THE OPIUM WARS

from murph

Before I get into the post, here are some pics of the current garden produce and a cooking try from Freeacre.

English Muffins -
Umm-umm! Here's my first attempt at making homemade English muffins. Turns out they are neither "English" nor, really, "muffins." But, they are delicious! After you make the dough and let it rise (a bread machine is fine), you roll it out, cut into rounds, and cook on a cast iron skillet for ten minutes on a side.


A days produce from the garden -
It's been about a month since we planted outside and we're just starting to be able to pick some things. I plan to make pasta prima vera from kale, chard, shallots, garlic, snap peas, and some asparagus I had on hand. See that rhubarb? I'm going to make a vanilla pudding and rhubarb pie for Dave when he gets here. Also got eight eggs today. Not too shabby for a "post collapse" meal.


THE OPIUM WARS

I wrote this post some time ago and just never put it up. With the expanded news currently coming out of Afghanistan, the Taliban and Pakistan concerning the opium trade, and its use by bankers and the state, I thought this might be timely. LATOC had two references about it today. Since it is much more lucrative to keep the population in fear of illegal drugs and the immense profits involved that goes to fuel even more wars, like the war on drugs, there sure doesn’t appear much of a chance of it ending anytime soon. It is another of those manufactured wars, like the war on terrorism that the neocon believers so love to buy into. Russia is starting to complain about the importing of opium into its country now. As if they haven’t got enough problems as it is.

I recently read an interesting and well documented book “The Opium Wars, The Addiction of one Empire and the Corruption of Another” by W. Travis Hanes III and Frank Sanello. I am writing a post concerning the book because of modern day parallels. I knew of the opium wars but had few details concerning it.

There were actually two wars, the first from 1839 to 1842, and the second 1856 to 1860. Eventually the French Empire along with the British were pitted against the Qing Empire

The book starts out with this image;

“Imagine this scenario; the Medellin cocaine cartel of Colombia mounts successful military offensive against the United States, then forces the U.S. to legalize cocaine and allow the cartel to import the drug into five major American cities, unsupervised and untaxed by the U.S, The American government also agrees to let the drug lords govern all Colombian citizens who operate in these cities, plus the U.S. has to pay war reparations of $100 billion to the Colombians’ cost of waging the war to import cocaine into America”.

According to this book; Britain was importing opium from India and selling it in China. A very small amount was taken to Britain for medicinal uses. The Chinese government was very much against the opium trade in its country for a variety of reasons and outlawed its use, which angered the traders from Britain and the government in Britain. Since at this time the British were themselves becoming slaves to the Chinese tea, they had to pay for it in some way, and that was by selling opium to China. Other products manufactured in Britain for trade were rejected by the Chinese in that they felt they made better quality than the British. So opium was the way the tea could be paid for.

To make things worse, the Chinese considered themselves the pinnacle of civilization having been around for 4000 years, and considered the British barbarians. Although, the literal translation of the Chinese term meant ‘not speaking Chinese’, the term barbarian was used to defame the Chinese. The Chinese also demanded all payment for tea and silk in silver.

In 1839, Lin Zexu, high commissioner of Canton sent a letter to Queen Victoria that said; “Suppose there were people from another country who carried opium for sale to England and seduced your people into buying and smoking it; certainly you would deeply hate it and be bitterly aroused…Formerly the number of opium smugglers was small; but now the vice has spread far and wide and the poison penetrated deeper”.

While there was bitter fighting within the government over the trade, the British citizens pressured to keep the tea rolling in and eventually the hawks won out and the wars started, in effect to force the Chinese to allow the importation of opium to pay for the tea. When the Chinese resisted, the complaining by the opium and tea traders finally forced the government to send military to the importation points and force compliance by the Chinese.

At this time in history, Britain’s empire was huge and enforced by might of arms. The Chinese were still in the 14th century in warfare and completely outclassed. Even at odds of 20 to 1, there was no contest. Throughout those 20 years, the causalities were mostly Chinese, with very few French or British being killed.

In modern terms you don’t take a knife to a gun fight, which was exactly what was happening. The Chinese primary weapons were bows and swords, the English with Enfield rifles and cannons. The Chinese armies didn’t stand a chance.

Anything sounding familiar here in American history?

For those of you who have read Michael Rupperts book, “Crossing the Rubicon”, and still have a copy, turn to chapter 3 that describes the involvement of the CIA in drugs and money laundering through shady banks. The drugs have to end up somewhere, and most of them ended up in U.S. cities, and the cash used to prop up the stock and commodities markets. It is literally the opium wars all over again, forced trade in an addictive substance to finance shaky deals elsewhere, including the political corruption that must take place for its implementation. In the case of the opium wars, not only was the opium facilitating the supply of tea that the country demanded, but made the elite fabulously wealthy.

During the opium wars, China was literally looted of its historic treasures and many of them destroyed by the looting troops.

Anything sounding familiar here in U.S. occupation of Iraq and the looting of the former Soviet state? For that matter, Germany and Japan also. I guess we just got to accept the idea that ‘to the victor belong the spoils’.

One of the subjects covered in this book is how this trade in opium and the wars and looting of China corrupted Britain.

Again, anything sounding familiar here?

While America mostly stayed away from the opium trade in China, the British intervention did make it easier for the Americans to do their trade thing.

The Chinese have always been very aware of history, and their role in it, and their civilization in the 18th and 19th centuries was truly an empire. Their complete humiliating defeat at the hands of the British and French was a very bitter pill. That is one group of people with very long term memories. In 1888, the Times of London overestimated, probably, that 70% of adult males in China took opium. Whatever the case in total addiction, it was huge, and it affected the entire society.

Within a year of taking over the country in 1949, Mao’s government outlawed all narcotics and their cultivation, use and sale, thus eradicating by dictatorial power 150 years of social devastation to the Chinese people, and he did it in half a generation, about 20 years. All it demanded back was a complete loss of social freedom.

So much for a war on drugs.

Last thing, a neat pic from Montana. "This little honey was standing on the crest behind the village to the west. Showed no fear of me or the little wheeler i was riding. Some days are just so glorious that you just know that you are standing in
the hand of our creator.