Felly, ydych yn ffyniadau, mae'n gwybod ymddangos o'r fain iawn. Felly, rwy'n gweithio i'r antyni Heimann Llywodraeth, oedd amddangos yma i'r dr David Mansfield, a'r cyffredin o bobl yn gystafell, sy'n ddysgu i'r afganistau. Fy gennym Ionathan Goodhand, ac mae'n ysgolwch i'r ddysgu ddysgu i'r dyfosedd, sy'n gyrch yn y ddweud o'r Fyfr, mae'r ddweud o'r Cynllun Cymru, ac mae'r ddweud yng ngyfrightd yng Nghymru, ac mae'r ddweud yn cyffredinol ar gyfer y trafod, ac mae'r ddweud yn cyffredinol ar gyfer y gynhyrch.  Mae'r leisio, y leisio an wastebethau, yn ystyried ar gyfer y gadael. Mae'n gynghori'r amser cyllid â'r llwyryd cyfwyr yw'r amser cyllid â'r rai ac yn ystyried ar gyfer y ffrindigol a'r ystyried. Mae'n cael ei wneud o'r gyhoeddol i amser o'r amser ac o'r cyllid â'r amser, a'r ymddangos a'r amser yn y gyfansiwn i hyn yn y llwyte. Ond ydych chi'n gweithio'n ddweud i'w Davies, ond rydyn ni'n rhoi'n ddweud i'r fanfyrdd yma yn ymgyrch yn deudio'r ddweud.  Felly, rydyn ni'n ddweud yn ei ddarparu reif yn ymgyrch. Rydyn ni'n wneud yn ni'n ddweud i fynd i gael'r amser a i'n ddysgu'r weithio. Felly, nid i ddim gynnwys David. David, wrth am fawr, rydyn ni wedi cael ei Llywodraeth nad yn ni yn rhaid i dweud o wneud amam y dyfu yma'r ystod. Something that is so central to Afghanistan's political economy and to the lives and livelihoods of a major part of Afghanistan's population. As many of you will know, there are few policy arenas in which there is such a mismatch between the evidence base and the dominant policy paradigm. As David himself has repeatedly written, policy narratives around drugs are based on patchy and politicized evidence and flawed assumptions about why Afghan communities are engaged in drug cultivation. Secondly, I'm very happy that it's David who's giving this talk. I think we can very confidently say that there's no one else better qualified in the world to be talking about the complexities of drug production and counter-optic policies in Afghanistan than David. He's now entering his third decade of studying and doing field research on drugs in Afghanistan. He's been to Afghanistan every growing season since 1997, often at great personal risk to himself and the researchers he works with. So he's got unrival credibility in challenging problematic data and policy myths about drugs. Over the years he's produced a stream of very influential policy papers and articles. Through his research, his writing, his consultancy on drugs issues, he straddles the academic and the policy communities. He brings together analytical insights about drugs and also about the real world of counter-optics institutions and policy-making environments. David and I have known each other for, I think, 17 years now. Against his better judgment, David decides to embark on a PhD at SARS under my supervision. He somehow managed to do this alongside his day job. One of the products of this, it's not just of his PhD, but one of the products of it has been this groundbreaking book published by Hearst in 2015. I think it was last, actually to end at the beginning of last year. The title is the title of today's lecture. It's the defining study of drugs, livelihoods and state building in Afghanistan. The book teaches us many things, but perhaps one of the most important messages is that we need to stop exceptionalising and demonising drugs. There's need to reconnect it to embed it within the social context, the political context and the economic context in which drugs are grown and trafficked. The excuse at easy generalisation shows the complex amount of factors that influence the cultivation of drugs and counter-optics policies in Afghanistan. David is going to be talking about a state built on sand. He's going to be talking for about 40 to 45 minutes. Then we'll open it up for questions and we'll finish at 7.30. We will continue the conversation in the reception just outside here. Welcome, David. It's great to have you here. Thanks, Jonathan. It's amazing he still speaks to me after my PhD and my failure to deliver on so many deadlines. It's even more kind of him to invite me to do this. Thank you very much to Anthony Hyman's family for the honour of speaking here tonight. I suppose it's important that I do introduce myself in different ways. Some of the caveats to my book and the work that I've done and the work that I'm going to present here. I've spent, as Jonathan says, too many years, far too many years looking into poppy cultivation. The longer I've been in Afghanistan and the more I've dealt with people in embassies and various other things, and they tell me why people grow up and the more I realise just how slow I must be. Because there's so many simple explanations for poppy cultivation and changes in poppy cultivation. I'm not sure why I have spent 20 years doing it. The work I've done has tried to look at how open bands have been implemented in Afghanistan. From the Taliban band of 2000-2001, bands in Nangahar under Hajidim Mohamed and Gulag Ashurzai. More recently, Daesh in the upper areas of Achi and the southern districts of Nangahar. As well as, of course, the famous or infamous Hellman Food Zone for 2008 onwards. I've also looked at how these bands have affected lives and livelihoods of the rural population in Afghanistan. How that's played out in different kinds of space, different kinds of socio-economic groups. What I've also tried to understand through that prism of looking at these bands is what they tell us about political power and how it's articulated in rural Afghanistan. And subsequently what impact bands have on state building and conflict. And I think that's where things start to get quite interesting. So I'll offer a set of caveats to start with, because I'm just in case there's people in the room. They're always watching, you never know. The first caveat, more of a disclaimer, is that over the years I've worked for, and in some cases I continue to work for, a number of organisations, some of whom may be here, ARU, I work for the Foreign Office for a number of years, DFID, Asian Development Bank and EC. And of course, many years ago, I think when myself and Nancy Fitzhulbert first met, he doesn't look a day older, but I look, well, I've got a lot less hair. Many years ago, UNODC, I currently work for LSE, and I'd just like to be clear that what I say today is based on the empirical work that I've done and I'm not representing the views of any of these learned organisations. Second caveat, I come at this issue from a development perspective, and the work I do is grounded in conceptual framework and methodology of rural livelihoods and political economy. I avoid drugs fetishes and the plague, this sort of obsession that everything can be defined by farmers who grow or do not grow opium. The idea that farmers can be defined solely by whether they are poppy farmers or not poppy farmers if you read the UNODC surveys. The reasons that farmers engage in opium production cannot be summed up on the basis of a single response to a direct question is you'll find in many of those surveys. You often have conclusions that X% of farmers grow poppy because of the high price. Y% grow it because of poverty. Z% grow it because of the need for credit. We never have, actually these aren't mutually exclusive responses, so why do we have this? I do not know. You cannot sum up complex human behaviour in a single categorised answer in that way. So I won't have much of that. This is far more complex. It makes for nice takeaways and headlines. We see it often in the media, but this isn't the reality of what's happening in rural Afghanistan. I think we also see drugs fetishes in the way CNN efforts to ban poppy are analysed, where the reasons for a ban are justified in terms of vested interests, to push up opium prices, a famous explanation of the Taliban ban, make greater profits, the removal of competitors. From my experience, many bans often shouldn't even be seen primarily as acts of drug control. There's a lot of theatre around counter-nocotics. There's a lot of gamesmanship by all of us, not just Afghans, not just the Afghan government and authorities. So I encourage us to look beyond that theatre of counter-nocotics and these kind of claims and look at what farmers do. I use field work and imagery, but there are other ways to do that. Look at the agronomics of the crops. Is it even possible that the crop can grow at certain times of the year in certain locations? Explore livelihood systems. How does poppy fit in with the wheat for the livestock and the household that the household and livestock need? And examine research methodologies, because many present, many of the presentations we have that come from conventional narratives, conventional wisdoms and official narratives on drugs just make little sense. We really need to be far more discernible as we look at the data that we're presented with and we look at the explanations. Because what you come up with is information that suggests anecdote and rumours are circulating as fact than recirculating with academic rigor because suddenly they're cited in a peer-reviewed journal. Examples might be bands that didn't happen, i.e. the Taliban ban of 94-95. And it's a subsequent rescinding of 96. I can't see any evidence that that took place. None at all, but it's in the literature and it is commonly repeated. The introduction of poppy to central helman by Naseem Akhanzada who imposed poppy quotas on people at the risk of torture and death. Why do you need to be encouraged to grow something that works? Why do you need to be threatened with torture and death? And didn't Naseem Akhanzada really have that kind of control? I'd also add the current claims, I'm talking to earlier with Anthony about this, around GMO, Chinese seeds. You know, this is the classic stories that we see that aren't based on an understanding around rural ideas, agronomic realities. So, we need to dig into the detail and not take things as given. Not see everything in terms of drugs and drugs policy, drugs fetishism. We need to understand politics and economics and livelihoods. And these are critical to understanding what is really happening in rural Afghanistan, not just the narratives of the power. The third caveat is that my experience has become increasingly geographically focused within the country. A particular focus on Nangahar and Helmand where field work has been undertaken every six months in Nangahar for 11 years, I think it is. And now we're slipping into a year in Helmand, but ever since, well, most recently looking at the Helmand vote for food zones since 2008, I did used to spend my years in delightful provinces like Gore and Baddickshire, but those days are over. Although when I was writing this book, I was deeply immersed in reviewing my field notes from those times across a number of provinces. And this was incredibly helpful in developing a greater understanding of what, in particular, the Taliban prohibition tells us about the projection of state power in Afghanistan and how bans, since they should be understood, they do, after all, have a lot in common. The tricks of the Taliban will play it out time and time again subsequently. The fourth caveat is the fact that my geographic focus has become very concentrated in the last few years due to the security challenges of doing research in rural Afghanistan. In fact, my days of wandering around rural Afghanistan, eastern and southern, are well and truly over, as are many others. And I'm eternally grateful to my good friends and colleagues at OSDR, ALSIS and ARU for the partnership that we've developed over the years. They've allowed us to dig much deeper into the complex socio-economic political environmental processes that work and really understand the different factors that influence cultivation and how they vary by time, location and socio-economic group. There is nothing that can supplement the kind of imagery work that we have available these days. It is just incredibly helpful when you have problems of access yourself. So, finally, I just want to be clear here also but I'm not here claiming to have a monopoly of the truth. There isn't one. I have a perspective. It's based on experience, grounded in coming up to my third decade of fuel work and data of, I don't