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The agency's low points, from working with child sex abusers to enabling drug traffickingTo build the case for taking down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the White House has highlighted some of the most egregious-sounding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs the U.S. has funded abroad, such as an LGBT empowerment program in Serbia. It has also pointed to USAID's controversial medical research in Wuhan. It hasn't always gotten its facts right, as when it claimed that a $100 million grant to a global medical charity was "condoms for Gaza." Some conservative commentators have even claimed that USAID...

Bottom Line: U.S. efforts to eliminate Afghan opium production through force or persuasion have failed, and if anything have made the situation worse. In July 2000, Taliban Mullah Mohammad Omar banned Afghan farmers from growing opium. His ban worked. But "as soon as the U.S. military invaded and toppled the Taliban in 2001, Afghan farmers resumed sowing their poppy seeds." Without the threat of the Taliban, it seemed farmers were unwilling to give up this lucrative crop. This would make it nearly impossible for the United States and its allies to end the opium trade in Afghanistan. But that didn't...

UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was accused of insider trading and fraud by tghe Department of Justice before he was assassinated on Wednesday in Manhattan. Thompson, 50, was shot dead in what NYPD officials believe was a targeted attack as he exited the Hilton hotel before an investor conference. His killer remains on the loose. Last year the DoJ launched a probe into whether the nation's biggest insurer, led by Thompson, was unfairly restricting competitors and running a monopoly. The DoJ then filed a lawsuit in October naming Thompson and other executives, accusing the CEO of failing to tell investors about...

Seth Harp is the author of a forthcoming book, The Fort Bragg Cartel . The Hamid Karzai government promoted opium poppy farming after the Taliban had banned it. His government was full of drug traffickers . Interesting interview .

How FUBAR is Afghanistan? More FUBAR than ever. Details in video. Transcript at link below video.

[Make sure to read Daniel Greenfield’s contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]After Biden’s withdrawal, the fighting ended in Afghanistan and moved into Europe.Even before the Taliban takeover, a massive traffic in migrants and drugs flowed over the ‘Balkan Route’ that took Afghans into Iran, Turkey and then Eastern Europe. One of the biggest holes in Europe’s armor was the former Yugoslavia, illegally invaded and partitioned by the Clinton administration, with a large Muslim population in Bosnia and heavy criminal organizations across the former republic that tie together the Russian mob, local gangs,...

The Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) have made a criminal Iran’s leading drug lord, Iran International can reveal. Information obtained by Iran International shows how Naji Sharifi-Zindashti and his cartel now dominate the narcotics trade thanks to the support of the government militia. His extraordinary rise comes despite his having killed a prison guard in Iran and fleeing abroad, only to return with impunity. Investigative reporter Mojtaba Pourmohsen has uncovered how a recent rise in the number of executions of convicts sentenced to death on drug-related charges is the result of infighting between rival drug cartels with connections within the...

In April 2022, Taliban supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada decreed that cultivation of the poppy - from which opium, the key ingredient for the drug heroin can be extracted - was strictly prohibited. Anyone violating the ban would have their field destroyed and be penalised according to Sharia law. A Taliban spokesman told the BBC they imposed the ban because of the harmful effects of opium - which is taken from the poppy seed capsules - and because it goes against their religious beliefs. Afghanistan used to produce more than 80% of the world's opium. Heroin made from Afghan opium makes...

A joint study by the Israel Antiquities Authority, Tel Aviv University and the Weizmann Institute of Science has discovered the world's earliest evidence of opium use from pottery that was unearthed during an excavation in Tel Yehud, Israel. The pottery was collected and photographed at the Israel Antiquities Authority lab in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

WASHIR, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have begun a campaign to eradicate poppy cultivation, aiming to wipe out the country’s massive production of opium and heroin, even as farmers fear their livelihoods will be ruined at a time of growing poverty. ... During their first time in power in the late 1990s, the Taliban also banned poppy cultivation and with a fierce campaign of destroying croplands nearly eradicated production within two years, according to the United Nations. However, after the U.S.-led invasion that ousted the Taliban in 2001, many farmers returned to growing poppies. Over the next nearly 20...

A video posted on Chinese microblogging website Weibo by the Russian embassy of a party held today to celebrate the 160th anniversary of Vladivostok sparked online outrage with Chinese diplomats, journalists and users referring to the city by its old name ‘Haishenwai’. Vladivostok which once used to be part of China’s Qing dynasty and was known as Haishenwai was annexed by the Russian empire in 1860 after China’s defeat by the British and the French in the Second Opium war. Reacting to Russian embassy’s tweet, Shen Shiwei, a journalist working with the state-owned broadcaster CGTN, tweeted: “This “tweet” of #Russian...

