5 Comments

1. carey_chastain@msn.com says:

   Friday, Jul 12, 2013 at

   Just destroy the crops period. Take away the afgan enconomy and let the place inplode. Get all US troops out of this god forsaken place and let the corupt afgan government die with the country.

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   • malcolmkyle says:

     Friday, Jul 12, 2013 at

     “In brief, Prohibition has not only failed to work the benefits that its proponents promised in 1917; it has brought in so many new evils that even the mob has turned against it. But do the Prohibitionists admit the fact frankly, and repudiate their original nonsense? They do not. On the contrary, they keep on demanding more and worse enforcement statutes — that is to say, more and worse devices for harassing and persecuting their opponents.

     The more obvious the failure becomes, the more shamelessly they exhibit their genuine motives. In plain words, what moves them is the psychological aberration called sadism. They lust to inflict inconvenience, discomfort, and whenever possible, disgrace upon the persons they hate, which is to say: upon everyone who is free from their barbarous theological superstitions, and is having a better time in the world than they are.

     They cannot stop the use of alcohol, nor even appreciably diminish it, but they can badger and annoy everyone who seeks to use it decently, and they can fill the jails with men taken for purely artificial offences, and they can get satisfaction thereby for the Puritan yearning to browbeat and injure, to torture and terrorize, to punish and humiliate all who show any sign of being happy. And all this they can do with a safe line of policemen and judges in front of them; always they can do it without personal risk.”

     —an extract from “Notes on Democracy” by Henry Louis Mencken, written in 1926, during alcohol prohibition, 1919-1933

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2. malcolmkyle says:

   Friday, Jul 12, 2013 at

   Prohibitionism is intensely, rabidly, frantically, frenetically, hysterically anti-truth, anti-freedom, anti-public-health, anti-public-safety and anti-economy.

   An important feature of prohibitionism—which it closely shares with fascism—is totalitarianism. That means a police-state apparatus—widespread surveillance, arbitrary imprisonment or even murder of political opponents, mass-incarceration, torture, etc.

   Like despicable, playground bullies, prohibitionists are vicious one moment, then full of self-pity the next. They whine and whinge like lying, spoiled brats, claiming they just want to “save the little children,” but the moment they feel it safe to do so, they use brute force and savage brutality against those they claim to be defending.

   Prohibitionists actually believe they can transcend human nature and produce a better world. They allow only one doctrine, an impossible-to-obtain drug-free world. All forms of dissent, be they common-sense, scientific, constitutional or democratic, are simply ignored, and their proponents vehemently persecuted.

   During alcohol prohibition, from 1919 to 1933, all profits went to enrich thugs and criminals. While battling over turf, young men died on inner-city streets. Corruption in law enforcement and the judiciary went clean off the scale. A fortune was wasted on enforcement that could have been far more wisely allocated. On top of the budget-busting prosecution and incarceration costs, billions in taxes were lost. Finally, in 1929, the economy collapsed.

   Does that sound familiar?

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3. rscott says:

   Saturday, Jul 13, 2013 at

   Before we consider continuing support for our failed, yes failed, counternarcotics programs in places like Helmand province that produces some 30-40% of the world’s opium, yes this one province, we should put together an effective integrated counternarcotics program, something we have not had for the past 12 years. Opium poppy cultivation has increased for the past 3 years while , thanks to plant disease not our programs, opium production has decreased. While production has decreased in the “food zone” project region, cultivation has greatly expanded into previously desert areas of Helmand, thanks to deep well irrigation. And we have done virtually nothing to support the markets for some of the traditional cash crops in Helmand like cotton which was the second largest cash crop in the 1970s. The Brits built the first cotton gin in Lashkar Gah, still functioning, in 1965 and completed a second gin in Girishk in 1979, which we have since bombed, to try to keep up with the rapidly expanding cotton cultivation, which is still a major crop with several small privately owned gins as well as the initial one. There is a market for cotton and international prices have hit all time highs over the past 3-4 years…but we have done nothing to support the small but important (important for the farmers) cotton market in Helmand to at least attempt to compete with opium. The farmers prefer cotton to opium which they consider an evil crop but with a reliable and good market and an informal credit system all of which we have not competed. More details see my website: http://www.scottshelmandvalleyarchives.org.

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4. Matthew Cunningham says:

   Sunday, Jul 14, 2013 at

   Lady you are on the wrong side of History and it will not look kindly on the Morality police and the Prohibition Industry.

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