By: Jack Burns / The Free Thought Project

For many years now, the United States has been fighting, and losing, the violent war to end opiate, opioid, and heroin overdoses. As The Free Thought Project has consistently reported, opiate-related overdoses are now killing thousands of Americans per year, with no real end in sight. Our political foes know this and, according to Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, the United States is using its own soldiers to protect the cultivation, production, and exportation of heroin from Afghanistan to other parts of the world.

As late as 2011, Moscow has been voicing its concerns over the drug trade in Afghanistan. Wikileaks published, as part of its Global Intelligence Files database, emails from Stratfor, describing Moscow’s criticism of U.S. foreign policy prohibiting its soldiers from destroying Afghani poppy fields.

In a Stratfor internal email, two Stratfor employees noted the Russian foreign minister’s opposition to U.S. permissiveness in the opium trade. “Lavrov slams USA’s unwillingness to destroy Afghan poppy fields..” That email was dated from 2011.

Also in that same year, Lavrov was an attendee at a multi-national conference on Afghanistan, called the Kabul Conference. There he reportedly made the following statements against Afghani terrorism and drug production. “We are convinced…that the ISAF (international security assistance force), regardless of their withdrawal date, should boost the efficiency of their anti-terror and anti-drug efforts and brief the UN Security Council on the implementation of their mandate. A special focus should be placed on combating drugs production, something that stipulates the elimination of poppy fields and heroine laboratories. These topics should be on the radar of our working group that is already being formed,” Lavrov pointed out.

Later, in an interview in 2012, Lavrov called for NATO to begin destroying poppy fields in Afghanistan. From a Russian government transcription he stated, “For the time being, the terrorist threat has not been reduced, whereas the drug threat has been increasing and intensifying. In response to our numerous appeals, our NATO partners refuse to eliminate the crops of opium poppy, although coca plantations in Colombia are eliminated as a key direction of the anti-drug war. We are also concerned about the still insufficient pace of creating an Afghan.”

In 2011 and 2012, Lavrov’s comments were somewhat veiled and not directed specifically at U.S. foreign policy, reading more like a suggestion than an accusation. However, jumping ahead to 2017, and all thinly veiled comments, innuendos, and cultural nuances have now been cast aside, in favor of a more direct approach.

As late as last week, Lavrov’s comments are much more forthcoming and are aimed directly at U.S. officials. Lavrov recently spoke to senior military officers at Moscow’s Military Academy. After accusing the U.S. of using “managed chaos” tactics to increase U.S. influence in “Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan,” Lavrov leveled, one could say, heavy accusations against the U.S. and its foreign policy implementation.

“In the case of Afghanistan…the terrorist threat has not been rooted out, while the drug threat has increased many times over. The drug industry prospered,” he said referencing America’s failure to combat the heroin trade there. Accusing the U.S. of looking away while the country which produces 90 percent of the world’s heroin supply is equated to giving a free pass to the Afghanis to cultivate, manufacture and distribute heroin. “There is factual evidence that some of the NATO contingents in Afghanistan turned a blind eye to the illegal drug trafficking, even if they were not directly involved in these criminal schemes,” Lavrov stated implying the U.S. (being a part of NATO) might actually be involved in the drug trade.

If the U.S. is involved in the flow of opium into the country it may not come as a shock to some. As The Free Thought Project recently reported, infamous drug kingpin Pablo Escobar reportedly worked for the CIA running drugs into the country, according to his son’s new book. TFTP’s Claire Bernish wrote, “If the CIA trafficking cocaine into the United States sounds like some tin foil conspiracy theory, think again. Their alleged role in the drug trade was exposed in 1996 in an explosive investigative series “Dark Alliance” by Gary Webb for the San Jose Mercury News. The investigation, headed up by Webb revealed ties between the CIA, Nicaraguan contras and the crack cocaine trade ravaging African-American communities.”

Lavrov, historically speaking, has been very vocal of the U.S. and its complicit involvement in the heroin trade, which brings up an interesting point. If heroin and its derivatives are responsible for killing thousands of Americans each year, and the U.S. could have destroyed the source of the world’s heroin and chose not to, who’s to blame for the current epidemic separating parents from their children, creating widows, and addicting millions of Americans?

