We’re told that drug war is a moral imperative because, in the words of Walters himself, "dangerous drugs damage [children's] lives and limit their futures."  But like most temperance zealots, Walters measures success not by actual lives wrecked or ended prematurely, but merely by how many people are and aren’t getting high.

Switching from the "drugs ruin lives" justification for the drug war itself to "how many people are getting high" when measuring the same drug war’s effectiveness, then, hides a more important statistic:  How many people have had their lives ruined and futures limited by the drug war?  The vast majority of the 873,000 people arrested for marijuana offenses last year, for example, likely had more damage done to their lives by the prohibition of marijuana than could ever be done by the drug itself.

Such is why drug warriors like William Bennett, Karen Tandy, and Walters can assert with a straight face that alcohol prohibition was, also, a "success." Sure, the crime rate spiked, alcohol hospitalizations soared, and corruption and contempt for the rule of law was rampant.  But fewer people swallowed down less demon rum.  So, score one for social engineering.

Sure, deaths from drug overdose have jumped 70 percent, and more than doubled among young people.  But fewer people are smoking pot.  And that means we’re winning.

As they say, if you repeat a lie enough times, it becomes true. Bennett, Tandy and Walters are proof of that.

But surely then, if you repeat a truth enough times, as Radley, I and so many other try to do, it should make people listen as well? Isn't that the least that fairness owes us?

And, just as an aside, I'm not impressed by her ability to shoot a moose.  I have been around moose in Vermont, and, while you can't walk up to them and pet them, they are not particularly shy of humans.  A friend of mine up there commented, long before Ms. Palin became a national figure,  that shooting a moose takes about as much hunting skill as shooting a parked car.   As for dressing a moose, I think that, if you're going to eat meat, it's only honest to know how to take it from live animal to what's for dinner.  My wife can do that, with deer, anyway--we have no moose here in Tennessee--and she'd make a much better VPUS than Ms. Palin.  It is, as the New Agers say, a very grounding skill.  Maybe it should be one of the Vice Presidential prerequisites?   What if we got a vegetarian candidate? But, I digress....

There are two points I'd like to make from my "Deep Green Perspective."  The first is that Joe Biden is just as scary, in his own way, as Ms. Palin, and the second is that what many see as Ms. Palin's weaknesses look like strengths to her core supporters, so that when she is attacked for these qualities, it only rallies her base and makes her stronger. Many people don't understand that we have three colliding worldviews interacting in this election.  When you see it that way, a lot of things start to make sense that seem quite baffling otherwise.  But first, let's take a critical look at Joe Biden.

A lot of my "left Democrat" friends believe that Obama is playing the Roosevelt strategy, running a conservative campaign that will mutate into a much more radical approach to restructuring the country once he has gotten himself elected by acting more mainstream than he really is.  When I see that he has cold warrior Zbigniew Brezinski advising him on foreign policy and Wall Street insiders like Robert Rubin and his acolyte Jason Furman giving him pointers on financial policy, I have my doubts that foxes like these three will really create a safe henhouse, y'know?  And then we have Joe Biden, "the Senator from MBNA," a heartbeat away from the Presidency--and sure, Obama's a lot healthier than McCain, but we've got people at Palin rallies screaming "kill him!" when Obama's name gets mentioned.  Bullets do not respect your healthy lifestyle, folks, and, as I'm going to discuss later, there's every reason to take those threats seriously.

"The Senator from MBNA" is an epithet Joe has earned by his earnest support of Delaware's largest corporation, or what was Delaware's largest corporation until it got bought out by Bank of America, which, with that purchase and its recent acquisition of Merrill, Lynch, is well on its way to fulfilling its name.  Monopoly capitalism....Karl Marx would feel vindicated.  Joe was one of the first Democrats to support the Republican-originated bankruptcy reform bill, which has made it much harder for middle-class Americans to declare bankruptcy.  He voted for it four times over the seven years it took to get the bill passed; Obama, to his credit, voted against the bill, one of only 24 Democrats with enough spine and compassion to do so. Here's Arianna Huffington on the consequences of this bill:

So what does the bill do? It makes it harder for average people to file for bankruptcy protection; it makes it easier for landlords to evict a bankrupt tenant; it endangers child-support payments by giving a wider array of creditors a shot at post-bankruptcy income; it allows millionaires to shield an unlimited amount of equity in homes and asset-protection trusts; it makes it more difficult for small businesses to reorganize while opening new loopholes for the Enrons of the world; it allows creditors to provide misleading information; and it does nothing to rein in lending abuses that frequently turn manageable debt into unmanageable crises. Even in failure, ordinary Americans do not get a level playing field.

All because the credit-card sharks wanted to be sure of getting their pound of flesh.  And Joe Biden is supposed to be a "friend of the working man"?

And then there's his support for the Patriot Act.  He introduced a similar bill in the nineties, because of the Oklahoma City bombings, and boasted after 9-11 that the Patriot Act was "my bill."  He has also been a strong supporter of US military intervention.  And there's his offhand racism--but there's one key issue of his that impacts me personally.  That issue is the War on Some Drugs.  Biden initiated the creation of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which one wag recently characterized as "the only federal agency with a mandate to lie to the public," as well as being a prime mover of mandatory minimum sentencing for drug "offenses."  He introduced and secured passage of the so-called "RAVE Act," which turned bottled water and glow sticks into drug paraphernalia.  Joe is personally responsible not only for the Patriot Act, but for the "War on Drugs" as we know it.

Now, I'm not going to admit to any so-called criminal activity myself, but I will say that I have a lot of friends who use "illegal drugs," and the vast majority of them are responsible, hard-working people; but in the eyes of Joe Biden and the US government, they are all unfit to hold a job, drive, or raise children, and should be stripped of their voting rights and all their assets and jailed or re-educated until they see the error of their ways.  We are supposed to vote for  Biden and Obama because they are not as frightening as McSame and imPlalin?  Can you say "Kafkaesque," boys and girls?  Very good.  How about "Orwellian"?  When you vote for the lesser of two evils, you are still  voting for evil.  And what does that make you?

musical interlude:  Tom Neilson, "Democrats"

Well, enough about the particulars...now for the deeper perspective.  Here's how it looks to me:

For most of the time since humans became humans, we have lived in small bands of closely-related individuals whose primary commitment was to support each other, whether repelling large carnivores, hunting big game, or fending off raiders from the next valley who thought we were impinging on their hunting territory.  That, in my opinion, is where Sarah Palin, and the millions who support her, are coming from.  They are kind, considerate, and compassionate--with their own people.  The rest of us don't count, and if we attack any one of them, we have attacked them all.  Loyalty to their pack and obedience to its leader are their supreme virtues.  Questioning consensus reality is treason; active dissent from it is even worse, because we have to hang together to survive in a hostile world.  If you want to know more about these folks read Bob Altenmeyer's The Authoritarians.  It's available for free, online.

I hate to be the one to break the news to you, but about three-quarters of the people in the world are still in the grip of this us-versus-them mindset, even though the saber-tooth tigers and the great herds are all long gone, and People Who Are Not Like Us live in the next apartment, not a day's walk away through the woods.

