Hitchens on Afghan Poppies

[QuestionForAtheists]

A question for atheists. In a world where there's no proof of God's existence or of life after death; how will you explain to your children why you brought them into the world and why they should die?

[KnightOwl2006]

Hitchens is right on this.

The "war on drugs" is a joke.

[BeyondNeptune]

then let's grow poppies in the U.S. i'm sure of our 50 states, at least one has a proper climate..fuck these muslims and their muslim poppies

[schwarzblatt]

@BeyondNeptune poppies grow in many places. just as well in Arizona as Washington.

[Hermoor]

I would like to try LSD, too bad they aren't selling it. Alchohol is on 4th place of most dangerous drugs. LSD is on 11th place...the reason it's banned is because there are too many fuck ups out there. That has no control over their own mind...

[wotg]

Hitchens is so right

[saadasim]

If drugs were legalized, what would the CIA do?

[hitchwatch]

Hitchens, the pharmaceutical expert.

[PoliticsStudent]

The ironic thing is that when we go there to burn their only source of income, it makes Afghan citizens turn to the Taliban for help.

[warwickshire800]

HItchens is spot on the issue. We should support India not Pakistan. Afghanistan is a source of minerals and opium and left alone all that would be in the hands of the Taliban and Pakistani Islamic militants.

[GaiusIuliusTaberna]

Once again Hitchens nails it, we should encourage Afghanistan to build a morphine industry, we certainly consume a lot of it for surgeries.

[accountbypass1]

Good sense by HItchens, but this is probably opposed by the extremists and the ones who have interests at stake.

[FrankinHolland]

Opium poppies are grown in Tazmania and Holland. There are probably vested interests involved who don't want a cheap supply coming from Afganistan.

[Ragnaros12345]

Heh, messiah. Go fuck yourself, fundie.

[ExoticGawdess]

Who controls/profits personally from Opium trade in Turkey?

Those answers will point us toward the real reason the US government hates Afghanis so much that they sent the military in there to kill humans.

The mass media is only giving us a fraction of the story, AS ALWAYS. They intentionally keep us ignorant so that we cannot vote and make educated decisions about domestic & foreign policy.

The mass media force feeds us a heavy dose of Paris Hilton's vagina to distract us & keep us ignorant.

[fubintien]

(@ExoticGawdess) My god . . . it's almost as if we might have to find other sources of information about the world . . .

Read books, fer crissakes.

[ExoticGawdess]

Oxcontin is opium (poppy seed) based. It's caused the biggest drug addiction in America. Guiliani is invested in it. He wanted to be president. Rumsfeld is invested in drugs, so this Afghan resistance is hurting Rumsfeld's bread & butter income. Naturally he helped to invade Afghanistan. Senator John Kerry's family is in the opium industry.

Government's drug war is only war on people who block their profit from drugs. It's a war on their competitors, using citizens' money for politicans' gain.

[award360]

is it just me or is everything upside down

[AlanCom1]

excellent!

War on drugs is idiotic. Time to legalize.

[putittogether]

Hitchens is drunk. How the fuck are we supposed to fund are secrete wars and assassinations with-out the drug trade, fucking trader.

[reelanrock]

Doesn't sound right about the "20 years ago" part. They've been producing heroin poppies there since at least the 1940s. The CIA is their biggest customer, along with the US-based Mafia. Most of it is processed in labs in France and Colombia, then distributed by the CIA out of Langley and NYC.

[saintkamus14]

Cont from my earlier post.

Like i said. They kill eachother anywhere, anytime and with out warning.

Sometimes they are revange driven killings, sometimes drug dealing power issues.

It can be in the parking lot of a Walmart, a redlight in an intersection, outside a gastation. it doesn't matter to them.

I haven't been witness to any of these killings, but many people have.

That's too close for comfort.

Lagealize drugs, and the problem disappears.

[libertarianjury]

Christopher Hitchens is fantastic. If only all mainstream commentators had the guts and the intellectual rigor to speak the truth and not be afraid of where it's going to lead them! I wonder what he thinks of Libertarian presidential candidate Wayne Root?

[modlany]

@libertarianjury Well, Hitchens is a dyed-in-the-wool Marxist, so.....

[JayLeePoe]

@modlany I've heard him identify more with Trotsky, if you make that distinction.

[libertarianjury]

@modlany Nope, he's ditched the Marxism, according to a several years old interview with the Atlantic Monthly. He now calls himself a "libertarian", and, althought he hasn't read much about libertarianism, he is pretty close to RJ Rummel of the University of Hawaii, who calls himself a "freedomist" (Libertarians who supported the Iraq invasion, due to the mass murdering of Sadam Hussein, and their belief that he was a potential threat). Domestically, Hitchens is fairly libertarian.

