"Opium, Rape and the American Way" (Scared of Russia)
Mort Zuckerman
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Subject: "Opium, Rape and the American Way"
Date: Nov 2, 2009 2:02 PM
ARTICLE BELOW ABOUT HOW MESSED-UP
AFGHANISTAN IS, FROM AN INSIDER LIVING IT
===================================
http://www.actionlyme.org/BUSH_BIN_LADEN.htm
"Since 1993, in India, Enron had invested $ 2.9 billion for a power
plant near Bombay. Originally it had counted on cheap supply of gas
from Turkmenistan via the planned pipeline through Afghanistan. The
power plant project had turned into a nightmare.
"As soon as the Bush administration was in place, vice president
Cheney would reward Enron for their support during the elections.
Enron's chairman, Kenneth Lay, had a wish list that was almost
entirely included in Cheney's proposals for the new U.S. energy
policy. [55] Cheney also intervened to help Enron collect a $64
million debt for its power plant near Bombay, during a meeting with
Indian opposition leader Sonia Ghandi in Washington on June 27 2001.
[56]"
"The wealthy bin Laden family is well known to the Bush family. Salem
bin Laden supplied part of the money for George W. Bush’s first oil
company, Arbusto, in 1978. [58] His father, George H.W. Bush, joined
the Carlyle group after being US' president, [59] and developed
relations with the BinLadin company. [60] He met the family in
November 1998 and in January 2000. [61]
"Bin Laden also invested in the Carlyle group. H.W. Bush still met
with Shafig bin Laden, Osama's brother, on September 10, 2001, the day
before the attacks, at the annual investor conference of the Carlyle
Group. [62] Like Enron, Carlyle had grown tremendously."
"***In February 1996 things went wrong for the U.S. pipeline project
in Afghanistan. President Rabbani of Afghanistan contracted the
Argentinean BRIDAS instead of UNOCAL for the construction and
exploitation of the gas pipeline. For the US, to get the pipeline
project back in the hands of UNOCAL, Rabbani would have to disappear.
But who could be accused if Rabbani were killed?***"
=======
The Banksters
http://www.actionlyme.org/DURHAM_BUSH_CRIME.htm
don't care about how many people we kill, and
neither do most Americans, who *all* know these
are Pipelines Wars. If it was about rights
we woulda been in Hutu-and-Tutsiville. We would
never have funneled and funded the Chechen
http://www.euranet.eu/eng/Today/News/English-News/Council-of-Europe-condemns-Chechen-murders
"terrorists," for *THEIR* Kill-Baby Show. We
wouldn't have created and summoned the Shakashvilli
Golem, or performed the Milosevic-Kosovo Conquest,
or dealt with Al-Quaeda to give Russia their
VietCongistan, stirring up trouble for Russia all
these years...
This is *all* *about* the Caspian Sea.
I think it has 20% or more of the known
global reserves. And it's not about
our getting is as much as it's about
Russia *NOT* getting it. That would be
because Russia knows about these other
skits: VietCongistan, Kosovo, Chechnya,
Shakashvilli and of course, the Rape
of Russia by the Israeli Oligarchs after
the Rape of Russia by the Israeli
Bolshevics. (Now we call them Zionists.)
Kathleen M. Dickson
http://www.actionlyme.org
=============================
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/02
Published on Monday, November 2, 2009 by TruthDig.com
Opium, Rape and the American Way
by Chris Hedges
The warlords we champion in Afghanistan are as venal, as opposed to
the rights of women and basic democratic freedoms, and as heavily
involved in opium trafficking as the Taliban. The moral lines we draw
between us and our adversaries are fictional. The uplifting narratives
used to justify the war in Afghanistan are pathetic attempts to redeem
acts of senseless brutality. War cannot be waged to instill any
virtue, including democracy or the liberation of women. War always
empowers those who have a penchant for violence and access to weapons.
War turns the moral order upside down and abolishes all discussions of
human rights. War banishes the just and the decent to the margins of
society. And the weapons of war do not separate the innocent and the
damned. An aerial drone is our version of an improvised explosive
device. An iron fragmentation bomb is our answer to a suicide bomb. A
burst from a belt-fed machine gun causes the same terror and bloodshed
among civilians no matter who pulls the trigger.
"We need to tear the mask off of the fundamentalist warlords who after
the tragedy of 9/11 replaced the Taliban," Malalai Joya, who was
expelled from the Afghan parliament two years ago for denouncing
government corruption and the Western occupation, told me during her
visit to New York last week. "They used the mask of democracy to take
power. They continue this deception. These warlords are mentally the
same as the Taliban. The only change is physical. These warlords
during the civil war in Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996 killed 65,000
innocent people. They have committed human rights violations, like the
Taliban, against women and many others."
"In eight years less than 2,000 Talib have been killed and more than
8,000 innocent civilians has been killed," she went on. "We believe
that this is not war on terror. This is war on innocent civilians.
Look at the massacres carried out by NATO forces in Afghanistan. Look
what they did in May in the Farah province, where more than 150
civilians were killed, most of them women and children. They used
white phosphorus and cluster bombs. There were 200 civilians on 9th of
September killed in the Kunduz province, again most of them women and
children. You can see the Web site of professor Marc Herold, this
democratic man, to know better the war crimes in Afghanistan imposed
on our people. The United States and NATO eight years ago occupied my
country under the banner of woman's rights and democracy. But they
have only pushed us from the frying pan into the fire. They put into
power men who are photocopies of the Taliban."
