2 birds with one stone

Just finished reading the International Narcotics Report released by the State Department today (2.29.08). I tell you, the Taliban got it going on and it seems to be all charged by the hate of US – the United States and the West. According to the report:

"Narcotics production in Afghanistan hit historic highs in 2007 for the second straight year. Afghanistan grew 93 percent of the world’s opium poppy, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Opium poppy cultivation expanded from 165,000 ha in 2006 to 193,000 ha in 2007, an increase of 17 percent in land under cultivation... The export value of this year’s illicit opium harvest, $4 billion, made up more than a third of Afghanistan’s combined total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $11.5 billion. Afghanistan’s drug trade is undercutting efforts to establish a stable democracy with a licit economic free market in the country. The narcotics trade has strong links with the anti-government insurgency, most commonly associated with the Taliban. Narcotics traffickers provide revenue and arms to the Taliban, while the Taliban provides protection to growers and traffickers and keeps the government from interfering with their activities. During recent years, poppy production has soared in provinces where the Taliban is most active."

Now this tells me a few things. 1] the 32,000 troops we got in Afghanistan have not been able to reduce the opium trade nor convince farmers to stop growing Poppy in the region and 2] if they will blow up 2000 year old Buddhist statues out the side of mountian, they wont stop until they blow up all of our troops.

Now this means that the Taliban is rollin' in loot, 11.5 billion dollars worth. I know I would if i sold more than 90% of all the stuff that was the primary ingredient to make heroin. And I know, my senior chemistry seminar paper was how to make heroin #10 from Morphine (and i still got a copy, fol gave me an 89 n shit).

My main point of consternation is that the locations where cultivation of Poppy is the greatest is in areas that’s under the NATO forces’ control. LOL. So in essence, the Taliban is using this money to attack US and NATO forces as well as the U.S.-backed government. The report is called the U.S. State Department's annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report. A Briefing on the report was given by Assistant Secretary David T. Johnson

We turned a blind eye to the plant when the Taliban was being funded and supplied by US when they were considered a way to make inroads into the country in 1979. But we can't blame them, because it easy money since i suspect that all the Taliban has to do is provide protection to growers and traffickers to collect. We supposedly reduced their power in 2001 but today still in 2008 we are locked in fierce battle with them folk.

All we do is talk about eradication of the plant when we know good and damn well that eradicating opium hurts already super, duper poor farmers. Meaning we talk about crop replacement but what crop gone replace the kind of loot that poppy can generate? Cocca or weed maybe, but not olive trees for sure. In 2003 it was estimated that poppy production according to the International Monetary Fund, accounted for 40 percent to 60 percent of the Afghan economy. So now I am speculating, since we have been there it now represents about 70 to 75% - is that an increase?

Here at home, heroin has made a combecak, albeit as LL Cool J said, "been here for years.". Based on data reported in the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, there are an estimated 3,091,000 U.S. individuals 12 years of age and older that have used heroin at least once. Now even kids are being hooked on the stuff. In Texas for example, there has recently become a large corpus of kids as young as 11 geting hoked on the stuff. Really they are becoming addicted to a mixture of heroin and Tylenol PM , commonly called "cheese." News Reports suggest that they buy it at school with their "lunch money and snorted it through hollowed-out ballpoint pens."

I guess this will be another legacy of G.W. Bush. I mean, we suposedly making progress at least in the strong hold of the Taliban. But what do they do, they take us down with one stone, growing poppy to supply their military wing, and get our youth, the future military persons of our country, addicited to the same shit.

stacks on deck

This is a rare two post day for me. They say a pic is worth a thousand words so you make the call. Got this from one of my Folks.

mexicos national debt maybe
cashed welfare checks


they say crime doesnt pay

The new plastic surgery

The only solace that I have today is that there are no more number one seeds left in the NCAA tournament and that Duke was the first number one seed to get bounced. With that said, it was a long weekend, and one in which a few of my friends figured getting a few drinks away from the tube would be therapeutic, especially since all of our teams lost.

While beveraging, I noticed an interesting phenomena, or what I thought was interesting. In fact it could have been something that has been going on for a long time but rather I was too oblivious to notice it. There was a fellow on the adjacent side of me. He would move from bar stool to bar stool, and from table to table. It appeared as if he did the same thing each time, for he only approached women. On two of these occasions I saw him lean over to the party, say something and smile, and after that he would go in his pocket and flash two big wads of money. He did it in such a way to say “I have money, but I want to pull it out as if to act like I don’t think or want you to notice it, but really I do.

Eventually before the night was over, he had collected quite a bevy of women, at leas four or five, for himself, one of his boys and continued to entertain. Often keeping the money in his hand as he talked loud requesting the services of the waitress. Now being somewhat perspicacious observer of human tendencies as I give my credit for, it dawned on me that what he was doing was like plastic surgery – that the money made him feel good and as a result enhanced his looks as well as the way the ladies around him saw him.

I guess for folks like myself, who rarely even consider considering cosmetic or plastic surgery as a viable way to alter ones looks for the purpose of facial enhancement, can take another route now – money. Is it really true that money can make a person look better? And if that is the case, what does it say about us as people? Does it speak that our desire for material and things is more important than our desire for self-determination or personal betterment? I only ask because if I can, I will attempt to describe him. He was wearing an oversize Polo shirt with a large white tee under it with Averix Jeans. There was also a hint of glisten from his mouth but I could not tell if it was gold, platinum or the ubiquitous yellow teeth syndrome providing the shine. He head was the size of an under inflated volleyball and had a faced that resembled a cross between Dennis Rodman (without the hair color) and Sam Cassell (with hair). I could not discern anything about his personality, but what I could detect that it seems as if he made no head room in terms of conversation until he flashed his loot.

I figured that this was just a minor point of order when one has consumed three Bombay and tonics to look at those around them and taking notes. So when someone tells you that we as people don’t even or rarely consider plastic surgery, correct the, We do, we just don’t go under the knife as much with the exception of the super wealthy and Hollywood elite. Nope, for us, it seems that a stack of loot will do a person fine, even if they are but fuck ugly and have plaque on their teeth.