i stand corrected

In a recent post, i wrote that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost the US $3 trillion. This number was based on an analysis done by Joseph Stiglitz last year, but is apparently incorrect (or may be correct, depending on the line items Stiglitz used in his calculations; for example, medical treatment for veterans). According to an article today on The Raw Story, which also cites Stiglitz' study, a report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments states that the US will have spent nearly $2 trillion on military operations including Iraq and Afghanistan over the next decade. The difference is obviously substantial, although one has to admit that $2 trillion is still a lot of money to spend on a global endeavour which has succeeded in accomplishing very little in the way of security, peace and those other lofty goals the W Dick junta claimed they were on top of, though in fact they were just scraping the bottom of the 'evil is as evil does' barrel of misguided policy.

Quickie World News Roundup

As hundreds of bloggers continue to explore the deeper meaning of Iraqi size 10's, Bush has moved on to Afghanistan to shake (rather than hold) hands with President Select Karzai. Some time ago, The Onion did a nice report about W visiting places in the US his policies and incompetence have destroyed (first stop: New Orleans); it seems he's now doing the same for entire countries he's pushed over the proverbial cliff... or maybe he's just trying to get as far away from Obama as possible? (No doubt the Obamas' request for an early move into Blair House sparked a reality check freak out, or maybe it's just that W isn't keen on mixed race neighborhoods.)

The media have finally discovered that drugs provide a way to cope with the tension of living in a war zone, with the high number of Gazans addicted to painkillers and sedatives making the front page on every major daily. (Next week expect an update on heroin addiction in Iraq: Nodding Out While the Conquerers Do Noel.) The Israeli siege of Gaza is apparently continuing in order for the jewish state to make relevant the Hanukah story wherein there rebel warriors had only enough oil to light one little candle a night. Christian zionists like to think that their scriptures will eventually see the light of day in jewish cannon; one supposes that Israelis believe Hamas will eventually embrace the Macabees. Speaking of being holed up in temples, there have been 7 fires in Istanbul mosques over the past 3 days. Although no one has been hurt, it's unclear whether the causes are electrical or arson. Muftis are praying for calm while their prayer books are going up in flames.

Weather events are taking a toll in New England, where 800.000 still don't have electricity, and in France as well, where an estimated 100.000 are without power and at least 3 have died. England and Italy are dealing with floods, Australians are recovering from floods, and Papua New Guinea was struck by flooding brought on by extreme tidal surges. All of these events are, of course, designed to make a martyr out of George Monbiot and an idiot out of Andrea Merkel. While many have touted GPS-phones as one way to reduce the loss of life in natural disasters or other emergencies, the Egyptians are forcing Apple to remove the GPS function from its new iPhone 3G in order to prevent users from engaging in effective terrorist attacks. This is undoubtedly a strategy thought up in the aftermath of the India's 'Not 9/11' Mumbai attacks and is in no way connected with Egypt's on-going crackdown on civil rights of bloggers, gays and whomever else Mubarak doesn't like.

In miscellaneous news, the US entertainment media is apoplectic over Jennifer Aniston's bare all cover for GQ, either because it's taking attention away from her ex's latest interview with Rolling Stone or has redefined the nature of the power tie. Hugh Jackman has been announced as 2009 host for the Oscars, apparently in an effort to reduce the comedy and increase ratings in Australia. With many predicting Sean Penn will win best actor for Milk, the last thing the Academy wants is a lot of gay humor and anti-Prop 8 rants running roughshod over its family value ratings. This segues nicely into the quote of the day, from Adrián Dárgelos of the Argentine group, Babasónicos: Mi arrogancia es una decisión póética. Go Hugh! Go Oscars! And George, have a nice visit in slippered Islamabad.

Romania: Ruins delay ecological ruin

Last week, Gabriel Resources' plans to tear up a sizable section of the Carpathians in Romania was set back yet again, when the Supreme Court annulled the company's archaeological "discharge" permit. The Rosia Montana project, in which Canada-based Gabriel is the principle investor, is located in the area of Europe's oldest gold minds: ruins from Roman period mining activities are still to be found and must be thoroughly excavated and catalogued before Rosia Montana can go forward. The news has driven down Gabriel's stock by 18%, though the company apparently sees this as another setback in a project which eventually will reap them billions of euros. Cyanide extraction has already caused a fair amount of damage to Romanians and others, i.e. those living in the Carpathian Basin watershed, and much of that has been from stripping tailings. Gabriel is going to use mountaintop removal open cast pits, and if i remember correctly, expect to extract about 1 ounce of gold and silver for every 1-2 tonnes of ore.

