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Showing posts with label "War on Drugs". Show all posts
Showing posts with label "War on Drugs". Show all posts

Monday, 1 August 2016

The root of healing from addiction is connection

Jonathan Davis
Sott.net viaUplift

Do Stronger Human Connections Immunise Us Against Emotional Distress?

Right now an exciting new perspective on addiction is emerging. Johann Harri, author of Chasing The Scream, recently captured widespread public interest with his Ted talk Everything You Know About Addiction Is Wrong, where he concluded with this powerful statement:

"The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection."
- Johann Harri


These sentiments are augmented by a growing number of experts, including addiction specialist Dr Gabor Maté, who cites 'emotional loss and trauma' as the core of addiction. Compare this 'emotional loss' to Johan Harri's idea about lack of connection and it is clear they're talking about a similar emotional condition. 

Limbic Resonance

If connection is the opposite of addiction, then an examination of the neuroscience of human connection is in order. Published in 2000, A General Theory Of Love is a collaboration between three professors of psychiatry at the University of California in San Francisco. A General Theory Of Love reveals that humans require social connection for optimal brain development, and that babies cared for in a loving environment are psychological and neurologically 'immunised' by love. When things get difficult in adult life, the neural wiring developed from a love-filled childhood leads to increased emotional resilience in adult life. Conversely, those who grow up in an environment where loving care is unstable or absent are less likely to be resilient in the face of emotional distress.

How does this relate to addiction? Gabor Maté observes an extremely high rate of childhood trauma in the addicts he works with and trauma is the extreme opposite of growing up in a consistently safe and loving environment. He asserts that it is extremely common for people with addictions to have a reduced capacity for dealing with emotional distress, hence an increased risk of drug-dependence.

Trauma is well-known to cause interruption to healthy neural wiring, in both the developing and mature brain. A deeper issue here is that people who have suffered trauma, particularly children, can be left with an underlying sense that the world is no longer safe, or that people can no longer be trusted. This erosion (or complete destruction) of a sense of trust, that our family, community and society will keep us safe, results in isolation - leading to the very lack of connection Johann Harri suggests is the opposite of addiction. People who use drugs compulsively do so to avoid the pain of past trauma and to replace the absence of connection in their life. 


Social Solutions To Addiction

The solution to the problem of addiction on a societal level is both simple and fairly easy to implement. If a person is born into a life that is lacking in love and support on a family level, or if due to some other trauma they have become isolated and suffer from addiction, there must be a cultural response to make sure that person knows that they are valued by their society (even if they don't feel valued by their family). Portugal has demonstrated this with a 50% drop in addiction thanks to programs that are specifically designed to re-create connection between the addict and their community.


Read more

See also: The Rise of Narcissism and the Loss of Meaning III

 

Thursday, 21 July 2016

The government ignores the truth: Opioid use plummets in states with legal cannabis

Justin Gardner
The Free Thought Project


Yesterday we reported how Congress' "opioid bill," or Comprehensive Addiction & Recovery Act (CARA), was a hollow achievement, as it ignored medical cannabis alternatives and said nothing about the role of Big Pharma in the opioid abuse epidemic.

Among the information missing from the conversation was an eye-opening study done last year. A JAMA Internal Medicine study looked at ten years of data in all 50 states, concluding that states with medical cannabis laws had significantly lower rates of opioid overdose mortality.

There is no indication this important fact was heard when a federal "pain panel" advised Congress. The FDA, one of several agencies on the panel, had already been exposed as being stacked with members linked to drugmakers, including one caught up in an OxyContin scandal.  


The JAMA study was presented in a recent Congressional panel on pain management. Despite the clear evidence of real-world results, prohibitionists rejected an amendment to study the "potential for marijuana to serve as an alternative to opioids for pain management."

Now, a second study has confirmed the powerful effect that medical cannabis has on reducing opioid abuse.

In 17 states with medical cannabis laws in place by 2013, the researchers "found that the use of prescription drugs for which marijuana could serve as a clinical alternative fell significantly, once a medical marijuana law was implemented."

Prescriptions fell dramatically for opioid painkillers, with 1,826 fewer doses being prescribed per year by the typical physician in a medical cannabis state. Amazingly, the trend also applied to prescriptions for depression, seizure, nausea and anxiety


Read more

2016 election decides who controls the drug trade

Daniel Hopsicker
Mad Cow Productions

In the Presidential Election of 2016, Republican and Democratic insiders are wrestling like two dogs over a bone over who controls the illegal drug trade.

To the victor go the spoils. Who wins the election wins control of America’s vast drug bazaar, largest in the world, whose proceeds prop up lucky bankers and politicians lapping at the trough of  the biggest richest slush fund in the history of the world.

