In related themes

[unixronin]

jordan179 outs Amnesty International for supporting jihad.  All you have to do is claim, however unsupportably, that it's "in self defense", and Amnesty International will have no problem with it whatsoever, and will actually suspend any of its own personnel who have a problem with Amnesty International endorsing jihad.  And as pointed out in that thread, Islam has been making war on other peoples "for its own defense" since at least about the eighth century AD.

And, in another case where it's all about definitions, Strategic Forecasting points out that Mexico's having lost control of its northern states to drug cartels isn't necessarily a problem, for Mexico, if you look at it the right way.  Looked at from the perspective that drug smuggling into the US is America's problem, drug smuggling across the Mexican border brings Mexico forty billion dollars of hard (well ... OK, harder) foreign currency a year.  About thirty two billion dollars of this is profit, which would require about a third of a trillion dollars in conventional business to produce.  In other words, the drug trade pumps as much new money into the Mexican economy as does roughly a third of Mexico's GDP.  As has been pointed out before, it is not in Mexico's economic interest to stem the flow of illegal drugs from Mexico into the US, any more than it's in Mexico's interest to stem the flow of illegal immigrants.

Of course, to be fair, this knife — like many others — cuts both ways.  There are things the US could do fix the problem from the US side; principally, taking the profit out of smuggling through drug legalization.  But the US cannot bring itself to do that, and can't figure out how to reduce the demand for drugs while keeping them illegal.  So, short of massive military action against Mexico, here we stand.

Comments

Timely Article on Guantonamo Prisoners

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

This (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7092435.ece?) Times of London article is timely:

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.

The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin Powell, [...]

Re: Timely Article on Guantonamo Prisoners

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, that fails to surprise me. More and more, I find myself thinking that our government has become one of the world's leading enemies of freedom and democracy.

Neither does it help when President Obama once again perpetuates a Bush administration policy and openly declares that it's OK for the US to assassinate US citizens without trial (see articles here (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/04/08/the_lwot_us_confirms_awlaki_on_cia_hit_list_gitmo_military_trial_begins) and here (http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/07/assassinations), among others) as long as "strong evidence exists". (Cue the witch scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. "Did you dress her up like this?" "No!" "No!" "No!" "No." "Well... Yeah. A bit.") I can't argue that the guy's any friend of ours, but fer crissakes, at least go through the motions of pretending to follow due process.

Re: Timely Article on Guantonamo Prisoners

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Unh-hunh. I think this is the authoritarian interregnum (http://adviceunasked.blogspot.com/2010/04/sore-losers.html), which began with Bush II, and is being maintained by Obama. Obama, despite the right's fears, and the left's hopes, is apparently a conservative, or at least feels that conservative policies are best at this time. I prefer sane conservative to insane radical right. But I would rather have other choices.

Re: Timely Article on Guantonamo Prisoners

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I don't agree. He's maintaining Bush policies that suit him while going balls-to-the-wall on the big-government entitlement agenda. Bush was for the most part conservative only socially, and Obama acts conservative only when it suits him.

I also think you're ignoring significant amounts of violence from the Left. This is not Left vs. Right. It's the population vs. the political machines.

Re: Timely Article on Guantonamo Prisoners

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Entitlements? You mean the health insurance plan? It's a conservative plan--the left's opinion of it ranges from "fix it later" to "wish it hadn't passed." It's very similar to the Republican 1994 counter-proposal to the Clinton plan, and also the Massachusetts plan, due to Republican governor Mitt Romney. Or do you mean the bank bailout? That was also a conservative plan. If it had been left-wing we'd have seen much more regulation and support for small business, homeowners, and so on. Conservatives are for big government, when it benefits big business (as in the health insurance plan and the bank bailout) or when it involves war (as in Iraq.) The political machine is right wing: there is nothing like a strong left in the Federal government. The left pulled out all the stops for the public option and lost. Now they won't even challenge the coal and oil industry on CO2 regulation.

The US radical left is much more on the peaceful anarchist side than the violent statist side. The most prominent US radical left figure is Chomsky, who is an anarchist and opposed to violence except in defense--has been for decades. Chomsky is old, and I do not think there is any young US leftist of comparable stature. Who on the left has threatened serious anti-government violence since 1975? On the other hand, on the right we have figures like Beck, Limbaugh, Malkin, Palin, and Boehner.

Of recent anti-government violence on the right we have Scott Roeder, murderer of Dr. Tiller, Gregory Giusti who threatened Speaker Pelosi, Charles Alan Wilson who threatened Senator Patty Murray, and Larry North who planted 36 IEDs in Texas mailboxes. There were the Hutaree, and Stupak claims to have been threatened from the right, because he abandoned his anti-abortion position for Senator Nelson's slightly less anti-abortion position. Who on the left is comparable or has comparable numbers?