know, well over 10,000 household interviews. There is no more than that. But with those caveats at a site, I can safely say I am walking proof that there's a thin line between perseverance and stupidity and I crossed it a long, long time ago. So, with these duties done, that's what we're going to talk about this evening. So, clearly it's going to be OK. I am alas the man who's known for, as the guy that does OK, which can be really misconstrued. But I've actually had someone in DFID one time ring me up and say, use the guy that does opium. Really, can we stop talking like that? But I want to talk about what we've learned from the experience of banning opium over these last two decades in Afghanistan. In doing so, I want to talk about the politics of Afghanistan and how power is articulated, particularly in rural areas, because what we see in the implementation of bans in Afghanistan are multiple centres of power, complex bargains between national, subnational and local actors, as well as international donors and agencies. There are a lot of people at play in here. There's a lot of institutional and individual interests at play and we need to understand more about this. I also want to touch on what these bans and how they are described in their media, academia and bifishals tell us about how we as scholars, academics, policy makers and journalists work in Afghanistan. How we do research, how we verify findings, how we come to better understand the country in its different centres of power, and in particular I want to offer a warning not to overlook the agency of rural communities and their constituent parts to not just accept the narratives of the powerful but to hear the voices of community members who are often not the passive recipients of violence that some might suggest but active participants whose actions and sound effects on stability in political settlements and not just locally but also ripple all the way back to Kabul. And I think this is where the literature I often felt lets as many of us down. These kind of explanations of the haji who told us I can ban poppin. I'll do it tomorrow. Not actually thinking behind what actually, maybe he did do that, but what was actually behind it? How long would it endure? Some of the critical elements around how we work in Afghanistan. What it is to do research particularly as it gets more and more challenging. Now this is imagery. This is poppy probability. Essentially the probability that poppy will be found in various parts of the country. Purple, bright purple being high probability. So you see the bad geese, the helman, the kanan, the lower the distance. In a variety of areas in 2016 this is the centers of poppy cultivation. We are most likely to find it. So what do we learn from banning poppy? First is quite clear. It is possible to ban poppy. And you can do it in a very short period of time. With the right degree of coercion, a lot of bargaining and deal making at the international, national, sub-national and local level. A ban can be opposed on a population that will result in a dramatic reduction across a relatively wide geographic area. We know this. The Taliban did it. Great effect in 2000-2001 where cultivation just dropped out in the sky. We also saw it in 2016 with Daesh and some of the upper parts of Achin, Debala and Cot where they gained traction. And I can show you some of the, it's a bit of Hogyani poppy looking good. There too. The weak is the more even crop poppy is the lighter green. So, hang on. You can see the bans taking place. Taliban ban. How did you do my hammock? Do you like it? And it's down turn here. So we have a number of these bans. I'm using both sets of stats. There is UNODC stats, but there is also US government stats. Debate over which are the more accurate, but I don't think you can actually discuss poppy cultivation in Afghanistan without looking at the desegregated data and who's produced it and understanding the methodological issues around it. In some provinces you see they map each other quite well. In others, completely contrasting to this. Completely. Kandahar, they're like that. Cross-eat children. US is reporting they're coming down. UN is reporting they're going up. You really need to dig deeper. You can't just accept the figures that you see. So, I think what's less clear. We know we can ban poppy, you can ban it quickly. But what's less clear is under what conditions does a ban endure. And what are the implications of imposing a ban where those conditions are not in place? It's here that the repeated fieldwork in Nangahar and Helmand has been evaluated. In terms of enduring reductions, the Taliban ban off as little. They were, after all, fell within a single season. So, it's not possible to assess whether they could have sustained the ban into a second consecutive season, although there are a number of thoughts about this. I, myself, am of the view that the cracks were already beginning to show. I was part of the Taliban ban assessment mission. So we were, the donors were dragged into the country to verify that poppy wasn't there. We went to various parts of the country, Nangahar, Helmand, Kandahar, and looked and... No, I can safely say there's no poppy here. I'm looking at the processes of how it was imposed, and subsequently what consequences were, how they were manifesting at the local level. I thought what we saw was something that suggested severe fragilities in the Taliban regime and the history and nature of the Afghan state. The way the ban was imposed in particular areas, particularly up in the southern districts of Nangahar and places like that, there was some real signs that this was not going to last. I'm also of the view that the Taliban ban in 2000-2001 is the most misunderstood periods of contemporary Afghan history. That has not only led to counterproductive policy when it comes to drugs, but also impacted on how we understand politics and power in rural Afghanistan. But perhaps we can talk about that a bit later. In developing a better understanding of the lessons from banning opium over the last few decades, it's important to break from the habit of seeing things in terms of administrative boundaries and analysing provincial-level statistics for provinces like Nangahar and Helm. You have to disaggregate. In particular, we need to distinguish between areas where the state is stronger, i.e. where there is a history of state presence, social contract, where the state is imposed taxes, conscription and extracted rent on agricultural surfaces. Where economic opportunities for the population exist, these opportunities are actually realised and not just potential. These are the more accessible lower areas. The valleys where the population has better resource endowments, it has access to labour and commodity markets, and here we find local elites whose interests coincide with the national and provincial elites. These are patrons who have successfully concentrated economic and political power and use their considerable influence over rural communities to implement a ban. Now you can think of the cahns of Maman and of Kama or the Arsalawh family in Sukhur. These are people who have been instrumental in helping these bans to be imposed. They control economic and political power and have access to government positions. These are quite distinct from areas where state power is limited, where there is no tradition or of any notable state presence. These are areas where power is dissented and negotiated, where there are not hierarchical rural elites, not patrons but brokers, and where the state is typically sought to manage dissent rather than government direct. This is a completely different kind of space. When we look at the experience of opium bans in the terms of this diverse political topography, rather than through the prism of provincial boundaries, we see quite different responses according to different histories, social structures and resource endowments within these communities. This tells us how different populations will cope with a ban on poverty. If you look at that in a disaggregated terms, you've got a set of districts in Nangahar, some of which seem to be massive increases in population population over the last few years according to you and EDC, and others, cultivation is still a very low level. Completely different responses. So, in terms of success, we see areas like Sukhrod and Khmer, Vesood, where initial responses to the ban imposed by Haji Din Mohammed in 2005. Sorry, I don't have 2005. I'll go on to that bit. Where we saw in those areas, people basically abandoned poppy in 2005 through simple crop substitution. They took up onion in Sukhrod, green bean in Khmer, and that was followed by extensive crop diversification. Help by road building, work on the Khmer intake, and a growing demand for high-value horticulture crops in Kabul and beyond that. We see movements into non-farm income, initially Pakistan, the subsequent jobs in Jalalabad, summer in Kabul, working in construction, and growing number of local employment opportunities. It's Chemptala camp, jobs in the cities of, sorry, various development programs within the districts themselves. We also saw the security premium delivery of services, education, health, et cetera, in these areas. I mean these areas are unrecognisable when you go back to them. We did until more recently see some of these processes at work in the low part of the district of Shinwa as well, where farmers had in the past typically shifted between opium to wheat when poppy was banned, and then straight back to poppy when the ban was rescinded. But over time in Shinwa, you see much greater evidence of high-value horticulture, non-farm income, and there are other places across the east as well. I mean the mehtalams and car guys of this world, in Lugman, where farmers have been taking full advantage of the returns on Gandana, Newcambolettis, multiple crops. The differences that we see in these areas over the last 15 years is quite astounding. Not just the east, we have Dan Daman and of course Argendab. Argendab, we did in 2013 in Argendab. I think it's one of the only places in rural Afghanistan where farmers don't constantly complain. Actually supportive of the government's provision of development inputs. I mean it is an area where you look at the imagery. The place is just awash with pomegranates and grapes. They actually talk about the not area that's not pomegranates and grapes as black land. Almost unproductive. In Argendab, as I say, you see that. In Dandan, the man, you see these farmers who are incredibly responsive to changing prices of different vegetable crops moving between one and the other. We saw the same process as much as everyone talks about the failures of Helmand. We see the same processes in Helmand. You look at the crop diversification around Lashigar. It's just incredible over the years. 