Reuters & WhatDoesItMean & The Observer – 2011-10-16 00:29:22
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/10/us-russia-aids-idUSTRE7993OT20111010
Russia Says US Afghan Policy Stokes AIDS Problem
Reuters
MOSCOW (October 10, 2011) — The United States is aggravating the HIV/AIDS problem in Russia and the West by refusing to use its forces to destroy opium crops in Afghanistan, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday.
Lavrov made Russia’s persistent case for poppy crop eradication by US and NATO forces in Afghanistan at a conference on communicable diseases in the eastern Europe and Central Asia region, where AIDS is a growing problem.
“It is hard for us to understand why our American partners don’t want the International Security Assistance Force to do this,” he said. “This issue is crucial to the fight against the drug threat and, consequently, the spread of HIV/AIDS.”
Afghanistan is the world’s biggest producer of poppies used to make opium, the key ingredient in the production of heroin. Russia is the largest per capita consumer of the drug and faces an HIV/AIDS epidemic that is spreading from dirty needles.
“The tragedy of the situation lies in the fact that in Europe, young people … are getting this disease because of the spread of drugs,” Lavrov said, adding that “we must fight not only the use but also the spread of drugs.”
Russia, which fought a decade-long war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, is supporting the Western military campaign in Afghanistan by providing transit routes for personnel and supplies.
It says the United States made a big mistake when it reversed its anti-drug strategy in 2009 by phasing out crop eradication efforts to focus instead on intercepting drugs and hunting production operations and drug lords.
The Unites States said it made the change because drug crop eradication was not damaging the Taliban insurgency but was putting farmers out of work, sowing resentment against foreign intervention.
Russia says it opposes a long-term Western military presence in Afghanistan, but has also expressed fears that the spread of drugs and Islamist militancy toward its borders could worsen if NATO forces leave without first ensuring stability.
© Thomson Reuters 2011. All rights reserved.
Obama Warned Now Heads World’s Most Dangerous Drug Cartel
Sorcha Faal / What Does It Mean.com
(October 13, 2011) — A scathing report authored by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the United States President’s role in protecting the Afghanistan drug trade essentially labels Barack Obama as the most powerful drug cartel leader our world has ever known.
Speaking at a conference this week on communicable diseases Lavrov lashed out over Obama’s refusal to eradicate Afghanistan’s poppy crop and stated, “It is hard for us to understand why our American partners don’t want the International Security Assistance Force to do this. This issue is crucial to the fight against the drug threat and, consequently, the spread of HIV/AIDS.”
Enraging Russian authorities the most was Obama’s 2009 decision to stop the eradication of Afghanistan’s poppy crop and, instead, order American military forces to actually begin protecting not only the fields where these dangerous drug plants are grown, but also protecting the transporters and manufacturers who turn it into heroin.
Since the US war against Afghanistan was launched the Bush administration paid American contractors and Afghan security personnel hundreds of millions of dollars to slash and burn individual poppy fields. Upon taking office, however, Obama regime officials stated bluntly that those efforts to eradicate Afghanistan’s poppy fields had failed and ordered their destruction stopped.
In late 2001 when the US invaded Afghanistan they accounted for 12% of the world’s opium production. By 2008, it accounted for 93% and the United Nations has reported this week that Afghanistan opium production is set to rise another staggering 61% this year.
As a virtual flood of Afghan heroin continues to devastate children and families, Russian officials publicly blame America for this plague because almost all this deadly drug comes from US-dominated Afghanistan and leading Russia’s envoy to NATO Dmitry Rogozin to warn this past week that Russia will reject the US presence in Afghanistan after its current UN mandate expires.
Not being told to the American people about Obama’s reason for protecting the global drug trade was his being able to use the money gained from this ‘death business’ to save the US economy from complete collapse in 2009 shortly after he took office.
Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, reported on this in December 2009 when he publically stated that he had seen the evidence that proceeds of the global drug trade were “the only liquid investment capital” available to some banks on the brink of collapse in 2008. He said that a majority of the $352 billion (£216 billion) of drugs profits was absorbed into the global economic system as a result.