Afghanistan's boom in the trade in opium, used to produce heroin, over
the past eight years of occupation has funneled hundreds of millions
of dollars to the Taliban, al-Qaida, local warlords, criminal gangs,
kidnappers, private armies, drug traffickers and many of the senior
figures in the government of Hamid Karzai. The New York Times reported
that the brother of President Karzai, Ahmed Wali Karzai, has been
collecting money from the CIA although he is a major player in the
illegal opium business. Afghanistan produces 92 percent of the world's
opium in a trade that is worth some $65 billion, the United Nations
estimates. This opium feeds some 15 million addicts worldwide and
kills around 100,000 people annually. These fatalities should be added
to the rolls of war dead.
Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office
on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), said that the drug trade has permitted the
Taliban to thrive and expand despite the presence of 100,000 NATO
troops.
"The Taliban's direct involvement in the opium trade allows them to
fund a war machine that is becoming technologically more complex and
increasingly widespread," said Costa.
The UNODC estimates the Taliban earned $90 million to $160 million a
year from taxing the production and smuggling of opium and heroin
between 2005 and 2009, as much as double the amount it earned annually
while it was in power nearly a decade ago. And Costa described the
Afghan-Pakistani border as "the world's largest free trade zone in
anything and everything that is illicit," an area blighted by drugs,
weapons and illegal immigration. The "perfect storm of drugs and
terrorism" may be on the move along drug trafficking routes through
Central Asia, he warned. Profits made from opium are being pumped into
militant groups in Central Asia and "a big part of the region could be
engulfed in large-scale terrorism, endangering its massive energy
resources," Costa said.
"Afghanistan, after eight years of occupation, has become a world
center for drugs," Joya told me. "The drug lords are the only ones
with power. How can you expect these people to stop the planting of
opium and halt the drug trade? How is it that the Taliban when they
were in power destroyed the opium production and a superpower not only
cannot destroy the opium production but allows it to increase? And
while all this goes on, those who support the war talk to you about
women's rights. We do not have human rights now in most provinces. It
is as easy to kill a woman in my country as it is to kill a bird. In
some big cities like Kabul some women have access to jobs and
education, but in most of the country the situation for women is hell.
Rape, kidnapping and domestic violence are increasing. These
fundamentalists during the so-called free elections made a misogynist
law against Shia women in Afghanistan. This law has even been signed
by Hamid Karzai. All these crimes are happening under the name of
democracy."
Thousands of Afghan civilians have died from insurgent and foreign
military violence. And American and NATO forces are responsible for
almost half the civilian deaths in Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of
Afghan civilians have also died from displacement, starvation,
disease, exposure, lack of medical treatment, crime and lawlessness
resulting from the war.
Joya argues that Karzai and his rival Abdullah Abdullah, who has
withdrawn from the Nov. 7 runoff election, will do nothing to halt the
transformation of Afghanistan into a narco-state. She said that NATO,
by choosing sides in a battle between two corrupt and brutal
opponents, has lost all its legitimacy in the country.
The recent resignation of a high-level U.S. diplomat in Afghanistan,
Matthew Hoh, was in part tied to the drug problem. Hoh wrote in his
resignation letter that Karzi's government is filled with "glaring
corruption and unabashed graft." Karzi, he wrote, is a president
"whose confidants and chief advisers comprise drug lords and war
crimes villains who mock our own rule of law and counter-narcotics
effort."
Joya said, "Where do you think the $36 billion of money poured into
country by the international community have gone? This money went into
the pockets of the drug lords and the warlords. There are 18 million
people in Afghanistan who live on less than $2 a day while these
warlords get rich. The Taliban and warlords together contribute to
this fascism while the occupation forces are bombing and killing
innocent civilians. When we do not have security how can we even talk
about human rights or women's rights?"
"This election under the shade of Afghan war-lordism, drug-lordism,
corruption and occupation forces has no legitimacy at all," she said.
"The result will be like the same donkey but with new saddles. It is
not important who is voting. It is important who is counting. And this
is our problem. Many of those who go with the Taliban do not support
the Taliban, but they are fed up with these warlords and this
injustice and they go with the Taliban to take revenge. I do not agree
with them, but I understand them. Most of my people are against the
Taliban and the warlords, which is why millions did not take part in
this tragic drama of an election."
"The U.S. wastes taxpayers' money and the blood of their soldiers by
supporting such a mafia corrupt system of Hamid Karzai," said Joya,
who changes houses in Kabul frequently because of the numerous death
threats made against her. "Eight years is long enough to learn about
Karzai and Abdullah. They chained my country to the center of drugs.
If Obama was really honest he would support the democratic-minded
people of my country. We have a lot [of those people]. But he does not
support the democratic-minded people of my country. He is going to
start war in Pakistan by attacking in the border area of Pakistan.
More civilians have been killed in the Obama period than even during
the criminal Bush."
"My people are sandwiched between two powerful enemies," she lamented.
"The occupation forces from the sky bomb and kill innocent civilians.
On the ground, Taliban and these warlords deliver fascism. As NATO
kills more civilians the resistance to the foreign troops increases.
If the U.S. government and NATO do not leave voluntarily my people
will give to them the same lesson they gave to Russia and to the
English who three times tried to occupy Afghanistan. It is easier for
us to fight against one enemy rather than two."
© 2009 TruthDig.com
Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges
graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades
a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of
many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What
Every Person Should Know About War, and American Fascists: The
Christian Right and the War on America. His most recent book is
Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.
"[Real] scientists are *fiercely* independent. That's the good
news."-- NIH's Top Fool, Anthony Fauci