...due to a significant price drop resulting from previous oversupply.
[ToloNews] The World Drug Report released by the United Nations ...where theory meets practice and practice loses... Drugs and Crime Office’s (UNODC) on Thursday shows a decrease in opium cultivation in the country in 2019 in which Afghan farmers planted opium poppy on 163,000 hectares of land.
This, according to the report, is 38 percent less than in 2018 when 263,000 hectares was planted.
The UNODC report says that all the main opium poppy-growing provinces saw significant decreases in the amount of land growing poppy in 2019.
In Nangarhar The unfortunate Afghan province located adjacent to Mohmand, Kurram, and Khyber Agencies. The capital is Jalalabad. The province was the fief of Younus Khalis after the Soviets departed and one of his sons is the current provincial Taliban commander. Nangarhar is Haqqani country.. , the report says, this decreased by 82 percent, Nimroz by 78 percent, Kandahar by 40 percent, Uruzgan by 38 percent, Farah by 35 percent and Helmand ...an Afghan province populated mostly by Pashtuns, adjacent to Injun country in Pak Balochistan... by 34 percent.
On average, this reduction of 38 percent can be attributed mainly to developments in the opium market, UNODC found.
Following two years of very high levels of production, the average farm-gate price (price at point of cultivation without added transportation or other costs) per kilogram of fresh opium fell to $52 in 2019 from $76 USD in 2018, the report says.
UNODC estimated the 2019 total farm-gate value as $404 million, a decrease of 33 percent from its 2018 value, according to an analysis by the Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN).
In 2019, the area under cultivation was the lowest recorded since 2013, AAN says in its analysis on the UN report.
In previous years, farmers, especially in the all-important south-western region, typically reported disease as the main reason for low to moderate yields. This region, also known as Greater Kandahar, includes Helmand province which, were it a separate country, would be the largest opium producer worldwide, according to AAN analysis.
In 2019, Greater Kandahar produced 4,920 metric tons of opium, representing more than two-thirds of this year’s total opium production nationwide. In the southern region (Loya Paktia and Ghazni), the harvest doubled compared to 2018, ANN says in its analysis citing UN report.
AAN says that for the first time since 1994, the UNODC did not release its findings in an annual opium survey and has said the government is suspected of having blocked publication.
The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy estimates released in February 2020 show similar results, according to AAN. The White House report says opium poppy was planted on 160,000 hectares, a decrease of 28 percent from 221,000 in 2018.
[ToloNews] CNN on Saturday reported that the Trump administration is close to finalizing a decision to withdraw more than 4,000 troops from Afghanistan by the fall, citing two Trump administration officials.
It’s CNN, so the probability is at least 50% that they got it right.
Almost a week ago, Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, head of the US Central Command, said the United States has reduced its troop level to 8,600 in Afghanistan, fulfilling the first phase of the planned withdrawal specified in the US-Taliban ...Arabic for students... deal signed in Doha in February.
The CNN report says that the new move would reduce the number of troops from 8,600 to 4,500 and would be the lowest number since the very earliest days of the war in Afghanistan, which began in 2001.
This comes a day after a meeting between US Defense Secretary Mark Esper and NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels.
"We will also follow up on our discussion on Afghanistan. NATO will continue to adjust our presence in support of the grinding of the peace processor," Stoltenberg said on Friday. "This will be done in close coordination with Allies and partners."
The US has committed to withdrawing all of its forces from Afghanistan by next April under the agreement it signed with the Taliban.
It is unclear when the withdrawal of the 4,000 additional US troops would take place, CNN reports.
"US force levels in Afghanistan remain in the mid-8,000s. Additional drawdowns beyond this number remain conditions-based according to the US Government’s assessment of the overall security environment and Taliban compliance with the US-Taliban agreement," Pentagon front man Major Rob Lodewick, said as quoted by CNN.
According to CNN, the US State Department and US National Security Council did not reply to requests for comment.
[The Star Canada] The white iPhone with chipped paint that Moroccan journalist Omar Radi used to stay in contact with his sources also allowed his government to spy on him.
They could read every email, text and website visited; listen to every phone call and watch every video conference; download calendar entries, monitor GPS coordinates, and even turn on the camera and microphone to see and hear where the phone was at any moment.
