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Rising Drug Trade Threatens Myanmar’s Aspirations

Ethnic Lisu girls and women dressed in traditional clothing walk down a road in Thon Min Yar village, central Shan state, Myanmar.

THON MIN YAR – Deep in the lawless mountains of the Golden Triangle, sloping fields of illegal poppies have just been scraped dry for opium. This is the peak season for producing drugs here, and in Myanmar’s nascent era of democratic change, the haul has only gotten bigger.

Opium, its derivative heroin and methamphetamine’s are surging across Myanmar’s borders in quantities that the United Nations and police in neighboring countries say are the highest levels in years.

ethnic Pa-O poppy farmer holds a harvested poppy stem with dried-up opium sap in a poppy cultivation in central Shan state, Myanmar.

Two years after replacing a long-ruling military junta, the civilian government is still struggling to get a foothold in its war against drugs. The trade is centered in a remote, impoverished area where the government has little control and where ethnic armies have waged civil wars for decades — wars financed with drug money.

The Associated Press was granted rare access to Myanmar’s drug-producing hub in the vast, jungle-clad mountain region of northeastern Shan state, deep in a cease-fire zone that was closed to foreigners for decades. It’s a land dotted with makeshift methamphetamine labs and tiny, poor villages where growing opium is the only real industry. The trip was part of a U.N. mission allowed only under armed police escort.

President Thein Sein has signed cease-fire agreements with a patchwork of rebel groups in the region, but the peace is extremely fragile and sporadic fighting continues. Cracking down on drug syndicates or arresting poor opium farmers risks alienating the ethnic groups he is courting for peace talks.

“To stop the drug problem, we need peace. And that is what the government is trying to achieve now,” said Police Col. Myint Thein, head of the Central Committee for Drug Abuse and Control, which controls the country’s drug policy. “But that is just one of so many challenges. This is a very difficult task. It will take time.”

Myanmar army officer patrols close to Mong Pan village, central Shan state, Myanmar.

Foreign aid that could help combat drugs is just beginning to trickle back into the area, which is rife with corruption. But the toughest task may be transforming the destitute rural economy, filled with poor farmers who view growing opium as the best way to provide for their families.

Dozens of those farmers live in Thon Min Yar, a village in southern Shan state that is far in every sense from Myanmar’s postcard-perfect pagodas and colonial relics. So obscure it does not appear on maps, it is an image of dirt-road squalor and government neglect.

Its 73 bamboo huts have no electricity or running water. Its people have no access to health care, no job prospects, not enough food and no aspirations other than survival. Toddlers and teens get a one-sized-fits-all education in a one-room schoolhouse.

Almost everyone in Thon Min Yar is an opium farmer.

“My father and my grandfather grew opium. I have no other way to make money,” said 28-year-old Peter Ar Loo, a father of two.

He does not smoke opium, but sometimes he envies the life of an addict. They seem more carefree, he said.

Myanmar police officer photographs a harvested poppy field in central Shan state, Myanmar.

But he added, “Using opium only benefits one person. Selling it helps my whole family.”

Opium farmers like Ar Loo are not the people getting rich from the drug trade. They are among the poorest people in one of the world’s least-developed countries.

In a good year, Ar Loo makes about $1,000 from an acre-sized field of poppies. That doesn’t include business expenses which he calls “paying respects” — a roughly 15 percent opium tax doled out to a variety of local authorities who turn a blind eye in exchange.

Police control the towns, government soldiers patrol the roads and ethnic armies rule the mountains. All of them get a cut.

“We give to the Shan militia, the police and the army,” Ar Loo said.

There is a law that bans growing opium poppies, but he said no one in his village has ever been arrested. “We get permission from the local authorities, explaining that we need to do this to feed our children.”

The government says it wants farmers to grow corn and other legal crops, but many poppy farmers say the terrible mountain roads mean getting legal crops to market is almost impossible.

Lisu children and women in traditional clothing gather outside the Ywar Thar Yar village’s school, central Shan state, Myanmar

Opium is different: The buyers come straight to your fields.