Tibor Kocsis made an excellent documentary about this in 2002, New Eldorado: The Curse of Rosia Montana, and later followed it up with Gold Futures, which received an apparently powerful rebuttal from industry backers. (An interesting controversy, worth looking into if i could manage to get hold of both films.) The Carpathians are the LAST EUROPEAN WILDERNESS and the ecological health of its numerous watersheds (feeding at least 5 countries directly) depend on development being sound and sustainable. The Rosia Montana project is going to create havoc, no matter how much integrity the company may have relative to following its own environmental parameters.

Anyone still busy with the xmas shopping, pls take a moment to consider that most gold extraction is at serious odds with fragile environments and human cultures, and that the majority of new gold 'produced' is used for jewelry. Buy something else, i'm sure there are better options.

Duck U Lame Phuck

While i'm sure every other W-disdaining blogger has posted this link, i've gotta add it here. We now know you are more likely to be completely mauled for throwing shoes at an elected official than you are if you smash a pie into their face. i guess this is because shoes are a terrorist weapon, whereas pies are merely wasted calories? Maybe it was the camera angle, but it looked to me like W was actually kind of smiling as he ducked. "I don't know what his cause is.... this is what happens in free societies." That W cannot imagine why someone would do something that, in arab culture, is incredibly insulting, illustrates how totally clueless he is about why people are angry at him. i hope when he gets home from this trip, he'll have a night off to watch Frost/Nixon and think about what it means when a president doesn't take responsibility for any of his actions.

Hand me that bottle of ouzo

Seems like the ideal time for a Greek holiday... Guardian reports:

"It is unclear what measures the government is considering in response to the unrest. With a general strike over economic policy planned for tomorrow, its position is looking increasingly precarious. [i'll say] Violence has resumed in the northern city of Thessaloniki and in Ioannina, and Greek demonstrators occupied the country's consulate in Paris."

Here's a photo from Le Monde, which says the consulate occupation lasted for a few hours. On the heels of opposition victory in Thailand, it would seem that the best way to get rid of a corrupt govt in this century is turning out to be the old fashioned way. Qu'est-ce qui se passe, O Canada??

<

No Time to Play Girly-man: Legalize It!

The State of California is having a fiscal emergency that could be solved in the quasi-near-term with the stroke of a pen. Legalize cannabis and tax it liberally. Let the growers and leaf pickers work legally, tax their income. Allow mail orders and tax the shipments. People should be willing to roll with it, even if it means giving up the thrill of being underground. The economic benefits to the state would be significant. Governor Schwarzenegger stated, "In an emergency like this, we have to take quick action to avoid even worse problems, even if they include decisions we don't like." Legalizing cannabis is an environmentally friendly, economically sound and socially beneficial means of easing the economic crunch. The Governator cannot be blind to this fact nor to it being an option he can and should take seriously.

The arguments against legalization center around 3 principle issues: health, crime and social rectitude (for lack of a better term). NORML’s site offers a pretty thorough FAQ page, so you should go there if you crave a more thorough pro legalization argument to go along with whatever else you might be craving if you’re reading this stoned :-) The issue of negative health impacts in a world full of alcohol, PCBs and fossil fuels seems, relatively speaking, like a non-issue. If you have asthma, you probably wouldn’t opt to smoke pot anymore than you would decide to spend your holiday in Beijing or Mexico City. The idea that government should protect people from all things bad is farcical: this requires either totalitarianism to eliminate all free will (itself an ultimate badness) or consistency, which cannot come from states that make things like nuclear weapons and torture people. We live in an imperfect world, and we should respect individual choices to engage in whatever form of self-medication or recreational substance use one prefers, so long as they don’t involve violence against someone else. If you are afraid being around a bunch of pot smokers presents a clear and present danger to your health, then instead of buying tickets to the next Chemical Brothers concert, go into your local pub to hang out in an inebriation safe zone.

The issue of crime is self-construed. That is to say, growing, selling and using cannabis is criminal not in any moral universe sense, but only in that criminalizing the drug per force turns your peaceful Pink Floyd loving or migraine prone neighbor into an outlaw. Take away the illegal nature of a substance which history has proven millions to be committed to using in spite of the law, and we remove the whole stigma of criminal from our list of cannabis-related problems. According to NORML,

More than 700,000 Americans were arrested on marijuana charges last year, and more than 5 million Americans have been arrested for marijuana offenses in the past decade. Almost 90 percent of these arrests are for simple possession, not trafficking or sale. This is a misapplication of the criminal sanction that invites government into areas of our private lives that are inappropriate and wastes valuable law enforcement resources that should be focused on serious and violent crime.

