The US is frustrated that Turkey withholds military help from besieged Kobane.
Captagon Pills Keep The IS Jihadis Cool As Kobane Bleeds
by Anorak | 12th, October 2014
A Cambodian Army officer, left, exhales marijuana smoke after using a homemade pipe as a soldier plays guitar in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 1973. (AP Photo/Chhor Yuthi) Date: 00/00/1973
THE People brings readers:
Inside Kobane: Drug-crazed ISIS savages rape, slaughter and behead children
We hear testimony from Ekram Ahmet, 40, “who fled Kobane with his wife and five children six days ago”.
He says:
“Many have nowhere to go and many more are trapped between the town and the Turkish border – out in the open waiting for rescue or certain death.”
The Kurds are caught.
Ahmed adds:
“IS are animals. They’re not human. They have a bloodlust the like of which I’ve never seen – it’s as if they enjoy killing. They revel in cutting heads off – it’s like their trademark. They are filthy, with straggly beards and long black nails. They have lots of pills with them that they all keep taking. It seems to make them more crazy if anything. They become agitated and excited, desperate to punish even children for the smallest thing.”
Locals believe pills found on dead IS soldiers are amphetamines, which fire up the fighters’ greed for killing.
You can read it all here.
But do amphetamimes make you greedy for murder?
Reuters reported:
Drugs experts, traders and local activists say Syrian production of the most popular of the stimulants, known by its former brand name Captagon, accelerated in 2013, outpacing production in other countries in the region such as Lebanon.
Reports of seizures and interviews with people connected to the trade suggest it generates hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenues in Syria, potentially providing funding for weapons, while the drug itself helps combatants dig in for long, grueling battles…
The drug was first produced in the West in the 1960s to treat hyperactivity, narcolepsy and depression, but by the 1980s was banned in most countries because of its addictive properties and no longer has a legitimate medical use. Its active ingredient, fenethylline, is metabolized by the body into the stimulants amphetamine and theophylline.
Time has more:
In one month, Lebanese authorities confiscated more than $200 million worth of a potent amphetamine that is almost entirely unheard of in the West. But in the Persian Gulf, Captagon, as the amphetamine is known, is the most sought-after drug on the street, and the conflict in Syria, with its attendant lawlessness, is making it even easier to obtain.
As the war drags on, it is all the more likely that Captagon will take on a significant role funding warring parties in the conflict. The captured cargo trucks were owned by a Sunni Syrian clan long linked to the drug trade that fled the besieged city of Homs last year to set up shop in Lebanon, says Chams Eddine, who suspects that the proceeds may have been used in part to fund anti–Bashar Assad rebels. “They run two or three operations like that, and they can easily get $300 million. That would buy a lot of guns.”…
In the spring of 2012, Lebanese officials busted a vast Captagon manufacturing and smuggling ring run by prominent members of Hizballah. At least 10 machines, capable of producing tens of thousands of pills a day, were confiscated and destroyed…
On Sept. 17, Saudi Arabia executed a Syrian man convicted of smuggling Captagon into the kingdom; another was hanged for the same crime in March 2012. Most smugglers caught trafficking the drug in Lebanon are also Syrian, says Lebanese drug-enforcement official Chams Eddine. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Syrians have taken over the drug business. At least not yet. With the war producing some 2 million refugees, and another 5 million internally displaced, desperation is driving more Syrians to take up smuggling on behalf of Lebanese cartels. But as lawlessness grows in Syria, so too does that country’s manufacturing capabilities.
This site about amphetamimes say it’s nothing new:
Soldiers on both sides in World War Two consumed millions of amphetamine tablets. This practice sometimes caused states of quasi-psychotic aggression in the combatants. From 1942, Hitler received daily methamphetamine injections from his quack doctor Morell. This corrupted his judgement, undermined his health and probably changed the course of the War.
German soldiers during World War II were hyped for killing by a powerful stimulant handed out like battlefield rations.
Pervitin, an amphetamine manufactured by Berlin-based pharmaceutical giant Temmler Werke, was given to soldiers in millions of doses and sold over the counter to civilians.
In letters home from the front, German soldiers often asked family members to send along tablets of the powerful stimulant which induced heightened energy, euphoria and decreased the need for sleep.
“Perhaps you could obtain some more Pervitin for my supplies?” wrote Heinrich Boll to his family in Cologne in 1940.
Boll, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1972, was conscripted into the German military in his early 20s and was deployed to Hungary, Romania, France and the Soviet Union. The drug allowed him to find some blissful peace in the midst of war and kept him more alert than coffee, he wrote.
Pervitin, the precursor to “whites,” “speed,” “crank” and methamphetamines, was considered a wonder drug that not only kept soldiers alert and focused, but also increased morale.
Military members also called it “tank chocolate” and “pilot’s salt.”
Well, is speed’s good enough for Mickey Mouse, it’s good enough for all the kids…
Posted: 12th, October 2014 | In: Reviews Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