[modlany]

@libertarianjury Not sure where you heard that, but he's still very much a leftist if no longer one that considers himself a "socialist". watch?v=Za-QBJxINEI

[BelfastAtheist]

@libertarianjury

Hitchens studied PP&E, so obviously he's well-read on Libertarianism. Incidentally, I've semi-obsessively watched his Interviews (And quite close to all of his debates) and I've never seen him call himself a Libertarian, can you cite a source for this claim..?

Christopher Hitchens is *by no means* a Libertarian and he never was. What on Earth are you babbling about? You shouldn't answer other peoples questions if you don't know the answer.

[degaulle30]

He's right on this issue, wrong on others. But on the whole I still like him, a true Brit sticking it to bullish Americans.

[saintkamus14]

Well, he's a human being, he can't be right about evrything right?

But i'll tell you what. When he's got enough information for an opinion, he's usually dead on right.

And when he doesn't have enough information to make an opinion he's the first to admit it.

So anyway. What i'm saying is, after looking carefully at most of his opinions, i now agree with many of them.

For example i used to be against the Iraq war, because i thought the country wasn't in that bad shape, he changed my mind.

[andreiq]

hitchens rules

drugs rule

[murphycline]

He makes in a lot of areas, and doesn't in others.

[andreiq]

case CLOSED

[Hottides]

If the Afghans did more opium and less Islam, they and the world would be much happier.

[bratfink74]

So true, Hottides. I vote LOTS of opium and NO Islam.

[Hottides]

True, bratfink. With opium, you're happy and harm only yourself. With Islam, you're miserable and take lots of other people down with you. Islam's one of those rare things with no benefits whatsoever.

[kat1989]

i would say it has one benefit, that of being self defeating. the unquestioning nature of the ideology is not conducive to science or innovation, so those countries with it will naturally fall behind

[surelady]

Haha nice.

[JayLeePoe]

@Hottides If they had more money and less poverty, even better.

[RUBENSolol]

@Hottides As a joke it´s fine, unfortunately, many afghani soldiers are stoned ALL THE TIME.

[randy95023]

The "Drug War" is interesting... Many of my friends and family are either in Law enforcement or Correctional officers. The average "cop" or "guard" makes MORE than the average "drug dealer". As a society we don't really want to win the drug war...

[sitkabrownbear]

fuck u and fuck off

[J2897]

We need Opium to make Morphine. We need Morphine to get our Heroin addicts off Heroin.

We could just Nuke every country that grows it? :D

[adamfal81]

Thats funny its in alot of gardens across the USA oh and in floral shops to jackass!

[escargot606]

I was going to comment but now I have read the standard of argument I'm not going to. ('Hurray!' says everyone who's read my other rants)

[qqs764]

It is impossible to overdose on THC, the active ingredient in Marijuana. Now, if people are going to illegally produce drugs, then why not legalise it and have it moderated rather than illegal and filled with all sorts of crap that will make it both more addictive and far more deadly than measured legal doses which can be used to wean people off the drug by reducing the dosage at certain intervals?

[dankster24]

Think about it, we're waging a war against a plant that grows naturally. People will always find a way to get high and I think we should just legalize drugs and with the money we save fighting this inane "war" we can use to build facilities to help addicts with their addictions. Plus, it would take care of prison over-crowding. I say we decriminalize drugs and let our schools and parents teach us the negative effects of drug use.

[Comradesnowball]

well opium is a main component of morphine, which there isnt enough off in the world anyway.

[1DeathWalkingTerror1]

What a crock, addict....

[yerk3]

DeathWalkingTerror...Can you refute anything that's been said here? The Afghans should be able to grow their opium legally to make morphine, which is a medical necessity. The money they make would pump much-needed life into their economy, and perhaps the strengthened infrastructure could help more delicate industries like wine production.

[1DeathWalkingTerror1]

I like the cut of ye jib, yerk...

[hitchwatch]

They are growing several orders of magnitude more opium than they need for any sort of legitimate medical purpose. Hitch is just trying to put a positive spin on a side effect of his "Glorious War."

[tskaface]

This same point was risen in the UK, it is being considered by the NHS and major pharmaceuticals. Hitchens has simply done his research. What is your vendetta against Hitchens

[hitchwatch]

Hitchens is passing along something he heard at a cocktail party. He's just trying to polish a turd with this angle and you are just another fanboy reflexively defending his hero.

