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https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2023/09/11/blinken-us-does-not-oppose-ukrainian-attacks-inside-russia-with-us-supplied-missiles/

Blinken: US Does Not Oppose Ukrainian Attacks Inside Russia With US-Supplied Missiles

The fact that we are drawing closer and closer to nuclear conflict should dominate headlines every single day, and the subject of how to avoid planetary disaster should be the constant focus of mainstream political discourse.  

During an appearance on ABC’s This Week with Jonathan Karl, Secretary of State Tony Blinken explicitly said that the US would not oppose Ukraine using US-supplied longer-range missiles to attack deep inside Russian territory, a move that Moscow has previously called a “red line” which would make the United States a direct party to the conflict.

“We understand that the United States is considering sending those long-range missiles that Ukraine has been asking for for a long time,” Karl said in the interview. “These are long-range missiles, 200 miles in range. Are you okay if those missiles allow Ukraine to attack deep into Russian territory?”

“In terms of their targeting decisions, it’s their decision, not ours,” answered Blinken after some bloviation.

“We’ve seen an increasing number of attacks on Russian territory by Ukrainian drones, some in Moscow, Rostov-on-Don just a couple of days ago. Did you bring that up?” asked Karl.

“No,” said Blinken.

“Are you — are you okay with — I mean, obviously, they’re — it’s their decisions, but is this war now escalating into Russia?” asked Karl.

“ Jon, we haven’t encouraged and we haven’t enabled any use of weapons outside of Ukraine’s territory,” Blinken said. “Having said that, let’s take a step back for a second. Virtually every single day the Russians are attacking indiscriminately throughout the entire country of Ukraine. Just during the 48 hours that I was there going in, more missiles were launched at civilian targets, including in Kyiv while I was there; a horrific attack on a marketplace, people just going to buy food, civilians, had nothing to do with this war — killed 17 people. This is the daily life for Ukrainians. This is what they face every single day. So they have to make the basic decisions about how they’re going to defend their territory and how they’re working to take back what’s been seized from them. Our role, the role of dozens of other countries around the world that are supporting them, is to help them do that. And ultimately, what we all want is an end to this Russian aggression and an end to the aggression that, again, is just and is durable. That’s what Ukrainians want more than anyone else. That’s what we’re working toward.”

The interview then concluded without any further follow-up from Karl. By successfully winding down the clock babbling about what Ukraine has a right to do, Blinken avoided discussing the real issue of what the US itself is doing. Nobody disputes that Ukraine has a right to attack Russian territory; Russia is attacking Ukrainian territory, so of course Ukraine has a right to retaliate. That is not being seriously debated anywhere. What’s being debated is whether the US should be backing those attacks, because doing so could lead to nuclear war.

A year ago when Ukraine first started urging the United States to send it the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) — which has nearly four times the range of the HIMARS weapons the US has been supplying — Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova immediately responded with a warning that their use on Russian territory would make the US a direct participant in the conflict, and Russia would respond accordingly.

“If Washington decides to supply longer-range missiles to Kyiv, then it will be crossing a red line, and will become a direct party to the conflict,” Zakharova said, adding that Russia “reserves the right to defend its territory.”

As Michael Tracey noted on Twitter, Blinken was saying last year that Ukraine had provided assurances to the US that it would not use the other weapons systems the US has been supplying “against targets on Russian territory.” Going by Blinken’s current statements and the attacks we’ve been seeing from Ukraine inside the Russian Federation, this agreement appears no longer to be in place. Blinken has already previously voiced support for Ukrainian use of US-supplied weapons in Crimea, and now he’s saying the US is fine with any US-supplied weapons being used on any Russian territory.

Which means there appears to have been yet another massive escalation between nuclear superpowers, which is once again going alarmingly under-reported by the western press.

In an article published in Antiwar this past July titled “ATACMS: Be Very Afraid of This Acronym,” West Suburban Peace Coalition president Walt Zlotow wrote that this missile system “has potential to draw the US and NATO into all out war with Russia”:

ATACMS are long range US missiles that can strike up to 190 miles. Top US officials, likely including President Biden, are seriously considering giving ATACMS to Ukraine in their battle to take back all Russian gains in Ukraine, including Crimea. They can reach both Crimea and the Russian mainland.