Joe Biden and Barack Obama, I believe, have evolved beyond this primitive, anachronistic world view--but that does not constitute an endorsement!  They see that the whole human race is in it together on this planet and have a somewhat egalitarian approach, believing that debate among equals is no sin, unlike the Palin-McSame crowd.  However, the Biden-Obama worldview is so firmly committed to materialistic rationality that it incurs the hostility of those committed to the primitive religion of McCain-Palin consciousness, while it in turn is hostile to higher mysticism--hence the support for the war on some drugs and the commitment to the neoliberal, corporatist, ant hill/consumerist/growth agenda, which is as dangerous to the soul and ecology of the planet as the neoconservative, corporatist, ant hill/consumerist/growth agenda; the two differ mainly in how much they trust the ants--excuse me, I mean common people--who will populate the worlds they envision.  Palin-McSamers think humans are basically evil and will do the wrong thing unless watched constantly; the Biden-Obama crowd has seen far enough to postulate the perfectability of human nature, but will constantly be confounded by both  the prerational and postrational impulses that arise from deep within, because the possibility of post-rationality is not comprehensible to them; they, with Freud, think that religion is necessarily primitive, and they have little tolerance for it in either case.

Well, some small percentage of the population, myself included, (at least that's what I like to think) has gone beyond the polarization games of American politics, and we are neither afraid of the bad cops (McSame/Palin) nor drawn to co-operate with the good cops (Obama/Biden).  We could get along just fine in a world without cops, thank you, and we have a feeling that our numbers are growing exponentially.  If the struggle between the good cops and the bad cops doesn't destroy the planet's ability to sustain human life, we will likely take over when they have cancelled each other out.  It's just a question of time.

Meanwhile, I'm not going to be scared into voting for the good cop.  I'm going to vote for the Green Party's Cynthia McKinney, as well as local Green candidates John Miglietta and Chris Lugo.  And if all the "left Democrats" got fed up with being left by their party's consistent selection of center-right, neo-liberal, pro-growth, ecologically ignorant candidates and did the same, we would have quite a little movement on our hands, and maybe we could get this country moving again.  It's just a question of time; but time, my friends, is running out.

music:  Bruce Cockburn, "Gospel of Bondage"

A crop of 7,700 tonnes will produce around 1,100 tonnes of heroin - it basically works on a 7:1 ratio.The mystery is that the global demand for heroin is less than half that. In other words, Afghanistan only needs to produce 3,500 tonnes to satisfy every known heroin user on the planet.

Look at the graph, though.

For the past three years, production has been running at almost twice the level of global demand.The numbers just don't add up.

There are two credible theories.

via BBC NEWS | The Reporters | Mark Easton's UK.

--

Go peep the article for the thoeries.  I'm for the stockpiling one.  When times are good, go like gangbusters(bangers) and extract what you can.  But you don't want to flood the market with product, as that would hurt prices.  OPEC knows this, so I would expect their neighbors in Afghanistan propably peep it as well.

BTW, Afghanistan is, strangely, the place where the War on Terror and the War on Drugs have become the exact same thing....but only as far as Heroin in concerned.  If we were to focus that Terror war back to Afghanistan (vs. Iraq) and that drug war to Afghanistan (vs. here in the U.S) and then we might be able to actually win them both.

And we would know that we have done so by looking that that graph above, and how it changes in the future.

"No Horse, No Revolution."

NYTIMES:

WASHINGTON — When Afghan security forces found an enormous cache of heroin hidden beneath concrete blocks in a tractor-trailer outside Kandahar in 2004, the local Afghan commander quickly impounded the truck and notified his boss.

Before long, the commander, Habibullah Jan, received a telephone call from Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai, asking him to release the vehicle and the drugs, Mr. Jan later told American investigators, according to notes from the debriefing obtained by The New York Times. He said he complied after getting a phone call from an aide to President Karzai directing him to release the truck.

Two years later, American and Afghan counternarcotics forces stopped another truck, this time near Kabul, finding more than 110 pounds of heroin. Soon after the seizure, United States investigators told other American officials that they had discovered links between the drug shipment and a bodyguard believed to be an intermediary for Ahmed Wali Karzai, according to a participant in the briefing.

The assertions about the involvement of the president’s brother in the incidents were never investigated, according to American and Afghan officials, even though allegations that he has benefited from narcotics trafficking have circulated widely in Afghanistan.

Both President Karzai and Ahmed Wali Karzai, now the chief of the Kandahar Provincial Council, the governing body for the region that includes Afghanistan’s second largest city, dismiss the allegations as politically motivated attacks by longtime foes.

“I am not a drug dealer, I never was and I never will be,” the president’s brother said in a recent phone interview. “I am a victim of vicious politics.”

But the assertions about him have deeply worried top American officials in Kabul and in Washington. The United States officials fear that perceptions that the Afghan president might be protecting his brother are damaging his credibility and undermining efforts by the United States to buttress his government, which has been under siege from rivals and a Taliban insurgency fueled by drug money, several senior Bush administration officials said. Their concerns have intensified as American troops have been deployed to the country in growing numbers.

“What appears to be a fairly common Afghan public perception of corruption inside their government is a tremendously corrosive element working against establishing long-term confidence in that government — a very serious matter,” said Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, who was commander of coalition military forces in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005 and is now retired. “That could be problematic strategically for the United States.”

The White House says it believes that Ahmed Wali Karzai is involved in drug trafficking, and American officials have repeatedly warned President Karzai that his brother is a political liability, two senior Bush administration officials said in interviews last week.

Numerous reports link Ahmed Wali Karzai to the drug trade, according to current and former officials from the White House, the State Department and the United States Embassy in Afghanistan, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity. In meetings with President Karzai, including a 2006 session with the United States ambassador, the Central Intelligence Agency’s station chief and their British counterparts, American officials have talked about the allegations in hopes that the president might move his brother out of the country, said several people who took part in or were briefed on the talks.

“We thought the concern expressed to Karzai might be enough to get him out of there,” one official said. But President Karzai has resisted, demanding clear-cut evidence of wrongdoing, several officials said. “We don’t have the kind of hard, direct evidence that you could take to get a criminal indictment,” a White House official said. “That allows Karzai to say, ‘where’s your proof?’ ”

Neither the Drug Enforcement Administration, which conducts counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan, nor the fledgling Afghan anti-drug agency has pursued investigations into the accusations against the president’s brother.

Several American investigators said senior officials at the D.E.A. and the office of the Director of National Intelligence complained to them that the White House favored a hands-off approach toward Ahmed Wali Karzai because of the political delicacy of the matter. But White House officials dispute that, instead citing limited D.E.A. resources in Kandahar and southern Afghanistan and the absence of political will in the Afghan government to go after major drug suspects as the reasons for the lack of an inquiry.

“We invested considerable resources into building Afghan capability to conduct such investigations and consistently encouraged Karzai to take on the big fish and address widespread Afghan suspicions about the link between his brother and narcotics,” said Meghan O’Sullivan, who was the coordinator for Afghanistan and Iraq at the National Security Council until last year.

It was not clear whether President Bush had been briefed on the matter.Humayun Hamidzada, press secretary for President Karzai, denied that the president’s brother was involved in drug trafficking or that the president had intervened to help him. “People have made allegations without proof,” Mr. Hamidzada said.

Spokesmen for the Drug Enforcement Administration, the State Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.

An Informant’s Tip

The concerns about Ahmed Wali Karzai have surfaced recently because of the imprisonment of an informant who tipped off American and Afghan investigators to the drug-filled truck outside Kabul in 2006.