[tskaface]

You don't know what you are talking about.

[hitchwatch]

Prove me wrong, bitch.

[tskaface]

I barely think you've earnt a response; from the disrespectful way you are acting.

I will make a few points though, firstly you are argument is conjecture, I dont wish to debate conjecture. Secondly, I will simply state that he was talking about foreign policy and it is highly probably he has done some outside research. Thirdly, There is considerable money in stable legal opium poppy production.

I will cite, if you like. Or you can do some research.

[hitchwatch]

"I barely think you've earnt [sic] a response; from the disrespectful way you are acting."

Hitchens fanboy pretends to be offended.

"I will make a few points though, firstly you are argument is conjecture, I dont wish to debate conjecture."

Decent stands on protocol.

"highly probably [sic]"

Must defend Hitch!

[hitchwatch]

"There is considerable money in stable legal opium poppy production."

If that's the case, why don't they just have poppy farms in California? I did some consulting for a major pharmaceutical company and they were dumping their morphine inventory at deep discounts. It's a low-margin business.

[tskaface]

Firstly I seriously doubt you do any consulting at all. Secondly, from the way you write and your dogmatic attacks with childish remarks such as "fanboy," if your age is as much as 14 your maturity is certainly not.

[hitchwatch]

"The world produces 400 tonnes a year of legal opium, 50 more than the demand. This year, it is estimated that Afghanistan on its own will produce illegally 600 tonnes. If production is legalized in Afghanistan the world market will be flooded with opium, which would cause a collapse in prices," [Ali Gevenkiris, head of opium production in Turkey] said.

[tskaface]

Do you think that he may some resentment to changing the 80-20 rule?

[hitchwatch]

"he may some resentment"

Get back to me when you learn English.

[tskaface]

Stop being so Childish. It is pretty obvious that was an innocent mistake, where for some reason the word "have" was lost from my post. I probably miss-clicked when i pressed post.

[hitchwatch]

"Stop being so Childish.... I probably miss-clicked when i pressed post."

Get back to me when you learn English.

[GBart]

hahahahaha

[amartin7889]

Answer the question.

[amartin7889]

Why would that be a bad thing? The Afghan production of illegal opium is a multi-billion dollar business. There's way too much money involved for people to turn their back on the obscene profits of growing opium. If the business is legitimized, the black market begins to erode. Letting natural market forces work > allowing the Taliban to cultivate and trade heroin.

[amartin7889]

Because it's so heavily regulated in this country, and subjected to countless government interference that it's not worth the trouble. It's easier to get other countries to do it.

[hitchwatch]

Paultard, do you actually have any practical experience in any of the related businesses?

[amartin7889]

I don't need any practical experience in one industry to know how regulation prevents business growth. I've worked in several other industries that are overrun with regulation.

Besides, do you? You're 28 years old, which would give you about five years of business experience after you graduated from college. Your story isn't plausible.

Have you read the regulations on the opium industry? Probably not.

It's OK, just keep nursing the teet of Almighty Government. They'll protect you.

[hitchwatch]

I don't put accurate information on my profiles, idiot. Hitchens was parroting propaganda from a medical industry front group because he wanted to put a positive spin on the Afghanistan fiasco. I've actually worked in the pharmacutical business and don't need some Paultard babbling at me about government "teets," etc.

[amartin7889]

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, seeing that you can't even put accurate information in your posts.

Christopher Hitchens has said that Afghanistan is a fiasco. He's said that we're likely to lose the popular war, and win the unpopular war.

Dude, you're so full of shit it's fucking laughable. You can find this information out for yourself, but you're hell bent on this stupid vendetta that you've blinded yourself.

Again, Paultard = epic fail.

[hitchwatch]

It's amazing that a guy who basically called me a statist (when I've always worked in the private sector), supports a ex-Trot neo-con who supports preemptive war.

[hitchwatch]

Moron, most of the legal opium is grown in Turkey because it would be cheaper in any event. Legal opium is a low-margin, mature commodity business. Try doing a little research.

[Vurdox]

Piss off, idiot.

[1DeathWalkingTerror1]

fuck you vurdox

[Vurdox]

no.

[jozzmer]

as an unreformed opiate user. im a chronic pain sufferer. i agree. this shit is like gods gift to me as i can live a bit better.

[danielkills]

as a long-reformed heroin/opium addict (i was a silly youth), i can definitly say that the only thing the drug war has accomplished is propping up drug lords in every major city in america. making the shit legal, SAFER (not cooked with shoe polish to make it addictive) and available to the public only would hurt the pharm companies and their synthetic pain killer business.

