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Why Thailand’s is Losing its Battle with Illicit Narcotics from Myanmar

The days of small drug busts in Thailand are long over, since at least 2017 seizures of illicit narcotics have involved shipments of multiple millions of “yaba” speed tablets and truckloads of high-purity crystal methamphetamine weighing hundreds of kilograms and often over a tonne.

But even by the standards of the kingdom’s new normal, the size of the latest bust was a jaw-dropper that stunned even seasoned cops and counter-narcotics officials.

On November 12 an intelligence tip-off led police to a warehouse in Chachoengsao province close to Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport where they found a massive stash of ketamine, or “Super K”, a hallucinogenic drug increasingly popular in East Asia.

Weighing in at over 11.5 tonnes with a street value of close to US$1 billion, it marked the biggest interdiction of illicit drugs in the history of a country that has been the main transit route for illicit narcotics spilling out of Myanmar since the 1950s.

The unprecedented seizure threw into stark relief two overarching realities of a narcotics crisis that governments across the region are already well aware of but can never afford to publicly admit.

Industrial-scale production of illicit narcotics

The first is that Myanmar’s Shan state, that country’s largest administrative division, has emerged as a de facto special economic zone (SEZ) for the industrial-scale production of a smorgasbord of illicit narcotics. Shan state’s spiraling drugs industry operates mostly securely beyond the reach of local or international law enforcement.

The other is that behind an impressive facade of well-funded national counter-narcotics bureaucracies, feel-good international conferences and pro forma commitments to stepped up cooperation, Asia’s war on drugs is being comprehensively lost.

The winners are well-organized professional crime cartels with global reach that continue to diversify and expand their operations while corrupting and undermining any official capacity for serious response.

At least some of the Chachoengsao haul, packaged as harmless chemicals, was headed from Bangkok to Taiwan. A tip-off from Taiwanese police alerted their Thai counterparts to the warehouse. The warning had been triggered by a 300-kilogram ketamine seizure in Taiwan and the intelligence derived from it a few days earlier.

Chiang Rai’s Golden Triangle Border

Chiang Rai's Golden Triangle Border According to authorities, the warehouse had been rented since July this year by a Thai national of hill-tribe ethnicity from the northern border province of Chiang Rai – part of what in simpler days of opium and heroin trafficking became known as the “Golden Triangle” where Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet.

Senior Thai narcotics officials confirmed almost immediately that the ketamine had been produced across the border inside Shan state. Exactly where in a sprawling, mountainous region that constitutes nearly one-quarter of Myanmar’s total territory will probably never be known.

The arrest of the Chiang Rai middleman before the warehouse was overrun by police and TV crews might have provided hard intel on who produced the synthetic drug and where. In the event, good police work was trumped by the local proclivity for media-soaked seizure celebrations that afford senior police and politicians prime-time “face.” Alerted by the media bonanza, the Chiang Rai hill-tribe operative skipped town and remains on the lam.

In a sense, though, hard intelligence on where the latest batches of ketamine were produced would have been only of academic interest.

Thai authorities of the Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB) already possess megabytes of data, much of it shared with their international counterparts, mapping the forensics of narcotics types and signatures of drug-producing “labs” across Shan state.

Surging volume and growing diversification

Myanmar drug seizure

According to the regional offices of the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Bangkok, the rising tsunami of Shan-centered illicit production is now estimated to involve cash flows of $61.4 billion annually — up from around $40 billion in 2017.

Surging volume, growing diversification and the increasingly standardized purity of narcotics production all reflect sweeping changes in the Shan state trade.

The 1990s era of insurgent-run heroin and yaba production using hand-cranked presses in temporary jungle huts has transformed to large-scale industrial facilities run by sophisticated criminal enterprises catering to expanding and increasingly globalized markets.

Operated by skilled chemists – often from Taiwan – the new production hubs are financed and run by what narcotics intelligence sources describe as a shifting handful of cartels, mostly ethnic Chinese based in what they refer to as the “Hong Kong-Macao-Guangdong Triangle.”