PAGE 2

Paternalistic busybodies have this peculiar view of society that since people do not understand what's good for them, they should be forced into following the "right" path. And stupid laws help their crusade. Every law is prone to misuse, especially those targeting victimless crimes. Its difficult to file a false case of murder and easy to plant drugs on someone. Those who are aware of the incidents surrounding the militancy in Punjab will know that the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act was misused (every use of NDPS is a misuse) by the Punjab police-

During criminal investigation police frequently resort to torture to extract information from suspects while they are in their custody. Particular pieces of legislation, including the Narcotic Drugs and Psycotropic Substances Act (NDPSA) and the Arms Act, are reported to be frequently misused by police to detain suspects for lengthy periods, during which torture frequently takes place. The NDPSA in particular is reported to be called by many human rights activists in Punjab the TADA of peace time. This Act, intended to curb the possession and trade of narcotics, provides for wide powers of arrest of suspects and it is reported to be frequently misused by the police for filing false cases against persons whom they want to get in their custody.
- India: Break the cycle of impunity and torture in Punjab (Amnesty International)

There are just laws and there are unjust laws, and a distinction can be made very easily. Any law that disregards consent and hurts individual rights and freedom of expression is an unjust law - therefore censorship laws, anti-drug laws etc are unjust ones deserving contempt and nothing else. What we need is Members of Parliament who have IQs 125 and above who will spend five years going through every piece of legislation in force in India and making a bonfire of every perverse law. Like the idea of separation of church and state, governments should also follow the ideas of separation of society and state, separation of economy and state, and separation of morality and state. And if we follow Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism, we need no state.

Imagine a law (General Dyer-esque) which requires that all Indians crawl on all fours. I have no doubt that if such a day comes there will be a long line of busybodies who will demand the enforcement of this law as well. Reason? Its the law!

For starters, there is the medicinal marijuana debate. While there is some evidence that says marijuana could POTENTIALLY benefit people with cancer who are having trouble keeping down their lunch during chemotherapy treatment, these studies are often poorly conducted, usually by neo-hippies who don't even have proper credentials, in addition to being funded by the Taliban. Marinol, a pill that contains one of the 60+ therapeutic compounds in marijuana, is readily available. In clinical trials, this pill has even been shown to be slightly more effective than a sugar pill, and nearly as effective as Astroglide. Besides this, let us not forget that heroin, which was developed as a medication by the Bayer corporation, is classified as a Schedule I drug by the DEA, as is marijuana. Coincidence? Should heroin be brought back to the hospital too? I think not.

The contention that probably irks me the most is that cannabis, let's call it “pot” for convenience, is nearly harmless. Supporters of this idea claim that it is less deadly than alcohol, tobacco, McDonald's, caffeine, the massive amount of toxic chemicals being pumped into our water supply, people falling asleep while driving, and a myriad of other nasties. This is simply not true. For starters, one hundred percent of pot users wind up shooting heroin, except those who die from the pot. Incidentally, it is a little known fact that pot alone kills more people per year than natural disasters, AIDS, cancer, and death combined. Further, studies have conclusively shown that pot smoking is the leading cause of global warming, which is sure to kill us all if it isn't curbed. So actually, the $700,000,000+ that has been invested, some naysayers would say “wasted,” on the war on drugs has actually also helped combat global warming.

Another flawed argument is that the war on drugs causes more damage than it prevents. Even if this were true, let's consider the war in Afghanistan. It has caused as much, if not more destruction than the war on drugs in a fraction of the time. This is all in response to an attack that killed less than 3,000 people, while drugs have killed billions throughout history. Therefore, if you oppose the war on drugs, you are a flag-burning commie. Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking “but if the terrorists get nukes or bioweapons, they'll kill us all.” While this may or may not be true, consider the fact that pot has been readily manufactured into Zyklon-B using household materials costing less than a gallon of gasoline, a small can of naphtha, and a bottle of Tiki Torch fluid. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Finally, they tout cases of people like Jonathon Magbie, a 28-year-old who had more respiratory and other diseases than most people have fingers, and who also died in jail from these diseases after a pot arrest. Then there's Rachel Hoffman, a 23-year-old living in Florida who was caught with four ounces of pot and enough Valium to put an average adult to sleep for 10 hours. Two days after the the Tallahassee Police Department broke procedure to send her with $13,000 to buy cocaine and a gun, and then lost track of her whereabouts, she was found dead. Who cares? As Tallahassee Police Chief Dennis Jones was quick to point out, she was, after all, a criminal. There are countless cases of people being discriminated against for medical treatment, housing, jobs, parental rights, etc. based on either prior pot arrests, or on pissing in a cup within a month of having smoked pot. I guess it's up to me to ask the obvious question here. Do these evil fucks even deserve basic human rights?

Up until now, I've used rock-solid facts and undeniable logic to show the flaws in the arguments used by those who want to legalize pot for various reasons. Now I know there are some who would say my facts aren't so rock-solid and my logic is flimsy at best. But fuck them, I know what's best for them, and it's jail. Jesus hated pot, calling stonerdom, and I quote, “the most unforgivable sin of all.” Why in heaven's name would God put it on earth if that were the case? The answer to that is quite simple. Pot is here to test our faith, much like the fossil record and Judaism.

The answer to the marijuana epidemic sweeping our nation is obvious. The death penalty. If we institute the death penalty for any and every instance of marijuana possession, I predict that it will curb 100% of the problem. Just look at the Philippines. While a few might occasionally toke in the dark recesses of a cave or something, it would be out of the public eye, leaving us free to focus our time and tax dollars on less important things like global warming or child pornography. Seriously, when are we going to pull our heads out of our asses and take out this green, orange-haired, purple-crystal-covered monster once and for all?

Those familiar with the problem of legalization of marijuana probably already know about a major reason why weed was made illegal during the 1930s. For those who don't know, here's a good starting point to read up on how the DuPont plastic industry wanted to get rid of hemp as a potential competitor in a market it eagerly sought to dominate, if not monopolize entirely. Therefore, it was reasoned it was a hemp product, marijuana had to go too. Another excellent source detailing the reasons why marijuana was made illegal is The Marijuana Conspiracy.

However, in addition to the selfish politico-economic manipulations done by DuPont and the whole propaganda apparatus that went with it , there may be another more subtle economic reason why weed is finding difficulty of being legalized world-wide.

We live in a materialistic world in which its citizens are expected to be good producers and consumers. Until at least retirement age, we are expected to work diligently for the production of material goods and the rendering of services, which, not rarely, have rather limited value in the bureaucratic society we live in. After we have survived the financial onslaught resulting from the imposition of the many forms of taxation (which sometimes in character looks more like a state authorized extortion, especially with regards to the income tax), we are expected to spend what is left of our monetary resources, on buying consumer goods which are mostly also of rather limited virtue. In the meantime tough decisions on how to run our lives are being done by our "betters" while we are expected to play with our newly bought toys like the good little "perpetual children" we are until we get fed up with them (which usually doesn't take too long) and dash out to the stores to buy ourselves some new ones. Hence the materialistic consumption cycle starts all over again, all the while never quite realizing that happiness is something that defies buying.

So that is basically what life is all about for the average Jane Soap-opera and Joe Six-pack: an endless cycle of production alternated with consumption. In such an slavish society it is to be expected that the puppet masters who set up the con-scheme of perennial exploitation, would be terribly interested in psycho-active substances that would accentuate this slavish behavior even more. Hence the advent of stimulant drugs such as cocaine and amphetamine. In the US, a sloppy one hundred years ago, cocaine was much favored by many people to relieve fatigue, depression and a host of other ailments. Cocaine use skyrocketed one time among the civil population, ever implicitly promoting the work-ethic native to the good little workerbee. In addition, amphetamine use was rampant on both sides of the WWII conflict. With war being the profitable enterprise that it is, the commercial reason for widespread use of psycho-stimulants is self-evident. Amphetamine use, most notably methamphetamine, is still very high in countries such as Thailand, and overseers tend to hand out speed-pills ("Yah-Ba") to their workers like candy. "Meth" seems to be a drug that is most compatible with the high standards of Asian work-ethics.