Ar Loo’s poppy field is a 30-mile trek into the jungle, an inconvenient location he chose after police launched an anti-narcotics campaign a year ago and warned farmers to switch to legal crops — or face arrest.

“The farmers are just finding fields deeper in the mountains,” shrugged Ar War, chief of a nearby community called Yar Thar Yar, or Beautiful View Village. Pointing at mist-shrouded jungles controlled by ethnic armies, he added, “It’s harder for police to find them there.”

And even with the campaign, part of the central government’s new anti-narcotics effort, police may not be looking that hard. The payoffs continue.

The Golden Triangle is defined by the area where Shan state meets the borders of Thailand and Laos. It was the world’s top opium-growing region for years, but in the 1990s, Afghanistan became the top producer and drug syndicates here began focusing more on methamphetamines.

Now heroin and methamphetamines are both on the rise.

In Thailand, authorities last year seized a record 82.2 million methamphetamine tablets, a 66 percent increase from the year before.

“These drugs are not produced in Thailand. They are from Myanmar,” said Thailand’s Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm Yubumrung, who has vocally called on Myanmar to step up its policing efforts. “If Myanmar cooperates, that’s the end of the drug story. It’s better than it used to be, but still far from perfect.”

Authorities in Singapore, Laos and elsewhere in Southeast Asia also reported record hauls that the U.N. says are predominantly from Myanmar.

Police Col. Myint Thein, right, head of the Central Committee for Drug Abuse and Control which controls the country’s drug policy, and police officer Majo Zaw Min Oo sit in an office in Yangon, Myanmar.

Myanmar’s poppy cultivation, meanwhile, has more than doubled since 2006, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. Myanmar produced an estimated 690 tons of opium in 2012, a 17 percent jump from the year before.

No one can say for sure what is driving the overall increase in Myanmar’s drug production, but Ar Loo, who doubled his poppy production last year, said his motivation was inflation.

“Food prices are going up. Gasoline is more expensive,” he said. “If the military or police force us to stop immediately, there will be problems. Because people will not have enough to eat.”

Experts offer other explanations — notably that cash-strapped ethnic armies are planning for the future.

Many rebels are resisting a government demand to form a joint patrol force with the army by 2015 but need more strength and leverage at the negotiating table.

“It’s an uneasy cease-fire, and most of the groups are jostling to be in a better bargaining position,” said Leik Boonwaat, the UNODC Deputy Regional Director for East Asia and the Pacific. “In order to be in a better bargaining position, you need money, you need more soldiers, and the best way to do that is drugs.”

Drugs could also offer traffickers a path to greater riches once trade barriers are lifted. Thailand’s intelligence indicates that the rebel-controlled drug syndicates are planning for when 10 Southeast Asian countries lift trade barriers to become a single market in 2015.

“In 2015, these drug dealers will want to invest in legitimate businesses. So right now they are trying to boost their capital, and pumping out large amounts of drugs can help them achieve their goal,” said Narong Rattananugul, acting head of Thailand’s Office of Narcotics Control Board.

Southern Shan militia group travel in a vehicle close to Mong Pan village, central Shan state, Myanmar.

Most of Myanmar’s drugs are trafficked through its porous 1,100-kilometer (680-mile) border with Thailand. Narong said his country is seizing drugs almost daily and added, “The problem cannot really be solved.”

The drugs that exit the Golden Triangle ripple out across all of Asia, which is why Myanmar is seeking the world’s help.

“This is not just Myanmar’s concern. The whole international community should cooperate in eliminating the drug problem,” said Myint Thein, the anti-drug official. “We cannot afford it alone.”

Foreign funding has been trickling back into the country, now that most sanctions imposed during military rule have been lifted. The United States just reactivated a poppy yield survey in Shan state that was discontinued in 2004. The European Union and Germany have contributed $7 million for U.N. anti-drug projects over the next two years. But that is a tiny fraction of the money needed.

Earlier this month, Myanmar sent a high-level delegation to the U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna for the first time to highlight the link between drugs, poverty and conflict, and to ask for financial help.

