The principal sources of these precursor chemicals are believed to be Mexico, China, Europe, Central Asia and India. Traffickers hide the sources of their chemicals by repackaging or false labelling. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, markets and processing facilities are clustered in border areas of Iran, Pakistan and Tajikistan.

Acetic anhydride (AA) is the most commonly used chemical agent in heroin processing. According to the DEA, Mexico is the major source of AA and authorities in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan routinely seize ton-quantity shipments of acetic anhydride.

A July 2008 report, carried by the Boston Globe, quotes Christina Oguz, country representative for the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, saying that just 1% of these precursor chemicals are ever seized – even though these chemicals are all imported by the tanker-load, and have no ‘dual-use’ justification

It follows that there are many players with a much larger financial stake in the Afghan drug traffic than local Afghan drug lords, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban. Sibel Edmonds has charged that Pakistani and Turkish intelligence, working together, utilise the resources of the international networks trafficking Afghan heroin.

Others have written about the ties between U.S. intelligence and the Turkish narco-intelligence connection. A former top-level DEA agent in the Middle East, has corroborated the CIA interest in that region’s drug connection, apparently stating that ”In my 30-year history in the Drug Enforcement Administration and related agencies, the major targets of my investigations almost invariably turned out to be working for the CIA”.

The UNODC Executive Director, Antonio Maria Costa, has reported that “money made in illicit drug trade has been used to keep banks afloat in the global financial crisis.”

This video, and many others like it can be used as a starting point to explore these allegations.

Corexit is a solvent primarily used as a dispersant for breaking up oil slicks. It is produced by Nalco Holding Company which is associated with various major oil companies. Corexit 9500, four times more toxic than crude oil, is one of the most poisonous dispersants ever developed, and is up to 20 times more toxic than other dispersants, and only half as effective.

Corexit EC9500A and EC9527A are neither the least toxic, nor the most effective, among the Environmental Protection Agency approved dispersants. They are also banned from use on oil spills in the United Kingdom. Twelve other products received better toxicity and effectiveness ratings, but BP says it chose to use Corexit because it was available the week of the rig explosion. Critics contend that the major oil companies stockpile Corexit because of their close business relationship with its manufacturer Nalco.

When Corexit 9500, with its 2.61 ppm toxicity level, is combined with the warm waters of the Gulf much of it will transition into a gaseous state that will be absorbed into clouds, to be released as toxic rain upon all of the Eastern United States.

We suggest you use this as a starting point for your own research.

Buy and Bail consists of  acquiring a new house before the buyer’s credit rating is ruined by walking away an existing mortgage loan because it is “underwater” – i.e. worth less than the mortgage. It’s an attempt to escape payments on a home whose value may never recover while securing a new property, often at a lower price with a more affordable loan (and almost always with a different lender).

After falls in house values since 2006, something like 20% of home loans in the U.S. are “underwater”, meaning the house is worth less than the loan. As a result, more people are looking at ways to walk away from loans and approx. 12% of mortgage defaults are ‘strategic’ (deliberate), according to the report.

There is still a long way down yet, it would seem.

Read the full article here: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-10/-buy-and-bail-homeowners-get-past-mortgage-hurdles-from-fannie-freddie.html

Various institutions have identified fluoride as a possible developmental toxin. The Lancet, in 2006, listed fluoride as an “emerging neurotoxic substance”. In 2000, Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility discussed fluoride as a “known or suspected developmental neurotoxicant”.

In fact, neurological effects were known as early as the 1930′s and 40′s, by scientists working for the Manhattan Project and in Nazi Germany.

The University of Western Ontario says, “Though apparently vague and non-specific, most of the symptoms of Fluoride toxicity point towards some kind of profound metabolic dysfunction, and are strikingly similar to the symptoms of Hypothyroidism.”

Learning Disorders/Difficulty Concentrating/Incoherence/Memory Loss/Confusion, Body Temperature Disturbances/Cold Shivers, Chest Pains, Heart Palpitations, Depression, dizziness/Vertigo, Dyspepsia, Excessive Sleepiness/Fatigue, Headaches/Migraines, Joint Pains, Nausea, Restlessness, Shortness of Breath, Difficulties Swallowing, Thirst, Tinnitus, Visual Disturbances.

Maybe use it as a basis for further investigation of your own.

Drug production in Afghanistan has increased dramatically since the US-led invasion and a recent report by the United Nations states that Afghan opium is having a devastating impact on the world, killing thousands in consumer countries.

Meanwhile, The New York Times has reported that Ahmad Wali Karzai, brother of the Afghan president, is involved in the opium trade, meets with Taliban leaders, and is also a CIA operative.

The opium trade is the major source of Taliban financing.

Recorded Future uses real-time analysis of tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to identify relationships between people, organisations and events — both present and still-to-come.

The company says its temporal analytics engine looks at  ‘invisible links’ between documents that talk about the same (or related) entities and events. The idea is to derive, for each event, who was involved and where/when it happened or might happen.  Recorded Future plots that chatter, showing online “momentum” for any given event.

“The cool thing is, you can actually predict the curve, in many cases,” says company CEO Christopher Ahlberg, a former Swedish Army Ranger with a PhD in computer science.

This seems to be the first time that the intelligence community and Google have funded the same startup, at the same time. No one is accusing Google of directly collaborating with the CIA, but this is bound to be fodder for critics of Google, who already see the search giant as overly cozy with the U.S. government.

Full story: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/exclusive-google-cia/

Regardless of your personal opinion of the conflict in Afghanistan or of the leaking of these papers, the material released should be studied. One of the best summarisations of the material can be found at the Guardian’s website:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/afghanistan-the-war-logs

Invaluable experience and knowledge that otherwise could have been lost forever. It will explain much about what is going on today, but the events recalled are more than sixty years past and the interview itself was conducted in 1982.

G. Edward Griffin interviews Norman Dodd, congressional Director of Research for the Reece Committee, 1953-1954. The Reece Committee’s purpose was to investigate the seemingly unconstitutional activities of tax-exempt foundations such as Ford, Rockefeller or Carnegie Endowment.

See more here: http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/asbestos/