The Superlative Suppository

Due to issues with my choice of URL I have moved over to here.

More specific information about the impact of opium production on the Afghan economy:

Afghan opium cultivation jumped 64 percent to a record 131,000 hectares (324,000 acres) this year and drug exports account for more than 60 percent of the economy, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said Thursday.

It said opium, the raw material for heroin, was grown in all 32 provinces and 10 percent of the population, or 2.3 million people, were involved in a business worth $2.8 billion a year.

So scratch my earlier statements, they want to crush the majority, rather then just half, of their economy and put 2,300,000 people out of work.

I have been keeping a rather close eye on the drug war in Afghanistan as in my view it is at its more absurd in that area of the world. As I have posted before the production of poppies and opium actually makes up almost 50% of the Afghan gross national product and is simply the most profitable thing that the farmers can grow. In many cases it's a rather simple choice, grow poppies and make money or don't grow poppies and starve:

"We are not able to support our families unless we grow opium," said Tela Mohammad, from Mer Mandab district, Helmand province. "The government wants to prevent its cultivation, but doesn't help farmers."

He said he would keep growing opium, "even if it costs me my head."

...

Mer Dad of Shenwar district in Nangarhar province, said he would take extreme measures to protect his opium crop.

"I must support 17 family members – I can't let them to die from hunger," he said. "I will even plant mines to preserve my fields."

...

"Growing anything else isn't that profitable," said Sufi Payenda of the village of Yangi Hariq, in Balkh province. "We can't sustain our lives by growing other plants, so we won't stop growing opium."
...

"We will die from hunger if we don't grow opium," said Malim Mohammad Zaher, from village of Kutaki in Balkh province. "Even if the government tries to kill us, we won't stop."

However the enlightened folks in the Afghan government are not swayed by any thing quite so reasonable as economic or calorific necessity, so they have declared Jihad:

[deputy interior minister]Daud said it is time for the government to declare holy war – jihad – on narcotics.

"It is jihad, and there is no greater service that can be rendered to Afghans and the people of the world," he said. "It is our religious, Islamic duty."

It is our duty to force farmers into debt and starvation. We're from the government and we are here to help.

From the Common Dreams News Wire comes this:

WASHINGTON -- November 18 -- U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL), joined by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Jim Jeffords (I-VT), have introduced the first-ever Senate bill to ensure that federal juries hear the full story when medical marijuana patients and providers, operating legally under state law, are tried on federal marijuana charges.

S. 2989 is similar to H.R. 1717, the "Truth in Trials Act," introduced by a bipartisan House coalition last year and inspired in part by the case of Ed Rosenthal. In January 2003, Rosenthal was found guilty of felony marijuana cultivation charges by a jury that was not allowed to consider that the marijuana was for medical use by seriously ill patients and was grown with the authorization of the city of Oakland, California.

I can't wait to hear the arguments against fully informing juries.

Today I was reading this article about an all too typical beat them into submission boarding school for teens who use, or are suspected of using, drugs or who have just been the typical shits were all are from age 12is to 20 something when a spot of light came from the whole sad tail of paid for child abuse. Unfortunately the spot of light was mild amusement from seeing that the ad program the site is using thinks that people reading this story about such boarding schools abuses would be interested in shipping their kids off to one of them. Meh, cheap thrills is better then no thrills.

It is defiantly not Mr. Barr’s day. First he gets his house robed, ends up shooting one of the low lives trying to rob him then the cops are nice enough to bust him for cannabis possession. Now in court he is given the damned if you do, damned if you don’t options; join the army or go to jail:

SALINAS, Calif. (AP) -- A Salinas man will have to choose between going to jail or joining the military as his punishment for possession of marijuana.

A judge surprised both the prosecution and defense yesterday when he told Brian Barr that he could avoid a jail term by enlisting in the military.

Now them are some lousy options.

While I am currently living (read trapped) in the south and was actually born here I could not agree more with this rant:

[the] gravy train is fucking over. Take your liberal-bashing, federal-tax-leaching, confederate-flag-waving, holier-than-thou, hypocritical bullshit and shove it up your ass.

And no, you can't have your fucking convention in New York next time. Fuck off.

The DEA moose is on the case. Equal parts disgustingly cute and plain disgusting.

So much for the football prediction, astrological prediction, and my own stubborn optimism; we now officially get four more years of Shrub.

While for some reason I stopped drinking a few hours ago dispute having every reason in the world to knock'em back, while on the subject I came upon this rather amusing post:

Beer selection via bullets ballots

• Whichever beer won would be the only beer available for the next four years.
  
• You would have to pay for the elected beer whether you liked it or not, or even if you didn't drink beer.
  
• Even if you had no strong preference for Bud or Miller, you would be admonished to vote, as that would somehow, magically, improve the quality of the choice.
  If you did have a strong preference, some elementary math would tell you that voting for it would have essentially no chance of influencing the outcome.
  People would get in loud confrontational arguments on the merits of Bud vs. Miller. Even sober people.
  
• If you started talking about microbrews or imports, people would consider you a bit nutty.
  
• The Complete Joy of Homebrewing would be a book owned only by wacky anarchists.
  
• In order to appeal to the least common denominator, Miller and Budweiser would eventually come to have nearly identical, weak, flavors. Oh, wait.
  Despite this, people who had never tried other beers would insist that the two are quite different

Our courts are not already clogged with enough drug cases, let’s import some more:

Afghan drug barons could stand trial in American courts before the end of next year as part of a Washington-driven offensive against the booming drugs trade.

...

A Western official in Kabul said: "We think this will really scare these guys. They know that if they end up in an American court their money and connections will be of no help to them.

After all money has never gotten any one, who was guilty as sin, off in the US. Money has no impact, none what so ever!

At the end of the story this small tidbit turns up:

In the past year, the elite, British-trained Force 333 has begun destroying heroin laboratories, sometimes getting into gunfights with gangs.

American bombing raids have had to be called in to support them at least once.

Looks like my worries about troops being wasted on the Afghan drug war were well founded.

Ok so the swing in this case consists of exactly 4 people in who the hell knows New Hampshire.

Thus far the only numbers in are from the midnight vote in Dixville Notch, NH as reported by Mark Kleiman:

In 2000, Hart's Location and Dixville Notch, NH, which traditionally vote at midnight and release their results immediately, went for Bush over Gore 38-15, with one stubborn fool voting for Nader. This year, the score was Bush 34, Kerry 19, with one stubborn fool -- perhaps the very same one -- still voting for Nader.

That's a swing of nearly eight percent away from Bush and toward the Democrat. Using a likely voter model I just pulled out of my hat, this station can now project a Kerry landslide, with the Massachusetts liberal carrying the popular vote by 58-42 and winning everything but Alaska, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, the Dakotas,Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Indiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina for a total of about 350 EV.

While I would love to see Bush beaten like he owes me money, which he does, I think you are pulling those numbers out from some place farther south then your hat.

I voted. I did my civic duty. Why do I feel so dirty? Well here's one for you Johnny, you fucking drug warrior sack of mediocre shit. (but I haven't had a cunt drinkstable!) Now for that shower.

Every one seems to be posting their get out to vote messages today, perhaps because it's election day, but I will suffice to say this if after the past four years you have no reason to vote that's going to get you out of that chair away from this screen and into the voting booth I got nothing that is going to move your apathetic hind quarters.

So here's my message, do what ever it was you were going to do.

I am now heading to class but will be glued to this key board, post casting my vote, hammering out the election results as they come in or as they don't come in as the case may be. I intend to make a drinking game of it so do not expect coherence.