I’ve left the last sentence in because it points to the main thing people should consider about the criminal status of cannabis: the costs of law enforcement. An editorial in the Australian Drug and Alcohol Review about the potential impacts of legalization noted the following: Reclassification of possession of up to 1 ounce (28 g) of cannabis to a misdemeanour rather than a felony in California in 1976 achieved law enforcement savings of $US 100 million annually. In 2005, a study conducted for the Marijuana Policy Project by Harvard University economist, Jeff Miron, reached the following conclusion:

“… legalizing marijuana would save $7.7 billion per year in government expenditure on enforcement of prohibition. $5.3 billion of this savings would accrue to state and local governments, while $2.4 billion would accrue to the federal government.

These figures are, in fact, lower than those in a 2003 study by the US Office on National Drug Control Policy, which estimated “the United States was spending $12.1 billion on law enforcement and court costs, and $16.9 billion in corrections costs, totaling $29 billion.” Of course, the W Dick administration was in 2003 on the verge of throwing away $3 TRILLION dollars prosecuting their bogus war in Iraq, so it’s no surprise they never considered a mere $29 billion as something worthy of reform.

Although i’d suspect that anyone reading this blog already appreciates the point being made here, for the record, allow me to state the obvious: in a time of fiscal emergency, wasting billions of dollars on an area of law enforcement that (1) does not curb real violence, (2) puts productive, nonviolent people in prison, and (3) has absolutely no deterrent effect whatsoever MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE.

Doug Benson’s hilarious film Super High Me, shows the further idiocy inflicted by law enforcement in their raids on medical marijuana dispensaries, and brings us to the third major issue which is undoubtedly the one Schwarzenegger should consider most seriously as he tries to arrive at budgetary solutions in California. What impact would legalizing cannabis have on the economy? In particular, on the economy of a state which grows about a third of all cannabis produced in the US? Taking the US as a whole, Miron estimated that “marijuana legalization would yield tax revenue of $2.4 billion annually if marijuana were taxed like all other goods and $6.2 billion annually if marijuana were taxed at rates comparable to those on alcohol and tobacco.” Zeroing in on California, on top of the $981 million savings in law enforcement expenditures, the state could earn up to $105.4 million a year in tax revenue. Put these two figures together and we top $1 billion, approximately 10% of California’s current budget gap of $11.2 billion. If the Governator chose the path of emergency legalization, he could turn San Francisco into a west coast Amsterdam, inevitably reaping further economic benefits for the state.

Political courage is not political suicide. That comes straight from the horse’s mouth, the Governator himself. Legalizing marijuana would be a sanely courageous and highly non suicidal act. Aside from diehard Reefer Madness believers and politicized elements within the Jehovah Witnesses, Californians are unlikely to storm Sacramento protesting such an executive order. In fact, i’d harbor a guess that the only reason thousands might go to the state capitol would be to invite the Governator to a celebratory smoke-in. The Australians who looked at this issue also understood the sanity of such a move: “Allowing demand to instead be met from taxed and regulated sources is likely to reduce the harms from cannabis as well as the financial and other costs of cannabis control policies.” Arnie, your state is having a fiscal meltdown, its medical marijuana dispensaries are here to stay, one of the state’s major agricultural industries is operating completely underground. If you’ve still got those body-builder balls, now is the time to show them off. Don’t be a girly-man, be an innovator. This is the moment and it should be seized.

Quickie World Round-up

The Thai PM is resigning, stranded air travellers finally free to fly home. One small step for tourism, one large step for ousting leaders by popular revolt. In Zimbabwe, soldiers attempting to violate the 18p bank withdrawal limit are now fighting against Harare police; this cannot be good for Mugabe, whose military supporters were key to his election fraud earlier this year. Christians and Muslims have agreed to stop killing each other in Nigeria, while Nkunda's "negotiations or war" ultimatum to Kabile's govt in Kinshasa fell off the media's radar in the wake of the attacks in Mumbia. Bahrain just celebrated its first National Women's Day and the Saudi govt has decreed that volatile books must be removed from circulation. Hillary and Gates are in, respectively replacing change and hope as cornerstones of the incoming administration. Condi Rice serenaded the Queen while W spent his list bit of Presidential Mastercard (TM) credit on the new Hank Williams 10 CD Deluxe BoxSet and is now wandering the White House humming the refrain from My Main Trial Is Yet To Come. Fidel meanwhile has been blogging about the collapse of capitalismo as his amigo on the continent makes another push for indefinite presidential terms in Venezuela. The american consumer subconscious is contending with death by shoppers; the Italians continue to contend with their garbage. Picture of the day comes from TimesOnline, taken by Antony Crossfield, winner of the 2008 Terry O'Neill Award.