Monday, October 29, 2007

Rememberations



Sometimes the memory of a time or place becomes strong in my mind. Today I can remember living in Gallup New Mexico, over forty years ago. I think it helps that the air is crisp and cool today, like it usually was there. I'd like to go back there some day, maybe when gas prices go back down. ;)
One of the first things I saw in our new New Mexican neighborhood was a mom come out back and say something to her two kids and go back in their house. The kids just kept playing. Then about five minutes later she came out and she looked pissed. She grabbed the boys arm, jerked him up and said what sounded like "ski-claw!". Then she yelled "ski-claw!" to the girl, the kids both ran inside. I wasn't positive, but I was pretty sure that "ski-claw" meant "hurry up" in Navajo.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Oklahoma's Hall of Shame

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Sixteen state lawmakers have joined Rep. Rex Duncan, R-Sand Springs, in refusing a gift copy of the Quran.

The holy book of the Muslim religion was offered as a centennial gift by the Governor's Ethnic American Advisory Council, made up of American Muslims from Middle East countries.


Legislators refusing Qurans

Sen. Cliff Branan, R-Oklahoma City
Sen. Randy Brogdon, R-Owasso
Sen. Bill Brown, R-Broken Arrow
Sen. Todd Lamb, R-Edmond
Sen. David Myers,R-Ponca City
Sen. Nancy Riley, D-Tulsa
Sen. Mike Schulz, R-Altus
Rep. Gary Banz, R-Midwest City
Rep. Doug Cox, R-Grove
Rep. David Derby, R-Owasso
Rep. Rex Duncan, R-Sand Springs
Rep. George Faught, R-Muskogee
Rep. Guy Liebmann, R-Oklahoma City
Rep. Scott Martin, R-Norman
Rep. Mark McCullough, R-Sapulpa
Rep. Mike Reynolds, R-Oklahoma City
Rep. Susan Winchester, R-Chickasha

Duncan refused, saying, "Most Oklahomans do not endorse the idea of killing innocent women and children in the name of ideology."

Allison Moore of Tulsa, who converted to the Muslim faith more than a decade ago, said Duncan can count members of her faith among those who don't endorse those things.

"We do not condone suicide bombers any more than the Christians," she said.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

No Camera!

I went to the store yesterday to get some dog food. Bob eats quite a bit but Yoshi really puts it away this time of year, must be an instinct thing for malamutes to put on weight before winter hits. (Unfortunately, I seem to have the same instinct!)
I came out of the store and saw one of the best looking sunsets I've ever seen. Purple, pink and orange, I reached into the glove compartment to get my camera and it was empty, damn it, Shelly got it out the other night. I was kind of pissed at her, making me miss a possible award winning picture. Luckily I didn't act mad when I asked her where my camera was. She said "No, I just got my phone out of your car, not the camera." I checked the console, there it was where it had been all along. I decided to kick my ass right then and there. I put up a pretty good fight but was eventually able to kick my own ass.

Drinking - Dos Equis Lager Especial Cerveza

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Got Time for Music?

My Soul Bit Theory

In the movies you get to decide if you want to sell your soul or not, all at once.
It seems like it would be fairly easy to say no.
But in real life it seems to be sold bit by bit.
One good thing about the "Soul Bit Theory" is that the soul can also be earned back, bit by bit.
I guess I'm pretty much on the earning back side these days and strangely, it's better than the selling side was.

Narrow Streets

I walk along the narrow minds of
black and white
the wide roads blocked by fear
streets all go in circles
all lead right back to here

Monday, October 15, 2007

Truck Driving Man?



I met you in a truck stop stall.
Then again there in the mall.
I know I meant nothing to you.
But if you asked, I'd say "I do!"

