Posted on 10/22/2001 5:28:11 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
When the first case of anthrax was reported in early October, the Center for Disease Control issued a press release which began:
"The Florida State Department of Health and the CDC are investigating a case of anthrax in a 63-year-old male Florida resident. The diagnosis is confirmed by CDC's laboratory. So far this appears to be an isolated case."Anthrax is not contagious. The illness is not transmitted person to person.
"Sporadic cases of anthrax do occur in the United States, so a single case is not an indication of an outbreak. The last case of anthrax reported in the United States was earlier this year in Texas."
In three weeks time, that one case ended in the first death from an inhalation Anthrax in26 years. Two others have since be diagnosed with an inhaled form of Anthrax, and five have been diagnosed with cutaneous Anthrax infection. All are recovering, except for the case announced today in which a Washington postal worker is reported in "serious condition."
With one death, and a handful of Anthrax cases, which are being quickly cured with antibiotics, we have an almost total absorption of the American media on what they are reporting as an Anthrax threat. Yet, Anthrax is a naturally occurring, easily cured, bacteria, throughout the United States.
In the same period of time, in the United States, in the last three weeks, based on the most recently available statistics, an estimated 3000 people have quietly died of AIDS. There still is no cure for AIDS which means that, today, there are more people with AIDS in America than ever before. They are living longer, but they will still die from it.
In the same period of time, in the United States, in the last three weeks, based on the most recently available statistics, as estimated 300-400 people have died from heroin addiction.
Since death from AIDS has been tracked, from the early 1980s to the present, 438,795 Americans have died from the disease. All but about 5% of those deaths were in two categories - men having sex with men and injecting drug users.
Why is one an all-consuming threat and the other not even worthy of mention in the media? I suspect it has something to do with the mindset of the people who work in the media, most of whom are of the sixties generation when a new philosophy of behavior was adopted by many - free love and recreational drugs use. All forms of sex, heterosexual and homosexual, have been declared equally valid. Use of illegal drugs has never been seriously addressed. The first week after the destruction of the World Trade Center, drugs brought into the United States from Mexico almost stopped. Why? Because, in the aftermath of concern for the terrorists, the drug dealers ON THEIR OWN decided there might be increased surveillance, and arrests. Terrorists and drug dealers are quite frequently the same people, a fact that has been known to the FBI and CIA for decades.
Since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, which produces about 90% of the opium poppies used to make heroin for the European market, the production of heroin for that market has almost tripled and the per dose cost of heroin, following the law of supply and demand, has been reduced by about 50%.
In December of last year, the U.S. State Department reported:
. "In 1992-93, Afghanistan's poppy cultivation stood at about 20,000 hectares, mostly in Nangarhar province, which is located between Pakistan's North West Frontier province and Kabul in Afghanistan."Poppy then began to invade Helmand province where it has increased 800 percent since 1993. "Helmand borders on Qandahar province, the Taliban's power base, and harbors traditional smuggling routes to Pakistan and Iran. "Helmand also contains the HAVA irrigation system built by the United States Agency for International Development in the 1950's. This irrigated area has been modern Afghanistan's breadbasket. "Massive poppy cultivation in Helmand has developed since the Taliban took control of the area, and with the full knowledge of Taliban authorities. "The irrigation system minimizes the effects of drought and supports high-yielding opium poppy from year to year. "Poppy cultivation overall for Afghanistan has climbed from 41,720 hectares in 1998 to 64,510 hectares in 2000, mainly as a result of increases in Helmand. Taliban-controlled Helmand province alone now accounts for 39 percent of the world's illicit opium."(see: http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/global/drugs/00120801.htm)
So, what we learn from this is that the American taxpayer paid for the irrigation system that is now being used to grow poppies, not food. Because Afghanistan is now using their irrigated land to grow poppies for heroin users in Europe, instead of growing food for their families, the American taxpayers are now being urged to airlift food into the starving Afghans.
Knowing that the irrigation system was being used to grow poppies, under the Clinton Administration, as recently as 1998 and 1999, the United States funded a "non-governmental organization to improve this irrigation system for alternative crops in 1998 and 1999." In 1997 and 1999 the Taliban decreed a ban on opium, ordering a one-third decrease in poppy cultivation. However, no decrease occurred.
Last year, in what was an obvious media stunt, Osama Bin Laden's pal, Taliban leader Omar, ordered the Taliban to plow up fields planted to poppies. However, apparently the much reported show of the Taliban chopping down poppy plants were of plants already harvested.
I have been writing about the fact that terrorism, on a worldwide basis, is being largely financed with the $600 billion a year illegal drug trade for at least four years. Four years ago the drug trade was a mere $400 billion industry. I pointed out, before we starting bombing Yugoslavia, that the so-call ed "Kosovo Liberation Army" (KLA) were part of the Afghan-to-Europe drug ring. I questioned why the Clinton administration was using the U.S. Air Force to protect a group known by Interpol as the main distributors of heroin and prostitutes in Europe. Did we bomb to protect those trades? Since NATO and the United Nations took control of Kosovo the KLA drug and prostitution trade has boomed.
Also during the Clinton Administration the opium poppy business in Mexico and Columbia was almost doubled and has flowed freely across the Mexican border into the United States.
Is it merely coincidental that there has been a 50% increase in the growing of opium poppies in Columbia and the vast increase in heroin in the United States during the Clinton Administration? Well, in 1992, the last year of the Bush, Sr. administration, there were 27,369 arrests of nationals for drug dealing. By 1994 the arrests had dropped almost two-thirds, to 6,860.
The Clintons, whatever else they did or didn't do during their administration, were almost stereotypical examples of Sixties thinking. The first orders Clinton issued had to do with approving homosexuality in the military and approving unlimited abortion at home and abroad. Abortion is a necessary complement to free sex, of course. Where one is found approved, so is the other. The Clinton Administration also launched a massive condom distribution program for Africa, which, according to many African doctors, dramatically INCREASED the number of AIDS patients. "Free" sex became the norm in African cities, because young people were erroneously convinced that a condom was allow "safe" sex. It didn't.
Is it just an unfortunate correlation that today's terrorists, in the KLA and the Taliban, use the illegal drug trade and the abuse of women as major policy issues and both were supported by the Clinton administration policies - and money? As we go forward with the military destruction of the Taliban government, will we also destroy the opium poppy-to-heroin business?
If we actually, as a matter of National Policy, decide to destroy the heroin and prostitution industry that funds much of the terrorism around the world, will the free sex-recreation drug crowd, who are no longer young social rebels, finally admit their 1960s philosophy was flawed?
Don't bet on it. Most of them seem totally convinced that their notions were an expression of freedom and should be protected, if not by law, at least by not enforcing the law.
To comment: mmostert@bannerofliberty.com
The answer is that drug addictions and HIV are almost always self-inflicted health problems whereas anthrax is the result of a planned terrorist attack on American citizens.
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