If so used by Ukraine to attack Russia, it may be a missile too far that could ignite Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Further escalation into nuclear confrontation between Russia and the US/NATO alliance seeking Russia’s defeat becomes more likely.

The US and its allies keep providing Ukraine with more and more offensive weapons that they had previously refused to supply for fear of getting drawn into the war and provoking a nuclear conflict. Last year Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov correctly predicted that the US would wind up supplying the tanks, F-16s and ATACMS it had previously deemed too escalatory, because that had already been established as the trend from the beginning of the war.

“When I was in D.C. in November, before the invasion, and asked for Stingers, they told me it was impossible,” Reznikov told The New Yorker last year. “Now it’s possible. When I asked for 155-millimetre guns, the answer was no. HIMARS, no. HARM, no. Now all of that is a yes.” He added, “Therefore, I’m certain that tomorrow there will be tanks and ATACMS and F-16s.”

As Branko Marcetic explained earlier this year in an article for Responsible Statecraft titled “Mission Creep? How the US role in Ukraine has slowly escalated,” this continual pattern of escalation is actually incentivizing Russia to start taking aggressive action against western powers so that its warnings and red lines will cease being ignored.

“By escalating their support for Ukraine’s military, the U.S. and NATO have created an incentive structure for Moscow to take a drastic, aggressive step to show the seriousness of its own red lines,” Marcetic writes. “This would be dangerous at the best of times, but particularly so when Russian officials are making clear they increasingly view the war as one against NATO as a whole, not merely Ukraine, while threatening nuclear response to the alliance’s escalation in weapons deliveries.”

“Moscow keeps saying escalatory arms transfers are unacceptable and could mean wider war; U.S. officials say since Moscow hasn’t acted on those threats, they can freely escalate. Russia is effectively told it has to escalate to show it’s serious about lines,” Marcetic added on Twitter.

And it’s just so strange how this isn’t the main thing everyone talks about all the time. The fact that we are drawing closer and closer to nuclear conflict should dominate headlines every single day, and the subject of how to avoid planetary disaster should be the constant focus of mainstream political discourse. But it isn’t, because that would interfere with the grand chessboard maneuverings of a globe-dominating empire working to secure unipolar planetary domination by undermining disobedient nations like Russia and China.

It’s hard to think about the end of the world. It’s hard to even wrap your mind around it, much less stand staring into the harsh white light of deep contemplation about what it is and what it would mean. A lot of cognitive dissonance and discomfort comes up, and it’s easier to shift one’s attention to something easier to chew on like the presidential race.

But this is something that urgently needs to be looked at. Because the people steering our world today appear to be driving blind.

....

https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/death_by_a_thousand_cuts_the_many_ways_our_rights_have_been_usurped_since_9_11

Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Many Ways Our Rights Have Been Usurped Since 9/11

“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” — Abraham Lincoln

Those who gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that the government exists at the behest of its citizens. It is there to protect, defend and even enhance our freedoms, not violate them.

Unfortunately, although the Bill of Rights was adopted as a means of protecting the people against government tyranny, in America today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned.

In the 22 years since the USA Patriot Act—a massive 342-page wish list of expanded powers for the FBI and CIA—was rammed through Congress in the wake of the so-called 9/11 terror attacks, it has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse.

The Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating at least six of the ten original amendments—the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments—and possibly the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well.

The Patriot Act also redefined terrorism so broadly that many non-terrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations and civil disobedience are now considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state.

The Patriot Act justified broader domestic surveillance, the logic being that if government agents knew more about each American, they could distinguish the terrorists from law-abiding citizens—no doubt a reflexive impulse shared by small-town police and federal agents alike.

This, according to Washington Post reporter Robert O’Harrow, Jr., was a fantasy that “had been brewing in the law enforcement world for a long time.” And 9/11 provided the government with the perfect excuse for conducting far-reaching surveillance and collecting mountains of information on even the most law-abiding citizen.

Federal agents and police officers are now authorized to conduct covert black bag “sneak-and-peak” searches of homes and offices while you are away and confiscate your personal property without first notifying you of their intent or their presence.

The law also granted the FBI the right to come to your place of employment, demand your personal records and question your supervisors and fellow employees, all without notifying you; allowed the government access to your medical records, school records and practically every personal record about you; and allowed the government to secretly demand to see records of books or magazines you’ve checked out in any public library and Internet sites you’ve visited (at least 545 libraries received such demands in the first year following passage of the Patriot Act).