Chorus
You've got a gentle kind of love
You bathroom heart breaker
You've got a gentle way to love
You bathroom snake taker
You've got a special kind of love
You bathroom quake maker

My Trip To Southeast Oklahoma

We follow the cart through a wretched, impoverished plague-ridden
village. A few starved mongrels run about in the mud scavenging. In
the open doorway of one house perhaps we jug glimpse a pair of legs
dangling from the ceiling. In another doorway an OLD WOMAN is beating
a cat against a wall rather like one does with a mat. The cart passes
round a dead donkey or cow in the mud. And a MAN tied to a cart is
being hammered to death by four NUNS with huge mallets.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Boot Camp/Death Camp

They beat a 14-year-old child to death for a minor offense and the law says they did no wrong. Emmett Till was 14 when he was beaten to death in Mississippi back in 1955. He had supposedly whistled at a white woman but that minor offense carried a death sentence. Martin Lee Anderson had stolen his grandmother’s car and was sentenced to boot camp where he was executed for his crime.

Vision of the future from 1950

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Constitution vs Patriot Act

US Constitution (Bill of Rights) US Patriot Act
Amendment IV: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Freedom from unreasonable searches: The government may search and seize Americans' papers and effects without probable cause to assist terror investigation.
Amendment VI: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense. Right to a speedy and public trial: The government may jail Americans indefinitely without a trial.
Amendment I: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Freedom of association: To assist terror investigation, the government may monitor religious and political institutions without suspecting criminal activity.
Amendment VI: ... to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense. Right to legal representation: The government may monitor conversations between attorneys and clients in federal prisons and deny lawyers to Americans accused of crimes.
Amendment I: Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech ... Freedom of speech: The government may prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone the government subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation.
Amendment VI: ... to be confronted with the witnesses against him ... Right to liberty: Americans may be jailed without being charged or being able to confront witnesses against them. US citizens (labeled "unlawful combatants") have been held incommunicado and refused attorneys.

Constitutional Source: Cornell Law School
Patriot Act Source: The Associated Press, Knight-Ridder Newspapers
Full Patriot Act Text: US Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services

Sunday, October 07, 2007

Ann the Man?

I saw Ann coulter on TV the other day and noticed quite an adam's apple so I googled "Ann Coulter is a man" and a lot popped up, here is just one of them.

Ann Coulter is Pretty Hot - For a Man!
Posted by Micha Ghertner @ 2:27 pm in

* General

| Cosmos | digg this | reddit

Strap-On Veterans for Truth exposes the hard-hitting, below-the-belt truth about Ann Coulter:
Ann Coulter is actually a former drag queen from Key West named Pudenda Shenanigans. … As Pudenda Shenanigans, she was well known on the drag circuit in Key West. Whether she actually had a full sex change or not is a matter of debate, although her adam’s apple is still visible in photos, under the appropriate light. …

The person known today as Ann Coulter was born Jeremy Levinsohn in the village in New York in 1960. … Jeremy drifted for awhile before finding himself in Key West. Co-worker Licky Dickenstein described these early years, “Jeremy was a natural, I never saw anyone take to drag so quickly. Once he found his persona, he WAS Pudenda Shenanigans. For most of us drag was a part time thing, but Pudenda was 24-7, always in character, always in costume. She really shook things up, she was a goddess on stage.” …
After that Ms. Shenanigans disappeared for years, only resurfacing in the 90’s as Ann Coulter. Her hatred for muslims, gays and feminists is odd for her former coworkers. Long Dick Gone, a former co-worker stated, “At first I thought there was something funny about this Ann Coulter. I mean here’s a woman who claims to hate feminists, but is in her 40’s, single, no kids, is very opinionated and outspoken and concentrates on her career. Ann Coulter is the biggest example of a feminist I ever saw. Then I noticed that in just the right light you could see that adam’s apple and that’s when I recognized our little Pudenda Shenanigans, the hottest drag queen this side of Fire Island.”

Illegal Life Forms



Helmet Shortage


Bicycle Helmet shortage in Iraq.

Saturday, October 06, 2007

Think Again




Think Again: Drugs
By Ethan Nadelmann


September/October 2007
Prohibition has failed—again. Instead of treating the demand for illegal drugs as a market, and addicts as patients, policymakers the world over have boosted the profits of drug lords and fostered narcostates that would frighten Al Capone. Finally, a smarter drug control regime that values reality over rhetoric is rising to replace the “war” on drugs.
igF

“The Global War on Drugs Can Be Won”
iStockphoto.com
High in demand: Prohibition does little to stem the desire for drugs.