It’s the biggest business in the world, and the No. 1 industry on the face of the planet, in terms of foreign trade. And if you didn’t know that about the illegal drug trade, then the vast amounts spent on propaganda and disinformation every year in the so-called “War on Drugs” is working.

The first industry to globalize vertically was the illegal drug business. It’s an open question whether drug trafficking drove globalization, or the other way around.

Negotiated by Bill Clinton, the chief beneficiary of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement)—by dollar volume and impact on the economy—was the drug trade.

Read more

Sunday, 24 August 2014

U.S. Military: More Counter-Narcotics Funding Will Help Stem Exodus of Children from Central America

Bill Conroy
Narco News

Critics Argue Drug-War Money is Part of the Problem, Not the Solution

Some 58,000 migrant children, mostly Central Americans, have made the treacherous journey to the U.S. southern border alone over the past 10 months, but actions being considered by U.S. officials to combat the problem with more military and drug-war aid to their countries, critics warn, may worsen the violence that provokes this unprecedented exodus.

The number of unaccompanied children that have arrived at the U.S. border so far this fiscal year is up 106 percent from the same period a year earlier — with the total expected to reach 90,000 before Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year.

To put that latter number in perspective, it is nearly five times larger than the number of Border Patrol agents now stationed along the entire southern border.

The Obama administration paints the crisis as a humanitarian issue sparked by poverty, violence and the tug of family bonds. Congressional Republicans point the finger at the Obama administration’s lax enforcement of immigration laws.

Seemingly lost among the fray of political talking points over the child-migrant flight, however, is the stance of the U.S. military — which, unlike the president or Congress, is openly talking about the drug war as being a primary driver of the exodus.

Jose Ruiz, spokesperson for the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), said the transnational criminal organizations now entrenched in Central America have created elaborate networks “capable of moving drugs, money, arms and people” around the world.

“Sadly, crime syndicates that profit from human smuggling prey on victims willing to put themselves and their loved ones at great risk by entrusting ruthless criminals with their safety,” he added.

Gen. John Kelly, commander of SOUTHCOM, recently penned an opinion piece for the military press that lays out the nexus he sees between the flight of unaccompanied children and the pervasive narco-trafficking networks in Central America — particularly in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, the major source nations for the child-migrant surge.

Read more


Friday, 2 May 2014

Heroin Production Hits Record Levels in Afghanistan – Study


America’s war on drugs is failing in Afghanistan, with opium production at record levels, despite spending $7.5 billion to tackle the problem. Over 200 thousand hectares is used to grow opium, an increase of 36 percent, according to a US report.

The report, which was commissioned by SIGAR, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction makes grim reading, with opium poppy cultivation increasing by over a third, while the country now has about 1.3 million heroin users. This is a ten-fold increase compared to 2005, when around 130,000 people were using the drug.

Afghanistan is responsible for about three-quarters of the world’s heroin production, with much of it being cultivated in the Helmand and Kandahar provinces in the south of the country. However, the US has concentrated most of its efforts in the east of Afghanistan, which has relatively little poppy production, as it is safer than working in the south.

Attempts to limit production and seize heroin have not been helped due to a downscaling of operations by the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force). In 2013, coalition forces managed to seize 41,000 kilograms of opium out of the 5.5 million kilograms produced in Afghanistan.

“Drug labs, storage sites, and major trafficking networks are concentrated in rural areas that are increasingly off-limits to Afghan forces due the ISAF drawdown and declining security in these areas,” the report found.


 

Polls: Americans Are Sick of the War On Terror, War On Drugs … And All of the Other Failed U.S. Wars

Washington's Blog

Americans Turn Anti-War

 

The American people are now overwhelmingly opposed to more war in Ukraine, Syria, Iran and elsewhere.

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll shows:
Americans in large numbers want the U.S. to reduce its role in world affairs even as a showdown with Russia over Ukraine preoccupies Washington ….
In a marked change from past decades, nearly half of those surveyed want the U.S. to be less active on the global stage, with fewer than one-fifth calling for more active engagement—an anti-interventionist current that sweeps across party lines.
A Pew poll from December found a majority of Americans – more than ever before in Pew’s 50-year history of polling this question – think the U.S. “should mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along as best they can on their own.”

A Pew/USA Today poll conducted over the weekend found that Americans  oppose – by a 2-1 margin – any U.S. military aid to Ukraine.

A YouGov poll conducted last month found that only 14 percent of Americans said the U.S. has “any responsibility” to get involved in Ukraine, and only 18 percent think the U.S. “has any responsibility to protect Ukraine if Russia were to invade.”

