Dutch mayors call for legalised cannabis

Amsterdam, Dutch politics, Reefer Madness
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Amsterdam coffeeshop

Only a few weeks ago it seemed the Dutch tolerance towards soft drugs would end soon, due to the increasing strength of the puritan movement in Dutch politics. Magic mushrooms are already banned, while the future of the coffeeshop seemed limited, due to cheese paring measures forced on city councils like the rule that no coffeeshop could be located within 500 metres of a school. Try and find a coffeeshop in Amsterdam that doesn’t…

Meanwhile the growing troubles caused by socalled drugs tourists from France, Germany and Belgium in border towns had already led several of those towns to close down their coffee shops altogether. The future therefore seemed bleak for the ordinary cannabis user in the Netherlands, who smokes it recreationally or to relief pains and nausea (for which it works quite well, as I’ve seen myself, better than many conventional pain killers or nausea relievers). Though the system had worked reasonably well for some three decades, making going to the coffee shop almost as normal as going down the local for a quick pint and a half, it had always been a stopgap, an attempt to regulate cannabis trade without legalising it, as that would be difficult to explain abroad. It was introduced as a measure to free police resources for the battle against hard drugs as well as to limit the dangers of cannabis users “graduating” towards harder drugs. As such it worked well, but there never was the intention on the part of the authorities to go any further towards legalisation. It was a policy they were forced into but never were comfortable with.

Tolerance as a policy, even had it had the full support of politicians and police, could never continue forever. The inherent contradictions of the policy, which made it semi-legal to buy and sell cannabis at a retail level, but illegal to sell wholesale, let alone grow it, would see to this. But because we could never make the choice of legalisation without incurring the wrath of France and America, nor end Tolerance altogether the situation did continue. The hobbyists and smalltime growers who had been the base of the cannabis culture in the Netherlands were driven out by organised crime causing huge problems for many city councils.

The way these criminals operate is to go to an impoverished neighbourhood in Rotterdam or Tilburg or someplace simular and get a front man to hire a house from the council or housing society. This is then turned into a full blown industrial cannabis nursery, powered by stolen electricity from the neighbours. They only need to keep the flat on for several months, until harvest time, then disappear and make a huge profit selling their harvest to the coffeeshops. Despite everything the councils do to combat this, there’s little risk for the real criminals themselves: they leave everything to their patsies.

So it’s no wonder that the mayors of some thirty cities, including Amsterdam, last Saturday called for an end to this situation, by regulating the “backdoor of the coffeeshop”. What they want is to legalise the growing of cannabis by putting it under state supervision and allowing coffeeshops to legally buy their supplies from these suppliers. This would end the involvement of organised gangs, regulate the awkward situation the coffeeshops themselves are in now where they’re forced to buy from criminals, not to mention provide amuch needed source of income for local councils. It’s a good idea, but at the moment it still seems unlikely the central government will take the councils on, as the governing parties are largely opposed to legalisation.

Neocon hubris still causing trouble years later

War on Terror, wingnuts
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redrawn map of the Middle East at the height of neocon illusions

Remember the above map? It was drawn up by Infinite Star Armchair general Ralph “Blood ‘N Guts” Peters back in 2006 in the last flourish of neocon thriumphalism as the way to create a “better Middle East”. The idea apparantly being that since these borders were drawn up almost a century ago by a bunch of European imperialists and have caused a lot of trouble since, what better way to end this trouble by letting another bunch of imperialists, American this time, draw up another set of borders according to their prejudice and idee-fixes, because that worked out so well last time. Also, to stop ethnic cleansing by pre-emptively ethnic
cleanse these countries. At the time it seemed like a joke, if a sick one made palatable by the idea that Peters is such a loon he would be too over the top even for Dr Strangelove.

Guess what? The joke’s on us:

NEW YORK: A redrawn map of South Asia showing a truncated Pakistan, reduced to an elongated sliver of land, has sparked fear among military planners in Islamabad who think India and Afghanistan are “colluding” to destroy the only nuclear powered-Muslim nation with the US help, a media report said on Sunday.

The map, first circulated as a theoretical exercise in some American neoconservative circles, has fueled a belief among Pakistanis that what the United States really wants is the breakup of their country, the New York Times reported.