Contrastingly, weed generally doesn't urge you to work longer and harder, not in the least because you start to understand the banality of doing so. It doesn't take too long for stoned people to realize that they are people rather than superficial worker-bees. Likewise, if you are stoned you feel less inclination to get up and go buy the latest but redundant expensive gadgets made for only pennies in Asian sweatshops. On the same note, "stoners" produce less because they don't need the extra wages to buy the latest but useless expensive gadgets.

On the other hand you may say, that heroin also tends to make its users less productive and less able to spend money on needless little gadgets. Although that is true, from the perspective of our rulers there is a virtue attached to heroin consumption that is not seen with cannabis usage. Heroin addicts usually have to resort to criminal activity in order to support their expensive addiction. Hence they provide the authorities with ample opportunity and rationale to expand their policing apparatus and prison accommodations. And these developments cost the state more money, which of course is extracted from the public through taxation. Thus the authorities have a way of extracting more money from the civil population in another way besides regular civil consumption. It can hardly be coincidental that they themselves are also the biggest suppliers of heroin flooding the streets of the US.

Weed, however is a different story altogether and it must therefore be considered an annoying little thorn in the eye of the string-pullers as it blasphemes the two pillars of "society": production and consumption. And this seems to be an important reason why they seem to despise cannabis. Another reason may include things like the inability of the rulers to attain a market monopoly since basically any half-wit can grow a plant... In addition, it seems that mind-control stands to break down with the consumption of cannabis and with all the people subjected to covert governmental mind-control programs, the idea of a possibility of compromising programming may be a bit too much to look forward to, from the perspective of the rulers that is.

Addendum:
At the time I originally wrote the above piece it didn't quite occur to me that there may be another reason why the governments wants to keep cannabis illegal. That reason is what all illegal drugs have in common, drug users are prosecutable by law. It is easily provable that a lot of people end up in prison because of mere drug use, with marijuana being a highly represented. In other words, marijuana, while illegal, feeds the Prison Industrial Complex. As long as this is considered a virtuous thing by the powers that be - and given the stiffening of drug laws it surely seems that way - another incentive for keeping pot illegal has been revealed. As is said in the War on Drugs (The Prison Industrial Complex) (1999), "it's not a war on drugs, it's a war on poor people with drug involvement."

References:

1. Reefer Madness (anti-marijuana propaganda from 1936)

   [googlevideo=http://video.google.nl/videoplay?docid=-6696582420128930236&hl=nl]

2. Grass, A Marijuana History - Narrated by Woody Harrelson (comes in multiple parts)

3. War on Drugs (The Prison Industrial Complex) (1999)
   [googlevideo=http://video.google.nl/videoplay?docid=864268000924014458&hl=nl]

This is why it is peculiar of us, if not bizarre and quasi-suicidal, to insist that its main economic lifeblood continues to be wholly controlled by our enemies...And, unsurprisingly, UNODC also reports that the vast bulk of the revenue from this astonishing harvest goes directly to the Taliban or to local warlords and mullahs. Meanwhile, in the guise of liberators NATO forces appear and tell the Afghan villagers that they intend to burn their only crop. And the American embassy is only restrained by the Afghan government from pursuing a policy of actually spraying this same crop from the air! In other words, the discredited fantasy of Richard Nixon's so-called "War on Drugs" is the dogma on which we are prepared to gamble and lose the country that gave birth to the Taliban and hospitality to al-Qaida.

SO WHAT IS THE BETTER SOLUTION?

While in the short term, hard-pressed Afghan farmers should be allowed to sell their opium to the government rather than only to the many criminal elements that continue to infest it or to the Taliban. We don't have to smoke the stuff once we have purchased it: It can be burned or thrown away or perhaps more profitably used to manufacture the painkillers of which the United States currently suffers a shortage. (As it is, we allow Turkey to cultivate opium poppy fields for precisely this purpose.) Why not give Afghanistan the contract instead? At one stroke, we help fill its coffers and empty the main war chest of our foes while altering the "hearts-and-minds" balance that has been tipping away from us.

WILL THAT FLY IN WASHINGTON?

I happen to know that this option has been discussed at quite high levels in Afghanistan itself, and I leave you to guess at the sort of political constraints that prevent it from being discussed intelligently in public in the United States. But if we ever have to have the melancholy inquest on how we "lost" a country we had once liberated, this will be one of the places where the conversation will have to start.

 I couldn't agree more.  Hitchens is  right on the last point but I don't see why this couldn't be carried out covertly.  And just to be clear I had no idea that Hitchens would be writing this on October 6 when I posted the same thing on October 5th.   In fact,  I have long argued (and have a paper trail to prove it) that the drug trade everywhere could  easily be disrupted and destroyed by the US government if it wanted to disrupt the economic supply and demand chain.   Major High-Five to Friday_in-Cairo for passing this along.

The video below is from his appearance on a panel at the Cato Institute on 9/11/08.  The panel was entitled "Should No-Knock Police Raids be Rare-or Routine?" that also included Radley Balko.

More information on the event, including a podcast and video of the entire event in RealPlayer here.

I'm not sure why UAPD chooses to present four-year stats. Beyond allowing students to pick out their own individual contributions to the arrest totals over the course of their college careers, four years of data isn't particularly useful. In fact, it's just enough to make wildly erroneous inferences about campus crime trends. For a clearer look at UA crime, check out this Google spreadsheet, where I've collected, graphed and analyzed arrest data from UAPD reports dating back to 1998, which is a little bit better.

So, which sort of infractions result in the most arrests by University police? I'll give you two guesses:

Yep, victimless drug and alcohol violations. According to UAPD, arrests filed under "Liquor" include:

The violation of law or ordinances prohibiting the manufacture, sale, transporting, furnishing, or possessing of intoxicating liquor; maintaining unlawful drinking places; bootlegging; operating a still; furnishing liquor to a minor; using a vehicle for illegal transportation of liquor; drinking on a train or public conveyance; all attempts to commit any of the aforementioned.

You know, the sort of crimes officers might need a few AR-15 assault rifles to bust. Oddly, the report contains no definition of arrests categorized under "Drugs," but I think it's safe to assume it includes everything from getting caught smoking out your hermit crab in the honors dorm to running a campuswide coke cartel.

Of course, bothering to police both categories of crime -- which make up well over 60 percent of campus arrests, and more each year -- is a massive waste of officer time, taxpayer money, and individual liberty. I'd much rather see these resources diverted towards the biggest campus crime that imposes significant costs on someone besides the offender: drunk driving, which netted an unsettling 90 arrests last year.

As an interesting aside, as I was wading through data, I discovered a useful chart on page 12 of the 2006 report cataloging use of force by UAPD officers -- things like the number of times a gun was drawn, a taser was fired, or pepper was sprayed. It's interesting stuff, but it doesn't seem to be published in any other annual report. Sure, it's public information that can be acquired through UA's byzantine records request process, but like ASUA minutes, this is the sort of thing that ought to be regularly published -- if only in order to find out how many bros are actually getting tased.

VANCOUVER — There's green to be made clipping and trimming the green leaves in British Columbia's marijuana industry.

The prospect of tax-free income is driving some people into temporary work as "clippers" for indoor and outdoor grow operations.

It's not only against the law, it's also considered the most labour-intensive part of the harvesting process. But there isn't a shortage of people willing to do the work.

Pot clippers - also known as trimmers - groom marijuana plants that have been harvested from fields or indoor grow operations. The workers pare down the buds from the plants to make them presentable for sale.