Read more

Friday, 17 January 2014

Pleadings in Federal Court Reveal ICE Undercover Operation Marked With CIA Fingerprints


Narco News
Bill Conroy - NarcoSphere

Federal agents this past November raided the offices of an aircraft brokerage and leasing company called World Jet Inc., based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

The raid, spearheaded by the US Drug Enforcement Administration, was launched on the heels of a DEA affidavit for a search warrant, which was filed in late October last year in federal court in Colorado as part of a case that is now sealed. The search-warrant affidavit was made available on the Internet after being obtained by a reporter for the Durango Herald newspaper.

The affidavit outlines allegations against several individuals accused by the DEA of participating in a narco-trafficking conspiracy. But that is not the big story here.

Instead, the real news is buried deep in the DEA court pleadings and confirms the existence of a US undercover operation that Narco News reported previously had allowed tons of cocaine to be flown from Latin America into the states absent proper controls or the knowledge of the affected Latin American nations.

The DEA affidavit focuses on the owner of World Jet, Don Whittington, and his brother, Bill — both of whom earned modest infamy as race-car drivers who were convicted and served time in prison for participating in a marijuana-smuggling conspiracy in the 1980s.

The DEA now alleges the pair, through World Jet, have leased or brokered the sale of multiple aircraft to agents of known narco-trafficking organizations in Latin America. Those aircraft, the DEA claims, were leased or sold at inflated prices and the proceeds laundered through various businesses owned or operate by the brothers — including a resort and spa in Colorado.

Because the titles and tail numbers for the leased aircraft are kept in World Jet or related-parties’ names, the planes can be “repossessed” by World Jet after they have served their purpose for the narco-traffickers, or if a plane is later seized as part of a drug bust, “both parties can deny responsibility and World Jet Inc. can reclaim the aircraft as they hold the financial lien,” the DEA affidavit alleges.

Narco News contacted World Jet’s office in Florida seeking comment from the Whittington brothers and also contacted their attorney. None of them returned calls prior to deadline.

However, Jason Bowles, an attorney representing Bill Whittington’s daughter, Nerissa, claims DEA’s allegations with respect to his client are without merit. (Nerissa Whittington is the registered agent for the company that controls the Colorado resort and spa that the DEA affidavit alleges is part of the World Jet money-laundering scheme.)

"Nerissa and her companies have done nothing wrong," Bowles says. "She is a good business woman. She is innocent."

Read more

Tuesday, 24 December 2013

Outrageous HSBC Settlement Proves the Drug War is a Joke

Rolling Stone

If you’ve ever been arrested on a drug charge, if you’ve ever spent even a day in jail for having a stem of marijuana in your pocket or “drug paraphernalia” in your gym bag, Assistant Attorney General and longtime Bill Clinton pal Lanny Breuer has a message for you: Bite me.

Breuer this week signed off on a settlement deal with the British banking giant HSBC that is the ultimate insult to every ordinary person who’s ever had his life altered by a narcotics charge. Despite the fact that HSBC admitted to laundering billions of dollars for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels (among others) and violating a host of important banking laws (from the Bank Secrecy Act to the Trading With the Enemy Act), Breuer and his Justice Department elected not to pursue criminal prosecutions of the bank, opting instead for a “record” financial settlement of $1.9 billion, which as one analyst noted is about five weeks of income for the bank.

Read more

 

Saturday, 17 September 2011

A Decade After 9/11, Police Departments Are Increasingly Militarized


Huffington Post 

Swatcop

New York magazine reported some telling figures last month on how delayed-notice search warrants -- also known as "sneak-and-peek" warrants -- have been used in recent years. Though passed with the PATRIOT Act and justified as a much-needed weapon in the war on terrorism, the sneak-and-peek was used in a terror investigation just 15 times between 2006 and 2009. In drug investigations, however, it was used more than 1,600 times during the same period.

It's a familiar storyline. In the 10 years since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the government has claimed a number of new policing powers in the name of protecting the country from terrorism, often at the expense of civil liberties. But once claimed, those powers are overwhelmingly used in the war on drugs. Nowhere is this more clear than in the continuing militarization of America's police departments.

POLICE MILITARIZATION BEFORE SEPTEMBER 11

The trend toward a more militarized domestic police force began well before 9/11. It in fact began in the early 1980s, as the Regan administration added a new dimension of literalness to Richard Nixon's declaration of a "war on drugs." Reagan declared illicit drugs a threat to national security, and once likened America's drug fight to the World War I battle of Verdun. But Reagan was more than just rhetoric. In 1981 he and a compliant Congress passed the Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act, which allowed and encouraged the military to give local, state, and federal police access to military bases, research, and equipment. It authorized the military to train civilian police officers to use the newly available equipment, instructed the military to share drug-war–related information with civilian police and authorized the military to take an active role in preventing drugs from entering the country.

