For Some Reason, LA Drug Cops Received Intelligence, Training On ‘Muslim Extremists’ From The Israeli Military
from the cross-pollination-isn't-always-ideal dept
A few years ago, hacktivist group Anonymous liberated a ton of documents from law enforcement agencies all over the world. These were published by transparency activists DDoS (Distributed Denial of Secrets). Journalists and other activists continue to dive into this 269 gigabyte treasure trove, teasing out additional information law enforcement agencies certainly wish was still their little secret.
Some early reporting highlighted the panicky bulletins and alerts issued by the DHS and FBI. The DHS tended to get duped by viral videos or encourage the domestic surveillance of people engaged in First Amendment activities. The FBI, on the other hand, was warning law enforcement that consumer products like Ring doorbell cameras now made it pretty much impossible for officers to get the drop on targets of warrant service. That revelation was steeped in irony, given that dozens of law enforcement agencies had teamed up with Ring to hand out freebie surveillance cameras to citizens — the same cameras that might later give away their position when engaging in a raid.
The Guardian has found something interesting in the so-called “BlueLeaks” stash: an extremely improbable partnership between a Los Angeles drug task force and IDF, Israel’s joint military group. Here’s what this task force was supposed to be doing:
One body whose internal archives were exposed in the hack, LA Clear, is tasked with providing “analytical and case support” in narcotics investigations in southern California, according to its website. It was established as a joint project between the Los Angeles County Police Chiefs Association, the California department of justice, and the Los Angeles county sheriff’s department in 1992.
And here’s what it was doing. Or, at least, here’s what it was looking at.
Despite its ostensible mission to combat drug trafficking, the LA Clear archive of training materials (labeled “lacleartraining”) included in the BlueLeaks trove has several analyses of previous episodes of widespread conflict in Gaza and the West Bank that are sourced directly from the IDF and closely aligned Israeli thinktanks.
Included in this set of files were an analysis of the IDF’s 22-day assault on the Gaza Strip in 2008. There’s also a presentation discussing Israel’s unique position in the Middle East, both strategically and politically. Another presentation crafted by the IDF points out the challenges Israel faces when attempting to control internal and external narratives related to its counter-terrorism efforts.
Obviously, none of this has anything to do with LA Clear’s anti-drug trafficking work. It could be that it were sent these documents by mistake. Or it could be that it requested them for reasons it’s not willing to discuss.
What is clear is that several US law enforcement agencies are working closely with pro-Israel groups and participating in seminars that encourage surveillance of Muslims — ones performed not by law enforcement agencies but rather the ADL (Anti-Defamation League), a pro-Israel non-profit group.
Emails preserved in BlueLeaks show various agencies promoting ADL training sessions for law enforcement officers, including a January 2013 session on “screening of persons by observational techniques” and a seminar at the Southern Nevada Counter Terrorism Center on the “evolving nature of Islamic extremists”.
ADL staff are shown as registered attendees at events run by fusion centers, offering bios that advise the organization that “we facilitate workshops for law enforcement on extremism, hate crime and (in Washington DC and Israel) counter-terrorism”.
It’s all a bit strange. Cops tend to believe most outsiders aren’t worth paying attention to, but the ADL is given a pass. Members are allowed to attend events that aren’t open to other members of the public (the fusion center events listed above) and are often consulted for their “expertise” on Islamic extremism and counter-terrorism, even if those members have never actually worked in the counter-terrorism field. Maybe it’s just easier to have a single perspective on things — one that hews more closely to the US law enforcement assumption that most Muslims are probably terrorists.
Whatever it is, it probably isn’t what people assume is happening with their tax dollars. Law enforcement agencies are buying into a very singular narrative when they treat entities with an obvious bias as arbiters of unvarnished truth. And this would be just as problematic if agencies decided to use a non-profit like CAIR (Council for American-Islamic Relations) as the sole source of info on Israeli-Palestinian relations, counter-terrorism, or Islamic extremism.
And if you’re in the business of providing operation support for drug interdiction efforts, maybe you’d just better focus on the work you’re supposed to be doing, rather than pretending that skimming through a few one-sided briefings will turn you into a counter-terrorism expert.