In the name of fighting terrorism, government officials are now permitted to monitor religious and political institutions with no suspicion of criminal wrongdoing; prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone that the government has subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation; monitor conversations between attorneys and clients; search and seize Americans’ papers and effects without showing probable cause; and jail Americans indefinitely without a trial, among other things.

The federal government also made liberal use of its new powers, especially through the use (and abuse) of the nefarious national security letters, which allow the FBI to demand personal customer records from Internet Service Providers, financial institutions and credit companies at the mere say-so of the government agent in charge of a local FBI office and without prior court approval.

In fact, since 9/11, we’ve been spied on by surveillance cameras, eavesdropped on by government agents, had our belongings searched, our phones tapped, our mail opened, our email monitored, our opinions questioned, our purchases scrutinized (under the USA Patriot Act, banks are required to analyze your transactions for any patterns that raise suspicion and to see if you are connected to any objectionable people), and our activities watched.

We’re also being subjected to invasive patdowns and whole-body scans of our persons and seizures of our electronic devices in the nation’s airports. We can’t even purchase certain cold medicines at the pharmacy anymore without it being reported to the government and our names being placed on a watch list.

In this way, “we the people” continue to be terrorized, traumatized, and tricked into a semi-permanent state of compliance by a government that cares nothing for our lives or our liberties.

The bogeyman’s names and faces have changed over time (terrorism, the war on drugs, illegal immigration, a viral pandemic, and more to come), but the end result remains the same: in the so-called name of national security, the Constitution has been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded with the support of Congress, the White House, and the courts.

A recitation of the Bill of Rights—set against a backdrop of government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, overcriminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches, vaccine mandates, lockdowns, and the like (all sanctioned by Congress, the White House, and the courts)—would understandably sound more like a eulogy to freedoms lost than an affirmation of rights we truly possess.

What we are left with today is but a shadow of the robust document adopted more than two centuries ago. Sadly, most of the damage has been inflicted upon the Bill of Rights.

Here is what it means to live under the Constitution, with the nation still suffering blowback from the permanent state of emergency brought about by 9/11 and COVID-19.

The First Amendment is supposed to protect the freedom to speak your mind, assemble and protest nonviolently without being bridled by the government. It also protects the freedom of the media, as well as the right to worship and pray without interference. In other words, Americans should not be silenced by the government. To the founders, all of America was a free speech zone.

Despite the clear protections found in the First Amendment, the freedoms described therein are under constant assault. Increasingly, Americans are being persecuted for exercising their First Amendment rights and speaking out against government corruption. Activists are being arrested and charged for daring to film police officers engaged in harassment or abusive practices. Journalists are being prosecuted for reporting on whistleblowers. States are passing legislation to muzzle reporting on cruel and abusive corporate practices. Religious ministries are being fined for attempting to feed and house the homeless. Protesters are being tear-gassed, beaten, arrested and forced into “free speech zones.” And under the guise of “government speech,” the courts have reasoned that the government can discriminate freely against any First Amendment activity that takes place within a so-called government forum.

The Second Amendment was intended to guarantee “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” Essentially, this amendment was intended to give the citizenry the means to resist tyrannical government. Yet while gun ownership has been recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as an individual citizen right, Americans remain powerless to defend themselves against red flag gun laws, militarized police, SWAT team raids, and government agencies armed to the teeth with military weapons better suited to the battlefield.

The Third Amendment reinforces the principle that civilian-elected officials are superior to the military by prohibiting the military from entering any citizen’s home without “the consent of the owner.” With the police increasingly training like the military, acting like the military, and posing as military forces—complete with heavily armed SWAT teams, military weapons, assault vehicles, etc.—it is clear that we now have what the founders feared most—a standing army on American soil.

The Fourth Amendment prohibits government agents from conducting surveillance on you or touching you or encroaching on your private property unless they have evidence that you’re up to something criminal. In other words, the Fourth Amendment ensures privacy and bodily integrity. Unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment has suffered the greatest damage in recent years and has been all but eviscerated by an unwarranted expansion of governmental police powers that include strip searches and even anal and vaginal searches of citizens, surveillance (corporate and otherwise), and intrusions justified in the name of fighting terrorism, as well as the outsourcing of otherwise illegal activities to private contractors.

