6/1/17

Today's intersection: Afghanistan and Indian Country


Eighty percent of the world's heroin comes from Afghanistan's poppy fields.

It's a place where dropping the Earth's largest non-nuclear explosive has not only resulted in blowback, an attack in Kabul that killed a hundred people and injured many more, it's driving a formidable native insurgency. The Republican-led wars there and in Iraq have cost American taxpayers some $6 TRILLION.
On March 28, 2017, the Afghan Ministry of Defence fired 1,394 officials for corruption. In 2016, 35 per cent of the Afghan security forces were killed: 6,800 soldiers and police. It is unlikely that even an increase of 5,000 U.S. troops will have an impact on the Taliban’s rush towards Kabul. The style of U.S. warfare is likely to increase civilian casualties, and the deterioration of the Afghan National Army will not raise the population’s confidence. [AlterNet]
South Dakota's Ellsworth Air Force Base has slaughtered countless civilians during the actions to protect the heroin trade keeping the Russian mob and the American Central Intelligence Agency in cash.

An editorial at Rapid City-based Native Sun News lambasted the Trump Organization.
Donald Trump is asking Congress to make drastic budget cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and to other programs that benefit the poor and elderly. Think about that: Six trillion dollars for two wars that are still ongoing and wars that have accomplished simply nothing to benefit the average American. As the infrastructures in this country continue to crumble we are spending millions to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. What about our crumbling bridges and decaying roads? The impoverished Indian reservations could have used a tiny percentage of the money wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan to rebuild our bridges and roads, to improve our failing health care system, our schools, our colleges and our tribal administration buildings. [How much have the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost us?]
Trump doesn't merely push Democrats' buttons. He lays on the keys.

A recent Intercept article on the American Indian and Canadian First Nations' insurgency chronicled the cash relationship between Energy Transfer Partners, builders of the Dakota Excess Pipeline, and mercenary group TigerSwan hired to quash the demonstration forecast by interested party.

Desperation in Indian Country has long been exacerbated by the cost of American imperialism and addiction has begun to look like a gift from God.




1 comment:

larry kurtz said...

Aircraft that dropped MOAB munition on Afghanistan flew out of Cannon AFB, New Mexico.