[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
From: Terry Blanton
From: thomas malloy
Did you hear the NewsMax story about Al Quieda having
20 nukes in America?
World Net Daily elaborates:
http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45246
An extremely OT essay follows. You have been warned! ;-)
Indeed! But I had a couple comments none the less.
Pertaining to the WorldNetDaily.com article and of particular interest to me:
"Bin Laden, according to Williams, has nearly unlimited funds to spend on his
nuclear terrorism plan because he has remained in control of the Afghanistan-produced
heroin industry. Poppy production has greatly increased even while U.S. troops are
occupying the country, he writes. Al-Qaida has developed close relations with the
Albanian Mafia, which assists in the smuggling and sale of heroin throughout Europe and
the U.S. "
* * * * *
I realize many are likely to consider what I'm about to suggest to be an
extremely unpopular and morally bankrupt suggestion but I'll mention it anyway:
Legitimate governments, including ours, should grow their own poppy crops. This
might include going over to Afghanistan and making deals with the local farmers
growing the crops. Government could probably easily outbid the drug cartel's
asking prices.
Absolutely. The goverment would presumably not be above selling the
heroin at a loss, which immediately pushes the price of the raw
materials up out of reach of anyone trying to make a profit on it.
Undercutting street prices at one end while outbidding for the raw
poppies at the other end should be very easy to do (for a government).
The governments could offer the farmers protection as well.
That might be harder! Track records in the area of protecting remotely
located individuals from retaliation by highly motivated drug interests
haven't been too great (consider Colombia).
In the meantime governments could also offer incentives to these farmers to switch to
other crops, though that might prove to be a challenge assuming growing poppy seeds tends
to bring in far more profits that other "legitimate" crops.
The "product" purchased at fair-market value by governments should eventually
be sold by governments at substantially reduced prices on the streets,
Well I hope you mean "through clinics located in areas where drug use is
high" rather than literally "on the streets".
Was it on Vortex that I read that heroin is better than methadone
because with heroin, an addict is spaced for about an hour but then can
go into work and be productive, but on methadone they're spaced for 6 or
8 hours and the whole day is shot? Too bad the barriers to any kind of
legal use of heroin are so totally insurmountable in this country.
so to speak - and by doing so undercut the artificially pumped up profits
They're not "artificially pumped up" -- they're just normal monopoly
profits of the same sort that Microsoft rakes in. Totally natural, in
some sense; the international crime syndicates have no "monopoly" on
such things.
of the huge international drug cartels and the distribution chain that
propagates all the way down to small-time pushers desperately eking out meager
profits in back alleys of our ghettos.
Meanwhile, use the government sanctioned collected profits to finance rehabilitation and drug awareness programs. CLEARLY make it obvious to all who buy the highly dangerous and addictive drugs that their purchase of the product is funding
Um, since the product is to be sold at a loss (which seems to follow
from the assumption that they'll overbid the cartels for the product and
then undercut them on the street), I don't see how the sales could
provide funding for _anything_. (Something like using the profits from
the sale of Airbus aircraft to fund something -- first you need to
figure out if there actually are any profits.)
the rehabilitation centers and programs they should avail themselves to.
CLEARLY show what happens to all who end up getting hooked. Pull no punches.
Graphically show the devastation and ruined lives. The point being: you can
continue to buy these highly dangerous and addictive drugs and probably
eventually die from an overdose, or you can go get treatment. The choice is
yours.
Such "morally bankrupt" policies are likely, IMHO, to quickly put most of the
drug cartels out of business faster than continued multi-million dollar funded drug raids
and expensive paramilitary expenditures assembled with great fan fare to wage our morally
righteous wars against the evil drug cartels.
Crack finally became big news when the bottom fell out of the cocaine
market. Before that the raw materials were too expensive; it was, I
believe, called "freebase cocaine" but since you need a lot of coke to
make a little crack almost nobody had ever even heard of it. I think
there may be a recently discovered process used to make crack a little
more easily than one could "freebase" but the fundamental fact that you
use up a lot of coke making it hasn't changed.
And, of course, the bottom fell out of the cocaine market because of the
complete failure to stem the production or importation of the stuff --
supply ran so far ahead of demand that it changed from an exotic drug
used by rich stockbrokers to something any schoolkid can afford. And
that's when everyone learned that it was addictive, after all (back when
I was in school the "common knowledge" was that coke wasn't addictive --
but since almost nobody could afford enough of the stuff to possibly get
hooked, that "knowledge" was clearly based on an inadequate empirical
foundation).
Unfortunately, it seems to me that most of these government sanctioned crusades
have turned into Big Business with their own self-interests at heart. I suspect
many of these operations have a steak in keeping the status quo as is.
Well then they should "go veg" -- steak is bad for you (and rough on the
cow, too).
They are not really all that interested in truly defeating the enemy, as it
would eventually put them out of business as well.
I think you may have too jaundiced a view of the government here. A
head-on fight against a well-funded covert enemy is very difficult. And
stopping importation of contraband at the border is easier if the border
doesn't start out looking like a very, very long seive, as ours tends to
be. I don't think you need to invoke conflict of interest and
corruption to explain why a direct war on the drug producers would tend
to be unsuccessful.
I realize one of the major arguments against implementing such a morally
bankrupt choice is predicated on the premise that to do so would essentially
mean governments are legitimizing the use of dangerous drugs, that it's a
recipe to hook impressionable youth on deadly addictive drugs. Personally, I
don't believe so. The drug education programs should make that devastatingly
obvious. I'd view it as simply a pragmatic decision by governments to
efficiently put all drug cartels permanently out of business, and by doing so
recycling a large chunk of discretionary income back into the economy where it
can be taxed while simultaneously funding useful programs. Actually...come to
think of it, I suspect a number of unlisted government operations are probably
being funded in exactly this way now, all under the table of course.
"Blood Money!" some might protest. Perhaps so... Never the less, tell that to hoards of
radiation victims streaming into over taxed hospitals as well as victims dieing horribly on the
streets when the next "Holy Cleansing" goes off in the middle of New York, Chicago, or
Los Angeles.
It is, after all, your tax dollars at work.
Regards,
Steven Vincent Johnson
www.OrionWorks.com