2009 to 2012. This is not to say that all farmers in these areas absorb the impact of prohibition very easily. We didn't see collective economic insecurity and widespread acts of resistance in these areas. There's often this talk as if eradication or a ban on opium immediately results in violence and resistance to the state. In some cases that resistance to the state is actually about negotiation. It's actually about trying to access greater amounts of development systems and erodes some further projects and isn't actually about trying to overthrow the state. Where we have seen that, you need to look at it in different terms. What distinguishes the farmers of opium almost seamlessly is, at one, that lighter land holds. Typically fewer dependents within the household. Two, they've accessed a non-farm income. A Zaranj. These great three-wheeled, they've sort of revolutionised the Afghan countryside as a Zaranj. The ability to move between A and B. There's a console that has three wheeled motorbikes that you can transport customers or you're producing. You have one of those. The Pakistani Rupee's Day moving between the farm gate and the city. A shop, a wage, all sorts of non-farm incomes that have actually been critical to help people move out of poppy. Sometimes a salary from the police or the army. The farmers who have made that move seamlessly also showed much greater levels of crop diversification. They're growing short maturation crops, green vegetables, intercropping with wheat. One's growing for food. The other one's growing for sale. And actually we should be comparing not just the unit of land with two crops, a crop by crop comparison. But if I can grow four units of, four crops on a unit of land as a consequence of short maturation peers and intercropping why are we making this false comparison between wheat and poppy in a way that the UN offered? It's an erroneous comparison. It's misleading. It leads to the Hellman food zone and the attempt to replace poppy by wheat. So, these other farmers also have other assets that can be sold which has allowed them to invest in other income streams. I have a number of long-term contacts who have invested their all-gotten gains from opium in buying certain shops. So one does a nice cream sailor in Goresh who did very well out of opium, thank you very much and decided to start the new shop with that. And has again made the move out of opium quite seamlessly as a consequence of that asset that you had to sell. The challenge is that in some of these, in the same provinces where we see reductions in cultivation without widespread economic hardship we also see stark evidence of failure. Of households who are not resilient to abandon poppy and the other shocks that they experience alongside. These are the areas where the Afghan state has not concentrated the means of violence and has no history of doing so and we're viable alternatives to poppy are just not in place. The Sengar valley in Alangar in Lagman or in Nangar it's much of the southern districts bording Pakistan where land holdings are small population densities are high and little crop diversification is taking place. Farmers essentially replace poppy with wheat. But these households can't meet their basic needs through wheat cultivation. They just can't grow enough wheat on the amount of land they have for the population densities they have to feed themselves. So when wheat prices go up they actually end up with a more expensive wheat deficit. And this is something I tried to explain to a number of people on shore others have done the same and it just doesn't go through. This comparison between wheat and poppy just continues to plague us all. So what we saw in those kind of areas were people joining the Afghan National Army but for many it was conscription by default. I mean I have families that we've done longitudinal research with. Some people call it stalking let's call it longitudinal research and they've got four sons who have joined the army year on year and they're not a sign of nationalism or patriotism I think this was a sign of the fact that the family couldn't survive without the income that it brought. They recognized the risks it brought of sending sons down south and when the bodies started coming back that's when they really started to turn in terms of their view of the government. So in these areas in these areas bands have not played out well in terms of support for the government. For example in the southern districts of Nangarha in those areas where Daesh is now penetrated it is now not unusual for households to have one or more son in the ANSF who can't come home and send the remittances but he can't come and visit unless he comes under disguise. Another son or cousin in the Talibah may have a brother working as a teacher receiving a salary from the government family members using the government clinic and school in fact the school attendance has gone up in some of these areas because the Taliban insist the teachers turn up and some of the pupils as well. They're growing poppy and where the household also provides some sort of tax payment chandar or usher or whatever to the Taliban local mosque along with other payments depending on their financial status and their connections of course and negotiation is everything and these things. So you have these incredibly complex hybrid regimes where communities take services from the state some of them which are improving as a consequence of Taliban presence but they grow poppy and they're welcoming the Taliban who after all aren't from the sky their local community members because they allow them to grow poppy. Return to widespread poppy cultivation in Nangarha was not overnight and I can show that that's how seven the ban came in and slowly it starts to creep back initially in the southern district you see it in Shazad there in Horyani comes down into action in 11th 12th by 13th and by 2013 we saw opium openly traded in Shadal Bazar again which hadn't seen since 2007 we saw the return of salam the advance payments on opium and real signs that opium poppy was here to start and where is the provincial the provincial authorities have been in a position to impose a ban on opium or eradicate it in the past by 2013 there was no capacity to impose a ban and no appetite due to the growing insecurity in the southern districts and this was often put down by policy makers showing a lack of commitment so disconnected from the realities of what district and provincial authorities and others were having to contend with in these areas in fact in 2013 what we saw were the authorities requesting the population to acquiesce and allow some poppy eradication so the authorities didn't look bad this was not Nangarha of 0809 or 10 where the authorities could impose their will this was a time when the district and provincial authorities and indeed the ANA were going cap in hand to rural communities asking them to please allow some crop to be destroyed you're making us look bad in front of international donors so the politics shifted as a consequence of the economics and other events that were going on in these southern districts but the ban on poppy was instrumental in changing those politics alongside of course there was the land grab up in Uchin and Nangarha so other events were taking place but it was absolutely instrumental and I'll show you what eradication looked like in 2020 so this is 2012 actually so these are all the events you see the sheer number of people who died 47, sorry, 48 killed most of them in Oriani it's 2012 2013, oh we're not going out there this wasn't about political commitment this was about fear, this was about control the fact that the government had lost control of many of these areas and was much more in a position it wasn't in a position to impose it was having to it almost forgotten its own history forgotten the fact that in the southern district you have to negotiate you've always managed by descent you do not govern directly they overstepped their reach and suddenly they find themselves not even being able to go out and eradicate in the southern parts of the country and this is eradication in 2013 let's take a few heads off a bit of a game it's not really we're not really talking about much so and then the rise from 2012 was dramatic like other bands the population started to realise that the emperor had no clothes the state was not that powerful and when you think of Gulagashazai the idea of the emperor not having any clothes is really not very important but so after being declared poppy free in 2008 poppy went down from from low levels in 09, 10, 11 to just over 3,000 hectares in 2012 by 2013 there was over 18,000 hectares of poppy back in Nangar in 2016 cultivation was about 14,500 hectares but it's only because of the Taliban ban in Nazion, Hock and Achin and if you look at this one this is poppy probability across the southern district but if you look here you can find poppy very little and this was for whatever reasons some various supposition but the Daesh had actually banned poppy the green is primarily any government influence there let's not put it in control and what we've seen is this trickle back of poppy cultivation this is Hogyani district centre of Hogyani and if you look this is the centre the yard field away from the roads away from the main centre of this it's already coming back in 2015 2015 right next to the road sign you can't miss it again the inability of the government to control this is lower down nearer the road but this is in Timloir not that far from the other town and as the military base is closed this is almost like a two year lag from the previous one and no doubt this year we will see a lot more and if you zoom in here you might be able to see it the uniform colour but you see a bit more of a packet so this year 2017 poppy is moving further down the valleys into lower parts of Shinwa it's in Batchicot on so-called government land it's found across Chapao and Upper Suferod and even into parts of lower Suferod along the foothills of the Torgaw mountains and no doubt around Saltypour this year so a lot more poppy coming in Nangahar although the ban on poppy in Daesh areas is thought to be holding something very particular about that we can discuss that in Q&A but I'll be very interested in other people's views on it particularly some of the old Afghan hands that they're here because it really is quite distinct from any other thing any of these other bands that I'm talking about in Helmand there are similar areas where we see we saw little agriculture diversification as well and a high dependency in poppy growing political discontent and a push back into opium particularly after 2014 when the ALP began to look at ways to manage the security situation in the canal command area conscious that they didn't have the backup that they used to have maybe the fact that they had to start doing a deal you look at the probability in Helmand which has also had its ups and downs and you can see somewhere again the difference between US and UN figures they're really quite stark in some ways so again very careful about correlating shifting poppy cultivating with any kinds of events so this is poppy probability Helmand 2008 places of wash high poppy probability places to watch out for I wasn't allowed a pointer I think they thought I might help myself for you with it so you've got central Helmand you've got this area north of the Bogra canal look at this area Farah this is Pachwa and Delarem and then these areas up here now if you move along you can see in 2009 the effect of the Helmand food zone starts to take place here starts to see it thinning into Nelobarexine and go on see it see Farah starting to grow but also these areas massive increases in the amount of land under agriculture in these areas 2012 this is all thinned out still and then 14 by 15 massive increases the amount of land under agriculture by 2016 it's green but this area north of the Bogra it's increased, I'll show that a bit better next slide so we saw rising cultivation in Helmand particularly in the form of desert areas just north of the Bogra canal here just here but also into Bachwa and Nimbos here an area where the afghan state has limited access and where until recently there was very little land under agricultural production at all it was simply desert land 10, 15 years ago let me just show that actually so this shows the expansion over time just that area north of the Bogra canal it's an interesting process it just keeps growing it has this old dip every now and then but this was desert there was nothing there the question is what drove the increase in this desert yeah price, we always go on about price when it comes to opium remains attractive it keeps prices are good this year again but it's not part of the reason success in the canal command area the Helmand food zone the classic balloon effect you squeeze in one place and it expands in another and then of course insecurity this constant attempt to infer a causal relationship between Taliban presence and poppy and as if the Taliban leads the poppy as opposed to the ban on poppy leads to the Taliban that leads to the return of poppy I mean these are complex relationships around the relationship between the secure and the poppy it's often too simply put let's come back to the first two points so the balloon effect stipulates that weather has given demand, you squeeze supply one area simply moves to another we can clearly see this at work in Helmand but it's not just the movement of poppy it was the movement of people a large number of people my back of a cigarette packet estimate the sheer number