...So you pick up a history book to figure out US's angle

From Peter Dale Scotts: American War Machine-Deep Politics, The Cia and the Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan

p.78

p.79

p.80

p.81

TL:DR the US turned Burma-Laos and Thailand into a heroin growing triangle (The Golden Triangle) much like they did with the Mafia in Sicily and Marseilles.

The Drug traffickers and drug money became a huge way of CIA to implant bourgeois ideology and suppress communists and the growing popularity of the PRC. They even used ex-Nazis as agents for drug smuggling. It also gave US unfettered access to Myanmars tungsten reserves.

This enitre coalition was directed at China of course.

  • astigmatic [none/use name]
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    edit-2
    3 years ago

    I don’t have a side on this argument but I do not think a lot of people here realize that NED has money in pretty much everything in the third world, whether they’re direct assets or just vague humanitarianism. I happen to know of a Mexican org that gets legal help to indigenous prisoners who don’t speak Spanish. They get NED funding. It’s not a CIA regime change operation, it has no political pretensions that way. Just like that there’s a billion different things that NED has its hands on. Yes, of course there’s an overall bent towards liberal imperialist bullshit, and it is their job ultimately to secure the US’ sphere of control, but not everything that receives or has received money from NED is owned by the CIA.

    • JoeySteel [comrade/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      They will pay and front orgs that are "good" and "doing good".

      But their main purpose is to cultivate assets - to find leaders and people with charisma using these orgs to then use them for US foreign policy ends (either knowingly or unknowingly)

      In Mexico you should be paying attention to these bastards as the fact Mexico is flooded with drugs and has seen more death in Mexico than Afghanistan in the recent past is directly tied to US foreign policy destabilising Mexico by weaponising drugs using the CIA and organised crime (Chapter 2 of the book this post is off)

        • CarlTheRedditor [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          It's almost like you explicitly made that clear in your post and yet this person ignored that for some reason.

          • DeepPoliSci [none/use name]
            ·
            edit-2
            3 years ago

            They get NED funding. It’s not a CIA regime change operation, it has no political pretensions that way ... not everything that receives or has received money from NED is owned by the CIA.

            It sounds like their response was geared towards these comments.

            The NED doing missionary work for the CIA does not preclude it from being owned by the CIA, nor does it make that missionary work indifferent to the CIA's objectives.

              • DeepPoliSci [none/use name]
                ·
                3 years ago

                So, why play dumb? It just seems unnecessarily rude if you know the reason they responded.

                  • DeepPoliSci [none/use name]
                    ·
                    3 years ago

                    I took your initial comment in good faith, and I told you why I thought their comment was helpful. You decided to double-down on being an ass for some reason.

                • astigmatic [none/use name]
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  3 years ago

                  I don’t get why you think it’s a response at all when the premise is already a part of my comment.

                  It is literally what my post was cultivated on! The only reason it makes sense to begin with!

                  • DeepPoliSci [none/use name]
                    ·
                    3 years ago

                    NED has money in pretty much everything in the third world, whether they’re direct assets or just vague humanitarianism ... They get NED funding. It’s not a CIA regime change operation.

                    Your comment made it sound like these two types of NED operations were distinct from one another. The response highlighted that these are not distinct. It is two features of the same operation.

                    I found that important to highlight because it matches with the revolving door of state agents & humanitarian operations in my city.

                    It's not a dig at you or anything, but the clarification was helpful.

                    • astigmatic [none/use name]
                      ·
                      3 years ago

                      Yeah I mean that’s fine, we have different reads on this and maybe I’m not expressing myself very well. To be clear I do not think most of the organizations where NED has money are “NED operations” in and of themselves. They opportunistically and parasitically extends their claws everywhere, yeah, but receiving some NED money (note: some money, not being entirely funded that way) in itself doesn’t tell me that the organization is what the CIA needs them to be.

                      Whether that’s the case with this specific Thai group, I have no idea, I had never heard of them before this thread and I think it’s fine to be suspicious.