Yet Radi was trained in encryption and cyber security. He hadn’t clicked on any suspicious links and didn’t have any missed calls on WhatsApp — both well-documented ways a cell phone can be hacked.
Instead, a report published Monday by Amnesty International shows Radi was targeted by a new and frighteningly stealthy technique. All he had to do was visit one website. Any website.
Forensic evidence gathered by Amnesty International on Radi’s phone shows that it was infected by "network injection," a fully automated method where an attacker intercepts a cellular signal when it makes a request to visit a website. In milliseconds, the web browser is diverted to a malicious site and spyware code is downloaded that allows remote access to everything on the phone. The browser then redirects to the intended website and the user is none the wiser.
As somebody who once designed the early digital cellular data call flows I have the following to say.
#1 This is a brilliant infra-structure side hack!
#2 It would be very hard to defeat
#3 It's a hack at a "glue-point" where different tech are attached together and hence a perfect point to do it.
#4 this is because most modern tech is not a design "unity" rather a "glued" composite.
While Amnesty could not definitively state that the Moroccan authorities were behind the attack, the group was able to use forensic evidence to conclude this was very likely the case.
Forensic evidence gathered by Amnesty International on Radi’s phone shows that it was infected by "network injection," a fully automated method where an attacker intercepts a cellular signal when it makes a request to visit a website.
The episode reveals not that authoritarian governments are actively listening to the calls, monitoring the web traffic and reading the emails of journalists and human rights activists — but that they can do so undetected.
"I kind of suspected (I was hacked)," said Radi on an encrypted video chat from Rabat. "The Moroccan authorities are buying every possible and imaginable surveillance and espionage product. They want to know everything."
Radi is an investigative journalist who co-founded the local news site Le Desk, a partner with the Star in the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. He specializes in the connections between politicians and business people as well as social movements and human rights. In other words, he’s a thorn in the government’s side and a prime target for surveillance, hacking and harassment.
In 2017, he was arrested while reporting on a security crackdown in the Rif region, and again this past December after one of his tweets described a local judge as an "executioner."
"I was prosecuted for contempt of court, but that’s just the official charge. In fact, I was punished for my entire body of work. They pile things up and then they look for a pretext to arrest," he told Forbidden Stories, an investigative journalism group that coordinated this report with the Star and 14 other outlets.
Radi spent a week in pretrial detention, was later convicted to four months and is currently out pending appeal.
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/28/2020 00:00 ||
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#1
The Israelis shared this tech with us some years ago. At a discount too, fantastic chaps. Great front end too. Easy and very 'god like'. Amnesty has been after them for a while, instigated by a Soros funded group called Open Computing. It's very necessary in this world.
An activist journalist deserves zero privacy anyway.
Watch: Muslim World League (MWL) Secretary General Mohammad al-Issa, tells Al Arabiya that MWL cooperates with #SaudiArabia as a leader in all efforts to combat “extremist ideas, specifically in the Muslim world.”https://t.co/Z6NlSZMjk8pic.twitter.com/2VFQF8OHzb
#UK counter-terrorism police charge Libyan suspect with three counts of murder for a knife attack in the English town of Reading.https://t.co/gXrCvMxgBb
A suspect has been charged with three counts of murder over a knife attack in the English town of Reading described by police as a terrorist incident, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said on Saturday.
A man wielding a five-inch knife attacked people out enjoying the sun at Forbury Gardens, a Reading park, on the evening of June 20, killing three people and injuring three others.
"The Crown Prosecution Service has today authorized CounterTerrorism Policing South East to charge Khairi Saadallah,
...arrived in England requesting asylum in 2012 because he liked to smoke and drink, developed schizophrenia and an interest in jihad which briefly attracted the attention of MI5 last year, released from prison just two weeks before succumbing to Sudden Jihad Syndrome but could not be sent back to Libya because the country was deemed too dangerous for him...
25, with three counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder," the CPS said.
Saadallah will appear at Westminster Magistrates Court on Monday.
A security source had previously told Rooters that the suspect, a resident of Reading, was a Libyan national.
Police named the victims as Britons James Furlong, 36, and David Wails, 49, and US national Joseph Ritchie-Bennett, 39.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/28/2020 00:00 ||
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#1
could not be sent back to Libya because the country was deemed too dangerous for him...
