It took me another 30 years to learn about the intricacies of global poppy crop rotation. What I had seen in Cambodia was just the beginning. Within ten years, the soil in Cambodia had been depleted of nutrients, leaving it barren and useless for poppy farming, which had once been the mainstay of the region’s economy. What happened?
After six months spent blowing up circus tents, the chemical engineers working for the oil conglomerates finally figured out the formula, and with that they proceeded to do the same thing they had always done with crude...exhaust the supply and move on. I would never have learned this if it hadn’t been for an excerpt from an article written by an old friend, Arlen Rutledge.
. I found the clip in some old microfiche. Sheer luck, I guess. The article itself had never been printed, but it was archived by the paper. It would have been easy to find had it not mysteriously disappeared. That fact alone added credibility to Rutledge’s statement in the clip. He was on to something and I would have given just about anything to get my hands on his notes. The clip read as follows:
It only became clear later, when I spoke to virtually everyone in the camp, that Al Qaeda sent the communication to George Bush on August 8th 2002, pleading for a truce and spelling out the true nature of their relationship with the Taliban, who they openly despised. The letter sent to Bush was a clear statement of surrender and included a guarantee on their part that they would provide all possible military assistance to America in its war with Taliban funded insurgents. Al Qaeda fully expected a reply. They were surrendering. The reply never came. Thinking that the communication had somehow been lost in transit, they sent it again three weeks later, but again, there was no reply. They placed the letter on an open Internet site, but it was deleted immediately. After the slaughter of 130 civilian Iraqis by an American Special Operations Division, Al Qaeda abandoned its attempts to surrender and re-instituted their fight to reclaim three thousand acres of farmland that had been secured by U.S. troops. None of this was rep› œ Ÿ ž • 9 6 Ÿ 0 0 6 9 9 „ ƒ \ < D
Think what you want to about this. Frankly, I try not to think about it at all. That is not easy - particularly when you consider the FACT that coporations like ExxonMobile rarely if ever ignore opportunities to quadruple their revenues...off the books. Let's just pretend that Rutledge was nutty as a fruitcake and this little tidbit of an article means nothing comapared to the bigger picture...whatever it happens to be.
Supply and demand. Foerever shall the twain meet.