[GutRocket]

Too true.

[SKITTZ0]

Did they know that he has smoked opium before?

[amarbleinspace]

its not only grown in turkey for our pharmaceuticals its grown in New Zealand i think. im pretty sure Hitchens makes things up alot.

[Letranger]

We all have different data-sets that we express ourselves using... perhaps you happen to be aware of something he is not... or vice versa. I don't see how one could claim certainty about another's imaginative capacities in the same breath though.

[amarbleinspace]

Letranger . thats true, but i dont have books out filled with my opinions stating the obvious, Hitchens is a man who wants creative merit but doesnt have any so hes forced to write crappy books, but i think he would like to be a Fiction writer or something like this, they usually do.

[000snow000]

have you read any of his books?

[Tavat]

FGFM: You were working for a pharmeceutical company. mmmhmm. Don't you think that they might have vested interest in seeing that a NATURAL, easily-produced (and logically usable) pain-killer is not on the market? Pharm giants are bullies, liars and thieves. Thanks for helping them out.

[hitchwatch]

They sell plenty of opiates, there's just not a lot of money in it. If they can get it cheap and hook a lot more people on it, they would be sure to do it. Do you really think that Hitchens is a drug expert who came up with this idea independently or is it more likely that he's just passing along the same propaganda I saw from that front group?

[Redcarpet01]

"a genocide being commited against Niggers" so most consumers aren't white? Where's that allegation from?

[12Zwolf]

Opium is a genocide being commited against Niggers. The Middle East grows this drug for that purpose, don't blame the C.I.A., blame the United Nations for subsidising opium farmers, and not subsidising the American farmer that grows food.

Send the 'Crips', and the 'Bloods' into the Middle East, and the war in the Middle East will be over in a week.

Valkyrie Sieg Mourne

[OmegaRage]

He's probably smarter than you.

[FGFM]

Hitch is a moron. I was doing some consulting work for a pharmaceutical firm a while back and they were getting out of the (legal) morphine business because there was no money in it! There is absolutely no shortage of opium available for medicinal applications and synthetic narcotics like Demerol have been in use for decades.

[lolharbandhar]

I think his proposal was more of giving Afghanistan a share of the market that the US gives Turkey, he didn't imply for one second that there was a shortage of opium.

[FGFM]

He was just parroting some pharmaceutical front group propaganda he probably heard at a cocktail party. They want to open the African market for legal opiates that they can get cheaper in Afghanistan.

[libertarianjury]

But that's the point, you idiot! THE FREE MARKET WORKS. Hitch was advocating legalizing the illegal market, due to his respect for PROPERTY RIGHTS. Not just the property rights of rich pharmaceutical companies, but also of the individual drug user, purchaser, buyer, MARKET. He advocates a legal, regulated market with enforceable contracts, opposed to an illegal death-dealing prohibitionist cluster-f*ck. Who benefits _most_ is irrelevant.

[hitchwatch]

Stop foaming at the mouth, you Randoid crackpot. The drug companies don't want to make opiates legal, they just want to get Africans hooked on what they can get cheap from Afghanistan.

[amartin7889]

The kettle just called the pot black.

[GildersleeveRTB]

The Libertarian in me says that Hitch is right on this one. The only people ever able to stop the opium trade were the Taliban, and they did it through fear and violence. We should help uplift the Afghan people.

[SCOTSDOC]

Dyna Corps was involved in S.America too.

Why should CANADIAN TROOPS support poppy eradication??

We are having to send our troops out to locate the shot down Dyna Corp helicopter?? It is the CIA controlled Dyna Corp that causes the locals to rise up and kill our Canadian boys!!

[GlobalCop]

We probably don't agree on much Scotsdoc, but on this, we're pretty close. End the stupid drug war and let the free market work.

[saintkamus14]

I live in Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico.

It's a pretty normal avarage City, with about 1 million people in it.

However, the rate at which drug lords are killing eachother here is getting out of control.

Recently even the army is getting involved. (which in itself is a bad thing, because this eventually can lead to problems of it's own.)

They don't just go out to the woods to kill eachother, they do it anywhere, any time.

Sometimes we have up to 17 drug lord related killings a day. TBC...

[SCOTSDOC]

Imagine that scene for a moment--you are an Ecuadorian farmer, and suddenly, without notice or warning, a large helicopter approaches, and the frightening noise of the chopper blades invades the quiet. The helicopter comes closer, and sprays a toxic poison on you, your children, your livestock and your food crops. You see your children get sick, your crops die."