Posted on 05/14/2025 8:38:32 AM PDT by appeal2
The First Opium War ended with China surrendering Hong Kong. The Second ended with China surrendering its dignity. Now, nearly two centuries later, the Third Opium War has just ended—and once again, China lost. But this time, they weren’t importing opium. They were exporting it.
The Modern Opium: Fentanyl
No sails. No gunboats. No treaties. Just chemicals—sent in barrels and disguised in powders—feeding a synthetic addiction that’s killed more Americans than all our wars combined. China didn’t need to invade. They simply flooded our streets. - Synthetic precursors shipped to Mexican cartels - Distribution routes subsidized by “strategic partnerships” - Political cover behind every denial and delay And for a while, it worked. America rotted from the inside while China profited from death...
(Excerpt) Read more at johnnydept.substack.com ...
I beg to disagree. The Washington Post doesn’t have people logging into Free Republic and posting links to articles to drive up traffic to their site.
It is a common problem with people who have blogs.
I understand what you’re saying. And if I didn’t believe I had something of value to contribute I wouldn’t bother. And I have sent $$ to FR in the past and will again. And I am never so fast to dismiss what I don’t agree with. I have been on FR since I was using dial up and ISDN lines. I remember reading posts here at least 1-2 years before 9-11 where people were claiming there men working in the World Trade Center rigging it with explosives. My initial response was that’s crazy, the government wouldn’t do that. I’m still not convinced it was the government but there was something to that post. After 9-11, I said OMG, this was written about. And I have been running a podcast and website since 2010 when I left the law business. So now before I go dismissing things, I do a deep dive and question my own beliefs first. And even then I am very slow to disparage what others says because I still remember those posts. Unfortunately, they seem to be memory holed because try as I might I can’t find them. FR had some crashes and lost data a few times over the years. But I completely understand your concerns. I just started this substack with a new POV. I’ve accumulated nearly 100k email subs but can’t import them over to substack due to their tos. So if I’ve offended you or any other Freepers here, it wasn’t my intent.
Virtually ALL of those addictions and deaths were of people who made the CHOICE to abuse drugs.
I get that. But they aren’t vanity flogging, and clickbaiting their own fantasy blogs. The guy should just vanity post on FR, but then he wouldn’t be generating paid clicks would he?
Personal responsibility and accountability always. But these are kids and they believe it can’t happen to me. They’re not complete victims they are at fault. But kids do stupid things and hopefully live to talk about. And they have been targeted. Very sad situation and I am not getting paid by anyone.
Pretty much everything posted online is a “blog” in one way or another. It’s ALL someone’s opinion, these days.
“Journalists” used to be more measured and fact based, some of them. Now every so-called news article is little more than personal opinion.
So, I don’t get the hysteria over someone linking to another location. It’s all information of some sort. Go there or not, it’s your choice.
I think you wholly missed the point I made.
It isn’t that a piece written by a purported “journalist” like Ellen Nakashima of the Washington post is or isn’t an opinion piece like “everything else online”. (Pretty much anything Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post writes is suspect to many of us.)
The point is that when Ellen Nakashima writes a piece that is published online or on paper, she isn’t logging onto Free Republic and posting a snippet of text to get people to go to her article on the Washington Post website to drive up views, views whose volumes revenue income streams are based on.
People HAVE, and DO exactly THAT using Free Republic as a medium to drive up any advertising income they can generate from visits to their page.
Nobody complains if it happens once or twice.
Nobody gets upset if they post the entire contents of their blog.
And nobody is irritated if Kash Patel were to maintain a blog, and someone with a Free Republic account created a thread to allow us to read it and navigate to the blog, even without the full content posted.
But people like myself, who have been paying a monthly donation for decades, do tend to get irritable about it. And for good reason.
See. This is what happens.
And avoiding this isn’t complicated or in the LEAST bit onerous:
All the person has to do is post the entire content of their blog and there is no complaint, and no suspicion.
People can then comment on the contents of a blog, or if they find it interesting enough, can navigate to the blog to look for other material and be a fan.
Otherwise, like this people (and not just me) will be irritated by it, we won’t get to discuss the issue because all we are going to see are valid issues voiced about blog pimping.
Do you really not understand this dynamic? I see from your profile you have been here a long time, so I assume you have been contributing to the operation and upkeep of this website in some way. If you have, and you feel differently, you are entitled to your own opinion, but that does not in any way invalidate the logic that someone is piggy-backing off of the wealth of others to increase their own wealth.
As a conservative, which I presume you are, if you understand that aspect of this website, that action we call “blog pimping” would be inconsistent with conservative principles.
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