War on Drugs == FAIL

[FluffyMcDeath]

Still causing nothing but trouble.
[youtube:3ou5fz47]91y9KqvVggY[/youtube:3ou5fz47]

 

[cecilia]

it's all about making money on a black market.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

it's all about making money on a black market.

Yes. It's about Mexico and South America. It's about6 Afghanistan and Kosovo. It's about blacks and the banks. And it's about power.

 

[Glaucus]

It certainly is about money and power, but Kosovo?

 

[Robert]

It certainly is about money and power, but Kosovo?

Oh yes:
Chossudovsky:

The global media portrays Milosevic as a dictator, and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) as a nationalist defender of innocent Albanian civilians. The truth is a lot more complicated than that.

In fact, the KLA is supported by crime syndicates that derive their money from marketing huge amounts of heroin in Western Europe.

 

[Glaucus]

Ok, you don't have to tell me that the KLA is little more then a criminal organization, but was the Kosovo war about drugs? I fully opposed that war, but I'd find it hard to believe the war on drugs was part of it's justification.

 

[Robert]

Part of it's justification? Eh'm, No.

That is not the suggestion, at all.

 

[faethor]

Fatboy Slim must be popular with the YouTubers.

Socialnomics:
[youtube:qp644st8]sIFYPQjYhv8[/youtube:qp644st8]

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

Ok, you don't have to tell me that the KLA is little more then a criminal organization, but was the Kosovo war about drugs? I fully opposed that war, but I'd find it hard to believe the war on drugs was part of it's justification.

This is one of those - "it's complicated" moments. Did the British East India Company fight wars to be able to run drugs? Hell, yes. It was a business and it had the full backing of the crown. Was the British East India Company also an organ for the projection of state power? Hell yes. It was quite a symbiotic relationship. Is it special in history as being the only such case of a symbiosis between government, business and criminality? Not by a long shot.

One could argue that there was no criminality because opium was not illegal except that it was in the places that the company was trying to push it until they killed a sufficient number of people to have that changed.

Drugs tend to follow along with american soldiers. Some of this we could say is just the nature of war. Criminals come with it and take advantage of stressed populations. Iraq seems to have had an increase in drug use since the war for example.

But it is also interesting that falling drug production can precede a war with the US. Manuel Noriega is currently on trial in France. He claims that the falling out with the US came when he refused to cooperate with the US in fighting leftists. He was fighting against the drug cartels and drug money was often used to fuel the rightist death squads that it was otherwise tricky to directly fund from the treasury.

In Kosovo, the justification wasn't drugs (how the hell could you sell that to the world public opinion). The justification was atrocities. Of course, much in the way of atrocity wasn't what it seemed to be and the press was manipulated. And getting even that far took a long time. If you remember back that far following along with the press, it took a long time to destabilize Sarajevo to the point that an actual war could break out.

Justification aside, the reason was to increase US presence in Eastern Europe. However, you need someone you can work with when you are trying to take over a place and there is a necessary tit for tat that has to go along with it. It's just political reality.

Before the US war on Afghanistan, the Taliban were hitting hard against the opium growers. They had to hang a few farmers to get the message across but after that the campaign was going well. Obviously they realized the funding potential for the northern alliance but they used the justification of Sharia.

Since the US invasion, Afghanistan is once again a thriving source of opium and heroin. Oddly enough, Kosovo is the major transit point into Europe for that production.

As we learned in Kosovo, sex trade and drug trade seemed to follow right along with US contractors. The crooks are built right into the system and the system seems to turn a blind eye. There are policy benefits in degrading populations and funneling money to ruthless enforcers.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

Speaking of drugs what about prescription addiction?

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

It certainly is about money and power, but Kosovo?

Oh yes:
Chossudovsky:

Finally got round to reading that link. All I can say is - yup - that's about right. I'll have to see what he's written and maybe drop by my local bookstore.

Also, a lot of the arms that went into Kosovo were recycled from (nothing to do with US/Saudi backing of course) Islamic fighters in Soviet Afghanistan. Those arms have gone on to other conflicts since then. War is a racketMajor General Smedley Butler, USMC, 1933.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

I found more by Chossudovsky:

 

[Robert]

I found more by Chossudovsky:

Yes, that puts a bit more flesh on the bones.

Whenever someone asks why drugs are still illegal, I always point to this type of thing as part of the reason.
Of course some people think the idea is crazy but they're generally the same type of people who think drugs are illegal because the government care about you and only want to protect you from yourself.