A bill passed in 1988 authorized the National Guard to aid local police in drug interdiction, a law that resulted in National Guard troops conducting drug raids on city streets and using helicopters to survey rural areas for pot farms. In 1989, President George Bush enacted a new policy creating regional task forces within the Pentagon to work with local police agencies on anti-drug efforts. Since then, a number of other bills and policies have carved out more ways for the military and domestic police to cooperate in the government's ongoing campaign to prevent Americans from getting high. Then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney declared in 1989, "The detection and countering of the production, trafficking and use of illegal drugs is a high priority national security mission of the Department of Defense."

The problem with this mingling of domestic policing with military operations is that the two institutions have starkly different missions. The military's job is to annihilate a foreign enemy. Cops are charged with keeping the peace, and with protecting the constitutional rights of American citizens and residents. It's dangerous to conflate the two. As former Reagan administration official Lawrence Korb once put it, "Soldiers are trained to vaporize, not Mirandize." That distinction is why the U.S. passed the Posse Comitatus Act more than 130 years ago, a law that explicitly forbids the use of military troops in domestic policing.


Monday, 25 July 2011

Congress Told of Strategy Behind Fast and Furious Months Before Its Launch



The Republican-led Congressional witch-hunt to pin blame for ATF’s failed Fast and Furious operation on high-level Obama administration officials may well come full circle back to Congress itself.

Documents released by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, as part of his probe into Fast and Furious, as well as testimony provided to Congress prior to the launch of the flawed operation, all seem to indicate that the weapons-trafficking investigation was set up under a strategy pushed by former U.S. Attorney General David Ogden — who stepped down from his post in early 2010 after less than a year on the job.

In addition, Ogden actually publicly outlined the strategy that prompted Fast and Furious as part of testimony he provided to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs in March 2009 — some six months prior to the launch of Fast and Furious in the fall of that year.

Fast and Furious was, according to a July 11 letter penned by U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley and U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-California, “an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force [OCDETF] prosecutor-led strike force case” operated out of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Phoenix.

Fast and Furious has come under fire because, as part of a strategy aimed at targeting higher-ups in the weapons- and narco-trafficking business, it allegedly allowed some 2,000 or more firearms illegally purchased in the U.S. to “walk” (or be smuggled under ATF’s watch) across the border, where they helped to fuel the murder rate in Mexico, ATF whistleblowers contend.

Two of the guns linked to the Fast and Furious operation also allegedly were found at the murder scene of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, who was shot to death by Mexican border marauders in Arizona late last year. The whistleblower revelations about Fast and Furious have since sparked Congressional inquiries spearheaded by Grassley and Issa.

However, the strategy of using multi-agency OCDETF strike forces to target Mexican narco-kingpins, a plan that encompassed ATF operations like Fast and Furious as well, should have come as no surprise to Congressional leaders such as Grassley and Issa. [...]

"...the root of the problem here can be found in the prohibitionist strategy that propels and encourages the continued insanity of the drug war — a pretense in which law enforcers and official brass are rewarded with larger budgets and promotions for making headline-grabbing “kingpin” cases — even at the expense of lives, it seems, as Fast and Furious seems to bear out."


Monday, 27 June 2011

If Crime Is Organized, then Why Not Us?

narconews.com/

Sicilia: “We Are Taking the First Steps in this Great Crusade to Dignify Our Country”

Before the Caravan of Solace, many of the families who had lost their own to the war on drugs remembered them in the privacy of their living rooms. They lived below a yoke of fear imposed by the government’s criminalization of the victims and they didn’t dare raise their voices in a cry for justice. Now, as a result of the caravan, many know each other and recognize each other. They dare to go out into the street and say that their son, daughter, husband, wife, father or mother was not a criminal. Families that beforehand did not know each other began to share their pain, hugging each other, in the street, to appeal for justice, peace and dignity.

Maria Elena Herrera Magdalene holding a Chihuahua sign with photographs of her 4 children and two relatives missing. DR 2011 Marta Molina.

The recognition between them, the sharing of stories of life and death, the pain and solace, the love, the desires for justice, helped them to dignify the names of their fallen family members, friends and neighbors. This is what unites María Elena Herrera Magdalena of Morelia, Michoacán, whose four children were disappeared, with the parents of Juan Martín Ayala and of Sarahy Méndez Salazar, murdered in San Luís Potosí. This is what joins María América Nava of Ecatepec, in the state of Mexico, whose brother, a community organizer, was assassinated, in a hug with Nepomuceno Moreno, from Sonora, who joined the caravan to continue seeking justice for his son. Estela Ángeles Mondragón, of the Rarámuri, (also known as Tarahumara) indigenous community, shares with them the constant pilgrimage she makes from the mountains to the courtrooms to claim justice for her daughter, gunned down, and her assassinated husband.