By Martin Arvizu

It seems that Mexico is finally, after so many setbacks in its history, taking a huge step forward. Not only to help itself financially and socially but also in freeing itself from the political pressures of the United States.

According to the story in Reuters by Miguel Angel Gutierrez, Mexico is once again trying to pass legislation to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of street drugs.

Under President Felipe Calderon’s plan, people would be allowed to posses up to two grams of marijuana or opium, one-half of a gram of cocaine, 50 milligrams of heroin or 40 milligrams of methamphetamine without facing legal repercussions.

Gutierrez reports that Sen. Alejandro Gonzalez, head of the Senate’s justice committee said, “What we want is to not treat an addict as a criminal, but rather a sick person and give them psychological and medical treatment.”

Although I seriously doubt that Mexico intends to treat and help addicts, this is far better plan than incarceration.

The story predicts that the problem will be the conservative nature of Mexicans and of course its northern neighbors, the United States.

Mexicans are very conservative, but not in the traditional American way. Yes they are religious and very family oriented. They believe that hard work pays off and they also believe that nothing in life is a given.

But Mexicans are also party animals. Mexicans love life to that point that that actually celebrate death. Mexicans believe in drinking and dancing and fiestas galore.

Trust me, an American conservative like Bill O’Reilly has nothing in common with conservatives in Mexico. This proposed legislation is a perfect example. Calderon is a known Mexican conservative and he is attempting to legalize the possession of small amounts of street drugs. Barrack Obama or Nancy Pelosi, some of our more popular liberals would not even attempt that type of legislation here in the United States. Some other liberal politician may eventually try, but it will not be for quite a while. I guess that it will be at least ten more years before someone has the bravery to do so.

Regardless, I hope Mexico continues and succeeds in its endeavor to pass this logical piece of legislation, despite what the United States will say about it.

Former President Vicente Fox, also a so called “conservative,” attempted to enact similar legislation in 2006 but it was scrapped after Washington objected and critics said it would create a market specifically aimed at “drug tourists.”

I guess Washington does not care if Americans drink themselves to death in Mexico, just so long as they do not partake in any illegal drug use. Just as Mexico should mind its own people in its own country, the United States should do the same.

Felipe Calderon has earned some respect from me with this brave and logical proposal. I cannot deny that I was disappointed when he won the election over Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in July of 2006, but I seriously admire him for the moment being for taking his country’s future seriously and attempting to navigate away from the failed path that the United States has taken for so long in criminalizing drug use.

I expect the United States to verbally assault Mexico over their plan in the coming days, as they would like for everyone to think as they do and believe that drugs are evil and need to be eradicated, unless of course they are found to be legal by senators and congressmen who probably own stock in pharmaceuticals. They know that this law could seriously undermine that outdated stance not only domestically, but in the world as well.

So as all our readers know by now I am a Mexico basher. I believe Mexico should not be meddling in the immigration issue here in the United States as their record towards illegal immigrants in their country is nothing to brag about.

I have written about how Mexico’s treatment of their poor and the lack of opportunity it provides the working and middle classes are the main factor in the emigration out of the country.

But for tonight I have nothing but praise for Calderon and Mexico. It is an intelligent decision to begin the de-criminalization of drugs even if it is only for small quantities.

The criminalization of drugs has caused enough problems for Mexico and I hope and encourage Mexico to move forward with this legislation know matter what the United States does to thwart it.

Levent Akbulut

Students for a Sensible Drug Policy in the UK

Now I know drugs can be a destructive force. They kill brain cells, rot teeth, increase blood pressure and heart attack risk. They impair mental facilities, and they can cause someone to turn to violent measures to get the money to get more drugs. They should be regulated, I do not argue against that. I do, however, argue against the stiff penalties and lack of freedom where drugs are concerned. If I have some weed on me and get stopped by the police, should I automatically face stiff jail time? Yes I know drugs are illegal, and it is my choice to break the law so therefore I must face the consequences. I have no problem facing the consequences--owning up to my responsibilities as they say. But, in the case of drugs the consequences are usually unfair and unjust.

Imprisoning someone will not get them off drugs. It will make the drugs harder to get, sure, but anyone who believes our prisons and jails are drug free is fooling themselves and living in a different world. Rehabilitation is a much better option, for a couple of reasons. One, rehab takes an active approach to getting people drug free; it doesn't just throw them in a concrete room, chide them for breaking the law, and then leave them there to languish in the throes of withdrawal as it forgets about them. Two, the only way to get someone off of drugs, and keep them off, is through a rehab program.

So we send someone to jail because they had some cocaine on them. What happens when they get out of jail? Well, unless they received some treatment while imprisoned, chances are that they will go back to using cocaine, and risk getting thrown back in jail. Stupid? Sure, but people are just people, and therefore we do stupid things all the time. Of course, rehab is no guarantee, and I suppose that as long as drugs are illegal a line must be drawn somewhere. Still, I find it refreshing to see Mexico (or any other country for that matter) trying to move that line a little bit because at least it's a start.

I wonder, though, if the Mexican bill will even see the light of day, or be implemented. It is no secret that the Unites States government hates drugs and has spent over 38 billion dollars on it at the State and Federal levels this year alone. Mexico is close to the U.S and will most likely bow to pressures from the U.S. to incarcerate drug offenders, not send them to rehab. I hope this is not so, and that Mexico will be allowed to rule itself how it sees fit, but with the American bully attitude in full effect around the world at this moment in time, who knows?

Maybe if we in the US legalized drugs, regulating and taxing them like we do alcohol and tobacco (two of the most dangerous drugs out there, yet they are legal) we wouldn't be in the financial crisis we are in. At the very least, we'd have an additional 38 billion dollars to spend on State and Federal programs. I know this is just a pipe dream; we cannot admit defeat in anything, and to legalize drugs now would be to admit that we've wasted countless amounts of money and time to fight something we were just going to give up on anyway. It's the same reason why John McCain wants to stay in Iraq, no matter what the cost.

The viewer is welcomed by the following ominous message, describing the socio-political context of Death Race:

The full text reads:

"2012-The United States economy collapses.
Unemployment hits a record high.
Crime rates spiral out of control. The prison system reaches breaking point.
Private Corporations now run all correctional facilities for profit.
~
Terminal Island Penitentiary streams a series of Cage Fights live on the Internet.
Prisoners fight to the death, creating a ratings sensation.
They are the new Gladiators and Terminal Island is their Coliseum.
~
But like the mob of ancient Rome, the modern audience soon becomes bored.
They demand more...
Death Race is born."

Regarding predictive programming, those opening lines are quite self-explanatory and need no further explanation. To gauge if the context given by those introductory lines gives a plausible rendition of the nature of a future American society, let's go over them in some detail.

1. 2012 - The United States economy collapses.
   There's already much to do at present times, October 2008, of a possible financial meltdown that could not only wreck the US economy but of which the shock effects could be felt throughout the world.
   It's beyond the scope of this current review to go try to demonstrate that the World is indeed amidst a financial crisis that may sooner rather than later escalate into one big enough to cause the US economy to plunge into a major depression. Therefore for anyone who is at least a bit Google-clever but who, unfortunately, has been living on the moon for the past two months here's a search-query to help convince you that there indeed is such a thing as a global financial crisis currently going on which has the potential of tanking the US economy in the not too distant future.
2. Unemployment hits a record high. The prison system reaches breaking point.
   These societal developments, if becoming a reality, are trivially premised on item 1, so there need be no further elaboration apart from showing that prison populations are indeed on the uprise:
   

   http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/corrtyp.htm

   

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisons_in_the_United_States

   The excerpts of the next article are also most elucidating:

   More than one in 100 adults in the United States is in jail or prison, an all-time high that is costing state governments nearly $50 billion a year and the federal government $5 billion more, according to a report released yesterday.

