Quote from: FarmerBob on September 28, 2012, 05:22 amPine, you could just as easily try to say the British are controlling it, Yep. America-lite.Quote from: FarmerBob on September 28, 2012, 05:22 amthey have camp bastion in helmand province which is the largest opium producing region in afghanistan, and they've recently sent prince harry there. That proves that the British royal family is trying to take control of morphine supplies.Huh? I do believe that is what is known as a strawman my friend! Shame! Mind you, go back a century or three and you're on the money, look at the English East India company and their charter. Quote from: FarmerBob on September 28, 2012, 05:22 amit's a retarded argument. The British and American forces are having a hard enough time keeping people from shooting at them (or each other), they certainly aren't controlling the regional drug trade or farming practices in any way.So what are the Northern Alliance? My imagination at work? Or did they not take control of the majority of opium production with the fall of the Taliban? I mean, was that not the deal?Control is the ability to influence supply in the future. It doesn't mean they are currently, right now, measuring and organizing every kilo of morphine/h/opium supplied. They are sitting on it, probably not doing anything more than mandating supply be cut off to certain countries. e.g. Iran, Russia.Quote from: FarmerBob on September 28, 2012, 05:22 amBefore the invasion the opium production was way down, the ruling Taliban clerics declared it Un-Islamic and were trying to wipe drugs off the face of Afghanistan. I've read that the punishment for non-compliance was severe.Then the Americans & Brits came, and blew the holy heck outta the Taliban, the new government lacks the fanatical religious devotion of the Taliban and can't effectively enforce it's laws. And the British and Americans don't care what the locals do so long as the locals aren't causing trouble for them. So what'ya think happens?I think we are thinking about this in very different ways.Quote from: FarmerBob on September 28, 2012, 05:22 amNo wealthy western nations want or need morphine, we have big-Pharma and synthetic and semi-synthetic opioids and a host of other fancy-ass painkillers and drugs (of which we have plenty), maybe poor people rely on morphine more than us, I dunno and I don't care because nobody cares about poor people. Well that's the thing, I am not sure this is true. If there are cheaper synthetic painkillers that are as effective as morphine & co (there is probably a scale of some sort we could look up), then my argument is invalided. I said that already. I'm not sure why you find my comments inanely conspiratorial when I've laid down reasonable grounds for hypothesis falsification. Find me a cheaper, equally effective drug to morphine in widespread use and my argument is invalidated. Except that every painkiller I know that works, is a derivative of the poppy. I don't think there is a synthetic alternative that is anywhere close to being as good. But I'm not an expert on painkillers, so supply examples if you know them.Quote from: FarmerBob on September 28, 2012, 05:22 amSo what's the lessons to be learned here: 1-that fanatical religious institutions with absolute power CAN win the war on drugs. (so vote taliban in the november elections everyone)2-The military doesn't give a squat about drugs so long as our soldiers aren't on them.3-nobody cares about poor brownish people. (sad but true)4-conspiracy theories are generally BS because conspiracies require people to keep secrets, and most people can't keep their mouths shutBobI'd like to pick you up on No.4 there, because I don't really disagree with the others, and also because it slightly irks me.There have been plenty of conspiracies in real life that did enormous harm to humanity, but almost none of them I can think of were 'secret' per se.e.g. The concentration camps. Secret? To a majority of the civil population perhaps. But hundreds of thousands of people outside of them doubtless understood what was going on. There is such a thing as an 'open secret', which is just information that belongs to a niche group. The American government for example, knew about the concentration camps long before the European Invasion was on the cards. They may not have known how bad it was getting, but lots of people knew about them. In just the same way we all know about Guantanamo Bay for example. It is a concentration camp and it is not an especially secret one. It is also not news to folk that America has a large quantity of secret prisons throughout Europe, the Middle East and America. If e.g. the Chinese suddenly took over the world and opened those secret prisons, and found the kind of dreadful conditions and brutality seen in post war Nazi Germany, then what do pine and bob have to say for themselves? Are we members of the conspiracy because we may know that they exist and didn't do anything about them, that we didn't inquire further to find out what the situation is in these state facilities? Remember how German corporations cooperated to turn the camps into well oiled machines, not merely German ones, but also American ones like IBM. This may have given a false sense of normality to observers, that these were just typical war camps. A difficult life perhaps, but not cruel and murderous.Similar conspiracies went on in Europe later, with the Stazi spying on just about every single person in East Germany, with the records to prove it. Again, an open conspiracy. Nobody knows here. Some know there, but they spread the message about it in vain because most people don't want to hear it.In short, your idea that conspiracies require tightly held secrets in order to function is evidently completely wrong. Those conspiracies are rare, and are in fact a good sign in a government because they prove the participants know they need to hold their cards close to their chest in order for their plan to succeed. Most real world conspiracies match my description of them.