Today, as I was drinking a coffee, I noticed a Bangkok newspaper in English. Curious, I picked it up to see if there was anything interesting going on or anything about Thailand. Generally, I use a person filter to get my news and it works really well. But, I was curious. Oops.
3 things caught my attention: The pope sees his shawdow - 6 more weeks of winter, drugs are bad m-kay, and an interesting thing about India.
The first thing was actually called, The Pope Hails Parenthood. I think it was in the paper cause some people like the pope and they didn't know how to fill the paper today. It was a lot of fluff with the general point being that the pope echoed the normal message of get married, don't have abortions, and be Catholic. He was quoted as saying, "don't be afraid of commitment", referring to marriage and he put down people that live together prior to or instead of getting hitched. I don't think fear is why people choose to live together, but maybe I'm wrong. If they are like me, they feel marriage is an unnecessary institution. Does getting married prove you love someone? Yes and no. Can we mate for life and not get married? Yes. All marriage is, is a legal document and a religious tradition. We certainly can love someone and prove it day to day without ever getting married. It's a grand gesture, but a relic. The unfortunate byproduct of marriage is that we get complacent and expectations start to put unnecessary strain where it doesn't need to be. If it proved we loved someone, then why do we need divorce? We proved we love you. Ah, but love under stress caused by expectations and complacency eventually changes. We all know people who went from being ecstatic to depressed (and ultimately divorced) just because they had a wedding. Just because it's tradition doesn't mean everyone wants to risk that undue stress for a couple tax breaks and the exact same living situation they'd have had had they just lived with one another.
Of course, the pope wants you to have kids. The Catholic creation myth, a well as all religions creation myths, tell us that we are the ultimate desired creature. We were put here, just shy of godliness (man was created in His image), to be owners of the world. It was necessary to have as many kids as possible before cause more than half died in infancy. Now it's not. If someone wants to have an abortion, let them. What if it's Einstein? Well, what if it's the next jailbird (the more likely case for children growing up in family that didn't want them). We all hear the survivorship bias of, "I am so happy I changed my mind about it. I can't imagine my life without [son or daughter]". It's a downer and the News thinks inappropriate, to do stories like, "I'm so happy I got an abortion 10 years ago". To be honest, I have no idea how I'd feel if my girlfriend wanted one. I am not set in stone that it is wrong or right. It's too huge a decision to say how you'd react ahead of time if it came about. However, it is not my business, nor anyone else's to tell someone they can't. The church doesn't like you using birth control either. We must fill the earth to it's breaking points, but don't worry, a mystical being will save us all from our self inflicted destruction. Not to mention that it means more Catholics running around to compete with the other major religions.
The second piece was actually an op-ed. The topic was a report released by the Global Commission on Drug Policy stating that the war on drugs is a failure and the best thing that governments can do is to legalize them. The op-ed was against that. The arguments against the report were, that commission members didn't said the opposite while they were in politics, that the current US drug czar has only had minor success in reducing penalties for non-violent crime drug related incarcerations, that drug dealers and mafia are bad, violent people, and that drugs are harmful. If you think that I am purposely talking down there points to make them seem silly, you are mistaken.
The one example of members not following was George Schultz (US secretary of state 20+ years ago), who "praised and helped to fund the Thai struggle to chase heroin warlord Khun Sa out of the country". Eliminating warlords is always a good idea, but perhaps there are better ways to do it. Also, people should never change their minds, even over 20 years when they are presented with new information (as in the war on drugs is totally unsuccessful). Besides, they were worried about a job rather than doing what is right, which is unfortunately all to common in politics. Now, he can speak his mind.
The success of the current drug czar is irrelevant, unless you are trying to argue that someone is more suited to do the job of reducing penalties, which was not the argument of this op-ed piece. To me. that appears to kinda support the conclusion of the commission's report.