of people who are living in these desert spaces we've seen 300,000 hectare increase in land under agriculture in the deserts of southwest Afghanistan tell me a development project that achieved that kind of expansion in agricultural land work it out based on the interviews that we have in both Bukhwa and Helmand over many years you're probably talking about 1.2 million people who are living in these desert areas so we've got a movement of people this was we shouldn't just attribute that to the Helmand food zone this was a process already at work since 2002 but with the imposition of the ban in the food zone it increased and what detailed field work both north and south of the Nari Bogra showed is that when landowners in the canal area moved from poppy to a cropping system that was primarily based on wheat in the winter plus a bit of cotton, melon water melon in the spring followed by maize and mung bean in the summer the income spell significantly for the landowner with 10 dribs a land or less he was on about dollar dollar gross income per person per day for a sharecropper they would be on about 20 cents per person per day they were looking at one-fifth of the total yield of lower value crops compared to one-third of the yield when they cultivated property there were clear signs of economic stress in the canal command area in places like western Nadi Alley but particularly in the former desert areas within the canal because some of the areas under the canal aren't irrigated by the canal if you forgive my terminology there is Dashi Ainak or Dashi Shesharaak in these places loss of opium led to the loss of irrigation because they couldn't afford to run their tube wells that meant less drinking water less water for their livestock and significant economic problems so the movement from poppy to wheat cotton maize mung bean if you like as a livelihood system led to a reduction in the opportunities for the land poor created a mobile labour force skilled in growing poppy and anyone who stood in a poppy field and tried to give it a go should know that it is quite child and this was disabled for anyone who cared to look all this why is this a case poppy being grown in the canal there's no need for landowners to employ others to work their land you have to look at the symbiotic relationships between landed and landless when it comes to open poppy this is an incredibly labour intensive crop if Anthony is growing poppy he needs my help if he's growing above a certain level of poppy I work as a sharecroft on his land he's happy for my help I'm happy for the land I'm happy for the water it brings I'm out I have to go and find somewhere else for a house, for water, for land so I move north into the desert and of course I as the landless was least likely to get any development assistance anyway most of the Helmand food zone efforts were targeted at the landed the result is the land poor were dispossessed by the removal of poppy and they headed north where they had access to capital they lease land from those purchased it or taken it already where they did not they sharecroft the land for only a quarter of the crop so they went from a third of the crop in the canal area to a quarter and even a fifth in the desert areas with lower yields the result was I'll show you what the result was massive extension in the amount of I won't show you what the result was because I don't have it monocropping poppy 2010, 2011, 2012 people just monocropped poppy to make up for the losses that they had incurred you had a cheap labour force highly available skilled and they just monocropped the crop so we saw a massive uptake there so that's why we saw this massive expansion into these desert areas and then this expansion of the poppy crop so what did we actually achieve from that Helmand food zone it's also important to note that there's been some dramatic improvements in agricultural techniques in these areas showing that agriculture is neither time bound and that there is a real dynamism within these farming communities and those that service them first we saw the move as I showed to deep wealth and this is knowledge that is allegedly transferred from NGOs and deep world technology coming in from Pakistan this is how people claim it we interviewed a number of these guys who run these rigs and this has made this area possible to grow agricultural we've also had herbicides after 16 years of doing field work we suddenly started to see this when you've got paraquat from Iran you've got paraquat from China broad based herbicides and then started to move into topic which is specific suddenly I can grow more poppy because I don't have to weed as much it's much easier now of course you don't wear any protective gear that would be for softies you just spray it the environmental health consequences of this just we don't know now, and I think this is fascinating now we have herbicides that actually advertise poppy these farmers are all time based traditional agriculture we've got this dynamism here in terms of the commercial developments that are taking place I really need to find out where these labels are designed, I also want to find out but I'm collecting these labels at the moment the other thing that we've seen is solar power this is the reservoir I thought everyone was starting to practice for the Olympics or something because everyone seemed to have these 600m or 1000m2 about a meter to two meters deep they're not lined, there's a big evaporation problem so basically you have these irrigating poppy boy, irrigating the crops let's put it like that and we went from one in one of our locations in 1314 to 81 by 2016 in a 300x300km block in a year and a half there is now 13,000 but no no, agriculture is time-bound, it doesn't change this is traditional farming this isn't Mr Big this isn't the Taliban or some sort of Tony Soprano this is farmers learning, watching each other learning two new techniques clearly this uptake and solar raises serious questions about the long-term sustainability of agriculture and the settlements in these former desert areas and we're doing some more work with IOU this year so to return to the questions to what drove the increase in Bokker, north of the Bokker price success in the canal command area, food zone plastic balloon effect but also let's go back to that question of insecurity here the argument has been that where we have a strong state of poppy, the UK, the US Belgium it's not the same to say that where we don't have poppy we have a strong state governor or indeed a strong head of the PRT or regional command NATO many careers have been linked to low levels of poppy in the last decade and many of these are just shows of strength for example in Nangor and Helmand where the ban pushed into areas where the state hasn't concentrated the means of violence and where viable alternatives don't exist the process of banning poppy undermined the legitimacy of the state it relied on deals with the rural elite and population as well as promises development assistance that have rarely been delivered on it also required the threat of or perceived threat of foreign military power you just look at what happened in Nangor with Gulagosherzai conflating coin and CN in 2007-08 and a significant uptake in US military forces in the run up to that period you look at Helmand with the reductions in the canal command area have actually been achieved without the surge now of our exile in 2009 and 10 Marja where poppy fell from 60% of land in 2010 to less than 5% in 2011 I won't show you that let me show you that's Marja 2008 2009 not a poppy 2010 no eradication there beforehand I was 14,000 marines so that I think we really need to understand this because so often outside see the absence of poppy as a sign of strength it sees it as a projection of power of state power in remote and peripheral areas but locally the population is aware of a process of negotiation the threat of foreign military action that creates the perception that the afghan state is weak we see it as strength locally I say who are these guys I used to say about Golagosherzai who is he, he used to drive to our village now he needs an American helicopter who is this man he's afghan he behaves like an American it's important to recognise that in the southern districts of Nanghar the ban did nothing to aid the legitimacy of the afghan state and Golagosherzai or indeed the rural elite that was seen to have facilitated the imposition of the ban some of those like Malik Usman and Malik Niyaz in Achin who were instrumental in imposing the ban couldn't even travel back to their villages by 2013 they were unwelcome and their rivals actually took power in Helmar the vitriol and profanities used to describe Governor Mangal and his successor Baluch were extreme and certainly not to be repeated in fact it became increasingly apparent in places like Marja Western Nadi Alley and in the former desert areas south of Nari Bogra in the north of Kanal that the state was an entity that was perceived as taking from communities exposed households to shock and this like in Nanghar increased support for anyone that would oppose the effect so in summary I will be quick what can we conclude from the lessons of banning public first they point to avoiding go it alone and see an initiatives eradication coercion not to plant single sector alternative development efforts that might work in isolation of the wider development security and governance effort operating in an area many of these efforts actually undermine many of the other projects that are taking place second it also means acknowledging the impact of drugs on the political economy of Afghanistan and understanding how it impacts on the priorities that have been set in terms of security development and governance we have to stop pretending to give my metaphor that there isn't a bull in the Chinese shop being ridden by a thousand pound gorilla the failure to discuss drugs in today's Afghanistan is just shocking the unwillingness to even reference it is myopic beyond belief indeed the lessons suggest we need to move beyond the point of rhetoric of recognizing drugs as a cross coming issue and actively doing something about it it points to the integration of the drugs issue into the wider planning process the kind of work the world banks done on its agricultural strategy review and certainly adopting a principle of not making things worse considering how development interventions might facilitate an increase in cultivation and looking at ways to counter this I mean I have seen so many projects including the good performance initiative invest in the irrigation systems we are rewarding you for growing profit here is an irrigation system oh two years later there is more land under agriculture there is more poppy and it is higher yielding perfect wonderful we really need to think beyond that kind it also involves building an understanding of the illicit economy in the political analysis of Afghanistan in the same way you can't ignore economy and economy that creates 400,000 direct jobs the opium economy creates more jobs than the ANSF that we care so much about the opium is the most valuable export in Afghanistan by far but we pretend it's not there you can't ignore that effect on the economy but you can't also ignore its effect on political settlements and its effort to end the conflict all these discussions that we have about the political entities and how does this all take place with such widespread cultivation and its widespread trade in this community third it points to these lessons point to moving towards area-based planning where the causes of cultivation how they differ by different socio-economic group are understood, integrated into design and implementation so we don't see five different projects operating in a square kilometre all working with the different agendas and actually undermining each other wouldn't that be an interesting idea fourth these lessons point to capacity building in Afghan institutions and there I say our own offices in country too often we face a UNODC with limited development capacity and a development community with no understanding of the drugs yet they're working in those areas with the best will in the world our own colleagues in embassies and bilateral missions lack experience in both the subject of illicit economies and Afghanistan making it hard for them to support Afghan colleagues that undertake effective planning in bilateral and multilateral programmes say that as someone who's done a lot of work and I've had some excellent colleagues over the years but I've also had some incredibly indifferent ones finally the lessons from banning poppy point towards actually developing a systematic processes of technical review sure that existing and planned programmes are examined and supported so that lessons learned are applied and actually adopted not just witnessed and talked about in meetings God forbid more meetings on lessons learned with more about legacy than actually learning lessons these lessons also mean building effective impact monitoring systems so that programmes are able to adapt the change in terrain and build robust evidence as to what are the intended and unintended outcomes both CNN development of these future efforts I've seen many of an M&E system up close and personal from the Helmand monitoring evaluation project to the independent monitoring agencies of various programmes and I can safely say they're designed to provide good news they're not diagnostics they're not designed to understand what is actually happening on the ground and this leaves the Afghan government donors and programmes blind unable to make the necessary adjustments and delivery where things are in fact going wrong or replicate what is going right and on that I'll call it a day although I do have a nice little video for you if you have the time a bit later thank you