   With more than 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States leads the world in both the number and percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving far-more-populous China a distant second, according to a study by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.

   The growth in prison population is largely because of tougher state and federal sentencing imposed since the mid-1980s. Minorities have been particularly affected: One in nine black men ages 20 to 34 is behind bars. For black women ages 35 to 39, the figure is one in 100, compared with one in 355 for white women in the same age group.
   Source: New High In U.S. Prison Numbers - Growth Attributed To More Stringent Sentencing Laws

   In addition, the female prison population is growing even faster as this excerpt from a short article, dated May 2006, demonstrates:

   The number of women in state prisons has grown exponentially in the past three decades, growing at more than twice the rate as the male population, according to a report from the Women's Prison Association.
   [...]
   Most of the increases in female imprisonment can be traced to the war on drugs, the report said. More women are being sent to prison for drug offenses -- notably methamphetamine use -- while convictions for violent crimes have fallen. Experts called for alternative sentencing for female prisoners, including addiction treatment for drug offenders.
   Female Prison Population Grew 757 Percent Since 1977, Report Says

   Once again, articles such as the one above as well as the Dutch documentary referred to in the reference section reinforce the notion that the so-called War on Drugs, rather than being an effective collective effort to try to bring a halt to the damaging effects of narcotics, is quite contrarily, apart from hopelessly failing in what it pretends to do, an efficient catalyst for increasing the scope of law enforcement and for feeding the Prison Industrial Complex.

3. Private Corporations now run all correctional facilities for profit.
   The current developments in the prison industry are such that more and more prisons emerge that are neither state- nor federally managed but indeed owned and operated by private corporations; prisons are being privatized.
   The prospect of privatized prison is the likely outcome of a rather alarming trend that can already be witnessed today is supported by a documentary already made in 1999 by Dutch Television. It has been placed on Googlevideo, also see the reference area below. I highly recommend it, the spoken language is mostly English with a minimally contributing Dutch voice-over.

   Since the goal of any corporation, by its commercial character is to strive to maximize profit, a danger emerges of potentially conflicting interests between the pursuit of profit and ethically acceptable treatments of prisoners. For instance, cutting costs in guard labor may negatively interfere with properly managing the prisoners. As such, riots may break out, or prisoners may end up getting killed by belligerent fellow prisoners. Also the commercial exploitation of prisoners, in the form of slave labor, or, similar to the thematic centerpiece of the movie, as slavish actors in commercially attractive but macabre forms of entertainment.

4. Prisoners fight to the death, creating a ratings sensation.
   If society indeed is plunged into systemic misery then unfortunately the psychology of a human is of such generally pathological degree that it derives pleasure in the knowledge that there are other people doing worse than he or she is. If one is but a stone's throw away from the gutter, then what better way to gain some sense of perverted satisfaction than to observe another person doing even worse off than you do?

   Indeed, the phenomenon of taking pleasure in witnessing other people's suffering is well known all over the world as is reflected by the reality of many languages having unique words to identify it. For instance, the Dutch call it 'leedvermaak', whereas the Germans call it 'Schadenfreude', a word that was even adopted as schadenfreude by the English language. Hence it would come as little surprise that, based on regrettable but basic human psychology, and as macabre as it may be, that there would be enough people willing to support a market based the idea of broadcasting filmed fights of people trying to kill one another.

5. They are the new Gladiators and Terminal Island is their Coliseum.
   
   However, the idea of one person trying to bash in the head of another person for the enjoyment of others is hardly new at all and indeed was already quite commonplace no later than the days of the old Roman Empire.

   
   The notion of prisons turning commercial is reflected by the high prices viewers have to pay in order to watch Death Race live, although I ignored taking into account any inflationary corrections. Since the race comes in three stages, at $99 dollars each, or $250 for all three, and taking into account that the bloodthirsty viewing audience consists of millions of viewers at any one go, it doesn't take a rocket-scientist to figure out that this kind of business is simply too lucrative for unscrupulous entrepreneurs to let pass unexploited.

   Sad as it is, the unconscientious businessman is of course only partly too blame for the emergence of modern day gladiator games since if there wouldn't have a been a market for it, represented by all the hordes of viewers out for blood, the idea of a Death Race would not have been commercially viable to begin with. It's but a simple consequence of the elementary economic law of demand and supply.

   Besides being the next generation of the gladiator games, the fictional but potentially real phenomenon of Death Race is akin to the existing phenomenon of the snuff film, by virtue of people getting filmed while they are getting killed for none other reason than commercial exploitation. However, contrary to a snuff movie, in Death Race family members do not get paid a single dime for the sacrificial acts of the actors. For all practical purposes, the participants in Death Race are acting out their part as mere slave laborers since all a racer can look towards is the exceedingly unlikely prospect of merely leaving prison and returning to society. Therefore, in essence, Death Race embodies the ethically questionable entertainment amalgamation of the gladiator game combined with the snuff movie, although without the bad script and with an utterly expendable and cheap acting cast. As such, the creative minds behind neo-gladiator prison games save themselves both the effort for procuring inferior movie-scripts as well as saving expenditures on acting.

   
   As the movie shows quite clearly, the idea of the inclusion of women into pits of death is, is not an altogether new but nonetheless quite exotic phenomenon. But with the rise of female inmates this may not be an entirely fictional and far-fetched prediction. Movies such as Death Race, in which women function as racing navigators, serve to help prepare the public for such a (similar) development becoming reality in the future. Given the abhorrent nature of those games, a rightful remark would be, "emancipation is a b!tch", meant quite literally.

The movie features prisoners being tracked by a global positioning system (GPS). It is a known fact of today's society that the familiarity and ubiquitousness of the GPS is on the rise all over the world[1][2][3]. In some cases, such as sex offenders, the reason for doing so, in the light of preventing recidivism, seems to be quite justified. However, in spite of all the convenient practical benefits, if and when people are tagged like sheep for all the wrong reasons then this is cause for grave concern and invokes questions of ethics regarding privacy and the potentiality for authoritative abuse by whoever is responsible for doing the tracking. Combine a dictatorial regime with mandatory tracking of its citizens, through implanted RFID chips for instance, and basic civil rights now will be decided by the despot to respect or not.

For instance, on a prima facie level it may be justified to tag and track felons, on the basis of the virtue of protecting society against recidivism. However, what if the laws of the country are such that not all felons are in actual fact a danger to society? For instance, some American states may regard the smoking of marijuana a major offense and convict all those who get caught as felons. As such, otherwise law abiding and productive members of society may find themselves being treated, by law enforcement officials as well as the rest of society, as dangerous criminals for the rest of their natural life. From a purely humane point of view alone such a profoundly discriminatory punishment surely is too much to bear and in violation of any decent standard of civil rights.

At any rate, be that as it may, regarding predictive programming, the movie normalizes the mandatory provisioning of prisoners with GPS.

The antagonist, prison warden Hennesey, firmly asserts herself as director of Death Race.

In the movie the role of antagonist is fulfilled by the organizer of Death Race, the prison warden of Terminal Island Correctional Facilities, a female by the name of Hennesey. At the end of the movie, the protagonist, a former career racer named Ames who was framed and jailed by Hennesey and thus coerced into participating in Death Race, together with another imprisoned racer miraculously manage to break out of prison and escape to certain freedom. As an appetizing bonus, the evil prison warden gets blown up to kingdom come, and they all, minus the warden and a few dead racers, live happily ever after.

