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Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Jail

California has so many prisons and so many guards that the guards have some political clout when it comes to elections. When the Taliban first took over Afghanistan after they kicked the Soviets out, opium production dropped to zero. Then we (the US) went in and opium production resumed at it's previous levels. Supposedly it is being done by Taliban, presumably to pay for the war they are fighting with us.

Mexico's war on drugs is beginning to look like a civil war with 23,000 dead last year. Arizona has apparently usurped Texas as the hot bed of smuggling activity and the related violence, or at least press coverage of it has. Who knows? Florida may still be at the top of the heap in smuggling activity.

Half the states allow marijuana for medical purposes, but the Feds still consider it an illegal substance. Things are really screwed up.

I wonder what is going to happen. It seems to me that the logical course of action would be to eliminate all the prohibitions on drugs, that is, make them legal. But that's what I thought 30 years ago, and it hasn't happened. I wish I knew what it would take to make it happen.

If nothing changes on the legal side, what is in store for us? More wars, more bodies and more violence, I expect. Some Central or South American country could throw in the towel, or be taken over by a drug cartel, and that could lead to one after another falling like dominoes (Oh, no! Not the domino theory again!) Or the US could go bankrupt trying to impose our version of civilization on the world. That's how we beat the Soviets, we outspent them in the arms race. They went bankrupt before we did.

In any case, it doesn't look good.


Glenn Frey - Smuggler's Blues

Update November 2015. Replaced missing video.
Update February 2017 replaced missing video with two. Evidently Glenn, or the Eagles, or NBC, or somebody, is still pursuing absolute control of their intellectual property. I think the above video is right, but the sound has been stripped. This next video has the sound. Play them together and you should get the original effect.
Update March 2021 replaced first missing video, deleted second missing video. I think we are back where we started.

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