed in its instalments on the Afghanistan documents, 'The War on Truth', that the CIA's "external operations are funded from drug profits and said that "allegations that the Taliban used the heroin trade to finance their operations was a fabrication and a way to point them in the wrong direction".
The possibility of discontented workers joining up with disaffected youth is the real nightmare of the regime. And this is no fantasy. In Deng Xiaoping's China, working class discontent is growing. This is the new factor which the Western media in many recent reports has denounced as the unfortunate appearance in China of "the politics of envy." The workers and rural poor are angry that they get poorer by the day while the bureaucrats and capitalists at the top live like kings and queens.
But how are these evictions supposed to stop drug abuse? Were these crack houses? Were these heroin factories? Not at all. These were only the homes of tenants who had failed to pay their rent, either due to impoverishment or in protest against landlord's failure to make repairs. Indeed, there were only three arrests made during the raids, and these were only for minor drug possession charges.
But in fact the report goes out of its way to whitewash the Reagan-Bush administration and the contra leadership. In doing so, it unwittingly reveals Congressional complicity in the Reagan-Bush administration drug dealing. They know about the drug deals; they talk about it a bit for the cameras; and then they pat the government agencies on the back and tell them to keep up the good work.
OAKLAND: At the Planned Parenthood clinic defense on April 29 (where OR never showed up), NOW resorted to threats of repression in an attempt to impose their liberal politics. First, anyone who wanted to join the defense had to sign a statement agreeing to submit to NOW's dictates against confronting OR.
Lula's reputation as a "socialist'' and a "workers' leader'' make him popular among the masses, and he may well win the presidency. But his social-democratic politics do not represent an alternative that can lift the Brazilian masses out of the crisis-ridden situation they are in. 041b061a72