Comments on “For Some Reason, LA Drug Cops Received Intelligence, Training On ‘Muslim Extremists’ From The Israeli Military”
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Love it. A real TechDirt Twofer: anti-police hate speech + antisemitism in a single post! 👍🏻
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Criticizing the Israeli government (including its military) is not, in and of itself, antisemitic because criticizing the actions of a government that happens to be led by Jewish people isn’t criticizing Jewish people as a whole. Criticizing American police departments is not hate speech because “police officer” is not a population demographic.
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Oh, you never know. It is possible that some 70% of the israeli citizenry is anti-semitic. /s
That, after all, has been the precise argument proposed by a certain number of israeli politicians whenever jewish people, or even israeli jews, start criticizing the israeli government.
The fact is that when we have on record, prominent israeli politicians coming out swinging for an essential endlösung for the ‘palestinian problem’ in the knesset it’s fair to say that somewhere, israel has lost the plot. There’s no damn way most sane and rational jews in israel can maintain the illusion of ‘one people, united’ when walking down the wrong street in Tel Aviv will see them meeting a few of the strapping lads of Otzma Yehudit eager to show them what it means to be the wrong sort of jew, in true Ernst Röhm Style.
Israel isn’t judaism as a whole. Never was, no matter what their charter says. And Netanyahu himself – a man investigated for corruption and nepotism who has salvaged his career by embracing the utterly worst extremists to be found – isn’t someone any normal person, jewish or not, would wantrepresenting them.
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It seems to me that Israel has forgotten the history of its people, which is why they are repeating it with another.
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I’m not seeing that they are.
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That’s as may be, but 90% of the time when non-Jews are critical of the Israeli government their criticism is shot through with Jüdenhass.
The paragraph starting with “what is clear” feels highly inaccurate to me — there’s nothing above to show that the seminars encouraged spying on Muslims, and describing the ADL as “pro-Israel” misses what the ADL actually is against. Of course it’s pro-Israel in general terms — what Jewish organization isn’t? But describing it as a “pro-Israel non-profit” feels like an attempt at sliming it without technically lying.
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And 70% of the time, anyone can make up bullshit statistics.
I’m not going to deny that some criticism of the Israeli government by people who aren’t Jewish/don’t live in Israel is antisemitic. I’d be a fool in saying otherwise. But to suggest that damn near all such criticism is antisemitic requires you to make an offer of proof that you can’t actually pull out of anywhere but your ass.
Then you should’ve read the blockquoted paragraphs after that one:
I may be something of an idiot, but even I know that “Islamic extremists” is code for “Muslims”, at least in the United States. You’re not gonna see many “Islamic extremists” turn out to be Hispanic, after all.
A fair point. That said: The ADL is a pro-Israel non-profit; lying about or ignoring that fact would remove at least some context from the conversation. Would you rather have a truth that might sting, a comforting lie, or nothing at all?
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Yeah, no. The ADL, just for recent (current) history, is one of those groups who deem Jews who protest the actions of the Israeli government to be antisemitic.
But for 90% made-up stats: 90% of American non-Jews supportive of the Israeli government actually DGAF about Jews either. It’s just they hate Muslims more, plus we need Israel to be a state plus some other stuff so we can have the sweet, sweet Apocalypse. (Or they pretend to this reason, to get along or get elected.)
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There’s also the third reason: Fascists of a feather stick together. To use a common example, think of the axis powers of Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and Fascist Italy: All Fascists, even with one of them non-white (Japan). Also, think that Israel gets support from Benito Mussolini’s unrepentant descendants in Italy, as well as in Modi’s India (though the anti-Muslim animus in India may also have something to do with that, and Modi’s India also has good relationships with Majority-Muslim nations (except Pakistan), so maybe it’s not a good point I’m making there).
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Ah, yes. Holding police accountable for their training and practices that are often the scapegoat in situations where cops violate the rights of citizens or even murder citizens is “hate speech.” Cops aren’t going to give you kudos for this lingual shoeshine you’re giving them.
And the disingenuous conflation of Israel with Jews continues. Criticizing Israel isn’t antisemitism. There’s a difference between a nation, it’s government, it’s military, and it’s population. You can criticize one of the former without being racist towards the latter.
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Tim Cushing can’t do that w/r/t this topic, however. He is an anti-Semitic cop-hater who would have Muslims murder all Jews and law enforcement officers.
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“Tim is a poopy head who smells like banana farts!”
Your irrational ad hominems say so much more about you than about the people you attack.
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…hallucinated nobody mentally competent, ever.