Gloria Aguilar Hernández came out to denounce the disappearance of her husband and children and embraced Melchor Flores Landa, father of the performance artist known as the Galactic Cowboy, who had wanted to work in Barcelona as a street statue in Las Ramblas in his costume as a silver cowboy. The father of college student Gabi Pineda of Monterrey shared his pain with Soledad Marina, of Ciudad Juárez, where they killed her son, a graffiti artist.

All the victims that have found their voice during the caravan united with each other in this constant act of “making a path,” as Estela calls it in Tarahumara, “bohuerasa.” Each of them found their voice to each other they joined, with banners, photographs, names, tears and hugs: the family members of the victims of this war. [...]

Saturday, 25 June 2011

Call off the global drug war


startribune

In an extraordinary new initiative announced earlier this month, the Global Commission on Drug Policy has made some courageous and profoundly important recommendations in a report on how to bring more effective control over the illicit drug trade.

The commission includes the former presidents or prime ministers of five countries, a former secretary general of the United Nations, human rights leaders, and business and government leaders, including Richard Branson, George P. Shultz and Paul A. Volcker.

The report describes the total failure of the present global antidrug effort, and in particular America's "war on drugs," which was declared 40 years ago today. It notes that the global consumption of opiates has increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and cannabis 8.5 percent from 1998 to 2008.

Its primary recommendations are to substitute treatment for imprisonment for people who use drugs but do no harm to others, and to concentrate more coordinated international effort on combating violent criminal organizations rather than nonviolent, low-level offenders.
 These recommendations are compatible with U.S. drug policy from three decades ago. In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the country should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, with a full program of treatment for addicts.

I also cautioned against filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and summarized by saying: "Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself."

These ideas were widely accepted at the time. But in the 1980s President Ronald Reagan and Congress began to shift from balanced drug policies, including the treatment and rehabilitation of addicts, toward futile efforts to control drug imports from foreign countries.
 This approach entailed an enormous expenditure of resources and the dependence on police and military forces to reduce the foreign cultivation of marijuana, coca and opium poppy and the production of cocaine and heroin. One result has been a terrible escalation in drug-related violence, corruption and gross violations of human rights in a growing number of Latin American countries.

 The commission's facts and arguments are persuasive. It recommends that governments be encouraged to experiment "with models of legal regulation of drugs ... that are designed to undermine the power of organized crime and safeguard the health and security of their citizens." For effective examples, they can look to policies that have shown promising results in Europe, Australia and other places.

 But they probably won't turn to the U.S. for advice. Drug policies here are more punitive and counterproductive than in other democracies, and have brought about an explosion in prison populations. At the end of 1980, just before I left office, 500,000 people were incarcerated in America; at the end of 2009 the number was nearly 2.3 million.

 There are 743 people in prison for every 100,000 Americans, a higher portion than in any other country and seven times as great as in Europe. Some 7.2 million people are either in prison or on probation or parole — more than 3 percent of all American adults!

Some of this increase has been caused by mandatory minimum sentencing and "three strikes you're out" laws. But about three-quarters of new admissions to state prisons are for nonviolent crimes.

 And the single greatest cause of prison population growth has been the war on drugs, with the number of people incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses increasing more than twelvefold since 1980.

 Not only has this excessive punishment destroyed the lives of millions of young people and their families (disproportionately minorities), but it is wreaking havoc on state and local budgets. Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pointed out that, in 1980, 10 percent of his state's budget went to higher education and 3 percent to prisons; in 2010, almost 11 percent went to prisons and only 7.5 percent to higher education.

Maybe the increased tax burden on wealthy citizens necessary to pay for the war on drugs will help to bring about a reform of America's drug policies. At least the recommendations of the Global Commission will give some cover to political leaders who wish to do what is right.

A few years ago I worked side by side for four months with a group of prison inmates, who were learning the building trade, to renovate some public buildings in my hometown of Plains, Ga. They were intelligent and dedicated young men, each preparing for a productive life after the completion of his sentence. More than half of them were in prison for drug-related crimes, and would have been better off in college or trade school.

To help such men remain valuable members of society, and to make drug policies more humane and more effective, the American government should support and enact the reforms laid out by the Global Commission on Drug Policy.

Sunday, 1 May 2011

Osama and the CIA sponsored "War on Terrorism":

 Americans are being killed by American trained Islamists

 by Peter Chamberlin,  Global Research, January 6, 2008 



Apparently, Osama bin Laden and former CIA agent Michael Scheuer have a mutual respect for each other's intellect.  In one of bin Laden's latest videos, he said,
 
"If you would like to get to know some of the reasons for your losing of your war against us, then read the book of Michael Scheuer in this regard."             
Here is Scheuer's take on Osama: 
"For nearly a decade now, bin Laden demonstrated patience, brilliant planning, managerial expertise, sound strategic and tactical sense, admirable character traits, eloquence, and focused, limited war aims. He has never, to my knowledge, behaved or spoken in a way that could be described as irrational in the extreme." 