This is covering the spread part of the fan dual podcast network We have got some massive games between title contenders coming up in week number three across the NFL We're gonna break down those games where we're seeing some vetting value within them and lay out our favorite beds across week three in The NFL this is covering the spread right here on the fan dual podcast network and number fire calm My name is Jim Sonness. I am a senior writer and analyst for number fire calm joined here As I am each Thursday by Ryan Williams checking out on Twitter at Ryan Alexander underscore W Ryan, I'm sorry that the Houston Chicago game did not make the rundown for this week Maybe if they get a rematch like super we can talk about that game But yeah, not in the list for this week a couple other good games though. How you doing today? Oh, I'm doing great Jim, you know, we're just trying to give the people what they want They want they want to hear the picks they want to hear the leans and and we're hoping that we can be as successful in week Three as we were the first two weeks. So I mean you're on a heater So, you know, we're just gonna we're gonna try to I'm gonna try to lean on you because I was not as good as you last week So I gotta I gotta pick up some of the Ryan vibes to pick up the slack here week number three The good thing is I feel kind of okay about how week three is looking so far got some good movement on the early week Bet so we're feeling alright. We'll see if that actually translates to results or not Not sure we'll dive into weeks biggest games and outline some other things on our minds for week three And just one second at first a reminder to make sure you are subscribed to covering the spread wherever you get your podcast Our college football week for betting preview with dr. Ed Feng is now posted up on the covering the spread podcast feed and on Fandals YouTube page check out both those video version and audio version wherever you get your podcast or your videos Be sure to check that out with Ed will also be player prop preview tomorrow JJ Zacharyson getting a rundown of his favorite props for week number three as well that also here on the covering the spread podcast feed and On the fan will you to page twisted tea and fad or have joined forces to bring you a one-of-a-con contest series It gives you a chance to compete for your share of thousands of dollars in psych credit introducing twisted teas college football picks a Sports betting focused contest series that is entirely free to play the contest is simple each college football game Will be assigned money line the spread and total markets with assigned points to each market All you have to do is make six selections based on those three markets and earn points for each correct selection You may if at the end of the day your score ranks among the best in the contest You'll be eligible for your share of psych credit head to fandal.com Slash twisted tea picks and make your picks and reminder Please drink responsibly fandal.com Slash twisted tea picks and before I dive into the biggest games of this week Ryan Do you want to pick your brain quickly about how you kind of? Lay out your thought process on Offenses that have struggled through two weeks one week. I get it two weeks a little bit concerning the Bengals Broncos Optis slow starts to see your other slow starts for other big offense as well Let's talk about how you view those teams heading into week three What are you doing to try to decide? Whether the early season issues are legit the small sample issues are legit or if we should expect them to bounce back What were we expecting to be in the preseason? Yeah, so I think we'll we'll start off with Denver to start because I know Denver was you know They get Russell Wilson Bucks are moving them, you know people are thinking Denver could be a super bowl favorite All they needed was a quarterback to get them over the hump look at their offense look at the defense And it's just that simple, but I mean I Hate taking Pete Carroll side in anything, but it's just like maybe Seattle was like ahead of the curve on like, you know Getting you know saying that hey look at this draft. That's upcoming. There's all of these studs quarterbacks coming from college Russ is getting a little bit older and and we kind of have seen that I mean he had a tough match up week one against his former team on the road and then you're looking at You know a Houston team, but just the points, you know what we're expecting the let let Russ cook season That it that that's gone like we just got to let that let that subside And I just got to be taking the teams on the other side of Denver right now until Denver can prove to me that they can handle Lee, you know take on some of these teams and maybe maybe it's one of those things where You know Seattle, it's Geno Smith We weren't you know, we were expecting them to kind of handle them easily and that there wouldn't be much there Houston the same type of thing. Oh, this team should just be blowing them out Maybe they're playing down to their competition Jim So I would love, you know, the 49ers game is going to be interesting with Jimmy G back Then they get Vegas then they get indie and then the Chargers So I think this stretch is going to tell us a lot about Denver and maybe they play up to their competition Now the Cincinnati Bengals real quickly, you know, this is a team That they're getting off to a historically bad start when you're talking about being in the Super Bowl From the previous year and coming in and starting off on two now in weeks three When a team has started 0 and 2 and made the playoffs They are favorable in that in that week three matchup and you can tell that the sharps and the public They're all over Cincinnati right now. I mean the money is like at 90 I believe in this game against the Jets and I expect it You know, that's where it should be. That's fair because they they have everything on the wall to write the ship They just got to figure out how to get joe burrow to get the get rid of the ball more quickly The offensive line has not done him any favors even though they got new pieces in there But they still have explosive weapons across the board.  They still got Higgins. They still got tyler void This defense needs to be a little bit better and this is you know, the Jets Eat going out with joe flacco last week But this is probably the prime get right spot 14 that had to start like this So I think that we do see Cincinnati come to the mode and remember Jim last year Like people were pretty much not really on the Cincinnati bandwagon until it came down to those last two weeks Of the regular season in fantasy playoffs when joe pearl magic came through I mean he he's still a young quarterback as opposed to russ I still think he's got a left a lot left in the tank and we could be looking back on these two weeks Just in laughing at ourselves that we weren't you know high on the Cincinnati bangles going forward Yeah, I'll need mixing this week for dfs. So slight request that he go nuts this week He mentioned the public and the sharps liking the bangles this week that number did move to five and a half I think that was the correct move. I had a 5.3 So it's a stay away five and a half for me But 86% of the money is on the bangles side of the spread here and 77% of the bets So like you said that does back up what you were saying about how everyone's on the bangles So not only even a by-law spot if everyone is on it, unfortunately But the market the market catching up and I think correctly evaluating at least that offense I think they might be overreacting a tiny tiny tiny bit to Denver But I mean kind of to your point It's weird that you've got a team facing a quarterback who or a team that just lost their starting quarterback And somehow the opposing team may have more continuity across their entire team Especially with uh, George Kittle potentially back for this week Let's dive in now to our key games four week number three starting off with a huge battle in the afc east That is the bills at the dolphins bills six and a half point favorites total 52 and a half This was five and a half yesterday. It was six at open Then back to five and a half now bet back to six and a half So a lot of movement here a lot of interest in this game the dolphins Did light things up in the second half against the ravens But they're facing a bills team that has lit up everyone for ever since the playoffs last year effectively So Do you buy enough into the dolphins here to potentially bet them or are the bills covering once again? Yeah, it's it's just hard to bet against the bills. Uh at this point I mean when you're looking at josh allen's history Against the miami dolphins He's only lost to them once in his entire career and buffalo in these games has been winning on an average victory of 19 points Against this team. I mean and you're looking at these past matchups with tua playing You know because before it was ryan fits magic who is getting who is getting the brunt of this but uh They they just haven't been they just haven't been able to get over this hump Whether it's you know bringing everybody down there to miami Which we've seen on social media like the dolphins are all in on playing at home at this time And they want to come down and you know the weather they feel like is at their advantage It does not matter to josh allen. Um, and you know if they're gonna be shellacking teams, you know on In the public eye, you know on prime time then I gotta you know be taking them here When this game is kind of buried so to speak in the sunday slate I do I do like You know toa to still be aggressive in this matchup and they do have pieces that match up Especially with that secondary for buffalo being banged up as is so the total is interesting to me too Even at 52 and a half I do think that this game has a chance to go bananas and we know that buffalo I mean anytime buffalo is on the field this team's gonna have an applied Team total of over 28. So you're expecting, you know for touchdowns to come from the buffalo side in any way Shape or fashion if you know toa can muster up to three four touchdowns on his side I mean you can talk yourself into this game going way over the 52 and a half Yeah, so one thing you mentioned was the injuries and that's true for both sides in the secondary specifically Which could lend itself towards the total here Xavier and howard did not practice on wednesday. He's got a groin injury. He suffered that against the raven So he's a question mark there, but then you look at the bill's injury report and they have