Community | January 12, 2012 | 20 comments

Afghan opium profits up 133% according to UN

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rodstradamus
12 January 2012 Last updated at 19:49 ET Help

In a new survey, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime says income received by opium farmers in Afghanistan rose by 133% and that poppy cultivation has also increased.

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I like how she says the profits fund the insurgency. No, the profits fund the UN, CIA, military and pharmaceutical industrial complex. The local poppy farmer does not ship product internationally or have the refining facilities linked with the mob in Turkey or Corsica. They don't put the morphine in with the soldiers survival kit.

Many top American families got their riches via the British East India Company, running opium as far back as the 1600s, such as the Delanos, Kerrys and Bushes. Wars were fought from then til now and a major underlying factor is heroin, which makes a lot more money off the books than oil does on. By making it illegal, its easier for these monopoly men to gain more power and wealth.

The drug laws are a joke and the wars are a disgrace. Ron Paul is the only hope we got!
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20 comments // Afghan opium profits up 133% according to UN

  • StandaboveUnderstand
    • 0
      StandaboveUnderstand  
    • saying opium cultivation is up 133% is a joke. its like saying my retirement is up 133% today. when yesterday it was down to 1% of its all time high and today its at 2.33% of its all time high.

    • 4 months ago
  • jimstoner
    • +2
      jimstoner  
    • Has anyone ever wondered how these Afghans are getting the drugs to North America? If the enemy can get tons of drugs into the country, what exactly is Homeland Security doing with all that money and what are they for? I've often pictured an American or Canadian soldier standing over a group of Afghans and asking, how are they getting these mule trains all the way to the States?

    • 4 months ago
  • freehit
    • +1
      freehit  
    • jimstoner:

      The wagon trains driven by poor dirt farmers leaving out of Afganistan go up through Siberia and cross over the pole into Alaska and Canada and then sneek down the coast into the lower 48 where they sell off the wagons and mules and fly back home with their pockets filled with gold bars. This is why to fight this insidious route of infiltration over the north pole, the CIA is melting the sea ice because the mules pulling the wagon trains can't swim in cold water long enough to make the crossing. Oh I almost forgot, Ron Paul sold them the maps showing the unguarded roads to take so homeland security wouldn't catch them. That should cover all the hot buttons, now turning the sarcasim font off.

    • 4 months ago
  • jimstoner
  • trut
  • StandaboveUnderstand
  • circlesquared
    • +1
      circlesquared  
    • trut:

      thanks to the 1% as well that own his choices as they do most of ours. He spoke of many things I believe he does care about...it's been made clear though that he would rather maintain what policies he can for the few that allowed him to be elected into office rather than go against their wishes for the people that think they elected him for his "values".

    • 4 months ago
  • nikonwilly
  • WalmartRamen
  • Vierotchka
    • 0
      Vierotchka  
    • Image
    • WalmartRamen:

      It goes back much further than that:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium#Ancient_use