The Fifth Amendment and the Sixth Amendment work in tandem. These amendments supposedly ensure that you are innocent until proven guilty, and government authorities cannot deprive you of your life, your liberty or your property without the right to an attorney and a fair trial before a civilian judge. However, in the new suspect society in which we live, where surveillance is the norm, these fundamental principles have been upended. Certainly, if the government can arbitrarily freeze, seize or lay claim to your property (money, land or possessions) under government asset forfeiture schemes, you have no true rights.

The Seventh Amendment guarantees citizens the right to a jury trial. Yet when the populace has no idea of what’s in the Constitution—civic education has virtually disappeared from most school curriculums—that inevitably translates to an ignorant jury incapable of distinguishing justice and the law from their own preconceived notions and fears. However, as a growing number of citizens are coming to realize, the power of the jury to nullify the government’s actions—and thereby help balance the scales of justice—is not to be underestimated. Jury nullification reminds the government that “we the people” retain the power to ultimately determine what laws are just.

The Eighth Amendment is similar to the Sixth in that it is supposed to protect the rights of the accused and forbid the use of cruel and unusual punishment. However, the Supreme Court’s determination that what constitutes “cruel and unusual” should be dependent on the “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” leaves us with little protection in the face of a society lacking in morals altogether.

The Ninth Amendment provides that other rights not enumerated in the Constitution are nonetheless retained by the people. Popular sovereignty—the belief that the power to govern flows upward from the people rather than downward from the rulers—is clearly evident in this amendment. However, it has since been turned on its head by a centralized federal government that sees itself as supreme and which continues to pass more and more laws that restrict our freedoms under the pretext that it has an “important government interest” in doing so.

As for the Tenth Amendment’s reminder that the people and the states retain every authority that is not otherwise mentioned in the Constitution, that assurance of a system of government in which power is divided among local, state and national entities has long since been rendered moot by the centralized Washington, DC, power elite—the president, Congress and the courts.

Thus, if there is any sense to be made from this recitation of freedoms lost, it is simply this: our individual freedoms have been eviscerated so that the government’s powers could be expanded.

It was no idle happenstance that the Constitution, which was adopted 236 years ago on Sept. 17, 1787, opens with these three powerful words: “We the people.” As the Preamble proclaims:

We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this CONSTITUTION for the United States of America.

In other words, it’s our job to make the government play by the rules of the Constitution.

We are supposed to be the masters and they—the government and its agents—are the servants.

We the American people—the citizenry—are supposed to be the arbiters and ultimate guardians of America’s welfare, defense, liberty, laws and prosperity.

Still, it’s hard to be a good citizen if you don’t know anything about your rights or how the government is supposed to operate.

As the National Review rightly asks, “How can Americans possibly make intelligent and informed political choices if they don’t understand the fundamental structure of their government? American citizens have the right to self-government, but it seems that we increasingly lack the capacity for it.”

Americans are constitutionally illiterate.

Most citizens have little, if any, knowledge about their basic rights. And our educational system does a poor job of teaching the basic freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Teachers and school administrators do not fare much better. A study conducted by the Center for Survey Research and Analysis found that one educator in five was unable to name any of the freedoms in the First Amendment.

Government leaders and politicians are also ill-informed. Although they take an oath to uphold, support and defend the Constitution against “enemies foreign and domestic,” their lack of education about our fundamental rights often causes them to be enemies of the Bill of Rights.

So what’s the solution?

Thomas Jefferson recognized that a citizenry educated on “their rights, interests, and duties”  is the only real assurance that freedom will survive.

From the President on down, anyone taking public office should have a working knowledge of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and should be held accountable for upholding their precepts. One way to ensure this would be to require government leaders to take a course on the Constitution and pass a thorough examination thereof before being allowed to take office.

Some critics are advocating that students pass the United States citizenship exam in order to graduate from high school. Others recommend that it must be a prerequisite for attending college. I’d go so far as to argue that students should have to pass the citizenship exam before graduating from grade school.

Here’s an idea to get educated and take a stand for freedom: anyone who signs up to become a member of The Rutherford Institute gets a wallet-sized Bill of Rights card and a Know Your Rights card. Use this card to teach your children the freedoms found in the Bill of Rights.