The protagonist meeting the antagonist.

The happy ending of the movie suggests to the following scenario. Here you have one convicted felon, even though he is innocent and therefore wrongfully incarcerated, together with another convicted felon manage to break out of prison and subsequently stay out of prison without being haunted by the law which normally should work hard to put the escaped convicts behind bars again. Hmmmm.... does this end scenario sound likely to be possible to happen in real life too? And yet, the happy ending suggests that it is.

Again it is this theme of hope that gives the gullible viewer some sort of false sense of security that, if such modern day Gladiator games ever should be revived, there is this chance of getting around its final outcome, and escape certain death. That is, apart from winning a sufficient number of races to qualify for release into the public, if you are cunning, daring and lucky enough you might just be able to escape into freedom and live a peaceful life afterwards. Should these kind of sadistic and essentially inhumane games ever become a reality I would not bet my two cents on the possibility that whoever are the creative minds behind them leave open any systemic glitches ready to be exploited by the exploited (i.e. the incarcerated).

References:

1. World Prison Population List (fourth edition) (2003)
2. Prison Privatization: Recent Developments in the United States (2000)
3. 'How far can you bounce?': The extraordinary taunts of sick ghouls who jeered as a teenager leapt to his death (2008)
4. Americans starting to implant RFID chips in humans (2006)
   

5. NOW on PBS 419 Prisons for Profit
   [googlevideo=http://video.google.nl/videoplay?docid=-461339317435460598&hl=nl]

6. War on Drugs (The Prison Industrial Complex) (1999)
   [googlevideo=http://video.google.nl/videoplay?docid=864268000924014458&hl=nl]

7. 
   Death Race 2000 (the original of 1975)
   
   In the year 2000 the United States has been destroyed by a financial crisis and a military coup. Political parties have collapsed into a single Bipartisan Party, which also fulfills the religious functions of a unified church and state. The resulting fascist police state, the United Provinces, is headed by the cult figure "Mr President" (Sandy McCallum). The people are kept satisfied through a stream of gory gladiatorial entertainment, which includes the bloody spectacle the Transcontinental Road Race, depicted as a symbol of American values and way of life.

   The race is held in three segments from east coast to west, and scored both by traditional methods of timed checkpoints, and also by the fatalities ("scores") achieved by the drivers, including spectators, drivers and race crew. Scoring is 10 points for women of child-bearing age, 40 for teenagers, 70 for children under twelve and 100 for folks over 75. The winner of the race is the one who runs over the most pedestrians rather than the first to cross the finish line.[2] The cars are equipped to kill, bearing anti-personnel weaponry ranging from blades to rockets, and the drivers and their cars are themed in a manner reminiscent of the Hanna-Barbera animated series Wacky Races of the late 1960s.
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Race_2000

It’s unlikely to be an issue in the election, given more pressing matters, but it should be something that’s discussed in connection with the “tough on crime” legislation that the Conservatives are endlessly promoting (and for that matter, with respect to the positions of the Liberals and NDP who are seeking to mimic them in this regard).

While the term "victory" was never really an accurate way to describe any possible outcome, our understanding of the Jihad movement itself is so inherently flawed that even the most rudimentary goals in our the battle with Islamic extremism can never be achieved. Here's the quote from the Economist:

"To explain the movement, many experts draw parallels with globalisation. Some describe it as a venture-capital firm that invests in promising terrorist projects. Others speak of it as a global “brand” maintained by its leaders through their propaganda, with its growing number of “franchises” carrying out attacks..."

This is actually a very insightful way to describe Al Qaeda. The problem is that the description is reached through a thought process that represents a world-view completely alien to these terrorists.

Globalisation, venture capitalism, brand marketing are all western ideas that aim to make the world a better place. (How's that going, by the way?) By labeling any factions or arms within the Jihadist movement in these terms, we fail to grasp the geopolitical reality that created the likes of bin Laden and Zawahiri in the first place. This makes the task of winning hearts and minds in fringe Islamic communities impossible.

Before we get into the heavy philosophical discussion- let's look at the actual historical roots of Al Qeada.

To say that the United States created this enemy is true in a number of ways: beyond the obvious occupation of Islamic lands breeding an inevitable backlash, the U.S. actually gave political, financial, and logistical support to the same "freedom fighters" in Afghanistan that we are fighting today. Before we were stuck in our current quagmire in this God-forsaken wasteland, the Soviet Union was the occupying force. From 1978 to 1989 the Soviets fought in Afghanistan. Their original intention was to support Marxist forces in their struggle against the ruling Islamic parties.

Because we were absolutely determined to stop the expansion of Communism at all costs, the U.S. decided to lend its support to the mujahideen. CIA operatives were sent in to provide training and weapons to the Muslims, including one Osama bin Laden, in order to prevent the Soviet sphere of influence from growing. Eventually, the USSR was forced to withdraw in disgrace after a long war that shattered their aura of invincibility and drained vital funds and resources from the empire.

The Islamic parties maintained their hold of Afghanistan, and the country became a base for an assortment of Jihadist groups that would eventually seek to destroy their enemies beyond the region. At the same time this was happening, the U.S. was backing Saddam Hussein and Iraq in their long and bloody war with the Iranians. Thanks to our support, Hussein was able to beat back the extremist nation that had been taken over by radical Shiites. Iraq won the war and went on to live a peaceful existence free from the threats of radical Islam, living happily ever after for the rest of its days.

The lesson to be learned is that by overreacting to ideological opponents, the United States creates far greater threats than the ones they were made to fight.

Think of the U.S. as the mob in the Dark Knight, and Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein as the Joker:

"In their desperation, they turned to a man they did not fully understand."

That one phrase is perhaps the most poignant description of our foreign policy since World War 2. All over the globe, we have lent our support to groups with common enemies: be it Communist, terrorist, or otherwise. To this day we still provide weapons and funds to corrupt regimes, dictators, and (gasp!) terrorists in the name of battling our perceived threats.

But we do not fully understand. Not by a long shot. Another quote about another hopeless war comes to mind: during an episode of the Wire, two cops watch and do nothing while rival gangs beat each other over drug turf:

Carver: You know, I think this is why we can't win this.

Hauk: How come?

Carver: They screw up, they get beaten. We screw up, we get a pension.

The point is that the young men growing up in Baltimore and Kabul live in an entirely different world than the one that politicians and generals live in, and until we realize it, we stand no chance of winning either war.

We describe terrorists groups in terms of venture capitalism and globalisation because we assume that these are universal values and interests. American policy makers seem to believe if given the chance for a decent education and a career, none of these young men would choose to blow themselves up in the name of Jihad. Perhaps they don't realize that bin Laden himself comes from a very wealthy and reputable Saudi family. Perhaps they don't realize that some people aren't interested in Democracy, or heaven forbid the thought, making lots of money.

Which is worse? A world with a growing sphere of Communist influence? Or a world filled with loosely connected terrorist groups whose goal is to destroy western civilization entirely?

Whoever said that the enemy of my enemy is my friend was clearly unqualified to direct foreign policy, which is why, even with the economy the way it is, they have a great chance of finding a job in the U.S. government.

By Phillip S. Smith, Drug War Chronicle. Posted October 9, 2008.