Here we have a "former" CIA man, claiming to be an opponent of administration war policies, speaking as a foremost expert on bin Laden, because of his position on the "bin Laden unit."  He validates the latest bin Laden videos with his expertise, without ever acknowledging facts about al Qaida and their leader – the nature of the real threat vs. the created perception, the death of bin Laden, al Qaida the database, the builders and instructors of the Pakistani/Afghani insurgent training camps.  In his book Imperial Hubris, written under the penname "Anonymous," Scheuer paints a shocking portrait of camps that he claims were built by bin Laden, when, in truth, he knows that these are all CIA built facilities, including the notorious Tora Bora (where bin Laden is allegedly buried), the camps in the Swat Valley in Northwest Pakistan, the scene of ongoing confrontations and under the watchful eyes of a new American super base which is under construction near there.     
                               
Scheuer's book had to be cleared by the company before he could publish it, meaning that there is nothing in his book that the CIA does not want to become public knowledge.  His information on the insurgent training camps comes from an article from the New York Times, entitled "Turning Out Guerrillas and Terrorists to Wage a Holy War," detailing the training that was provided by American instructors to Afghan insurgents (although both attributed the training to al Qaida). 

"C.J. Chivers and David Rohde explained that 'American tactics and training became integral parts of the [al Qaeda] schools,' that instruction was standardized so 'courses taught in different languages and hundreds of miles apart . . . were identical,' They all have the same basic skills. . . and received funds from Gulf donors to cover costs" (never mentioning that the Gulf donors were matching US funds).                                        
Like Scheuer, the Times ignored the fact that al Qaida did not exist before 1999, according to experts like director of Congressional Task Force on Terrorism, Yossef Bodansky.  Scheuer quotes from the Times:  

 "The main function of the camps was and is to produce quality and uniform religious and paramilitary — or insurgent —training to young Muslims...Since the mid- 1980s, the camps have produced large numbers of skilled fighters — who then return home to fight and train others — not swarms of Terrorists. The terrorists trained in the camps are more accurately viewed as al Qaeda's urban warfare arm, or special forces. The camps' dual-production capability has been obvious for nearly thirty years, but this was little noticed in a West fixated on the small number of terrorists these camps produced. That the camps were producing far larger numbers of well-trained insurgents did not receive a serious think-through — and still has not — and, meanwhile, the trainees learned, according to documents captured in Afghanistan, how to use: AK-47s, Stinger missiles, GPS systems, advanced land navigation, RPGs, map reading, demolition techniques, celestial navigation, hand-to-hand combat techniques, trench digging, weapons deployments, escape and evasion techniques, first aid, scientific calculations to plot artillery fire, first aid, secure communications, et cetera, et cetera."  

The "et cetera," part that Scheuer left out from the New York Times referred to the training that the mujahedeen had received from a United States Army Special Forces manual which showed  

''methods for fabricating explosives, detonators, propellants shaped charges, [you know, the ones that only Iran is capable of constructing], small arms, mortars, incendiaries, delays, switches and similar items from indigenous materials.''   

The training included detailed knowledge for advanced terrorism, like manufacturing explosives from common household items and the conversion of basic electronic items like watches, toy remote controllers, and other items into sophisticated triggering systems -  the knowledge that has spread from Afghanistan to Iraq and beyond, has served as the basis for traps that have killed American troops, even shaped charges.  The camps trained paramilitary soldiers and hi-tech "super terrorists." 

The Times article notes the excellence of the military training for a
"ragged band of fanatics, had achieved a level of competence that American military officials say was on par with the world's best guerrilla forces...One senior military instructor noticed a familiar streak of professionalism 'Wherever they got this, it was modeled after somebody's program.  It was not made by some guys on some goat farm outside of Kabul.'''   

Scheuer promotes the vision of the camps that the CIA wants us to believe, that of Islamic camps producing assassins and suicide bombers, while the virtuous American government and CIA did nothing about it.   The army of non- Afghan Muslims and hundreds of paramilitary trainers who came out of these camps is blamed on Islamists who were brought together by us, but the CIA, as usual, tries to maintain "plausible deniability" in relation to the Afghan/Soviet war and the "Islamic threat" we created, which grew out of it.  The former head of the CIA's  "Bin Laden Unit" wants us to believe in the tortured claims of Shaykh al-Libi (that had been proven false by the time he wrote his book) "the camps housed WMD experts who were building weapons and training others to do so or to use them," even after it had become common knowledge within the US intelligence community that the charge was false.    