one two three Uh four different guys in their secondary on the injury report Now some of those guys were full practice and stuff like that But mike a high didn't practice dain jackson didn't practice They're pretty banged up The one concern I have with the total is wins because right now it's at 12 miles per hour I have no concerns about josh allan ripping it through that if it's not like 40 Like it wasn't that patriots game last year. He's probably gonna be okay Two was more of a question mark in the wind Um from that perspective. So my numbers do show value on the dolphins here I will not bet that I don't care. I'm not gonna do it like it We need probably seven and a half for me to bite and I don't think we're gonna get there So i'm not going at that. Um, I think the total of 52 and a half is interesting Is that high is that low enough where you would bet the over here or is it more or so elene on your perspective? The total gem at 52 and f. Yeah, I I would bet it. I mean, um, I I just think you know, there's teams that I just always i'm looking at totals and i'm like Can I talk myself into this and I mean we talked about I talked about the baltimore in miami game last week Of going over whatever that number was 44 But you're just looking at the quarterbacks and how the offense is like to play on each side of the ball And we know that we we know that with buffalo. I mean if you're not getting, you know, 53 54 number That's when I start to get a little bit weary. Um when the number's over that It's just like they're going to put up points and so who's the other team on the other side This isn't you know, we're not talking about the houston texans or the chicago bears We're talking about the dolphin to you know, just put up 28 points in one quarter Last week. So I think you know and buffalo Gets out to either way a buffalo gets out to the lead or if miami somehow gets out to an early lead We know they're going to be aggressive and that's what I like to look at when i'm looking at the total number Yeah, for sure Like I have my reservations around the wind But when you combine the secondary injuries with how past heavy Both these teams are neither team can run the football and I think that's a huge benefit for a total in this game Let's move now to the eagles that commanders eagles Six and a half point favorites here total 47 and a half We talked about the eagles team on our monday night preview, but like when I was watching this game Every snap it felt inevitable.  They're healthy right now Uh jalen hurts looks fantastic whether it be as a rusher or as a passer So my question for you ryan is can the man commanders keep this thing close? Or the eagles was too dominant for us to even consider betting the commander side of this one Yeah, I mean this is this is a number that makes me feel uncomfortable jim I said, you know on the monday show that we would kind of know a lot about either team of the eagles And and vikings and to a certain extent I feel like we do I mean the eagles just were handling that match up so So favorably and you love that they can you know, they don't need to do a lot As not really a short week But a short ish week as the way that the commanders are handling the run like and you know If they don't need to be past heavy the eagles that is I could see them You know establishing the three headed monster of miles sanders boston scott and kenef gainwell, so While I don't I don't really Like the number, you know, I get why the public is all over this taking the philly side of things because we just saw What they did, you know on prime time in monday night football against a competitive team Now where I do come in on this game jim is also the over here the total is 47 and a half like this is I just wrote down in my notes like you just have to hammer the over in this because of how Carson wintz plays. I mean we've seen this time and time again philly indy now at washington This dude will be aggressive regardless. He could go out there and throw four picks and be different You know, minnesota was doing this They returned the ball over and then they try and get dablin cooked the ball and then he's not getting anywhere And then they just they didn't get into a ribbon on offense This is they're they're just going to abandon the run Absolutely if philly gets out to an early lead here and they're just going to say, okay, carcel wintz Like throw it up to terry throw it up to jahan see what you can do And this this total really should be coming at like a 48 number 48 and a half And it's it's just too low for me. So that's where i'm leaning in this game Yeah, both these teams are pretty pass heavy based on like a pass right over expectation those kinds of numbers And I think that's always conducive towards an over two and I think that it makes sense with the commanders Like they always I think at their core like a turner led offense wants to pass heavy But they couldn't really do that when their quarterback was taylor hynneke Carson wintz despite his flaws is someone who is Better for that type of approach then uh, but he's also just like an over quarterback because like you said the mistakes Lead to overs but also these spikes the things he can do well Lead to overs too. So with the way this commander's defense is played so far I have no objections to that. I think that makes a lot of sense My numbers have this as eagles by 3.31. So which which would indicate again value on the commander's side But similar to that dolphin's number. I just can't do it like I can't I can't pull the trigger on that like I will take less value if I feel better about the situation I don't feel good about this one like my my priors were high on the eagles coming into this year And the prior is the largest chunk of my model right now. It's it's a hefty hefty chunk of it. So Despite it being high on the eagles there despite the early season data loving them as well I can't get six and a half that could mean that I'm just a dummy for not taking the commanders here That could be the takeaway here, but I don't know. I just can't get there like it's I don't know if you have this but like for me when I I think about The idea of betting the commanders. I just think back to Monday night snap 10 yards snap 10 yards snap 10 yards So that eagles offense and I can't get there. So yeah, I think that does lend itself towards the over as well To your point earlier Yeah, and absolutely and the public is actually agreeing with you jim and your numbers on taking the washington side there's the percentage um The percentage of the of the bets are actually going to the washington side of things and the money is actually split evenly As it stands right now at 50 50. So everybody's having to struggle with this game But the eagles, you know, let's just give them credit where credit is due I mean, they deserve to have this number right now. Jalen hurts looks absolutely fantastic The defense has been absolutely incredible. Like I do think Carson wince might be seeing nightmares depending on how this game goes Either way like they could squeak out a win maybe but like he's he's going to be in trouble Maybe turn in the ball over multiple times here So I I I would probably lean eagles at this number because it seems like we're we're going to If if they are able to win this game handedly, we're going to start getting like favorable numbers over seven for eagles And some favorable matchups going forward. Yeah, Carson wence is an agent of chaos Which means you want to bet into more like volatile markets So if you are out there listening and you believe in the commanders, I'd bet the money line instead of the spread Plus 240 the money line there. I'm not doing that either just to be fully transparent but If you believe in Carson wence and you want to take advantage of the volatility go for the higher upside market and that is The money line with the commanders there and I'm showing value there as well for the record But again, I'm not going to bet it because I just have nightmares about Monday night Let's finish up here with the packers at the buccaneers bucks one and a half point favorites total 50 or 41 and a half and I was joking on twitter on sunday about adding a vibes Like meter into my model because of the cardinals and because they had bad vibes and we're losing at that time And I was tilting they did win but I feel like with the bucks Maybe I actually do want to add in the vibes The vibes meter because vibes real bad right now, right? And they are not good They're missing a ton of guys right now. Mike Evans suspended Chris Godwin Julio Jones didn't practice wednesday scottie miller brashad perriman rustle gauge all limited dot mitsmith didn't practice But the bucks still point and a half favorites here. So Can they overcome those entries or are you riding with green bay? It was good to you on sunday night Yeah, I mean Listen, I'm gonna take the buck side here and it doesn't feel good Jim You know, things are not good down there in temple bay, but they still got brady And so when we're looking at how to decipher this matchup I'm just going back to what the historical data is telling me and you know Rogers and brady when they meet up the past four matchups brady's had his number three and one against the spread And brady is a favorite under a field of goal. He's 11 and three I believe all time against the spread as well And you're looking at erin roger's numbers like this guy does not turn the ball over But in the past two games against Tampa bay two interceptions and then one interception So averaging one and a half interceptions in the past matchups. That's that's crazy compared to what his career number is I gotta like the bucks here and the reason being jim is that the way this defense is playing right now is absolutely Incredible like if they can be you know, if they can be healthy At most of their pieces on the defense side of the ball They give roger's trouble and they're gonna give these backs trouble and that's been the best thing That green bay has had going for them with these wide receivers still getting acclimated I mean outside of randall cob who's like been 18 years in the league and still catching passes You know, where's rob gankowski to come out of retirement for brady, but uh, you know this They're gonna have a hard time getting a j dillon and erin jones To establish the run against this defense. Maybe they start using them in some past catching abilities to get the ball out Quickly, but I do like the Tampa Bay side of things. Um, just where the data is pointing at at one and a half Yeah, I think it's it's situation. Right. This is a complete toss up right now. It's the bucks by point one three points So the money line is actually minus one or two on the packer side, which means there's no value there I don't see any value on the on the bucks money line either I think that it's a stay away from me if maybe we get david bach to yari ruled out again for the packers That could be a situation that would lend itself towards the buck side, but Vibes meters real bad and I can't uh after the cardinal stuff even though they did come back me I can't bet against bad vibes so or bet on bad vibes So a little bit wary a little bit wary cluster injuries also worry me, but who are we to doubt? A uh suburban kid scottie miller from barrington, Illinois Obviously, who needs julia when you got scottie miller, right? Yeah, I'll tell you what scottie miller better You know, he better be watching the replacements and get that stick them that they Put on the hands there because the way that these guys were dropping the ball last week in brady's reaction You know, he's going to be I'm sure practice has been Quite interesting for the receiving crew this year, but it is funny jim when you're talking about these two teams It's like the spider-man meme, you know Yeah, it is Have a bay and green bay is pretty much the same team without you know, these wide receivers who are playing for them Like no debaute atoms though mike evans. Um, they got all of these Young pieces and and players who are no names catching the ball from these legendary quarterbacks. It's it's pretty funny I think I would actually go the little giants route with like the the pine tar full pine tar on the hands Give