Cashing In Across The Golden Triangle

Historically, the Golden Triangle on the Mekong River has been a strategic yet largely impoverished crossroads between China, Laos, Thailand and Burma. This book considers the new transnational "economic corridors" connecting northern Thailand and south-western China via key border towns in Myanmar and Laos. Improved highways and ports have transformed towns and districts, bringing an influx of Chinese investment, tourism, and population movements.

The Golden Triangle region that joins Burma, Thailand, and Laos is one of the global centers of opiate and methamphetamine production. Opportunistic Chinese businessmen and leaders of various armed groups are largely responsible for the manufacture of these drugs. The region is defined by the apparently conflicting parallel strands of criminality and efforts at state building, a tension embodied by a group of individuals who are simultaneously local political leaders, drug entrepreneurs, and members of heavily armed militias.Ko-lin Chin, a Chinese American criminologist who was born and raised in Burma, conducted five hundred face-to-face interviews with poppy growers, drug dealers, drug users, armed group leaders, law-enforcement authorities, and other key informants in Burma, Thailand, and China. The Golden Triangle provides a lively portrait of a region in constant transition, a place where political development is intimately linked to the vagaries of the global market in illicit drugs.Chin explains the nature of opium growing, heroin and methamphetamine production, drug sales, and drug use. He also shows how government officials who live in these areas view themselves not as drug kingpins, but as people who are carrying the responsibility for local economic development on their shoulders.

This book proposes the alternative explanation on the pattern of ethnic conflict, especially the on-going civil war in Myanmar. Previously, most scholars accepted that narcotics play the crucial role in conflict as the resource of revenues. However, this book dramatically changes what we have ever thought before. It investigated in both field and documentary research by examining the role of narcotics in the ideological formation process and ethnic identification process. Consequently, the so-called ethno-narcotic politics was found in the way that the role of narcotics was able to be used as the source of political mobilization in various ways. Furthermore, the borderland is the appropriated area where the process of anti-ethno-narcotics identification could be emerged and later used as the main identity for the ethnic groups who remain fighting against state’s power.

For decades, Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle—where the borders of Thailand, Laos, and Burma intersect—has been infamous for its opium and heroin production. But then, in the 1990s, the drug gangs in the Golden Triangle began to produce methamphetamine, a synthetic drug that does not depend on any unreliable crop such as the opium poppy. In Thailand the drug has become known as yaba, “madness drug” or “madness medicine.” Unlike heroin, which is a “downer,” yaba—or speed—is an “upper” that makes those who take it hyperactive and often aggressive. It has led to murders, stabbings, and the kidnapping of innocent people. It breaks down the users mentally as well as physically. It is a real “madness drug.” But who are the merchants of this madness? This book provides the answer. It is based on extensive research, spanning several decades and including a collection of first-hand accounts of the drug trade from law enforcement officers and intelligence officials alike, as well as sources close to the drug traffickers themselves. This book will lead to a better understanding of the Golden Triangle drug trade, how it all began, and how it has grown to become a multi-billion dollar criminal enterprise.

For two decades, the Burmese warlord Khun Sa controlled nearly 70 percent of the world’s heroin supply, yet there has been little written about the legend the U.S. State Department branded the “most evil man in the world”—until now. Through exhaustive investigative journalism, this examination of one of the world’s major drug lords from the 1970s to the 1990s goes behind the scenes into the lives of the DEA specialists assigned the seemingly impossible task of capturing or killing him. Known as Group 41, these men would fight for years in order to stop a man who, in fact, had the CIA to thank for his rise to power. Featuring interviews with DEA, CIA, Mafia, and Asian gang members, this meticulously researched and well-documented investigation reaches far beyond the expected and delves into the thrilling and shocking world of the CIA-backed heroin trade.

Sustainable Economic Development: Resources, Environment, and Institutions presents 25 articles that lay the foundations of sustainable development in a way that facilitates effective policy design. The editors mix broad thematic papers with focused micro-papers, balancing theories with policy designs.The book begins with two sections on sustainable development principles and practice and on specific settings where sustainable development is practiced. Two more sections illuminate institutions, governance, and political economy. Additional sections cover sustainable development and agriculture, and risk and economic security, including disaster management. This rich source of information should appeal to any institution involved in development work, and to development practitioners grappling with an array of difficult on-the-ground developmental challenges. Analyzes policies that move markets and resource use patterns towards achieving sustainability Articles are kaleidoscopic in scope and creativity Authors embody extraordinary diversity and qualifications

The book uncovers the involvement of the Secret Service and how Maundy Gregory exploited sensitive information that enabled him to gain access and influence to pillars of the establishment. It reveals for the first time the contents of the recently de-classified secret file held on Gregory and his activities by the Vatican and exposes the circumstances surrounding Gregory's 1933 arrest for selling honours and the deal he was offered by Cabinet Ministers to quite the country in return for a light sentence and a pension for life.

Rethinking Supply Chain outlines how organizations can close the gap between the supply chain capabilities they have and the supply chain capabilities they want. The supply chains built pre-covid are no longer suitable in the current volatile business environment. Rethinking Supply Chain explores why and how organizations can upgrade their supply chains to level 5 maturity, enhancing them to be more sustainable, strategy-driven and resilient. It outlines the dangers of using outdated supply chain practices, sharing what goes wrong when organizations run level 5 complexity and variability with a level 1 capability. It shows how organizations can improve their strategic planning, supply chain design, sales and operations planning and business planning processes to respond to new dynamic levels of variability and complexity. It is supported by practical frameworks and roadmaps. This book outlines why supply chain reconfiguration is needed, how to define a business case for change and the steps needed to drive effective transformation. Rethinking Supply Chain also explores how to integrate sustainability into the heart of supply chain design and operations and examines the trade-offs organizations must navigate, depending on whether they wish to be at par, differentiate or dominate on sustainability drivers.

'Reads like a thriller you can't put down' - Megha Rajagopalan, China Bureau Chief, Buzzfeed News 'ensures you'll never think about Southeast Asia in the same way ever again.' - Geographical Magazine Essential to understanding Southeast Asia in the 21st century, Hello, Shadowlands reveals a booming underworld of organised crime across a region in flux— a $100 billion trade that deals in narcotics, animals and people —and the staggering human toll that is being steadily ignored by the West. From Myanmar's anarchic hills to the swamplands of Vietnam, jihadis are being pitted against brothel workers, pet thieves against vigilantes and meth barons against Christian vice squads. Hello, Shadowlands takes a deep plunge into crime rings both large and small. It also examines how China's rise and America's decline is creating new opportunities for transnational syndicates to thrive. Focusing on human stories on both sides of this crime wave, the acclaimed Bangkok-based broadcaster and journalist Patrick Winn intimately profiles the men and women of the region who are forced to make agonizing choices in the absence of law.

Considering the question of how levels of security allow state power to be increased to the point at which it infringes essential civil liberties, this book explores the creeping power of the executive and the unfeasibility of widespread use of the Human Rights Act as a bulwark against the oppressive use of state power.