So, part of what Franklin had said was true.
Zodhiss noted it down in his records, but he still refused to fully trust Franklin's words.
This was the caution of a researcher. After all, what if that Franklin was merely a disguise worn by some dimensional demon god?
Or what if Franklin had ulterior motives and was deliberately misleading him?
Besides, he had been projecting his psionic power for quite some time now, and there was still no sign of the Phoenix Force.
...
Matters within Earth's internal affairs had also reached certain outcomes. For instance, under the influence of Alexander Pierce, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s annual budget had been slashed by more than half.
An intelligence agency that had been established less than a year, one that seemed to have boundless prospects, was now effectively crippled before it could truly take flight.
Meanwhile, the CIA saw its black budget swell to terrifying new heights.
Where did the Central Intelligence Agency's endless river of covert funding come from? Congressional appropriations? If that were the case, the agency would have shut its doors long ago.
Interfering in foreign coups, orchestrating color revolutions, and cultivating networks of local collaborators everywhere, the CIA's primary source of funds came from various narcotics trafficking operations.
Take heroin, for example. What many people do not know (and what the media certainly will not advertise) is that after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Afghanistan quickly became the world's foremost producer of heroin.
According to United Nations statistics, Afghan heroin production has skyrocketed since 2002. In 2014 alone, it was estimated that Afghanistan produced 6,500 tons of opium, the raw material for refining heroin.
Ninety percent of the heroin consumed in Canada and Europe originates from Afghanistan.
Did the Taliban, who were getting their teeth kicked in on the battlefield, suddenly develop this capability? If so, why didn't they do it earlier? What does all of this indicate?
America's expertise in controlling the global narcotics market was honed in the Golden Triangle, the world's primary source region for illicit drugs.
At the same time, the United States actively supported figures like Manuel Noriega in his drug manufacturing and trafficking operations. The Latin American cartel, Medellín Cartel, even established a cocaine processing facility in the Darién Province of Panama. A significant portion of those drugs was smuggled into the United States.
The Central Intelligence Agency was fully aware of this situation. But drug enforcement was not within the CIA's purview. On the contrary, the more drugs were sold, the larger the CIA's cut of the profits. Consequently, the CIA simply locked away any intelligence regarding Noriega's drug smuggling into the U.S. inside file safes stamped "Top Secret."
The flourishing narcotics trade inevitably gave rise to another industry: money laundering.
In 2012, the New York Federal Court disclosed that HSBC, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America had all participated in laundering money for drug cartels. Notably, HSBC laundered $1.1 billion within the United States for Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel in 2008.
Those that were caught merely paid fines and carried on, while institutions like Citibank, Bank of New York, and Bank of Boston remained entirely untouched. Who was protecting the money laundering industry? Wall Street or the White House?
Narcotics will not disappear within the next hundred years. The methods of production will only become more sophisticated, and the laundering schemes more refined. Yet the anti-drug slogans will continue to ring out loud and clear.
The annual budget of the Sword Bureau had reached a staggering one hundred billion U.S. dollars. Although the funds were officially allocated through the United Nations, one could easily imagine just how much of that money ultimately traced back to the narcotics trade.
The narcotics economy was nearly impossible to suppress entirely. Moreover, it fell well outside the Sword Bureau's operational jurisdiction.
That did not mean Zodhiss was content to let the drug trade flourish unchecked. It was a poison that sapped humanity's potential. He figured sending the Monster Association to wreak some havoc on the trade might be a good idea.
In the eyes of the Monster Association, all humans were the same; there were no good or bad distinctions among them. If they attacked narcotics production bases and disrupted the drug economy, it would naturally incur the wrath of those who profited immensely from it. In turn, that would only make those power brokers value the Sword Bureau's protection even more.
It was like killing two birds with one stone.
Afghanistan, Mexico, Latin America, even the Golden Triangle, which had officially announced a full shift toward tea and corn cultivation, continued to produce narcotics in secret.
These were the production zones Zodhiss was aware of. As for those he did not know, a quick inquiry with the Black Queen revealed them all.
...
Afghanistan. Territory under the control of the Ten Rings.
A vast field of blooming poppies stretched across the landscape. Pink poppy flowers covered the mountains and valleys like fragments of celestial clouds fallen to earth.
A group of women, elders, and children labored among the poppies. Only by delivering a sufficient quota of poppy pods could they obtain food rations from the Ten Rings. If the poppies in their fields failed, they would simply starve to death.
Under the Ten Rings' dominion, the Pashtun people residing here cultivated tens of thousands of acres of poppies. Dozens more such poppy farms existed across the region.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban grew poppies. The Ten Rings grew poppies. Even large Pashtun tribal confederations grew poppies. The total area under poppy cultivation in Afghanistan had reached 3.28 million hectares. The annual opium yield was projected to approach ninety million tons.
Since the U.S. military invaded Afghanistan, the country's poppy output had climbed year after year. No faction could resist the lure of the poppy. Without cultivating poppies, they would lose their financial lifeline. Without sufficient funds, they could not purchase advanced weaponry or sustain their armed forces. And without sufficient military power, they would vanish from the Afghan landscape in no time at all.
Individual effort was utterly powerless to alter this environment.
A group of children clad in filthy, tattered rags huddled together, eerily quiet.
Each of these children had mouths full of rotting teeth. Some parents, seeking to quiet their fussy offspring, simply fed them opium as if it were chocolate. No matter how noisy a child might be, a dose of opium would render them docile and still.
Having received no education, they had no concept that opium was addictive.
Some of the women and elders were missing a hand. It was the punishment meted out by the Ten Rings for those caught attempting to hide poppy pods for themselves.
This land was on the brink of death. What it needed was not Iron Man, nor Captain America, and certainly not a god.
It needed destruction. As for whether it could be reborn from those ashes, that would depend entirely upon the people themselves.
After all, there were far too many cases in this world where one could only lament their misfortune and rage at their passivity.
A colossal monster descended from the sky.
"Hahahaha! Humans! I am the Ice Cream Monster, transformed by eating too much ice cream! Prepare to die!"
The Ice Cream Monster unleashed a torrent of ultra-low temperature frozen treats. The ice cream was so cold that mere contact was enough to instantly freeze and necrotize human flesh, causing it to slough off the bone.
However, before the icy onslaught could reach human bodies, it first engulfed and buried vast swathes of the poppy flowers.
The women, elders, and children stared at the scene in bewildered shock. What were they supposed to do now that the poppies were gone?
The Ice Cream Monster's attack quickly drew the attention of the Ten Rings. The commotion was simply too great to ignore. And what drove the Ten Rings militants into an even greater frenzy was the sight of their painstakingly cultivated poppy fields being utterly annihilated!
/-\
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