what happened tyler johnson after the playoff game last year We had a couple drops and then got jettison to houston. I don't want that So i'm going full pine tar. We're not we're not settling for just stick them. It's pine tar Love it there. Let's open up the board to you ryan. Where else do you see in value across week three in the nfl? Yeah, I mean it it's it's tough. I'm not sure about value So to speak but I am interested like I said at the beginning, you know, I'm Broncos got to prove it to me 49ers getting two and a half points. Jimmy g is back here You know, maybe things I believe this game is in denver So maybe things kind of go right for for denver here as they you know get another home game But the 49ers, you know, they they seem to be Clicking and rallying behind jimmy g being back. So that'll be an interesting one The sentinetti one, you know, it's hard because the line has been moving. I believe it opened around Well, I don't know what the number it opened that but I saw it on sunday at four and a half And you know, they just keep getting bet up. I believe it's now five five and a half So it opened at five Actually, so it was kind of been fluctuating a little bit Who's betting on jets at five to move to four and a half? Right? Yeah, I get the bangles of struggle, but buddy Yeah Hey, listen, you know, they just you know, when you're talking about seeing these games on sunday, right? So like the jets they eke out that victory against the browns and some some people might have been, you know Riding that way, but I do like sentinetti to kind of rebound here. I know that number seems a little bit tough And I'm going with my home team, uh, the chicago bears here with you know, just even taking the money line on them I think has some merit. I know that, you know People are talking up houston like what a win a win can mean for them in the a of c south because that division Is so depleted and so disgusting that they could be one one and one and leading the division because of how things have gone and and the win over indy, so Um, that I think that is an interesting game too, but I expect, you know It's such a favorable matchup for david montgomery and cleo herbert and the home crowd rocking like i'm liking the bear side of that game I I do need a texans win for their their their total their win total at some point because it was a three and a half and Missing out on a tie having a tie in there kind of a bummer. They played tight against denver. I need wins at some point guys So like let's let's not know more moral victories. Let's get actual victories. I need that for the the win total there So please help me out here. Uh, one I wanted to run by you One I did not talk about on tuesday show that I just had it today and do like and have bet It's the cheese minus five and a half Uh, I've seen a lot of twitter interest in the colt side of this game and I get it I get it because We're trying to buy low on a team that was missing massively key pieces last week and it looks like michael pitton should be back alec pierce should be back But it's also the chiefs. I was not super high on this uh this colt team coming into the year So it's kind of like confirming my priors that they've um played poorly so far I've got the cheese fair by 7.9 points in this game So I've laid the five and a half once it got there. It was six and a half and moved to five and a half I get the thought process behind buying the colts, but I can't do it ryan So i'm on the cheese minus five and a half. What's your read on that one specifically? Yeah, this this is a tough one for me and I didn't want to you know Have this be a part of my card as we say so to speak but I took the cheat I hammered the chiefs at six and a half So you can only imagine what I did when it came down to five and a half um And what it comes down to because they're they're a tough team against the spread and we talked about them You know a lot when they are you know kind of these heavy favorites Um and and five and a half makes it even more favorable But at six and a half I was kind of just like you know It was just a read that I get it is in these first home game of the season I believe um, but matt ryan has just looked lost in this offense and if it comes down to him needing to be aggressive or Hopefully they can get jonathan taylor going I don't what do you have 10 touches last week or something just disgusting He killed I had like christian kirk jonathan taylor many game stacks in dfs and the christian kirk side is great The jonathan taylor side shockingly was the part that dragged those down Yeah, it makes sense. You think jonathan taylor goes out puts up a number then they need to pass christian kirk's gets a volume So I I I get that um, but yeah, I just I mean you know if they can you know get kelsy going here and you know I know it's they said it was going to be a revolving door patch my homes who's going to be the leading receiver Maybe this is juju game, you know playing in the slot and having a favorable match up for himself against this team But yeah, kansas city five and a half I'm just going to take that and you know let indy prove it to me let matt ryan prove it to me That they can you know cover this number against the team that is much better than them on paper That's where i'm at as well So I did lay the five and a half with the chiefs there that is all that we have here for week number three Typically we'll give like a two minute thoughts on thursday night, but i'm not going to bother like that So i'm not going to subject you to talking about that game ryan We'll just close up shop for this week and move forward to tomorrow's player prop breakdown with jj zachery And get that by subscribing to covering the spread wherever you get your podcast ryan I want to thank you once again for joining me for today. Good luck to you this week We'll talk to you once again soon Yeah, it was great to be here again jim and good luck to you and your leans and not rooting for your houston win there But are you gonna be at the game? Are you going? I am going to be at the game. Yes. Good. Well, have fun I hope it goes well for you. Um, I will I'll I'll push my houston hopes to next week. Well, we'll worry about that later on fair enough fair enough Good luck everybody. You can find ryan on twitter at ryan alexander underscore w. I am on twitter at jim sonnis You can also follow the fan dual podcast network at fan dual podcast Thank you all for tuning in and good luck to you this week We'll talk to you once again tomorrow to break down our player props for week three This has been covering the spread right here on the fan dual podcast network


This is the animation minute as always let's start with jobs access to this is looking for an animator for a feature animation gig Super Spline Studios is hiring a full-time lead animator air strip interactive is also looking for animators check out that post here Then at the job alert here looking for an animator Kevin here is tweeting that he's looking for some animators as well Switching over to trailers and use here's a new of the Batman trailer, which is awesome 60 years ago at Walt Disney animation suit was founded. They have a cool compilation clip here. Check it out Clay has a really interesting thread about looking for character designers and what he has learned from that check it out It's very very helpful here. I like it Elizabeth has interesting posts about the differences between layout and animation Go check it out. Edward strikes again with a fantastic thread. I love these these anecdotes and tips are so cool I love them a new rig is out check it out tomorrow my channel I will do a review about it portfolio day Nora has a cool clip here with multiple shots in one view Love this presentation. I also love the animation. Look at this here. Come on. It is another one also cool Come on. That's very cool. I love it. Speak of art. Check this out. That is cool That is also super cool. That is very cool. And that is extremely cool. Come on Speaking of cool. Check out Luise sweets here. I love all these space related artworks. They're so super cute Go check them out. He has a lot of them. There's any stock trick art. I gotta check it out Those are cool new versions of lower decks. I like it also lower decks is awesome So you're awesome. That's kind of cool. I love these my adventures with Superman fun character designs. I'm very intrigued by this Here's a cool new rig for blender. Check out Brian's channel in general always good tips on there Harvey here with this awesome channel has a new clip about differences between AAA and indie games Switching over to sound. I know it's not that often but I do love sound design I love that little contraption here and if you go forward here Come on that is so cool totally reminds me of midnight mass Anyway, check out that post. It's very cool. And actually I just noticed I didn't follow him. So let's follow Speak of music. I love this here Love it.  Check this out. Chris Westlake does an awesome job with the score for lower decks All right, you know, there has to be pixel art. But come on. This is cool The bam love those 2d effects are so great I just saw the end of this but come on. Look at that. Got to put that in there. Oh, so cool Also, cool. I love that especially that end with the jetpack. I have never animated not yet I do have animated jetpack kit that's for tomorrow ends But I see this I need to animate something like this. Last but not least a super cool looking pixel art game Which you got to check it out. I bought it but I haven't played it yet I can't wait speak of waiting if you can't wait for the next animation minute It's on my channel every monday at 10 a.m


So with the Toronto Raptors and the Golden State Warriors in the NBA finals and almost the end of the season I thought of an idea where we look at all 30 teams and look at 10 players that you may not have known or may have forgotten about who actually played for that certain team. So obviously with the Raptors and Warriors heading into game number 6 we're going to look at both the Raptors and the Warriors but in this video we're going to look at the Warriors and in the next episode of this series we'll look at the Raptors. But I want you guys to let me know which team you want after that and I think it's just a good way to get some NBA content when it's the off season and there is no basketball anymore so that's the plan for this series. And this series will be done when we've gone through all 30 NBA teams. Anyway before I get started if you like this idea let me know by hitting that like button also be sure to comment on which team you'd want me to do next. So without further ado let's look at 10 players who you may have forgotten about playing for the Golden State Warriors and let's see how many of these guys you get right and be honest in the comment section. Number 10, Ralph Samson. He's number 10 but many people don't realize that apart from being one of the top spots on the what could have been list and the Houston Rockets first overall peak in the 1983 NBA draft it was also a part of the Golden State Warriors from 1987 to 1989. Samson's incredible size and unnatural agility for a man that was 7 foot 4 is just insane. He was able to burst on the NBA scene as a rookie averaging 21 points 11 rebounds to assist 2.5 blocks per game in his first season. He was also named an All-Star and won the NBA Rookie of the Year award but he was injured halfway into the 1987-88 season which unfortunately was not uncommon for Samson. Going through his name being one that people just remember for what could have been with the Hakeem Elijah one after making the finals in 1986. The Twin Towers were meant to do big things but it just wasn't meant to be. Samson's knee and back troubles worsened and he never played a full season in the remaining years of his career. He was only able to average 6.4 points and 5 rebounds with the Golden State Warriors in 1988-89. Number 9, Mugsy Bogues. Everyone loves Mugsy. I mean, how can you not love Mugsy Bogues? People remember him for his time in Charlotte with Larry Johnson and Alonso Morning. After all, Bogues settled in Charlotte. He established himself in Charlotte as an exceptional passer, a great stealer, one of