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Actually, it is likely that conflating thus confusing opposition to Israel’s anti-Palestinian policies, with genuine antisemitism, the hatred and fear of Jews for no other reason than they are Jews, is much more damaging than keeping the two separate.
If people know that the two are two different things altogether, Jews are safer, and know they are safe. A nation’s policies are not its people, after all: how many people will readily confess to seeking a political policy on a dating site? For long-term relationship? Providing it’s not more than a thousand pages tall?
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Conflating opposition to israeli policy with anti-semitism is most definitely more harmful.
Because if you need to be called an ‘anti-semite’ when you oppose Netanyahu publicly having supported Hamas for the express purpose of delegitimizing the entire palestinian leadership from negotiations…then it becomes really hard to disavow that label.
Simply because most people probably don’t think it’s kosher for a head of state to actively sabotage any possibility of peace talks with an opposing party by financially supporting an actual terror group in their grasp for leadership of said opposing party. Not even most israeli, judging by the statistics.
The reality is that no one should get a pass on acting like an ass. Whether they’re white or black, jew or gentile.
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Not to mention that there are diaspora Jews outside of Israel, like me and Mike Masnick. Conflating the Israel population with Diaspora Jews, IMHO, is far more anti-Semitic than criticizing the Israeli government, who (in, once again, my own opinion) deserves mountains upon mountains of criticism, not to mention accountability.
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Seriously, the idea that all Jewish people love (or should love) Israel unconditionally because it’s “the Jew country” is antisemitic as all hell.
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But it’s so easy to reduce it to that absurd level because then they don’t have to engage intellectually and can keep doing stupid generalizations.
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Myeah, no matter how much brain I grind on this topic, I still only come up with two direct beneficiaries of conflating ‘israeli government’ with ‘jew’;
1) A corrupt, fascist, and self-serving israeli government trying to hoodwink their own citizenry once again into the belief that the world consists of jews and of gentiles who hate jews.
2) Actual bona fide anti-semites eager to tar anyone jewish with the same brush with which they can see israel’s government being tarred.
…and ironically on top of that, actual anti-semites tend to be VERY pro-israeli. ‘Let them go home’ didn’t work too well against black people during the BLM protests but for jews there is an israel.
And best of all, one which has one of the demographics anti-semitic white supremacists hate embattled with another demographic they hate..
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Not to mention there are diaspora Jews who never set foot in Israel nor want to, like me, for instance (Mike Masnick is also a Diaspora Jew, but I can’t speak for whether or not he wants to go to Israel, so I’ll shut my trap on that matter)
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Hey, if you right-wing nuts can do it why the fuck can’t we? We’ll do it and we’ll be more fabulous than you are when you do it, bitch!
Love wins.
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Re: Re:
Behold the nastiness and abusiveness of the average TechDirt reader.
Unable to use facts and reason to craft compelling arguments, they instead turn to insulting their betters using crude language that degrades women.
Impressive.
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How did you obtain data upon all TD users in order to make such a claim?
Or is it just more bullshit.
Re: Re: Re:2
Responding to the wrong comment, fool.
Re: Re: Re:3
No, you are. Read more closely. (Please assume the same response to all the comments identically worded to the above.)
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You mean, behold the nastiness and abusiveness of the average Techdirt rightwing commenter.
Since they don’t have facts, reasons or even a hint of decency in their entire beings, they chomp at the bit to be nasty and abusive, since you can’t shoot someone on the internet.
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Re: Re: Re:2
Responding to the wrong comment, fool.
Re: Re: Re:3
Yeah, no.
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Behold the nastiness and abusiveness of the average TechDirt reader.
Fuck your feelings, snowflake. Cry harder.
Unable to use facts and reason to craft compelling arguments, they instead turn to insulting their betters using crude language that degrades women.
Betters? What an ‘entitled asshole’ thing to say, fuckface.
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Re: Re: Re:2
And another example of the nasty and disgusting mindset of the average TechDirt reader, whose heart is full of hate and whose mouth is full of vulgarities (that should be washed out with a bar of soap!).
Re: Re: Re:3
As if I give a shit about your observation, you entitled asshole.
Keep crying, shitstain.
Re: Re: Re:3
Are you a 50’s soccer-mom or what? Talk about being stuck in the past and being emotionally repressed as hell.
Here’s a tip that you wont act upon: Voluntarily hanging around places you don’t like implies that you have some interesting psychological issues that needs treatment.
