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Afghanistan's Opium War: Corrupt government officials empower Taliban

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The Taliban siphon millions of dollars off the top of the opium market, which is a $2.3 billion industry, accounting for roughly 22% of Afghanistan’s total GDP.
the number of drug addicts in Afghanistan is now estimated to be over one million in a country with a population of 30 million
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- Afghanistan produces 90 percent of the world’s opium and the drug is sold openly across Afghanistan
- people at all levels of government who were profiting off the drug
- the selling price of opium is one to five times greater than that of the next best crop which is wheat
- the Taliban funnels the opium via the narco-cartel network into Pakistan
- once inside Pakistan, the Pakistani ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) coordinate the transportation of the drug using Pakistani army trucks
- the narco-cartels, Taliban and government officials are also manipulating world market prices by hoarding stockpiles of heroin and opium
- An outbreak of peace is the last thing that those who profit from opium, the drug lords, the Taliban and senior members of Karzai's own administration would like to see.

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A brief history of climate change and conflict | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

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The relationship between climate and conflict isn't as simple as cause and effect.
Historical case studies, therefore, allow us to identify three paths from climate change to conflict: sustained trends, intervening variables, and the need for conflict triggers.
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- The first is that conflict has the potential to emerge after a sustained period of divergent climate patterns.
- climate change alone won't cause conflict but, along with other factors, will contribute to and shape it
- an assassination, extreme natural event, or random act of group violence--is usually required to ignite violent conflict
- climate change provoked the interaction of human societies and the Neanderthals and subsequently led to conflict
- famines caused by the failed monsoons resulted in peasant revolts and fueled the intrastate conflict that drastically weakened, and then led to the complete collapse of, the Tang Dynasty
- The warming in Central America that was disastrous for the Mayans was, on the other hand, fortunate for the Vikings. Warmer temperatures in the north meant their land was more hospitable to live on.
- In the polar areas, "cold" conflict emerges between states seeking to exploit the new resources that warming makes available. In the equatorial area, which includes many deserts, conflict erupts over declining resources
- In the polar zone, the change in temperature indirectly drives conflict behavior and the impact on inhabitable land is most important. In the equatorial zone, change in precipitation patterns is clearly a major driver,
- Simply put, they are "cold" wars of opportunity versus "hot" wars of desperation.

El Nombre de Jesús -Mateo 1 Genealogía de Jesucristo

Mateo 1 Genealogía de Jesucristo (Lc. 3.23-38) 1 Libro de la genealogía de Jesucristo, hijo de David, hijo de Abraham. 2 Abraham engendró a Isaac, Isaac a Jacob, y Jacob a Judá y a sus hermanos. 3 Judá engendró de Tamar a Fares y a...

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