The worst argument, and they were all bad, was that "drugs and dealers threaten lives, cause violence and ruin livelihoods". He goes on to say, "Ending the struggles against drug traffickers would not ease the attempt by organised criminals to attack society" and that the mafia would still exist even without drugs. OK, first - these are two conflicting statements. The author is making an emotional case that dealers are bad. Then, he concedes that dealers would be gone, in order to make another case. It's confusing because he blurs what would happen should the world legalize drugs. There are a ton of longer reaching affects like vacuums created when the international drug market falls out, but I want to focus specifically on the authors cases. What would happen if we legalized all drugs in the above? Drug dealers would not exist and nor would the violence that surrounds that black market. Hell, they might actually become the first legitimate businessmen in those industries. Many people claim that drug usage would sky-rocket and society would fall apart. These people aren't aware, in my opinion, of just how rampant drug usage is now, and society is still intact. There would probably be a short spike in usage that would be created by the few people who stayed away before because they didn't want to go to jail, but this would be short lived and relatively manageable. Drug crime would clear up and the mafias would find other ways to illegally make money, just like they are doing now all over the world. However, without the enormous profits from the drug trade, they'd be much weaker. Mafias will most likely always exist, but we don't need to support them with drug money. Also, internationally, we'd be lowering the amount of money available to radical groups and terrorists weakening their ability to train, hide, recruit, buy arms, etc. Speaking of money, tax revenue...
The op-ed guy wanted more specific streetwise advice of cleaning up drug problems, but he missed the point of the report. He could have wrote his whole op-ed piece about that without bringing up the report. The report didn't have to do that because legalizing would eradicate the crime and violence. What wouldn't be cleaned up would be the users destroying their lives. This is out of the report's scope anyhow. Streetwise advice - use part of the enormous tax revenues to objectively (and not overdo it like tobacco) inform people about the drugs and let them decide for themselves. Most people won't want to destroy their lives just because drugs became legal. For those that are and will, use part of the tax revenues to help them when they realize they need help.
The third and last thing that caught my attention was that a Guru in India is protesting corruption in the government by fasting. The government allowed him 5,000 protesters, but 50,000 have shown up so far. The police then broke up the illegal gathering with tear gas and beating them. This Guru demanded that the government accept "all his demands, including introducing the death penalty for corrupt officials and withdrawing large-denomination bank notes used in illicit cash deals". Sounds reasonable to me. The whole situation is interesting, but what I really found amazing is that the "Prime Minister [and staff] tried to talk him out of the 'fast unto death', nervous that his campaign could spiral into a mass challenge to the governments authority". I feel like in the US, the government would look at him and go, "fuck it" no one cares. And no one would. There, even with only 50k people behind him out of over a billion, the culture is such that one person with the right intentions can have that kind of affect to scare the government.
Alright, that's it for now
The op-ed guy wanted more specific streetwise advice of cleaning up drug problems, but he missed the point of the report. He could have wrote his whole op-ed piece about that without bringing up the report. The report didn't have to do that because legalizing would eradicate the crime and violence. What wouldn't be cleaned up would be the users destroying their lives. This is out of the report's scope anyhow. Streetwise advice - use part of the enormous tax revenues to objectively (and not overdo it like tobacco) inform people about the drugs and let them decide for themselves. Most people won't want to destroy their lives just because drugs became legal. For those that are and will, use part of the tax revenues to help them when they realize they need help.
The third and last thing that caught my attention was that a Guru in India is protesting corruption in the government by fasting. The government allowed him 5,000 protesters, but 50,000 have shown up so far. The police then broke up the illegal gathering with tear gas and beating them. This Guru demanded that the government accept "all his demands, including introducing the death penalty for corrupt officials and withdrawing large-denomination bank notes used in illicit cash deals". Sounds reasonable to me. The whole situation is interesting, but what I really found amazing is that the "Prime Minister [and staff] tried to talk him out of the 'fast unto death', nervous that his campaign could spiral into a mass challenge to the governments authority". I feel like in the US, the government would look at him and go, "fuck it" no one cares. And no one would. There, even with only 50k people behind him out of over a billion, the culture is such that one person with the right intentions can have that kind of affect to scare the government.
Alright, that's it for now
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