Hekate
Hekate's JournalHere is what I do know: the Taliban suppressed poppy growth harshly, but farmers saved seed...
...in sacks beneath their floors. Afghan farmers are poor, they contend with poor soil and dry conditions, and the poppy plant grows well in those conditions and turns a profit for them. Not a big profit, but definitely enough to help the family.
Post-American invasion, the Bush regime turned out to have an amazingly short attention span. They made a big deal about girls and schools and voting, and then (seemingly) could not sustain interest. As far as I could tell from the article, they never paid much attention to the situation of the farmers at all. But the amount of cash each farmer needed to sustain and improve their family lot was miniscule compared to the war budget.
So, after the next growing season the borderlands began to be flooded with cheap opium and heroin. Really cheap. Pakistani and other addicts moved to those border towns. It was only a matter of time before the old channels to Europe and America reopened.
Which, shortly, they did, and a drug we thought we had managed to get rid of in the US made a comeback.
Source: major American newspaper, probably the NY Times, cited at DU in the year following the Afghan invasion.
Repeat after me: Democrats are a MINORITY party. We HAVE no "leverage." Nobody "caves"...
Please point out who in the Democratic Party in the House or Senate has voted for ANYthing put forward by the GOP. Which Democrats have provided a swing vote?
Thanks to the much-reviled Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, Democrats are holding the line and giving the Republicans NOTHING.
If you want the situation to change, work in your own district and state to elect Democrats to the House and Senate. That's it.
Those "three white guys" started this site in what was then our darkest hour...
Dinging them for their ethnicity is BS. They did the hard work.
This site has had its ups and downs, sometimes through an excess of tolerance. We got overrun by trolls more than once, and you can look for their spiteful spinoff sites and read their ongoing grievances over having been outed and ousted.
You want to see more feminists and POC? Then speak out and help make this a more honest and welcoming arena. If you see bigoted or trollish behavior, call it out and/or alert on it. Don't tolerate it.
But don't gripe that the people who had the vision and did the hard work are either male or white. That doesn't fly.
Pres Obama & his admin did everything they could & were stymied by politicians up & down the line
At the state level, secretaries of state were warned by AG Holder that they should make their voting systems a critical national infrastructure (someone please correct me on the right phrase) and he was roundly rejected because "states' rights."
After Trump was elected but well before he took office, President Obama and VP Biden told us they had piles of evidence and had made a point of distributing it widely among federal agencies "so that nobody could just go into one room and stuff it all in a sack to be shredded."
I have no special access. I saw this on reputable national television.
I will not have Obama, Biden, their administration, or Hillary Clinton blamed for this.
As for the people on DU who periodically pop up to demand that "the generals," the CIA, FBI, and so forth "do something," all I can say is that would play 100% into the hands of a growing authoritarian state.
You don't understand. Pregnancy, childbirth, and poverty are punishment for bad women...
...who have unauthorized sex. The women (or girls) must be visibly punished.
Think about it that way for a few minutes and see how it changes your perspective of the antichoice movement.
More than one Sci Fi author has addressed this, as have scientists in the Gaia Hypothesis...
Off the top of my head (my entire library is left behind in our evacuated house) all I can recall is "Earth" by David Brin, and you'll have to look up the Gaia Hypothesis because I can't remember if that's the name of a book or if it was just incorporated into books and articles.
Think of the interconnected synapses of your brain and body, and imagine the interconnectedness of all beings. Life appears in niches I never could have imagined: next to boiling hot vents in the abyssal depths, in bubbles in the underside of ice in the Antarctic... Astonishing.
I am shocked, SHOCKED, that an alumnus of SNL would engage in sight gags and raunchy humor!!!
While on a comedy entertainment tour for the troops no less!!! 
Dear gods what is the world coming to?!
Now, go away please.
Weve been evacuated from our new home due to massive Ventura CA fire
Keep a good thought for all those in its path as it is explosive and wind driven. We had so little warning due to power outage I thought I heard voices in the street and went out to see red and blue flashing lights. Couldn’t make out what they were saying so flagged down a passing car and heard mandatory evacuation. Looked at hill in back of house and saw entire sky was red. Crap. Wish I’d had more notice, but I woke hubby, leashed doggy, grabbed our medicine and headed for our inlaws.