No, it can’t. A “drug-free world,” which the United Nations describes as a realistic goal, is no more attainable than an “alcohol-free world”—and no one has talked about that with a straight face since the repeal of Prohibition in the United States in 1933. Yet futile rhetoric about winning a “war on drugs” persists, despite mountains of evidence documenting its moral and ideological bankruptcy. When the U.N. General Assembly Special Session on drugs convened in 1998, it committed to “eliminating or significantly reducing the illicit cultivation of the coca bush, the cannabis plant and the opium poppy by the year 2008” and to “achieving significant and measurable results in the field of demand reduction.” But today, global production and consumption of those drugs are roughly the same as they were a decade ago; meanwhile, many producers have become more efficient, and cocaine and heroin have become purer and cheaper.

It’s always dangerous when rhetoric drives policy—and especially so when “war on drugs” rhetoric leads the public to accept collateral casualties that would never be permissible in civilian law enforcement, much less public health. Politicians still talk of eliminating drugs from the Earth as though their use is a plague on humanity. But drug control is not like disease control, for the simple reason that there’s no popular demand for smallpox or polio. Cannabis and opium have been grown throughout much of the world for millennia. The same is true for coca in Latin America. Methamphetamine and other synthetic drugs can be produced anywhere. Demand for particular illicit drugs waxes and wanes, depending not just on availability but also fads, fashion, culture, and competition from alternative means of stimulation and distraction. The relative harshness of drug laws and the intensity of enforcement matter surprisingly little, except in totalitarian states. After all, rates of illegal drug use in the United States are the same as, or higher than, Europe, despite America’s much more punitive policies.

“We Can Reduce the Demand for Drugs”

Good luck. Reducing the demand for illegal drugs seems to make sense. But the desire to alter one’s state of consciousness, and to use psychoactive drugs to do so, is nearly universal—and mostly not a problem. There’s virtually never been a drug-free society, and more drugs are discovered and devised every year. Demand-reduction efforts that rely on honest education and positive alternatives to drug use are helpful, but not when they devolve into unrealistic, “zero tolerance” policies.

As with sex, abstinence from drugs is the best way to avoid trouble, but one always needs a fallback strategy for those who can’t or won’t refrain. “Zero tolerance” policies deter some people, but they also dramatically increase the harms and costs for those who don’t resist. Drugs become more potent, drug use becomes more hazardous, and people who use drugs are marginalized in ways that serve no one.

The better approach is not demand reduction but “harm reduction.” Reducing drug use is fine, but it’s not nearly as important as reducing the death, disease, crime, and suffering associated with both drug misuse and failed prohibitionist policies. With respect to legal drugs, such as alcohol and cigarettes, harm reduction means promoting responsible drinking and designated drivers, or persuading people to switch to nicotine patches, chewing gums, and smokeless tobacco. With respect to illegal drugs, it means reducing the transmission of infectious disease through syringe-exchange programs, reducing overdose fatalities by making antidotes readily available, and allowing people addicted to heroin and other illegal opiates to obtain methadone from doctors and even pharmaceutical heroin from clinics. Britain, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland have already embraced this last option. There’s no longer any question that these strategies decrease drug-related harms without increasing drug use. What blocks expansion of such programs is not cost; they typically save taxpayers’ money that would otherwise go to criminal justice and healthcare. No, the roadblocks are abstinence-only ideologues and a cruel indifference to the lives and well-being of people who use drugs.

“Reducing the Supply of Drugs Is the Answer”

Not if history is any guide. Reducing supply makes as much sense as reducing demand; after all, if no one were planting cannabis, coca, and opium, there wouldn’t be any heroin, cocaine, or marijuana to sell or consume. But the carrot and stick of crop eradication and substitution have been tried and failed, with rare exceptions, for half a century. These methods may succeed in targeted locales, but they usually simply shift production from one region to another: Opium production moves from Pakistan to Afghanistan; coca from Peru to Colombia; and cannabis from Mexico to the United States, while overall global production remains relatively constant or even increases.