Newsweek confirmed that a copy of the DIA report "would have been sent" to the Bush administration's National Security Council.  The CIA also produced a document containing similar conclusions about al-Libi in January 2003, Hubris came out in 2004. 

As the most widely recognized expert on bin Laden, Scheuer validates each new "bin Laden tape."  Do you think that the evil bastard appearing in the upper pictures is the same guy in the lower photos, taken from the latest "bin Laden" videos?   

 http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/osama_newfake.html                  

Here is Scheuer's latest defense of his hero:

 "Analysis of Osama bin Laden's" By Michael Scheuer  

"The September 7 release of a new video statement by Osama bin Laden puts to rest, at least for now, widespread speculation that he is dead, retired, or has been pushed aside by his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. With a newly trimmed and dyed beard, comfortable robes rather than a camouflage jacket, and a clear and patient speaking style, bin Laden achieved a major purpose of his speech before he said a word: he clearly showed Muslims and Americans that he was still alive, that he was healthy and not at death's door, that he spoke from secure surroundings unthreatened by the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, and that he, al-Qaeda and their allies were ready to continue the war. As usual, this message was wrapped in an as-Sahab Productions video displaying high level production values."

In the same article, Scheuer attempts to extend his power to validate terrorist videos that comes from his experience with bin Laden, to that of the Israeli/al Qaida spokesman, Adam Pearlman (a.k.a. Adam Gadahn, a.k.a. Azzam al-Amriki)        and Ayman  al-Zawahiri (alleged to be a CIA/MI6 asset).              While Scheuer was attempting to vouch for both bin Laden and Pearlman, his former associates still at the bureau were denouncing the latest tape as a hoax:
"American spy chiefs were quick to name Adam Gadahn, the head of al-Qaeda's English language media operations, as the author of large sections of bin Laden's broadcast... A former senior US intelligence official said: "It has Adam Gadahn written all over it." Mike Baker, a former CIA covert operations officer, said the tape left bin Laden with "the title of biggest gas bag in the terrorist world".   
    
Despite this, CIA officials claimed that voice analysis of the tape proved it was definitely bin Laden's voice, even though they failed to point out evidence of why this could not be, or the gaps in the video and audio segments, as well as the obvious editing errors which were uncovered. 

Jumping back to Imperial Hubris, we watch Scheuer dance around the issue of the problems created for us, by the camps that we did not build, and the insurgents that we did not train in advanced terror tactics:

"Completing the picture, we have learned since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan that camps also were dedicated to training Tajiks, Uzbeks, Chechens. and Uighurs. In Afghanistan, then, camps training Islamist insurgents numbered many more than those belonging to al Qaeda and the Taleban, and together they built a store of trouble for the United rotes and the West by preparing men to fight in current insurgencies and ones not yet begun. Many observers, however, still have trouble absorbing the fact that there is a huge cadre of camp-trained Islamist insurgents available around the world—a veteran force in being, if you will, ready to deploy whenever and wherever the opportunity arises." 
(The database of that huge cadre is called "al Qaida." )   

George Crile's expose, was released at the same time as Hubris , it confirmed that the camps in question were CIA/ISI (Pakistani secret service).  The deadly training that Scheuer described in his book was carried on from American programs, such as the infamous CIA jihadi textbooks, produced at the University of Nebraska, which remained the curriculum there, even after the Taliban were evicted.  Textbooks for children that were a combination of indoctrination in radical Islam and weapons training are at the core of America's problems with radical Islam in Pakistan.  

In their article "From the USA, the ABCs of jihad," in the Washington Post, Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway describe the Jihadi textbooks made in the American Bible/corn belt: 

"Published in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtu, the textbooks were developed in the early 1980s under an AID [Agency for International Development] grant to the University of Nebraska-Omaha and its Center for Afghanistan Studies. The agency spent $51 million on the university's education programs in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994...Under this Jihadism project, the images and talk of resistance to occupation were craftily intermingled with regular education: 
Children were taught to count with illustrations showing tanks, missiles and land mines, agency officials said. They acknowledged that at the time it also suited US interests to stoke hatred of foreign invaders...One page from the texts of that period shows a resistance fighter with a bandolier and a Kalashnikov slung from his shoulder. The soldier's head is missing. Above the soldier is a verse from the Koran. Below is a Pashtu tribute to the mujaheddin [sic], who are described as obedient to Allah. Such men will sacrifice their wealth and life itself to impose Islamic law on the government, the text says.
The United States' Jihadism successfully transformed Afghan children into true freedom fighters..."     