This is the real deal — we have our two elderly cars and the clothes we stand up in. The Santa Ana winds are howling outside. Well, I also have my purse and cellphone, and can charge the cell in my car.
Tomorrow we find out what happens to our home overnight but now it’s after 2am and I need to sleep and also don’t want to drain the battery anymore
Thank you my friends for being here. I’ll check in when I can.
Hekate
Kompromat comes in many forms, but sexual behavior is visual and easy to understand...
The Russians are very skilled at luring people in step by step, offering a favor here, an exchange of favors there, creating obligations both legal and illegal, creating the illusion of friendship but the reality of dependency, until the mark is caught in a snare. Then the mark can be played along until the spymaster (Kislyak; Putin) is ready to reel them in, and the mark cannot refuse. They must pay the piper when the tune ends.
Of course it's money laundering. Rachel Maddow has reported on this consistently month after month. Money laundering can land you in prison, bigly, and while the feds are at it they can make you forfeit all your assets, right down to your gold cufflinks. in Trump's case, this is a family business -- his kids, at least Ivana's 3 spawn plus Jared -- are in it up to their eyeballs, and they are very much at risk.
Motive #1 to keep playing along with Putin.
What does Putin want in return? Oh, not much -- just a little light treason. It probably didn't seem like much to men like Trump and Manafort (and Tillerson) who deal transnationally -- money, money, golden thrones -- and what is America and its problems to them? Absolutely nothing, from their Olympian heights. Just an address and a name on a US passport. Life is all transactional, and Putin (to them) is just another player transacting deals.
Putin, however, knows very well how much his asked-for payment is worth, and it means everything to him: the cheapening of America's name in the world community, the weakening of America's diplomatic power, driving divisions inside America deeper and deeper, making us doubt our institutions, our government, ourselves, and bankrupting our economy. You name it, Putin has struck pure gold this time.
Motive #2 to keep playing along with Putin, and to deny deny deny: It has finally occured to those around Trump, if not the Orange One himself, that they are in vastly more trouble than they ever bargained for. They are caught, and desperately hoping to bargain their way out of their demise. Putin is probably laughing, but Mueller is not.
I am so very very sorry for your loss, KentuckyWoman.Your intuition about the surgery might be right
I know my mother had a personality change from what may have been unnecessary bypass surgery when she was about 80. (She passed away at 82.) Other people saw it -- it was directly after the surgery. She and I had been at odds for years (not politics) and that worsened, which was bad enough. She became completely unreasonable to others. She also became paranoid and alienated some dear friends of hers that I had to console at her memorial service.
During the period after Mom's surgery my sister and I stumbled on an article in a medical journal, and I had a talk with an old friend of mine who worked in the sales side of the medical industry. Mom probably shouldn't have had the surgery, but since Medicare pays hospitals and doctors for the whole thing without question, why, it has become very common for very old people.
As for my friend, a quite bright professional who reads medical journals himself, there's this bit of info: while your blood does get filtered while you are under the knife, it is being filtered by a machine, which leaves something called microthrombi circulating in the blood. That's right: microscopic thromboses, which can cause microscopic but real damage to the brain. Not always, certainly, but enough that it is a known potential side effect of the surgery.
You are having a worse time of it because your brother is so much younger and you were so much closer. I don't know what to tell you, except to trust your intuitions and your observations about the wreck of this once rational and loving personality. Your grief is real and justified. I could suggest counseling, if you want to try that. Prayer, if you are a praying person. I clung to this Buddhist meditation as my family fell apart over Mom, and it helped, as you start with yourself and move outward to named persons, and then to all beings.
May I be peaceful
May I be happy
May I be safe
May I awaken to the light of my true nature
May I be free from suffering
May all beings be peaceful
May all beings be happy
May all beings be safe
May all beings awaken to the light of their true nature
May all beings be free from suffering
Someone may be along to post the long version, but this is the short version engraved on my bracelet, quick and available.
May you find peace. 
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Gender: FemaleHometown: Central Coast, California
Home country: USA
Member since: 2002
Number of posts: 90,616