Not only are there a number of state-level initiatives, there are also a handful of initiatives at the county or municipal level. With election day little more than a month away, it is time for a round-up of drug policy reform initiatives facing voters in November. Not only are there a number of state-level initiatives dealing with marijuana decriminalization, medical marijuana, and sentencing reform (or its opposite), there are also a handful of initiatives at the county or municipal level.

http://www.alternet.org/election08/102319/find_out_if_drug_reform_is_on_a_ballot_near_you_--_voter_guide/

http://urlet.com/cypress.ferrous

Seems that Defense Secretary Robert Gates is concerned about the opiates trade in Afghanistan because it's funding the Taliban. But he's against drug eradication programs because that would alienate individual farmers (presumably by making them poor, and thus less likely to cooperate with the NATO forces there). Now, this is some interesting stuff, because of course it's the opposite of our policy in Colombia, where we're paying millions of dollars for the arial eradication that's a big part of Uribe's strategy to get rid of coca production there. Maybe Gates has been reading about the failure of those eradication programs? Like the part where coca producation is actually increasing in Colombia?

Thus is objectionable. Gates' rejection of drug eradication is a tacit admission of the failure of Plan Colombia, which costs billions of dollars and is a brutal, ongoing catastrophe stripping farmers of their livelihood while driving up the price of drugs and giving people like FARC more money. Meanwhile, it's given ammunition to leftist leaders in the region and undercut American initiatives in the region. But if eradication is good enough for Colombia, it should be good enough for Afghanistan. Right?

Nope. Gates has let the cat out of the bag because he knows that drug eradication is a failed policy despite decades of boosterism by the US - a policy that would make things even worse for the struggling NATO mission in Afghanistan. What about legalizing the opiate trade there to help with the world's morphine shortage? Another non-starter. So what is Gates' proposal for stopping the drug trade without eradication or legalization? He says: "if we have the opportunity to go after drug lords and drug laboratories and try and interrupt this flow of cash to the Taliban, that seems to me like a legitimate security endeavor." Huh. It's not like this hasn't been tried before. In Colombia. And also failed. Supply controls don't work. Or, put another way, they work as well as refusal messaging.

Note: Edited 10-12-08 to fix misspelling of "Colombia."

Medvedev’s Plan

by Anna Arutunyan

President Dmitri Medvedev offered two five-point plans on getting the world out of the financial crisis and forging a new security treaty to maintain world peace, taking a tone that was anything but confrontational as global crisis overshadowed the controversy over Russian actions in Georgia. Speaking a the World Policy Conference in Evian on Wednesday, Medvedev sought to rebuild friendly ties with Europe even as he laid the blame not just for the financial crisis but for a "crisis of Euro-Atlantic policy" at the feet of a unipolar world order. Calling for more cooperation and dialogue, he was supported by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who urged Russia to join an emergency session of the G8 in order to find a way out of the crisis. The rapport witnessed before the two leaders met one-on-one following the conference suggested that Russia and Europe stood miles away from a new Cold War.

Medvedev outlined a series of steps that could lead the world out of the present malaise, but he also focused on forging a new system of security, arguing that the one created post-Cold War has proven to be a failure. The result, Medvedev said, was the conflict in Georgia and the financial crisis.

"Recent events in the Caucasus have demonstrated that it is impossible to appease or contain an aggressor based on bloc approaches," a grave, yet firm Medvedev said in his address, implicitly addressing the United States. "If irresponsible, adventurous actions by the ruling regime of a small country (Georgia in this particular case) are capable of destabilizing the situation in the world, is this not proof that the international security system based on unipolarity no longer works?

OK, this is a direct reference to the aggression of Saakashvili and the US using this to try to paint Russia as the aggressor.  Saakashvili was used by the US to provoke Russia.

"It is also evident that economic egoism is also a consequence of the unipolar vision of the world and of the desire to be its mega-regulator. It is a dead-end policy in terms of global economic development. I think that the origins of the current situation can be found in the events that took place seven years ago. After the overthrow of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the United States started a chapter of unilateral actions which was not coordinated with the United Nations or even with a number of the United States' partners. It is enough to mention the decision to withdraw from the ABM Treaty and the invasion of Iraq."

Correct.

Two More Five Point Plans

Echoing a series of fiscal and monetary measures being implemented at home by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Medvedev pointed to regulation as a way out of the financial crisis.

"First, I believe that in these new conditions, we need to streamline and systematize both national and international regulatory institutions," he said.

"Second, we need to get rid of the serious imbalance between the amount of issued financial instruments and the real returns on investment programs. The race to compete fuels financial soap bubbles, while public companies' accountability before their shareholders is eroded.

There's that word instruments again, financial instruments.  He means derivatives.

You can't have an economy based on predatory financier gambling.  In the end, you're going to have to produce something... which means a real concrete product.  Wall Street has moved almost all of the US industrial base offshore for cheaper labor.

"Third, the risk management system must be strengthened. Each market participant needs to hold responsibility for his share of risks. There should be no illusions about the ability of any asset to rise endlessly in value. The world just does not work this way. It is contrary to economic laws.

A warning against economic bubbles..

"Fourth, we need to ensure maximum information transparency and full disclosure for companies, tighten supervisory requirements and increase the responsibility of rating agencies and audit companies."

One of the main problems of derivatives is that no one really knows how much there is.  Not only is it not regulated, it's not even reportable under the current system.  Estimates range from $1-2 quadrillion ($1-2,000,000,000,000,000).

"And finally, fifth, we need to ensure that everyone will reap the benefits of removing barriers to international trade and free movement of capital."

Basically saying we need some fairness in free trade agreements.

Later in the address, he focused on a new European security treaty as a key alternative the unipolar world order - one bent on eradicating military conflict.

"The Treaty should clearly affirm the basic principles for security and intergovernmental relations in the Euro-Atlantic area. These principles include the commitment to fulfill in good faith obligations under international law; respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of states, and respect for all of the other principles set out in the truly fundamental document that is the United Nations Charter...

"The inadmissibility of the use of force or the threat of its use in international relations should be clearly affirmed. It is fundamental for the Treaty to guarantee uniform interpretation and implementation of those principles...

"It should guarantee equal security, and I mean equal security and not any other kind of security. In this respect we should base ourselves on three ‘no's. Namely, no ensuring one's own security at the expense of others. No allowing acts (by military alliances or coalitions) that undermine the unity of the common security space. And finally, no development of military alliances that would threaten the security of other parties to the Treaty.

Again, he's referencing Saakashvili and Georgia's aggression.

"It is important to confirm in the Treaty that no state or international organization can have exclusive rights to maintaining peace and stability in Europe. This applies fully to Russia as well.

"It would be good to establish basic arms control parameters and reasonable limits on military construction. Also needed are new cooperation procedures and mechanisms in areas such as WMD proliferation, terrorism and drug trafficking."

It's freely admitted that the Northern Alliance of Afghanistan is a major opium/heroin producer.  The taliban was actually anti-opium.

Meanwhile, Medvedev backed Sarkozy's proposal for an enlarged G8 meeting to deal with the financial crisis, but called for a more inclusive organization. "We must include other key economies: China, India, Brazil."

The Evian conference suggested much headway had been made in the Caucasus conflict, which had threatened relations between Russia and Europe since it erupted August 8.

Even while the Wall Street Journal opined Thursday that Medvedev had "dumped a truckload of vitriol" on the US, the conference served to fortify a reconciliation between Russia and Europe in face of criticism over Russia's actions in Georgia.

"Relations between Russia and Europe remain on solid ground," foreign policy expert Sergei Karaganov, speaking by phone from Evian, told The Moscow News. "Attempts to draw Russia into a new Cold War have failed. "Confidence... in America has fallen to a low that has not been experienced since the 20th or even the 19th centuries."

source: Moscow News