Then we have secretive American government figures, like Congressman Charlie Wilson and Zbigniew Brzezinski (the self-proclaimed father of the anti-Soviet jihad) traveling to secret camps in Pakistan to cheer the Afghans and, telling them "God is on your side," as seen in the following video:
                                  

Another important piece of investigative journalism, Triple Cross, by Peter Lance, reveals some of the little-known CIA al Qaida connections, in particular, that of Ali Mohamed: 

" In the years leading to the 9/11 attacks, no single agent of al Qaeda was more successful in compromising the U.S. intelligence community than a former Egyptian army captain turned CIA operative, Special Forces advisor, and FBI informant named Ali Mohamed [a.k.a. Ali Amiriki, or "Ali the American"].   Spying first for the Central Intelligence Agency and later the FBI, Mohamed even succeeded in penetrating the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg—while simultaneously training the cell that blew up the World Trade Center in 1993 [taught Ramsey Yousef, cousin of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged planner of 9/11].  He lived the quiet life of a Silicon Valley computer executive while slipping off to Afghanistan and the Sudan to train some of al Qaeda's most lethal terrorists in bomb-making and assassination tradecraft—much of that time maintaining his status as an FBI informant who worked his Bureau control agent like a mole...A deep-penetration al Qaeda sleeper, he succeeded as a triple agent, gaining access to the most sensitive intelligence in the U.S. counter-terrorism arsenal." - Peter Lance

 There you have it, Ali, a CIA double-agent, was key to bringing the camps run by bin Laden up to American standards for paramilitary training.  He also gave bin Laden's agents access to top secret intelligence which he had access to in the Army, while in the employ of the FBI, he was also working for the CIA to improve the lethality of al Qaida.  The hidden hand of the CIA is becoming visible in every step that America has taken over the years to create a believable new enemy for us, in the form of international Islamist extremism, to replace the Soviet bogeyman that the damned mujahedeen we trained so well took from us. 

Thanks to the CIA's hard efforts to create a potential enemy out of a peaceful religion, and especially to the efforts of loyal "retired" spooks, like Michael Scheuer, we are about to witness what the fascist neoconservatives like Michael Ledeen meant when they urged ";total war" on us,         as the path to victory in the war on terror.  In this, Scheuer and the neocons are in complete agreement.   Instead of acknowledging what has taken place in the past and trying to correct the mistakes, Scheuer joins those extremists calling for us to wage total war upon Islam, as a necessary evil, to preserve our gluttonous American way of life: 

"America is in a war for survival. Not survival in terms of protecting territory, but in terms of keeping the ability to live as we want, not as we must."          
                     
The hellish scenario described in the following passage should give sane people nightmares:

"We will have to use military force in the way Americans used it... from skies over Tokyo and Dresden. Progress will be measured by pace of killing and, yes, by body counts. Not the fatuous body counts of Vietnam, but precise counts that will run to extremely large ambers. The piles of dead will include as many or more civilians as combatants because our enemies wear no uniforms. Killing in large numbers is not enough to defeat our Muslim foes.  With killing must come a Sherman-like razing of infrastructure. Roads and irrigation systems; bridges, power plants, and crops in the field; fertilizer plants and grain mills—all these and more will need to be destroyed to deny the enemy its support base. Land mines, moreover will be massively reintroduced to seal borders and mountain passes too long, high, or numerous to close with U.S. soldiers. As noted, such actions will yield large civilian casualties, displaced populations, and refugee flows. Again, this sort of bloody-mindedness is neither admirable nor desirable, but it will remain America's only option so long as s he stands by her failed policies toward the Muslim world." 
We are seeing the first steps in that desired war escalation in the recent announcement that large numbers of Special Forces were moving into Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province, to train paramilitary forces and more Islamic militias to fight the other Islamists that we had previously trained.  

The CIA plot to create a credible enemy that would fight against US Army and Marine troops has started to bear fruit.  Their plan is working,

Americans are being killed by American-trained Islamists all over the place.  If Congress allows it to go forward (both Democrats and Republicans will support the plan enthusiastically), this may prove to be the elusive path to world war III that Cheney and the neocons have been frantically searching for.  At least that's what New Delhi news analyst Aijaz Ahmad foresees as Pakistan's fate, if it fails to "disengage from the US war on terrorism."      
   

http://www.youtube.com/v/7F1oRcsEJEc&rel=1&border=1

http://www.youtube.com/v/7F1oRcsEJEc&rel=1&border=1

Ahmad spells-out the obvious conclusion about reviving the original CIA program to train and radicalize Islamists and to wage war in Pakistan
           
"There is no military solution in Pakistan, just as there was no military solution in Iraq, Afghanistan, or on the nuclear issue with Iran."

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