Re: Re: Re:3
Victim complex much?
Re: Re: Re:3
Again, this isn’t an average Techdirt reader. This is a troll.
Re: Re: Re:2
Responding to the wrong comment, fool.
Re: Re: Re:3
Uh-uh
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Yeah, yeah. That’d be you and whomever above. A fistful of you guys don’t make “the average Techdirt reader”.
i realize you tone was civil (Southern civil) just now, but come on lol.
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Re: Re: Re:2
Responding to the wrong comment, fool.
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Nope
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Well they both have something in common after all, murdering of innocents, including children.
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Literally no such thing.
Literally zero antisemitism in this post.
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Muslims destroyed the World Trade Center. Muslims carried out the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris. Muslims are now cheering the rape, murder, and kidnapping of Israeli Jews, and trying to bamboozle the referee into stopping the war that is destroying their terrorists in Gaza.
There is every good reason for law enforcement to be monitoring Muslim activity in this country. The consequences of falling down on that job were made clear on October 7.
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Or maybe right-wing militant religious fundamentalists should be opposed, regardless of which version of a mythical deity they justify murder with…
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Thunderdome for religions,
two religions enter, one religion leaves.
Wait .. can we leave that one in there also?
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Sure it can be like one of those deals where no-one actually leaves. Cool.
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Yep… You know which country they were from right? The same one elom pedo man and trump pedo man, and every single republican take money from and refuse to treat like every other muslim country.
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You mean the Saudis. Who are “allied” to the US.
Who were NOT French Muslims. Fun fact: French Muslims are, IIRC, Moroccan, Algerian, and Tunisian, ie, NOT SAUDI.
Charlie Hebdo is also considered trash in France, and while the attacks were horrible, let’s not pretend that they were “noble martyrs”.
And with that said, Charlie Hebdo is free to be as racist, provocative, and insurrectionist as they want because, under free expression, they are certainly allowed to espouse that. If they can’t handle the consequences of their speech, regardless of what form it takes… Well, that says more about them, and we’re not talking about loss of life and terrorism here.
Certainly not the ones in France.
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You’re mixing the facts. Assuming that there are some separate Nations with strict frontiers where all the citizens think in the exact same way is absolutely wrong. There people against and people standing for any cause.
Only the arguments count but don’t expect to see them making the headlines. You cannot even hope for a consensus, not a firm stance of a whole Nation, since theses Nations are a melting pot of different people from different origin in different situation.
Since people never agree about cars or clothes, ideological ideas make more wars than consensus.
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Americans shoot up schools, so all Americans should be watched.
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“Americans shoot up schools, so all Americans should be watched.”
Americans ARE watched. The FBI and police spend all their time watching BLM, Pro-Palestine, and other leftist orgs.
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They are. They stand there and watch as psychos shoot up the place.
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That some Muslims do bad things doesn’t justify monitoring all Muslims any more than that some Christians do bad things justifies monitoring all Christians.
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Of course it does. Regardless, no behavioral justification needed to monitor deranged Muslim terrorists [ie all of them] – they’re barbaric animals dedicated to the overthrow of Western Civilization.
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No behavioral justification is needed to monitor perverted Catholic clergy [ie all of them] – they’re barbaric animals dedicated to the rape and sexual assault of children.
And in case you don’t get the point: The actions and beliefs of a minority of people within a given demographic (e.g., Muslims, Catholic clergy) are not an indicator of the actions and beliefs of that demographic as a whole. Not every Catholic clergyman abuses children or believes such abuse is justified, and not every Muslim commits acts of terrorism or believes such acts are justfied. Your logic would dictate that the actions of the insurrectionists on the 6th of January 2021 are indicative of the actions and beliefs of all white people only because the overwhelming majority of the insurrectionists where white. Even you, a troll whose only reason for posting racist screeds is to get yourself off sexually from whatever attention you receive, can’t be so completely brain dead that you can’t see the stupidity of that logic.
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Re: Re: Re:2 All White People
You are now literally quoting the philosophy of the critical race theorist portion of the woke filth.
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🥱
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Say you know nothing about CRT or woke ideologies without saying you know nothing about CRT or woke ideologies. That’s not what CRT says, and that’s not what being woke is.
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…say only barbaric animals dedicated to the overthrow of civilization.