the fastest players on the court and a fan favourite. Bogues spent 10 years in Charlotte as a Hornet led by Morning and Johnson and they became one of the most popular teams in the NBA. But Mugsy Bogues also played for the Golden State Warriors averaging 5.5 points and 5 assists as a warrior and then signed later as a free agent with the Raptors, as we all know. Number 8, Terry Cummings. If you don't know who Terry Cummings is, you should because in my opinion, he's one of the most underrated players that I know of. He's the top 50 scorer of all time. He was a rookie of the year who averaged 23 points, 10.4 rebounds, which is insane. He was averaging 16.6 points and 7 rebounds through his 17-year NBA career until he joined the Warriors in which he averaged 9.5 rebounds a game for his first season and then 8.5 rebounds in his last season before retiring. He's obviously best known on his time with the Barks where he made the All-Star team twice and obviously had a great career with the Spurs as well, but many people forget or don't even know about him playing for the Golden State Warriors. Number 7, Richard Jefferson. This is one of those guys where we just think of him and remember his time in Cleveland because he won a championship beating the Warriors and it almost seems a little bit weird seeing him in a Warriors jersey. Considering the Cavs Warriors rivalry in the last few years was insane. It's one that is just easy to forget. He even played for them as he averaged less than 5 points in his time in Golden State. In the end, he was an integral part of the Cavaliers, though. He actually beat the Warriors despite being down three games to one. The first team in NBA history to come back being down three games to one. And Richard Jefferson, even over 35 years old, was a huge part in that team and a great player coming off the bench and his dunk on Clay Thompson, still insane. Number 6, Robert Parrish. Obviously, he was best known for his time at the Celtics. He spent 14 seasons there and won four NBA championships with thanks to Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and the rest of the team, but he was also a part of the Warriors. In fact, they're the team that drafted him. Parrish was drafted in the first round of the 1976 NBA draft by the Golden State Warriors, but at that time he had also been drafted by the Utah Stars in the 1973 ABA Special League. And he was also drafted by the Spurs in the 1975 ABA draft as well. Don't ask me how that works, just go with it. Parrish signed with the Warriors in the end, and the Warriors were NBA champions in 1975, two years prior to Parrish's rookie season campaign. However, when Parrish joined the Warriors, their decline began immediately. They missed the entire players completely from 1978 to 1980. And then he became a member of the Boston Celtics. Number 5, John Starks. Okay, so did you know that Starks played for the Warriors? If you did, did you know he played for them twice in two different occasions? Although he was passed over in the 1988 NBA draft, Starks signed with the Golden State Warriors in September of 1988 as a free agent. This was his rookie year. The thing is, if you know the Golden State Warriors, you know that the 1988 draft was a special one, because they drafted shooting guard Mitch Richmond as well, with the fifth overall pick. Which meant that Starks played limited minutes in only 36 games, while Richmond won rookie of the year. But in the second cent with the Warriors in 1999, he averaged about 14 points and five assists, and was actually pretty solid before he left. Number 4, Jamal Crawford. Because Jamal Crawford hasn't aged a day since joining the NBA in the year 2000, apart from a few more tattoos, this image of him in a Warriors jersey almost looks photoshopped, but it's not. And to be honest, they're actually a team that should be targeting him again. Next season. Crawford only played in 54 games for the Warriors, but he did start in all of them, averaging nearly 20 points a game with 4.4 assists and 1.5 rebounds. But because the Warriors did not qualify for the playoffs in the 2008-09 season, they traded Crawford to the Atlanta Hawks. The Warriors did go on to draft Kari that year, so I guess it turned out alright. Number 3. Can I just mention one guy's name, who I think is one of the most underrated players of our era, who nobody ever talks about anymore, is Mark Price. He was so good. You remember how good- I wanted to check on the pick and roll. He was splitting the pick and roll. He created the split. Mark Price has been known as one of the most underrated point guards of all time. He's a four-time All-Star. He's a two-time NBA three-point contest winner. He's part of the 50-40-90 club. He's got his jersey retired by the Cleveland Cavaliers. He was a really, really good player. He was obviously best known as a Cleveland Cavalier, with four of his All-Star appearances being with the Cavaliers. And Mark Price actually revolutionized the way that people attack on the screen and roll. He was the first guy who really split the screen and roll, and everybody knew that if they were up against Mark Price, it was going to be a tough night, because he was seriously good. Anyway, he actually ended up on the Golden State Warriors in the 1996-1997 NBA season, where he averaged 11 points and five assists with a steal per game. He shot 90% from the free throw line, almost 40% from three, and about 45% from the field. So he was extremely efficient, just as he was his entire career. But I reckon a lot of people never knew that Price actually was a warrior at one point. Number two, Nick Van Exel. Most will probably remember Nick Van Exel from his Laker days. I mean, this guy crossed up players, had a smooth left hand jump shot, but Van Exel also spent some time in Golden State as well. In fact, he spent 39 games there. Van Exel was treaded in August of 2003 to the Golden State Warriors during the 0-304 season. He played in a career low 39 games, averaging 12.6 points and 5.3 assists. Van Exel was a veteran by the time he got to the Warriors, having spent most of the late 90s with the Lakers and the early 2000s with the Nuggets and the Dallas Mavericks even before then. Obviously, it was a big demotion for Van Exel as he went from a playoff contender with the Dallas Mavericks to a team that had the longest playoff drought in the NBA at the time, which obviously that made Van Exel kind of not want to play for the Warriors, considering he was almost about to win an NBA championship. At least try to. Number one, Chris Weber. Chris Weber. Now, you probably know about Chris Weber playing for the Warriors. I mean, he got drafted there.  I mean, we all know that the Orlando Magic passed up on Chris Weber and they chose Penny Hardaway instead, pairing Shaq and Penny instead of Shaq and Weber, but this isn't this time. This isn't the 1993 rookie Chris Weber playing for the Golden State Warriors. This is the Golden State Warriors, Chris Weber, of the year 2008. 15 years after he got drafted there, Warriors fans are probably still upset over the fact that Weber did not play his prime years in Golden State because he immediately after his rookie season left the team because he didn't like the coach. Anyway, he finished where he started as he got drafted to Golden State and retired in Golden State. He only played nine games for the Warriors, averaging 3.9 points, 3.6 rebounds in 14 minutes per game. And that's it. That's 10 plays you may have forgotten about playing for the Golden State Warriors. And with that said, if you guys enjoyed this video, please be sure to subscribe for more. Be sure to leave a like and follow me on Instagram. That would be much appreciated. We are so close to 250,000 subscribers, but let's see if we can reach 1,000 likes for the next episode of this series, which will be on the Toronto Raptors. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to check out some of my other videos. And I am out. Peace.


Last week at Tory party conference saw the chance the Exchequer's Sagit Javid announced that the national minimum wage would rise to £10.50 an hour. At first glance, that looks like a smart attempt to park Tory tanks on Labour's lawn, with Jeremy Corbyn himself having promised to increase the minimum wage to only £10 an hour. The Tory's outdoing Labour on a massive issue of social justice, I hear you say. Well, not quite. The first point is to notice that this proposed increase to £10.50 won't be until 2024. Labour, on the other hand, are promising to increase it to £10 now. The London living wage in London, right now, is £10.55. That's the figure calculated by the Living Wage Foundation. For the rest of the country, it's presently £9 an hour, which means that the present, quote, national living wage is in fact a poverty one. The result of a rebranding exercise done under the stewardship of investment banker slash failing newspaper editor slash failed chance to the Exchequer, George Osborne. At present, the national minimum wage changes as to how old you are, with workers only entitled to the full amount at 25, which is obviously absurd as things don't cost less if you're younger and in full-time employment. By 2021, Javid wants to change that, with it falling to 23 and by 2024 to 21 years old, which is clearly an improvement, but unlike Labour, doesn't include those below 21. Nor does it include apprentices who presently earn as little as £4.35 an hour if they're under 18 years old, so the next time someone asks why more young people don't choose to do apprenticeships, there's your answer. A few things. Today, the living wage after nine years of conservative government is £8.21. That, by the models the Tories are now using, is a poverty wage. So, after potentially 14 years in government by the middle of the next decade, they're going to rectify a problem they've overseen for a generation. This is from the party that promised to eliminate the deficit by 2015 and several times to reverse austerity. Oh, and who else remembers the promise to put workers on boards to not increase VAT and to end child poverty? As with them, I'd bet on these new measures either never seeing the light of day or actually more likely for in-work poverty to only get worse. The particularly interesting thing about all of this is that Sacha Javid, who reads Ayn Rand's his wife every year and is a fervent libertarian capitalist, has had to resort to a policy which, in normal times, he would detest. Why? Because in-work poverty in Britain is rampant and has massively intensified since the Tories came to power in 2010, first the Liberal Democrats, then by themselves, and more recently with the DUP. According to the Think Tank and the Institute of Fiscal Studies, in the mid-1990s, 37% of those in poverty lived in a working household. That has reached 58%, meaning the idea of being poor but in a job was until relatively recently and common, but it's increasingly the norm. This has a massive knock on effect to child poverty. Appallingly, 30% of all children in the UK live in a house below the poverty line and, as already mentioned, it is increasingly likely that such households will include someone in work. In London, that figure rises to 37% and after housing costs have faxed in, child poverty rises to more than 50% in Newham and Tower Hamlets with similar figures in Blackburn, Manchester and Luton. 50%, one every two kids you see walking on the streets of those places, will be raised in poverty. Remarkably, there are around 500,000 more kids in poverty today than there were in 2010, which is the population of the city of Manchester.  The thing is it's only getting worse, so the figure expected to rise to 5.1 million by 2022. All in all, 8 million people who live in poverty are in families where at least one person is in work. So when people talk about Britain's high rate of employment, which is true, to be fair, remember this, it's built on the fact that it's increasingly normal to be poor despite slogging your guts out. That's increasing the issue that impacts children whose future is mapped out before they even have a chance. Will the party which has generated these problems and massively ramped them up over the last decade be the same one to solve them? I wouldn't count on it.