A healthy, representative government is hard work. It takes a citizenry that is informed about the issues, educated about how the government operates, and willing to do more than grouse and complain.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, “we the people” have the power to make and break the government.

The powers-that-be want us to remain divided over politics, hostile to those with whom we disagree politically, and intolerant of anyone or anything whose solutions to what ails this country differ from our own. They also want us to believe that our job as citizens begins and ends on Election Day.

Yet there are 330 million of us in this country. Imagine what we could accomplish if we actually worked together, presented a united front, and spoke with one voice.

Tyranny wouldn't stand a chance.

....

https://corbettreport.substack.com/p/remember-what-happened-right-before

Remember What Happened Right Before 9/11? It's Happening Again.

Remember way back in the year 2000, when the Taliban took over large swaths of Afghanistan and set about eradicating the nation's poppy crop that feeds the world opium supply?

Of course you do.

Well, guess what? It's happening again.

That's right. After Uncle Sam's ignominious retreat from the graveyard of empires in 2021, the Taliban infamously regained control of the country and set about reinstituting their campaign to ban the cultivation of opium poppies. And, once again, the results of that ban have been nothing short of remarkable.

In fact, the Taliban's latest anti-poppy campaign is already being hailed as the "most successful counter-narcotics effort in human history" by self-proclaimed Afghanistan experts, with the country's opium production down a jaw-dropping 90% this year.

And since you do remember the story of the Taliban's first successful poppy crop crackdown, then you'll also likely remember how it ended: namely, with the blank check of 9/11 being cashed in on NATO's invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in 2001, leading to the subsequent resurgence of poppy cultivation in the country.

So, are we likely to see history repeating with this next iteration of the Afghan poppy story? Let's find out.

THE PAST

The tale of the Afghan poppy war is one that can be read in the annals of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), one of the many bureaucratic arms of the UN's globalist octopus. Tasked with "helping make the world safer from drugs, organized crime, corruption and terrorism" (which apparently involves "supporting Member States in implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development," for some unexplained reason), the UNODC has diligently documented the ups and downs of the Afghan poppy crop and its contribution to the illicit opium market in recent decades. They publish the results of this research in the form of an annual "Afghanistan Opium Survey," which tells the story in plain numbers.

In 1999, for example, this UN office informed the world that, after years of warfare and internal strife (in which the US played an integral part), Afghanistan's annual raw opium production had risen to the unprecedented level of 4,600 metric tons. They were also quick to add that "97 per cent of cultivation in 1999 occurred in Taliban-controlled areas," implying that poppy cultivation was being actively supported and encouraged by the Taliban in order to fund illicit activities.

Strange, then, that by the time of their 2001 Afghanistan Opium Survey—compiled just before the NATO invasion and occupation of the country—the UNODC bean counters (poppy counters?) were able to report that the country's total raw opium production had dropped to 185 metric tons, a 96% reduction from the record 1999 level.

So, what had happened? The Taliban happened, that's what.

Specifically, in July 2000, Mullah Mohammad Omar issued a fatwa declaring the cultivation or trafficking of poppies to be "haram" (forbidden under Islamic law). The result of that decree and its subsequent enforcement was so undeniable that not even the arch-propagandists at the Old Gray Presstitute or the Big Brother Corporation could cover it up.

As the charts make clear, the Taliban's poppy ban was remarkably successful. In fact, it was too successful for those in the deep state who have been managing and profiteering from the global drug trade since the days of William Russell. Afghanistan was providing more than 70% of the world's heroin supply at that time, and the powers-that-shouldn't-be wanted those drugs flowing again.

And we all know what happened next: 9/11. And, as we also know all too well, 9/11 led directly to the (completely fraudulent) invocation of NATO's Article 5, the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan, the overthrow of the Taliban and the resurgence of the Afghan poppy crop.

As I've been at pains to stress over the years, it would be far too simplistic to suggest that 9/11 was simply a plot to get the world opium supply growing and flowing again. But the post-9/11 boom in Afghan poppy production—reaching record high after record high after record high, as dutifully documented by the UNODC's narcotics number crunchers—was certainly more than just a happy coincidence for the 9/11 planners.