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I love it when you mock all religious clergy. It gets me so hot and bothered and queer. Mmmm!
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Again, just because some are doesn’t mean all are. Your proud islamophobia is neither logical nor reasonable, and it is not welcome here.
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Gonna have to disagree with you there. The fact that any number of Christians have been caught fiddling children is justification for us to mock all of them, just like Stephen T Stone mocks Christian love, Christian anything. If we do not, then we go back to a Trump presidency, and the destruction of rights that women, transfolk, wolves and fanfiction writers have fought for over centuries.
I am not willing to lose gay marriage. Not again. Not EVER again. Those imaginary sky friend believers can fuck themselves before I let that happen.
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Mock all you like. You’re just factually wrong and a bigot when you go beyond non-serious quips. It also doesn’t justify constant surveillance of all Christians more than anyone else.
Also, you clearly missed the point Stephen was actually making, which was that it’s wrong to treat all Christians clergy (let alone all Christians) as though they are sex offenders just because some are.
BTW, the same applies to homosexuals, too. That some gay people are rapists doesn’t justify treating all gay people as likely or future rapists.
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You can mock me all you want. Then they fight you, then you win. Love will win. Love HAS to win. I am NOT going back to the fucking 1950s.
Gay people don’t rape. It’s just a lie told to you by Christians who desperately want to keep all the molestation to themselves. Just ask any queer person and they’ll tell you the same.
There’ve been some tragic incidents in the recent past when focusing negatively on one particular ethnicity and/or religion has meant that crimes and murders have been committed by the people the Law Enforcement weren’t paying any attention to.
The Tree of Life Synagogue massacre springs to mind, as does the Mosque massacres in Christchurch, NZ. In both those situations, the LE were focusing on Muslims as the likely cause of terrorist incidents and ignoring the rabid far-right.
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This comment made me think of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. The prime suspects were all Muslims, but the perpetrators were Christian extremists. Of course, the Christian extremists were dismissed as “not real Christians”! You bet the “not real XYZ” standard wouldn’t be applied to Muslims.
As a country, the US focuses so much on the (barely existent) threat of Islamic terrorism that it ignores the real terror, which is overwhelmingly committed by Christian extremists.
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Ah, yes, the dissociative No True Scotsman fantasy.
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2021/01/06 comes to mind.
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So does Charlottesville.
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Timothy McVeigh’s beliefs may have been Christian, but his actions were condoned by no religion I know of.
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Religious leaders across the globe routinely state their disapproval of activities done by their followers, not all the time but .. your point is?
The day that we label criticizing a government entity (including law enforcement) as “hate speech” we are traveling down a road we don’t want to go.
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If commentary about the middle east reflecting poorly upon Israel is considered to be antisemitic then is that tacit agreement that Israel is a theocracy?
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Israel is a theocracy in certain matters. For example, marriage is under control of the Rabbinate. In most aspects of governance, it’s just a typical parliamentary democracy.
There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with a country being a theocracy, if that’s what its people want it to be, and if it provides ways for people to opt out of religion. Most Israelis are secular, and there are different areas that are more or less religious in character. You don’t have to live in the religious areas, but if you do, it’s likely that you will be made to feel unwelcome if you openly flout that area’s sensibilities.
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The problem with theocracies is that they rarely allow people to opt out of the official state religion—and in the off-chance that such an opt-out is available, people who do opt out are often treated as second-class citizens.
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Israel does not generally have that problem, except that people who don’t want to get married by the Rabbinate, or whom the Rabbinate does not allow to marry, have to take a short trip to Cyprus to get married there. Israel recognizes marriages made abroad even if they would not be permitted by the Rabbinate locally. Other behavior varies by region; most restaurants in Jerusalem are kosher, while restaurants in Tel Aviv will happily serve pork (called “white meat” in Hebrew).
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There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with a country being a theocracy
Apart from the schizophrenic delusion of seeing/hearing/talking to a god that isn’t there?
I see several problems with it. First, religion – all of them – have some problem with the questioning of beliefs, regardless of the facts. A second would be more obvious – if whatever version of god said theocracy embraces tells them to do something, what is there to challenge, apart from ‘god’s word?’
Now consider two, three whatever nations, all taking their marching orders from an imaginary thing that is always right, always blameless, and never to be questioned.