Russian officials note that as Commander in Chief of all US military forces, administrative head of all US intelligence agencies, and the head of all US law enforcement, Obama singlehandedly controls the world’s largest known drug manufacturing, transporting and distribution network estimated to be worth nearly $1 trillion.
And long known to everyone in the world (even those American who choose to face the truth) is that Obama’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has an over 50 year long association with being the most powerful and dangerous global drug cartel and has (ironically) been blamed as being solely responsible for the massive crippling of American’s largely black inner cities due to drug violence.
Even worse, new reports surfacing in the United States are now showing that the Obama regime, in order to protect their CIA drug trafficking routes into the US, has been supplying Mexican drug cartels with thousands of weapons in exchange for protection with some of these guns being reported found in the home belonging to the purported top Sinaloa cartel enforcer in Ciudad Juarez and others proved to be used in the killing of US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry this past summer.
Not just to Mexico either has the Obama regime been sending thousands of weapons, but also to his hometown of Chicago where US reports are showing that the drug gangs in that large American city are being armed courtesy of the US government.
And in what can only be described as irony turning into farce, Obama’s 2008 election promise not to interfere with US State’s medical marijuana laws was broken this past week when he ordered his regime to launch an assault on medical pot dispensaries, vowing to shut down establishments licensed and regulated by State and local governments….while at the exact same time he has steadfastly refused to prosecute or jail one single Wall Street bankster responsible for looting the American people of over $9 Trillion of their wealth.
Not being understood by the millions of sick Americans who have benefited from medical marijuana, is that when it comes to the point that their wellbeing is cutting into the illegal drug profits made by the CIA for the elites of their country, their personal welfare means absolutely nothing at all.
President John F. Kennedy once said about America, “This nation was founded by many men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.” One cannot but help think what he would say now about the people he gave his life to save, but have squandered it all away by allowing drug lords and despots to rule over them?
(c) EU and US all rights reserved.
Drug Money Saved Banks in Global Crisis, Claims UN Advisor
Drugs and crime chief says $352 billion in criminal proceeds was effectively laundered by financial institutions
Rajeev Syal / The Observer
(12 December 2009) — Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations’ drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer.
Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organized crime were “the only liquid investment capital” available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352 billion (£216 billion) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.
This will raise questions about crime’s influence on the economic system at times of crisis. It will also prompt further examination of the banking sector as world leaders, including Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, call for new International Monetary Fund regulations.
Speaking from his office in Vienna, Costa said evidence that illegal money was being absorbed into the financial system was first drawn to his attention by intelligence agencies and prosecutors around 18 months ago. “In many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system’s main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor,” he said.
Some of the evidence put before his office indicated that gang money was used to save some banks from collapse when lending seized up, he said.
“Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities…. There were signs that some banks were rescued that way.” Costa declined to identify countries or banks that may have received any drugs money, saying that would be inappropriate because his office is supposed to address the problem, not apportion blame. But he said the money is now a part of the official system and had been effectively laundered.
“That was the moment [last year] when the system was basically paralyzed because of the unwillingness of banks to lend money to one another. The progressive liquidization to the system and the progressive improvement by some banks of their share values [has meant that] the problem [of illegal money] has become much less serious than it was,” he said.
The IMF estimated that large US and European banks lost more than $1tn on toxic assets and from bad loans from January 2007 to September 2009 and more than 200 mortgage lenders went bankrupt. Many major institutions either failed, were acquired under duress, or were subject to government takeover.
Gangs are now believed to make most of their profits from the drugs trade and are estimated to be worth £352 billion, the UN says. They have traditionally kept proceeds in cash or moved it offshore to hide it from the authorities. It is understood that evidence that drug money has flowed into banks came from officials in Britain, Switzerland, Italy and the US.
British bankers would want to see any evidence that Costa has to back his claims. A British Bankers’ Association spokesman said: “We have not been party to any regulatory dialogue that would support a theory of this kind. There was clearly a lack of liquidity in the system and to a large degree this was filled by the intervention of central banks.”
Posted in accordance with Title 17, Section 107, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