In October, Myanmar quietly revised a deadline the ex-junta set in 1999 to wipe out illicit drugs by 2014. It changed the date to 2019 and set a more realistic target.

“Our objective is to reduce opium poppy cultivation as much as we can.” said Myint Thein. “There is no country where you have zero drugs.”

ethnic Lisu man looks out of his house as Myanmar police officers watch a gathering of villagers in Thon Min Yar village, central Shan state, Myanmar.

For years, soldiers with sickles were sent to destroy poppy crops, which was easy but ineffective.

“The government now realizes eradication doesn’t work,” said Jason Eligh, the UNODC representative in Myanmar who is leading a U.N. pilot project to help farmers switch to legal crops. “The government is starting to understand the value in admitting mistakes and admitting failure. These are small steps, but this is progress.”

After being unable to access the drug-and-conflict zone for decades, the U.N. agency was allowed to enter southern Shan state for the first time in January 2012. The breakthrough came a month after the government signed cease-fire agreements with different factions of the Shan State Army.

Convincing farmers to try planting new crops is one of many challenges ahead, Eligh says.

“The farmers don’t just want to eat. They need to make money,” he said, adding that the government needs to offer farmers a path to a better life, with better roads, new schools and health centers and, most of all, peace and security.

“A process has begun. Will a process continue? I don’t know,” said Eligh. “These are groups that have been killing each other for decades. We’ve only been talking a few months. I would say this is a fragile relationship.”

Eligh’s pilot project has already persuaded some farmers to switch, but they may end up switching right back.

A middle-aged farmer named Awa Wadaa grew opium for 20 years and was pulling in $3,500 a year in the five-month poppy season when the U.N. offered him a way out. In 2012, he worked year-round rotating crops of corn, potatoes and sunflowers, and earned just $500.

“I don’t want to grow poppies. I understand it is illegal and that drugs hurt our children,” Awa Wadaa said. But the father of five added that without his poppy-farming income, he can’t afford to keep his children in school.

“If I can’t find a way to make more money,” he said, “I will definitely go back to growing poppies.”

___

Associated Press Writer Thanyarat Doksone contributed to this report from Bangkok.

News

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

Pixa Bay

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

google

Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

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The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP

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Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli, To repay $6.4 Million

Washington — The Supreme Court rejected Martin Shkreli’s appeal on Monday, after he was branded “Pharma Bro” for raising the price of a lifesaving prescription.

Martin appealed a decision to repay $64.6 million in profits he and his former company earned after monopolizing the pharmaceutical market and dramatically raising its price. His lawyers claimed the money went to his company rather than him personally.

The justices did not explain their reasoning, as is customary, and there were no notable dissents.

Prosecutors, conversely, claimed that the firm had promised to pay $40 million in a settlement and that because Martin orchestrated the plan, he should be held accountable for returning profits.

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli

Martin was also forced to forfeit the Wu-Tang Clan’s unreleased album “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,” which has been dubbed the world’s rarest musical album. The multiplatinum hip-hop group auctioned off a single copy of the record in 2015, stipulating that it not be used commercially.

Shkreli was convicted of lying to investors and defrauding them of millions of dollars in two unsuccessful hedge funds he managed. Shkreli was the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals (later Vyera), which hiked the price of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill after acquiring exclusive rights to the decades-old medicine in 2015. It cures a rare parasite condition that affects pregnant women, cancer patients, and HIV patients.

shkreli

He defended the choice as an example of capitalism in action, claiming that insurance and other programs ensured that those in need of Daraprim would eventually receive it. However, the move prompted criticism, from the medical community to Congress.

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli

Attorney Thomas Huff said the Supreme Court’s Monday ruling was upsetting, but the high court could still overturn a lower court judgment that allowed the $64 million penalty order even though Shkreli had not personally received the money.

“If and when the Supreme Court does so, Mr. Shkreli will have a strong argument for modifying the order accordingly,” he told reporters.

Shkreli was freed from prison in 2022 after serving most of his seven-year sentence.

SOURCE | AP