No consideration that he was too dangerous to the country he was in though. This is known as human sacrifice to those outside the virtue signalling crowd who hold power. You are expendable for their virtue.
Six people have been arrested in #France over the theft of an artwork by street artist #Banksy commemorating the victims of the 2015 Paris attacks that was stolen from the Bataclan concert hall, say sources.https://t.co/DKLUnZ54X0
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Attorney General William Barr on Friday ordered the establishment of a task force to counter what he called "anti-government extremists" committing violence as protests against police brutality convulse the United States.
In a memo to law enforcement and prosecutors released by the Department of Justice, Barr said alleged extremists had "engaged in indefensible acts of violence designed to undermine public order," including attacking police officers, damaging property and threatening innocent people.
Protests have spread nationwide over George Floyd’s death in police custody last month and the deaths of other African Americans at the hands of police.
Although largely peaceful, some demonstrators have turned violent, which President Donald Trump and his allies have blamed on left-wing extremists among the protesters.
Barr said the extremists "profess a variety of ideologies."
"Some pretend to profess a message of freedom and progress, but they are in fact forces of anarchy, destruction, and coercion," Barr said.
[JPost] - Pro-Palestinian organizations across the US plan to hold demonstrations against Israel on Wednesday, the earliest date that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could bring to a cabinet vote the extension of Israeli sovereignty to parts of the West Bank.
The demonstrations are set to take place in Chicago, San Diego, Brooklyn, Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as in Toronto, Madrid and Valencia. Among the groups organizing the events are Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, and American Muslims for Palestine. Don't wear masks - Fauci is a secret Jew!
#1
At this point they have to get in line. BLM (burn, loot, murder), defund the police, commynizm 4evah and statuezmustgo# are all booked ahead of them.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
06/28/2020 10:05 Comments ||
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#2
"Rage" my house or property, don't forget to bring your own plasma and QuikClot.
Satellite photographs show that an explosion that rattled #Iran’s capital came from an area in its eastern mountains that analysts believe hides an underground tunnel system and missile production sites.https://t.co/E6TVy63Haqpic.twitter.com/oIjvUSeA6H
Posted by: Fred ||
06/28/2020 00:00 ||
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#1
The gas storage area sits near what analysts describe as Iran’s Khojir missile facility. The explosion appears to have struck a facility for the Shahid Bakeri Industrial Group, which makes solid-propellant rockets, said a researcher in Monterey, California.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies identified Khojir as the “site of numerous tunnels, some suspected of use for arms assembly.” Large industrial buildings at the site visible from satellite photographs also suggest missile assembly being conducted there.
One can only hope.
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/28/2020 9:59 Comments ||
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#2
They obviously do not subscribe to the International Building Code when it comes to the hazardous H classification standards.
They subscribe to the IIC the Insh'Alla Islamist Code.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
06/28/2020 13:27 Comments ||
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#Iran’s Central Bank injects hundreds of millions of dollars to stabilize the currency market after the rial fell to historic lows this week amid #US sanctions and the #coronavirus outbreak.#COVID19https://t.co/8BnQlgZTR4
Lebanese officials apologize to the #US ambassador in #Lebanon, Dorothy Shea, after a judge issued an order banning the US diplomat from being able to speak to local media outlets, one day after she criticized #Hezbollah in a public interview.https://t.co/MrshuLLU50pic.twitter.com/LWw2iR8P80
“By its actions and threats, Hezbollah destabilizes [Lebanon] and jeopardizes the country’s economic recovery,” Ambassador Dorothy Shea tells Al Hadath.https://t.co/KFECBpINZh
Zeinab Soleimani daughter of assassinated Qassem Soleimani today married the son of #Hezbollah's Hashem Safi Ad-Din, Reza Hashem Safi Ad Din. This further indictates the prostect of Safi Ad-Din being the heir to Hezbollah. pic.twitter.com/uuLBO041Rq
— Aurora Intel - #StayHome (@AuroraIntel) June 27, 2020
Posted by: Fred ||
06/28/2020 00:00 ||
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#1
No picture of John Kerry’s son as best man holding the ‘blood red’ wedding ring?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...Arabic for 