It’s a schizoid Battle Royale that will end only when the other is thoroughly vanquished. The world would be a far better place if we just let them blow each other up. Anyone left will be confused as fuck about which god won, thus ending this ridiculous cycle of pointless violence.
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Well, I’m not an atheist, but I still see problems with theocracies: Whose religion? Whose interpretation of that religion?
This is why a separation of church and state is the best choice. Because religion is–and should be–a private matter. In theocracies, where the church is the state, only one interpretation of the religion is paramount, and uses the state’s authority to enforce it, and you better be lucky the state’s religion is your religion, because if that interpretation is not yours, then fuck you!
THAT’S why a separation of church and state is the best route to go, and why christian fascists down here are wrong to dismantle it!
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Speaking of theocracies reminds me of Calvin’s Geneva.
https://www.stephenhicks.org/2010/11/27/john-calvins-geneva/
Not a pleasant place to be, by all accounts.
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The religion of that country.
Israel was created to be a Jewish nation, religiously and ethnically. It’s mostly culturally Jewish rather than religious. Most Israelis are secular, although as the joke has it, the synagogues they don’t go to are Orthodox; the more liberal strains of Judaism popular in America have barely a toehold in Israel. The religious aspect that most irritates regular people is that the Rabbinate controls marriage (of Jews), so people who want to intermarry or have questionable conversions to Judaism tend to get married in Cyprus and import their marriages back into Israel.
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As you folks proclaim about generic speech platforms that censor viewpoints, if you don’t like the theocracy, go somewhere else. There are plenty of countries that have secular governments.
Re: Re: Re:2
I love you.
IT’S STEPHEN T STONING TIME
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“There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with a country being a theocracy, if that’s what its people want it to be,”
Do or did they get to vote on it?
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They have long shown that you can have a theocracy that isn’t repressive. A few Muslim countries have made their way there too.
The problem with a theocracy is the people in power. Here we have a religious war seeking to clear out a group of people that disagree with them simply for disagreeing. You don’t slaughter 10,000 civilians to kill terrorists. Even the US managed to be restrained in their “hunt”.
This is nothing more than genocide. They’re killing people for being Muslim.
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We’re already a good part of the way down that road. That’s how one Donald Trump operates, after all. If you disagree with him, it’s not because you might have a rational objection to letting someone who could go bankrupt running a casino get access to the nation’s finances, it’s because you’re a “hater”. We’ve already let the demagogues loose, and we’ll have the devil of a job binding them up again.
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Uh, uh, …
The third largest supply chain of opium comes from the Afghan Pak region. Over 98% Muslim. I’d be surprised and worried if they weren’t discussed.
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I’d be more interested in discussing who buys the opium in the end, because a farmer in Afghanistan grows whatever crop that’ll allow him to survive.
In related news, the production of opium in Afghanistan has dropped ~90% since the Taliban takeover, or did you miss the fact that the Taliban forbade the growing of poppy in last April?
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I didn’t. But that doesn’t change the historical aspects of the region. Or the fact that there’s an opium beltway across the region.
You’re right, they are the seller, not the buyer. It’s still good to monitor the supply chain
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“The third largest supply chain of opium comes from the Afghan Pak region. Over 98% Muslim. I’d be surprised and worried if they weren’t discussed.”
I would guess that a shit ton of meth comes from areas that are mostly christian .. so what’s your point?
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And yet the top five importers of meth’s main ingredient are not Christian countries.
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and your point is .. ?
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It doesn’t have a clearly established supply chain. Opium only has three uses. Two of them are legal. Meth has zero legal use but nearly every part of the creation process does.
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Was that an invitation to discuss school shootings, serial killers, police brutality statistics, and come out of it thoroughly convinced that we need to discuss ‘americans’ whenever we discuss ‘murder’?
Because there are certainly a lot of things we can say about the afghanistan and pakistan region of the world when it comes to drug trade but religion doesn’t actually enter the equation once you begin looking at causation. Geopolitics does. Geography does. And, of course, the fact that it’s a hard area to farm anything you can sell and live on doesn’t help.
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We should really discuss that issue honestly and openly. The right’s respond is more guns. The left want to ban a rifle used in <1% of crimes but creates more bloodshed when used for criminal purposes.
Neither approach solves the problem.
It does though. As the illegal opium sales are generally handled by religious based terror groups.
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It’s nice to see the cowardly Nazi try to strike when the iron is hot for once.
But you’re still wrong.