From Russia With Drugs

A Dostoevskian psychological novel of ideas, Novel with Cocaine explores the interaction between psychology, philosophy, and ideology in its frank portrayal of an adolescent's cocaine addiction. The story relates the formative experiences of Vadim at school and with women before he turns to drug abuse and the philosophical reflections to which it gives rise. Although Ageyev makes little explicit reference to the Revolution, the novel's obsession with addictive forms of thinking finds resonance in the historical background, in which "our inborn feelings of humanity and justice" provoke "the cruelties and satanic transgressions committed in its name.

The other report is published by the U. S. State Department and is more "committed," but only as far as the national interest of the world's only su perpower is concerned. Therefore, the State Department report must be read while keeping in mind the state of U. S. relations with the countries concerned. This report is accompanied by the so-called "certification" process, whose ar bitrary character has often been stressed. For instance, Iran, a country whose determination to fight the drug transit on its territory is well-known - more than 100 Iranian law enforcement agents die every year as a restult - was removed from the "blacklist" of "decertified countries" in the spring of 1999, precisely as it was inaugurating a policy of opening itself to external influ ence, including that of the United States. In retrospect, this demonstrates that the U. S. government had decertified Iran in past years because it was viewed as an Islamic and terrorist country, not because of its supposed involvement in drug trafficking. Neither does the last State Department report explain why Haji Ayub Afridi, a major Pakistani drug baron, who had voluntarily surrendered to U. S. authorities, returned to Pakistan in 1999 after spending a mere three and a half years in a U. S. prison.

Prepared by the Nat. Narcotics Intelligence Consumers Comm. Presents a comprehensive assessment of the worldwide illicit drug situation. The product of a cooperative effort by Fed. agencies with drug-related law enforcement, foreign, and domestic policy, treatment, intelligence, and research responsibilities. Covers: cocaine (esp. in Bolivia, Colombia and Peru); opiates (esp. Mexico, Asia, and Russia); cannabis (incl. Hashish, in Pakistan and Afghanistan); chemicals, diversion, and dangerous drugs (stimulants, hallucinogens, clandestine labs); drug money (money laundering process and trends); and distribution. Charts.

Peter Dale Scott's brilliantly researched tour de force illuminates the underlying forces that drive U.S. global policy from Vietnam to Colombia and now to Afghanistan and Iraq. He brings to light the intertwined patterns of drugs, oil politics, and intelligence networks that have been so central to the larger workings of U.S. intervention and escalation in Third World countries through alliances with drug-trafficking proxies. This strategy was originally developed in the late 1940s to contain communist China; it has since been used to secure control over foreign petroleum resources. The result has been a staggering increase in the global drug traffic and the mafias associated with it_a problem that will worsen until there is a change in policy. Scott argues that covert operations almost always outlast the specific purpose for which they were designed. Instead, they grow and become part of a hostile constellation of forces. The author terms this phenomenon parapolitics_the exercise of power by covert means_which tends to metastasize into deep politics_the interplay of unacknowledged forces that spin out of the control of the original policy initiators. We must recognize that U.S. influence is grounded not just in military and economic superiority, Scott contends, but also in so-called soft power. We need a 'soft politics' of persuasion and nonviolence, especially as America is embroiled in yet another disastrous intervention, this time in Iraq.

This book studies the role of civil society organisations in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Russia. It looks at how Russia’s HIV/AIDS epidemic has developed into a serious social, economic and political problem, and how according to the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), Russia is currently facing the biggest HIV/AIDS epidemic in all of Europe with an estimated number of 980,000 people living with HIV in 2009. The book investigates civil society organisations’ contribution to social change and civil society development in post-Soviet Russia, and thus situates a specific type of civil society actors into a broader socio-political context and questions their ability to represent civic interests, particularly in the field of social policy-making and health. This allows for a better understanding of the dynamics of state-society relations in present-day Russia, and gives insight into the ways HIV/AIDS NGOs in Russia have used transnational ties in order to exert influence on domestic policy-making in the field of HIV/AIDS.

Examines the abuse of drugs in the West and the scope and value of the illegal drugs business, and the failure of the drug enforcement programmes either to curtail the supply of drugs or to persuade users to abandon their habit.