Read More: http://www.trueactivist.com/media-silence-as-russia-calls-out-usnato-role-in-afghan-drug-trafficking/

Russian authorities have pledged to investigate reported mass disappearances and deaths of gay locals in the region of Chechnya, after the regional government dismissed allegations made in Novaya Gazeta on Saturday, saying “you cannot detain… what simply does not exist.”

According to the Russian investigative newspaper, authorities in the conservative and predominantly Muslim Chechen Republic have detained over 100 men in various incidents in the past week. The paper said it had confirmed the detentions with sources in Russia’s law enforcement services, whom it cited on the condition of anonymity.

The report does not give the names of those detained, but said there were at least two Chechen TV personalities, as well as religious workers among those in captivity. It also reported that three people were killed during the process of being detained.

Chechen authorities have denied the reports. Alvi Karimov, spokesman for Chechnya’s strongman leader Ramzan Kadyrov said on Saturday: “If such people existed in Chechnya, law enforcement would not have to worry about them, as their own relatives would have sent them to a place of no return.”

However, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russian police would look into the claims. “We do not know how far this information corresponds with reality,” Peskov said of the reported disappearances in a comment to Russian independent news channel Dozhd on Monday. “Of course there are publications and the internal affairs organs will look into this case,” he added, though addressed no other aspects of the report.

Although Moscow oversees the Chechen government and Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov professes loyalty to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the region’s leader has begun to act with increasing autonomy.The reports of disappearances and comments from local authorities prompted an outcry among Russian liberals with opposition party Yabloko calling for an official investigation.

(Newsweek)

Europe is now the global hub of websites hosting child pornography, after a 19 percent jump in content since last year, a new report has found.

The report, conducted by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), found that Europe hosted the greatest number of websites with graphic images and videos of children. The Netherlands has become the country with the most online sexual imagery of children in Europe. (For the purpose of the report, Europe includes Russia and Turkey.)

The IWF is a non-profit, responsible for finding and removing graphic sexual content from the internet.

Until recently, most child sexual abuse images were found in the United States (57 percent), but this has now shifted to Europe, which hosts 60 percent of all material says the report.

Child abuse content has fallen in the United States partly because of work undertaken by the U.S. industry to tackle the problem. Susie Hargreaves, director of the IWF, told the BBC criminals are forced to search harder for host websites where they can upload child pornography. Just 37 percent of abusive images now come from the United States.

"The situation is reversed from previous years. Europe is now the biggest host of child sexual abuse imagery, rather than North America," Hargreaves told the BBC. There have been no changes in Europe’s policy that would explain the shift, according to the IWF report.

In 2016, the Internet Watch Foundation reported that they had removed 5,335 webpages of children— fewer than previous years. The report adds that this doesn’t account for the increase in individual images however.The report also noted a 258 percent increase in new website domains being bought specifically to show the abuse of children.

More than half of all images of children reviewed by the IWF report were under 10 years old. Nearly one third of images depicted child rape or sexual torture.

(Newsweek)

Britain, Spain and the EU have found themselves in an escalating war of words over the U.K. territory of Gibraltar, a strategic peninsula attached to Spain’s south coast.

The rocky headland, just 12 miles off the north coast of Africa, threatens to become a contentious issue as Britain and the EU’s 27 remaining members prepare to split. The United Kingdom voted to leave the union in June 2016 with the British Prime Minister Theresa May formally triggering exit talks Wednesday.

The EU’s negotiating draft negotiating guidelines for member states, published after May triggered Article 50 to begin Brexit, have provoked consternation among British politicians. The EU advised that any questions over the future of Gibraltar would have to be run by Spain, according to the BBC.

"After the United Kingdom leaves the Union, no agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom may apply to the territory of Gibraltar without the agreement between the Kingdom of Spain and the United Kingdom," the guideline said.