In fact, at a certain point, the blatant reality of what had just happened—namely, NATO's overthrow of a regime dedicated to eradicating the poppy crop and its installation of a puppet government dedicated to promoting it—became so undeniable that Uncle Sam's propagandists simply stopped denying it.

Who can forget that infamous 2010 Fox News clip in which the mustachioed mouthpiece of the money masters, Geraldo Rivera, interviews Lt. Col. Brian Christmas in Helmand Province about how, even though it "grinds his gut," the US military now has no choice but to guard the poor Afghan poppy farmers' precious crop?

Yes, life was pretty good for the profiteers of the drug trade in the deep state in the wake of 9/11. They had a plentiful, cheap supply of poppies to feed the global opium trade that they have been directing, protecting and profiting from since the days of the Golden Triangle. And what's more, the whole racket was being protected by the US military at US taxpayer expense! What could go wrong?

THE PRESENT

As we all know by now, the US military completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan on August 30, 2021. By that point, the Taliban—whose dramatic summer surge led to their seizing Kabul in mid-August—had already taken over the country. And so it was that 20 years of invasion, occupation, counter-insurgency operations, bloodshed and terror had accomplished precisely nothing.

Well, not exactly nothing. As we've seen, the NATO invasion and American occupation did afford the deep state drug runners another two decades of record poppy crops to feed the global heroin trade, with the UNODC reporting in 2010 that "some 90% of the world’s heroin comes from opium grown in just a few provinces in Afghanistan." It didn't take long, however, for the Taliban to bring that poppy-fueled drug money party to an abrupt halt.

In April of 2022, Haibatullah Akhundzada—the Taliban's current leader and the Supreme Leader of Afghanistan—issued a decree much like the one issued by Mullah Mohammad Omar in 2000:

All Afghans are informed that from now on, cultivation of poppy has been strictly prohibited across the country. If anyone violates the decree, the crop will be destroyed immediately and the violator will be treated according to the Sharia law.

Predictably enough, this fatwa was greeted with cynicism and outright disbelief in the West. Last November, the UNODC issued its annual opium cultivation report for the country, noting that "opium cultivation in Afghanistan increased by 32% over the previous year to 233,000 hectares – making the 2022 crop the third largest area under opium cultivation since monitoring began" and warning that "seizures of opiates around Afghanistan indicate that trafficking of Afghan opium and heroin has not stopped."

One had to read the report's accompanying press release, however, to discover that the 2022 crop had largely been exempted from Akhundzada's decree, and that the real results of the Taliban's poppy ban would not be expected to be seen until the 2023 crop was harvested.

This did not stop Washington Beltway establishment repeaters like Foreign Policy from immediately decrying the Taliban's poppy ban as mere political theater. "The Taliban that took over Afghanistan after a 20-year war largely funded by heroin trafficking have, after pretending to ban drugs, instead turbocharged the cultivation and sale of narcotics a year after their takeover," the propaganda rag—which, strangely, had never shown a particular interest in the practice of poppy cultivation before—wrote the day after the UN report's release.

This cynicism continued into 2023, with US state-funded outfit RFE/RL reporting in May that "Afghan Poppy Cultivation Jumps Despite Taliban Crackdown" and the UN blowing smoke up its own posterior by producing puff piece videos implying that the only way the poppy ban can possibly work is through the active engagement of the UN.

Imagine the Western establishment's collective shock, then, when the 2023 poppy cultivation numbers began to roll in.

The Taliban's ban, as it turns out, was not a charade. In fact, it has been, according to Graeme Smith, an Afghanistan "expert" with the Crisis Group, "the most successful counter-narcotics effort in human history, according to the volume of drugs taken off the market." And how much was that? Estimates indicate that poppy cultivation plummeted an astonishing 90% in the last year.

But, regardless of how it happened, the US/NATO PR flaks who have spent the last two decades pretending to care about the people of Afghanistan and pretending to worry about the country's opium problem must be rejoicing at this news, right?

THE FUTURE?

Wrong, of course.

No, believe it or not, the establishment is busy freaking out over the prospect of the Taliban actually achieving what the UN/US/NATO neo-colonizers only ever gave lip service to: eradicating Afghanistan's poppy crop.

And how, exactly, can they spin the Taliban's successful eradication campaign—the same campaign that they were calling a total sham just months ago, mind you—as a bad thing, you ask?