      Opium has been actively collected since prehistoric times, and may be the soma plant ubiquitously mentioned in the Rig Veda. Though western scholars typically date the text at 1500 BCE, Indian scholars maintain that the verses and the history contained in them have been orally transmitted thousands of years before. "Soma" is Vedic Sanskrit for moon, describing both the shape of the bulb and its nocturnal juice emission, which in ancient times would have been visible by moonlight only.[6] A common name for males in Afghanistan is "Redey", which in Pashto means "poppy".[7] This term may be derived from the Sanskrit words "rddhi" and "hrdya", which mean "magical", "a type of medicinal plant", and "heart-pleasing". The upper South Asian belt of Afghanistan, Pakistan, northern India, and Burma still account for the world's largest supply of opium.
      At least seventeen finds of Papaver somniferum from Neolithic settlements have been reported throughout Switzerland, Germany, and Spain, including the placement of large numbers of poppy seed capsules at a burial site (the Cueva de los Murciélagos, or "Bat cave," in Spain), which have been carbon-14 dated to 4200 BCE[citation needed] Numerous finds of Papaver somniferum or Papaver setigerum from Bronze Age and Iron Age settlements have also been reported.[8] The first known cultivation of opium poppies was in Mesopotamia, approximately 3400 BCE, by Sumerians who called the plant Hul Gil, the "joy plant."[9][10] Tablets found at Nippur, a Sumerian spiritual center south of Baghdad, described the collection of poppy juice in the morning and its use in production of opium.[5] Cultivation continued in the Middle East by the Assyrians, who also collected poppy juice in the morning after scoring the pods with an iron scoop; they called the juice aratpa-pal, possibly the root of Papaver. Opium production continued under the Babylonians and Egyptians.
      Opium was used with poison hemlock to put people quickly and painlessly to death, but it was also used in medicine. The Ebers Papyrus, ca. 1500 BCE, describes a way to "stop a crying child" using grains of the poppy-plant strained to a pulp. Spongia somnifera, sponges soaked in opium, were used during surgery.[9] The Egyptians cultivated opium thebaicum in famous poppy fields around 1300 BCE. Opium was traded from Egypt by the Phoenicians and Minoans to destinations around the Mediterranean Sea, including Greece, Carthage, and Europe. By 1100 BCE, opium was cultivated on Cyprus, where surgical-quality knives were used to score the poppy pods, and opium was cultivated, traded, and smoked.[11] Opium was also mentioned after the Persian conquest of Assyria and Babylonian lands in the sixth century BCE[5]
      From the earliest finds, opium has appeared to have ritual significance, and anthropologists have speculated that ancient priests may have used the drug as a proof of healing power.[9] In Egypt, the use of opium was generally restricted to priests, magicians, and warriors, its invention credited to Thoth, and it was said to have been given by Isis to Ra as treatment for a headache.[5] A figure of the Minoan "goddess of the narcotics," wearing a crown of three opium poppies, ca. 1300 BCE, was recovered from the Sanctuary of Gazi, Crete, together with a simple smoking apparatus.[11][12] The Greek gods Hypnos (Sleep), Nyx (Night), and Thanatos (Death) were depicted wreathed in poppies or holding poppies. Poppies also frequently adorned statues of Apollo, Asklepios, Pluto, Demeter, Aphrodite, Kybele and Isis, symbolizing nocturnal oblivion.[5]

    • 4 months ago
  • WalmartRamen
  • bailey78
  • Anonmaly
    • +2
      Anonmaly  
    • bailey78:

      Yeah and is probably being brought in under the supervision of Bush family CIA hires they made to oversee it now....

      Bush Sr. was the head of the CIA, you think he didn't groom the agency to make him money well into the future?....

    • 4 months ago
  • rodstradamus
  • fernweher
    • -2
      fernweher  
    • Image
    • Acetaminophen is NOT derived from opium. It's a chemical made by adding sodium nitrate to benzene. Acetaminophen is often paired with opiates in pills, like codeine, because they are two DIFFERENT kinds of pain relievers.
      You're not making Ron Paul look very good by supporting him with made-up science. Of course, if he has his way most poorer people like me wouldn't even get to learn real science, so I guess you'll have an easier time spreading your propaganda then.

    • 4 months ago
  • ThatCrazyLibertarian
  • Anonmaly
    • 0
      Anonmaly  
    • fernweher:

      Right.....

      Let's see the "war-on-drugs" disproportionately targets poor (rich people buy there way out of charges) and minorities... Ending that would therefore be an attack on those two groups how?

      And yes by stating quite clearly "The government has no place in marriage" thereby saying "they can't outlaw gay-marriage".... Is anti-gay how....?

      Yes and by not doing anything to change a woman's ability to have an abortion is somehow "anti-woman".....

      Fine by those standards Obama is anti "poor white male pot smoker".....

      I'm being denied sovereignty over my own body, in the way of consuming cannabis...

      If only the bullshit were so cut and dry....

    • 4 months ago
  • rodstradamus
  • rodstradamus
  • WalmartRamen
    • 0
      WalmartRamen  
    • fernweher:

      The point is more about making the drugs, is not really
      there for the poor. It's the rich that push those drugs out.
      Can you see the poor making home made
      Pseudoephedrine?

      Or it's pushed by the Government, other powers not known.
      As a way to make a need to control the people.

      Pseudoephedrine synthesis
      Molecular formula: (1S,2S)-2-methylamino-1-phenylpropan-1-ol,
      to be symbolised as C6H5-1CHOH-2C(CH3)-NH-CH3

      Nowadays it's made synthethically, not by extraction of Ephaedra grass anymore.
      It looks like something using:

      First part:
      The fermentation of benzaldehyd by yeast (Candida or Saccharomyces) species growing on dextrose and with 'help' from the enzyme pyruvate decarboxylase.
      Benzaldehyd is then transferred into precursor L-phenylacetylcarbinol (L-PAC, officially named: (1S)-1-hydroxy-1-phenyl-propan-2-one)

      Second part:
      L-PAC is then chemically converted to pseudoephedrine via reductive amination.
      This involves the conversion of the carbonyl group to an amine via an intermediate imine. The carbonyl group is at the '-2-' position on the propan part of LPAC.........

    • 4 months ago
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