Overlaps with traditional triad organizations such as the 14K and Big Circle Boys and, in some cases, previous business collaboration with Shan state heroin producers, are not uncommon.

Myanmar’s Shan state a zone of anarchy

Surging volume and growing diversification

As the UNODC’s peripatetic Bangkok head Jeremy Douglas argues, the rise of cartel-run production in Shan state was initially triggered by a sweeping and concerted crackdown on meth production across southeastern China dating back to 2014.

“Before that, China was the biggest producer of meth in Asia and drawing international attention,” he notes. “We then see a sharp drop in China and a steady rise in Shan.”

Not by coincidence in the years that followed, seizures of meth labs declined across Southeast Asia, notably in the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia, as production in the far more secure hills of northeast Myanmar was ramped up.

Amid the chaotic military and administrative fragmentation of Shan state, a zone of anarchy that meets virtually any definition of a “failed state”, East Asian drug syndicates are broadly invested in two categories of local armed protection.

The first consists of ethnic armed organizations typically based east of the Salween River and in stable ceasefire arrangements with Myanmar’s national military, or Tatmadaw.

Expanded heroin production

illicit narcotics shan state myanmar

Controlling a wide swath of territory between the Salween River and the Chinese border, the United Wa State Army (UWSA) ranks as the largest and militarily most powerful such group.

With a standing army of some 27,000 trained and well-equipped regulars, its armed forces have achieved a level of deterrence that for the foreseeable future precludes any government action against it.

Headquartered in the town of Mong La, a smaller UWSA ally and neighbor, the National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA), controls territory along the Chinese border further east.

Critically it also provides access to the Mekong River at the Myanmar port of Sop Lui, situated opposite of Laos, facilitating the movement of a wide range of goods including narcotics and precursor chemicals in addition to vehicles, weaponry and more.

Having expanded heroin production through the 1990s and later diversified into methamphetamine stimulants, the UWSA appears to have reduced its role in direct production in favor of other potentially lucrative roles in the trade, not least leasing space and protection to outside players.

Corroboration of that appeared to emerge from Taiwan in August this year following a major counter-narcotics operation which saw the seizure of 645 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine and 395 kilograms of heroin being landed from a vessel.

Myanmar’s military providing air transport

illicit narcotics shan state myanamar A senior prosecutor was quoted in local media as noting that the key Taiwanese trafficker arrested in the bust had been “known to visit and purchase drugs in Southeast Asia and (had) allegedly taken military planes or helicopters into the ‘Golden Triangle’.”

A senior counter-narcotics intelligence official who spoke to Asia Times discounted the possibility of Myanmar’s military providing air transport for a Taiwanese drug dealer, but added pointedly that the UWSA is known to operate several transport helicopters.

Sources also noted that over the past two to three years the Wa have branched out into trafficking and possibly even producing precursor chemicals – potentially a hugely profitable business that obviates current efforts to stem the flow of precursors moving into Shan state mainly from China but also from Thailand and other countries.

The sources noted that over this period there has been confirmation that the Wa area had imported significant quantities of “unique and very sophisticated chemicals.”

Given that there are no known industries in the region that might require these chemicals for any legitimate use, the imports “in volumes that are inexplicable” appeared intended either to produce precursor chemicals required for meth production or possibly to manufacture other synthetic drugs.

Specialized chemicals from China

illicit narcotics shan state myanmar

The supposition in intelligence circles is that these specialized chemicals – imported from both China and Laos via other countries in the Lower Mekong region – are being used to produce precursors.

That notion has been reinforced by analysis of regional data and intelligence that reflects, on the one hand, the staggering increase in crystal methamphetamine production in Shan state, and, on the other, the fact that seizures of traditional precursors ephedrine and pseudo-ephedrine have declined.

“This potentially puts the Wa in a broker role for precursors being used in other parts of Shan state,” noted one official. “And bear in mind that these precursors can be worth more the drugs themselves in Shan state.”

This is the first in a two-part series on Asia’s losing war on drugs by the Asia Times.

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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