The carrot, in the form of economic development and assistance in switching to legal crops, is typically both late and inadequate. The stick, often in the form of forced eradication, including aerial spraying, wipes out illegal and legal crops alike and can be hazardous to both people and local environments. The best thing to be said for emphasizing supply reduction is that it provides a rationale for wealthier nations to spend a little money on economic development in poorer countries. But, for the most part, crop eradication and substitution wreak havoc among impoverished farmers without diminishing overall global supply.

The global markets in cannabis, coca, and opium products operate essentially the same way that other global commodity markets do: If one source is compromised due to bad weather, rising production costs, or political difficulties, another emerges. If international drug control circles wanted to think strategically, the key question would no longer be how to reduce global supply, but rather: Where does illicit production cause the fewest problems (and the greatest benefits)? Think of it as a global vice control challenge. No one expects to eradicate vice, but it must be effectively zoned and regulated—even if it’s illegal.

“U.S. Drug Policy Is the World’s Drug Policy”

Sad, but true. Looking to the United States as a role model for drug control is like looking to apartheid-era South Africa for how to deal with race. The United States ranks first in the world in per capita incarceration––with less than 5 percent of the world’s population, but almost 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. The number of people locked up for U.S. drug-law violations has increased from roughly 50,000 in 1980 to almost 500,000 today; that’s more than the number of people Western Europe locks up for everything. Even more deadly is U.S. resistance to syringe-exchange programs to reduce HIV/AIDS both at home and abroad. Who knows how many people might not have contracted HIV if the United States had implemented at home, and supported abroad, the sorts of syringe-exchange and other harm-reduction programs that have kept HIV/AIDS rates so low in Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, and elsewhere. Perhaps millions.

And yet, despite this dismal record, the United States has succeeded in constructing an international drug prohibition regime modeled after its own highly punitive and moralistic approach. It has dominated the drug control agencies of the United Nations and other international organizations, and its federal drug enforcement agency was the first national police organization to go global. Rarely has one nation so successfully promoted its own failed policies to the rest of the world.

But now, for the first time, U.S. hegemony in drug control is being challenged. The European Union is demanding rigorous assessment of drug control strategies. Exhausted by decades of service to the U.S.-led war on drugs, Latin Americans are far less inclined to collaborate closely with U.S. drug enforcement efforts. Finally waking up to the deadly threat of HIV/AIDS, China, Indonesia, Vietnam, and even Malaysia and Iran are increasingly accepting of syringe-exchange and other harm-reduction programs. In 2005, the ayatollah in charge of Iran’s Ministry of Justice issued a fatwa declaring methadone maintenance and syringe-exchange programs compatible with sharia (Islamic) law. One only wishes his American counterpart were comparably enlightened.
“Afghan Opium Production Must Be Curbed”

Be careful what you wish for. It’s easy to believe that eliminating record-high opium production in Afghanistan—which today accounts for roughly 90 percent of global supply, up from 50 percent 10 years ago—would solve everything from heroin abuse in Europe and Asia to the resurgence of the Taliban.

But assume for a moment that the United States, NATO, and Hamid Karzai’s government were somehow able to cut opium production in Afghanistan. Who would benefit? Only the Taliban, warlords, and other black-market entrepreneurs whose stockpiles of opium would skyrocket in value. Hundreds of thousands of Afghan peasants would flock to cities, ill-prepared to find work. And many Afghans would return to their farms the following year to plant another illegal harvest, utilizing guerrilla farming methods to escape intensified eradication efforts. Except now, they’d soon be competing with poor farmers elsewhere in Central Asia, Latin America, or even Africa. This is, after all, a global commodities market.

And outside Afghanistan? Higher heroin prices typically translate into higher crime rates by addicts. They also invite cheaper but more dangerous means of consumption, such as switching from smoking to injecting heroin, which results in higher HIV and hepatitis C rates. All things considered, wiping out opium in Afghanistan would yield far fewer benefits than is commonly assumed.