Well, the arch-conspirators at Chatham House (aka the CFR mothership in London) have attempted to spin away the Taliban's amazing accomplishment by arguing that, yes, the Taliban have accomplished the previously unimaginable in virtually eliminating poppy production in the country, but it's actually just a grand ploy by the Taliban to trick people into liking them by actually improving their country! The cads! Don't trust them! Besides, the last poppy ban didn't last very long because of . . . some unnamable reason . . . so this one probably won't either.

The presstitutes at Time, Filter, The World and other pushers of approved propaganda, meanwhile, have all (by some remarkable coincidence or other) simultaneously hit upon the exact same talking point: if Afghan poppy farmers stop feeding the world heroin markets, then European junkies will turn to Fentanyl. So—wouldn't ya know it?—cheap Afghan opium was actually a good thing all along, and by cutting off its supply the Taliban are the bad guys once again!

But of all the pretzel-logic op-eds spewed out by the pro-opium, anti-Taliban crowd in recent months, by far the most chilling is "The Taliban’s Successful Opium Ban is Bad for Afghans and the World" by former World Bank economist William Byrd.

His commentary starts out by noting the remarkable success of the Taliban's poppy ban, acknowledging that it was accomplished by a "sophisticated, staged approach" that exempted the crop that was about to be harvested, and pointing out that the current ban is actually even more comprehensive than the Taliban's previous ban, as it prohibits the trade and processing of opiates, not just poppy cultivation.

But Byrd is quick to point out all of the ways that this remarkably successful narcotics eradication program is actually bad for Afghanistan (and the world!). The country's poppy farmers have lost $1 billion of revenue—revenue that, his analysis fails to spell out, those farmers could have earned by feeding the world heroin markets. This economic downturn, he writes, will cause a migration crisis, with poor farmers trying to cross the border in the hopes of making it to Europe. And this will all lead to more heroin overdoses in Europe as dealers adulterate their supply to offset rising costs.

So far, so boilerplate. It's where Byrd ventures into "solutions" to this "problem" of decreasing opium supplies that we start to see the dark specter of future intervention at play. In this final section, he raises the question of an "international response" and then proceeds to list all of the things that will not work.

The situation "may provide a well-grounded justification for more humanitarian assistance" in Afghanistan, but "this would just be a band-aid to provide temporary relief unless and until the opium ban is rescinded or undercut."

Programs offering rural development aid "could be helpful" but "the modest amounts of money involved will at best have a marginal impact."

And as for the expected migrant crisis? Well, there's no help there, either. "Trying to block people flows at the Afghan border will work only imperfectly, and to the extent it is successful will worsen privation and hunger within the country."

All of these negative points are meant to leave us with one overwhelming (and unstated) conclusion: this "problem" will not be "solved" as long as the Taliban are in power. If only someone could come along, depose the Taliban, and get the drugs flowing again . . .

Of course, this conclusion has to be left unsaid. After all, Byrd's analysis is being published by the "United States Institute of Peace," a made-up, feel-good institution that, its "About" page informs us, was "founded by Congress and dedicated to the proposition that a world without violent conflict is possible, practical and essential for U.S. and global security." All of which sounds fine and dandy until you use the globalese decoder ring to discover what a "world without violent conflict" actually means to the Washington warhawks: a world in which every state in the world does what their US State Department overlords tell them to do, no questions asked.

It seems the Taliban haven't gotten the message. And so, around we go again on the seemingly never-ending regime change merry-go-round.

What provocation will be used this time to motivate the people of the world for another trip to the graveyard of empires? Another "catalyzing, catastrophic event" like 9/11 to pin on some Al-CIA-da patsies? Or something that can tie I-CIA-sis to Russian operatives to American homegrown domestic terrorists, perhaps? Whatever it is, you better believe it will be spectacular.

Those who are interested in learning about the possible next steps in this unfolding agenda may be interested in joining myself, video editor extraordinaire Broc West and Ryan Cristián of The Last American Vagabond for a live pirate stream watch along of COVID-911: From Homeland Security to Biosecurity this Sunday night (September 10, 2023) at 9 PM EDT.

Meanwhile, as always, the people of Afghanistan are dismissed by nearly everyone. They are treated as mere chessboard pawns who amount to little more than an afterthought in the great game of empire.

And now, on the verge of another 9/11 anniversary, here we are remarking yet again: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.