A man from an opium-smoking village in Vietnam was imprisoned for more than two years not for drugs but because he converted to Christianity. Mission News Network reported that Thuan, not his real name, was arrested by the police a few months after he converted to Christianity. Thuan grew up in a village renowned for smoking opium and excessive drinking but was invited to the nearby village two years ago to have dinner with a local missionary named Pastor Dang, also not his real name. The leader of the said ministry, whose name was not disclosed, told Mission News Network...

A new Norwegian study has shown that alcohol and drug abuse is much more common among patients suffering from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression than in the population at large. The study, conducted by the Norwegian Institute for Public Health, looked into the extent of drug and alcohol dependence among Norwegians diagnosed with serious mental health disorders. Every fourth patient with schizophrenia and every fifth with bipolar disorder also suffered problems with substance abuse.  One in ten people who were severely depressed also had problems with alcohol or drug-related health problems.  It is estimated that one in forty Norwegians indulge...

Tracy James knew the drug she'd just swallowed was working when her old injuries from high school started twitching with new life. Pressure throbbed from a forgotten busted knee. Her ankle tingled. The fingers she'd sprained roller-skating decades back began to ache. Whatever the 37-year-old had just taken, it shot feeling back into the long-gone ailments. "When I did vomit, it was one of the most amazing moments of my life." For the past 45 minutes, the hut had been dark and silent, the air dripping with jungle moisture. James and nearly 20 others were sitting cross-legged on ornate rugs....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - "Magic mushrooms," used by Native Americans and hippies to alter consciousness, appear to have similar mystical effects on many people, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday. At least one team of doctors is already testing whether using them can help terminal cancer patients come to terms with their fates. More than 60 percent of volunteers given capsules of psilocybin derived from mushrooms said they had a "full mystical experience." "Many of the volunteers in our study reported, in one way or another, a direct, personal experience of the 'beyond,'" said Roland Griffiths, a professor of neuroscience and psychiatry...

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Tuesday that a small congregation in New Mexico may use hallucinogenic tea as part of a four-hour ritual intended to connect with God. Justices, in their first religious freedom decision under Chief Justice John Roberts, moved decisively to keep the government out of a church's religious practice. Federal drug agents should have been barred from confiscating the hoasca tea of the Brazil-based church, Roberts wrote in the decision. The tea, which contains an illegal drug known as DMT, is considered sacred to members of O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal, which has...

Alexander Shulgin, Sasha to his friends, lives with his wife, Ann, 30 minutes inland from the San Francisco Bay on a hillside dotted with valley oak, Monterey pine and hallucinogenic cactus. At 79, he stoops a little, but he is still well over six feet tall, with a mane of white hair, a matching beard and a wardrobe that runs toward sandals, slacks and short-sleeved shirts with vaguely ethnic patterns. He lives modestly, drawing income from a small stock portfolio supplemented by his Social Security and the rent that two phone companies pay him to put cell towers on his...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) -- Illegal drug use and cigarette smoking among sixth- through 12th-graders increased slightly during the last school year compared with the year before, says a new survey. Alcohol use remained at the same level during both years.</p> <p>Nearly one-fourth, or 24 percent, of these teenagers reported using illegal drugs -- marijuana, cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens and others -- at least once in the 2002-2003 school year, compared with 22 percent the year before, according to the private study by Pride Surveys.</p>

...researchers have found equipment used to prepare hallucinogenic drugs for sniffing, and dated them back to prehistoric South American tribes. Quetta Kaye, of University College London, and Scott Fitzpatrick, an archeologist from North Carolina State University, made the breakthrough on the Caribbean island of Carriacou. They found ceramic bowls, as well as tubes for inhaling drug fumes or powders, which appear to have originated in South America between 100BC and 400BC and were then carried 400 miles to the islands. While the use of such paraphernalia for inhaling drugs is well-known, the age of the bowls has thrown new light...

Russian archaeologist says Merv was origin of Zoroastrianism TEHRAN, June 10 (MNA) – Russian archaeologist Victor Sarianidi believes that Merv, a province in southern Turkmenistan, was the cradle of Zoroastrianism, the Persian service of Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported here Saturday. According to Sarianidi, his archeological team has recently discovered some Zoroastrians’ temples in the region. Each has two fire temples -- one was presumably used for religious ceremonies and one for cooking, he added. The temples date back to some 3,000 years BC, estimated the archaeologist. Sarianidi had already named the legendary land of Margush as the origin...