So what’s the solution? Some recommend buying up all the opium in Afghanistan, which would cost a lot less than is now being spent trying to eradicate it. But, given that farmers somewhere will produce opium so long as the demand for heroin persists, maybe the world is better off, all things considered, with 90 percent of it coming from just one country. And if that heresy becomes the new gospel, it opens up all sorts of possibilities for pursuing a new policy in Afghanistan that reconciles the interests of the United States, NATO, and millions of Afghan citizens.

“Legalization Is the Best Approach”

It might be. Global drug prohibition is clearly a costly disaster. The United Nations has estimated the value of the global market in illicit drugs at $400 billion, or 6 percent of global trade. The extraordinary profits available to those willing to assume the risks enrich criminals, terrorists, violent political insurgents, and corrupt politicians and governments. Many cities, states, and even countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia are reminiscent of Chicago under Al Capone—times 50. By bringing the market for drugs out into the open, legalization would radically change all that for the better.

More importantly, legalization would strip addiction down to what it really is: a health issue. Most people who use drugs are like the responsible alcohol consumer, causing no harm to themselves or anyone else. They would no longer be the state’s business. But legalization would also benefit those who struggle with drugs by reducing the risks of overdose and disease associated with unregulated products, eliminating the need to obtain drugs from dangerous criminal markets, and allowing addiction problems to be treated as medical rather than criminal problems.

No one knows how much governments spend collectively on failing drug war policies, but it’s probably at least $100 billion a year, with federal, state, and local governments in the United States accounting for almost half the total. Add to that the tens of billions of dollars to be gained annually in tax revenues from the sale of legalized drugs. Now imagine if just a third of that total were committed to reducing drug-related disease and addiction. Virtually everyone, except those who profit or gain politically from the current system, would benefit.

Some say legalization is immoral. That’s nonsense, unless one believes there is some principled basis for discriminating against people based solely on what they put into their bodies, absent harm to others. Others say legalization would open the floodgates to huge increases in drug abuse. They forget that we already live in a world in which psychoactive drugs of all sorts are readily available—and in which people too poor to buy drugs resort to sniffing gasoline, glue, and other industrial products, which can be more harmful than any drug. No, the greatest downside to legalization may well be the fact that the legal markets would fall into the hands of the powerful alcohol, tobacco, and pharmaceutical companies. Still, legalization is a far more pragmatic option than living with the corruption, violence, and organized crime of the current system.

“Legalization Will Never Happen”

Never say never. Wholesale legalization may be a long way off—but partial legalization is not. If any drug stands a chance of being legalized, it’s cannabis. Hundreds of millions of people have used it, the vast majority without suffering any harm or going on to use “harder” drugs. In Switzerland, for example, cannabis legalization was twice approved by one chamber of its parliament, but narrowly rejected by the other.

Elsewhere in Europe, support for the criminalization of cannabis is waning. In the United States, where roughly 40 percent of the country’s 1.8 million annual drug arrests are for cannabis possession, typically of tiny amounts, 40 percent of Americans say that the drug should be taxed, controlled, and regulated like alcohol. Encouraged by Bolivian President Evo Morales, support is also growing in Latin America and Europe for removing coca from international antidrug conventions, given the absence of any credible health reason for keeping it there. Traditional growers would benefit economically, and there’s some possibility that such products might compete favorably with more problematic substances, including alcohol.

The global war on drugs persists in part because so many people fail to distinguish between the harms of drug abuse and the harms of prohibition. Legalization forces that distinction to the forefront. The opium problem in Afghanistan is primarily a prohibition problem, not a drug problem. The same is true of the narcoviolence and corruption that has afflicted Latin America and the Caribbean for almost three decades—and that now threatens Africa. Governments can arrest and kill drug lord after drug lord, but the ultimate solution is a structural one, not a prosecutorial one. Few people doubt any longer that the war on drugs is lost, but courage and vision are needed to transcend the ignorance, fear, and vested interests that sustain it.




Ethan Nadelmann is founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.

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