God Bless America! The greatest Nation in all human history!!! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸!! Being an American is something greater than being a citizen of Rome at the peak of the Roman Empire!

Conrtrolled more people too. If you don't have your foot on somebody's neck, what's the point? :)

One thing I love about the British Empire was the Opium Wars.  Chinese were like no we are done with this opium stop selling it to us.  The British come in like a crazed drug dealer and say no your going to fucking keep buying this opium and your going to like it.  Oh and we'll take Hong Kong.

"In the 17th and 18th centuries demand for Chinese goods (particularly silk, porcelain, and tea) in the European market created a trade imbalance between Qing Imperial China and Great Britain. European silver flowed into China when the Canton System, instituted in the mid-18th century, confined the sea trade to Canton and the Chinese merchants of the Thirteen Factories. The British East India Company sought to strengthen trading influence in Asia, and began to auction opium grown on its plantations in India to independent foreign traders in exchange for silver. The opium was then transported to the Chinese coast and sold to local middlemen who retailed the drug inside China. This reversed the flow of silver and increased the numbers of opium addicts in China, an outcome that worried Chinese officials."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War

I remember telling a friend all about this a few years ago. Well, as much as I knew about it anyway. It was pretty high up on the evil scale, but a fascinating play.

It was mainly a battle of trade but opium was a pretty big chunk of the conflict hence the name Opium Wars.  Speaking of opium... I've only done it once but I wouldn't mind doing it again.  Problem is opium is hard to find because usually they just turn it into heroin or morphine.

Happy Birthday Noble!

Ha. I've always wanted to try it too. I had a friend of a friend try to explain the experience to me. He tried it in a cave, an actual cave, in China during a trip there. He found it to be an almost overwhelming experience. I was stabbed in the back in 2003, and then also got very sick, partially because of that. The measels, or chicke pox, can't remember, essentally re-avtivated inside my mouth, throat, and esophagus. Most pain I've ever been in in my life. Between the 2 things, they had me in quarantine on IV. I was also on Oxycodone, the pure stuff, not Oxycontin. I left the hospital with over 100 tabs, and as I recovered, began to do it recreationally more than for pain relief. It was probably the best drug I've ever tried. I never got addicted, and went through maybe 2-3 hours of wihdrawal, that was totally quelled by smoking pot for the first time in weeks. So yeah, I get the appeal of opiates.

Oh yeah its Nobles birthday too.

Why we celebrating the illegal and unlawful rebellion against a sovereign nation? 🤔🤔🤔

It's also Outlaw's birthday! Happy birthday to both of you!!