May has said the UK remains “committed” to Gibraltar and its sovereignty is not a bargaining chip as Britain leaves the EU. Arriving at a meeting of EU foreign ministers Monday, British foreign secretary Boris Johnson has said the status of the territory is a matter for Britain and Gibraltar alone.

"The sovereignty of Gibraltar is unchanged and is not going to change, and cannot conceivably change without the express support and consent of the people of Gibraltar and the United Kingdom, and that is not is going to change," he said.

The Spanish city of La Linea de la Concepcion (rear) and the tarmac of the Gibraltar International Airport (bottom L) with tourists standing on the top of the Rock next to the European Union flag, September 14, 2016. British politicians threatened to escalate tensions with Spain over Gibraltar's future after Brexit.REUTERS/JON NAZCA

"Another woman prime minister sent a task force halfway across the world to protect another small group of British people against another Spanish-speaking country,” Howard told Sky News. "And I'm absolutely clear that our current woman prime minister will show the same resolve in relation to Gibraltar as her predecessor did," he added. Former Conservative peer Michael Howard made more bellicose statements over the strip of land on Sunday, saying the U.K. could defend Gibraltar as it did with the Falklands Islands when the British archipelago in the South Atlantic was invaded by Argentina.

Spain’s foreign minister, Alfonso Dastis, urged Britain to remain level headed about Gibraltar’s future. “Someone in the UK is losing their cool and there’s no need for it,” Dastis said in a press conference in Madrid. “Making comparisons with past situations like the Falklands is a little out of context. The Spanish government is a little surprised by the tone of comments coming out of Britain, a country known for its composure,” he added, quoted in The Guardian.

(Newsweek)

By Annabelle Bamforth

The U.S. Central Command recently announced that troop numbers in Iraq and Syria will no longer be reported to the public. In its announcement, CENTCOM spokesman Army Col. John Thomas declared that “capabilities, not numbers,” should be the area of focus, and the public will be given general estimates of troop sizes in the future.

Jason Ditz of antiwar.com points out that the Obama administration was already less than forthcoming about the number of soldiers sent to these areas by utilizing a variety of tactics, including “deliberately omitting large numbers of troops from the official count by labeling them ‘temporary.’”

The Pentagon’s announcement comes during a time in which the U.S. military’s recent use of airstrikes is under fresh scrutiny and stands accused of causing deaths of hundreds of civilians in recent weeks, including strikes in Mosul last week that killed an unconfirmed, but reportedly numerous, number of noncombatants.

According to Reuters regarding the strike in Mosul, “Eyewitnesses from Mosul and Iraqi officials have said last week’s strike on Islamic State targets may have collapsed homes where rescue officials say as many as 200 people were buried in the rubble.” Reuters described this event as “one of the deadliest single incidents for civilians in recent memory in any major conflict involving the U.S. military.”

In the Pentagon’s acknowledgment of the Mosul strike and announcement of its investigation into the incident, Army Col. Joseph Scrocca admitted that “we believe a coalition strike contributed in at least some way to the civilian casualties.”

The new U.S. presidential administration has unsurprisingly provided little change in its approach to foreign policy and the war on terror; in fact, President Trump is currently considering sending at least 1,000 more troops to Syria. As Ditz noted, the government has long lacked transparency regarding troop numbers in Iraq and Syria, and it appears that CENTCOM may be seeking to avoid further criticism over specific deployment numbers by simply eliminating these reports. However, this increase in secrecy that further places civilians in the dark will undoubtedly exacerbate tensions across the globe in regards to American accountability.

Another troubling revelation from Thomas is the military’s dismissal of making changes to airstrike policy. Thomas stated that General Joseph Votel, the head of CENTCOM, “is not looking into changing the way we operate other than to say our processes are good and we want to make sure we live by those processes.”

New Hampshire-based writer Annabelle Bamforth is focused on breaking the left/right paradigm through new media and local politics. Annabelle is the editor-in-chief of Emmy-winning journalist Ben Swann’s Truth In Media Project and a producer for Mr. Swann’s Truth In Media episodes. This articlefirst appeared at TheFreeThoughtProject.com


(activistpost.com)