Pakistani people have reason to be paranoid about the USA’s intentions for their country, considering their mutual history, which includes enthusiastic American support for succesive Pakistani dictators, CIA backed meddling in Afghanistan during the eighties which helped destabilise Pakistan as well, not tomention the recent American airstrikes on Pakistan itself. It may look absurd now, but an invasion of Iraq looked absurd too, back in the nineties. That Obama will be president in January is no guarantee: Democrats are just as prone to stupid foreign policies: even Carter supported Somoza.

Found via Randy McDonald.

Legal advice on Iraq War flawed: No shit Sherlock

Law in action, War Lies, War on Iraq
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For some reason –probably all the hoohah over John Sargent– I missed the news last Monday that Lord Bingham, onetime senior law lord of the UK, criticised the War on Iraq as “a serious violation of international law and of the rule of law”:

Summarising Lord Goldsmith’s reasoning, Lord Bingham said: “A reasonable case could be made that resolution 1441 was capable in principle of reviving the authorisation in resolution 678, but the argument could only be sustainable if there were ‘strong factual grounds’ for concluding that Iraq had failed to take the final opportunity. There would need to be ‘hard evidence’.”

Ten days later, in a Parliamentary written answer issued on March 17, 2003, Lord Goldsmith said it was “plain” that Iraq had failed to comply with its disarmament obligations and was therefore in material breach of resolution 687. Accordingly, the authority to use force under resolution 678 had revived.

The former judge then quoted the conclusion to Lord Goldsmith’s Parliamentary statement: “Resolution 1441 would, in terms, have provided that a further decision of the Security Council to sanction force was required if that had been intended. Thus, all that resolution 1441 requires is reporting to and discussion by the Security Council of Iraq’s failures, but not an express further decision to authorise force.”

Lord Bingham was not impressed. “This statement was, I think flawed in two fundamental respects,” he said.

“First, it was not plain that Iraq had failed to comply in a manner justifying resort to force and there were no strong factual grounds or hard evidence to show that it had: Hans Blix and his team of weapons inspectors had found no weapons of mass destruction, were making progress and expected to complete their task in a matter of months.

“Secondly, it passes belief that a determination whether Iraq had failed to avail itself of its final opportunity was intended to be taken otherwise than collectively by the Security Council.”

Which is more or less what every anti-war activist already knew anyway. Like the dirty dossiers and the claims about Iraq being thirty minutes away from attacking Britain, Goldsmith’s legal advice was always meant as a figleaf for a decision already taken. There was never the intent on the part of Blair to really test the legality of an invasion; his former roomie knew what he wanted and so he delivered it. Had Goldsmith’s argument been made in a court of law it wouldn’t have passed the laugh test. As long as it was good enough to convince the doubters in parliament and the press it was good enough.

The runup to the War on Iraq made hollow phrases of democracy and rule of law, as the first was ignored while the second was perverted to make possible this war. It made clear what the population’s role was: to shut up, vote every few years without expecting anything important to change and to let the important decisions be made by our betters. And then Hazel “bloody” Blears has the gall to lecture us about about political disengagment and the negativity of bloggers?

That BNP membership list

Racism, wingnuts
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Via Lancaster Unity: entire membership of the BNP online:

Hands up if you feel your human rights threatened

Not only does the data, now available online, include the entire membership list with full names (and former names where there have been changes for any reason), addresses, contact numbers, email addresses and in many cases the member’s age, particularly where those members are under eighteen. Yes, that’s right. This list includes members as young as fourteen, male and female. Where a family membership is bought and paid for, the whole family is listed.

As if this isn’t bad enough, the notes that are attached to many of the entries leave a lot of the members open to difficulties in their jobs, some of them being in the armed forces or the police and the BNP too – an illegal combination, and where not illegal, frequently frowned upon. Other members are noted as construction managers, receptionists, district nurses, lay preachers, police officers, company directors and teachers among many others.

Like this wasn’t enough, the BNP has also listed hobbies or interests where for some reason they are deemed relevant. Thus we have short-wave radio hams, amateur historians, pagans, line-dancers and even a witch (male).

The BNP and/or allied organisations have for years been spying on and outing British leftists on their R*dw*tch site, which in the past has led people to be beaten up because they were featured on it. It must be karma that this is now happening to themselves. Of course, despite the BNP always wanting to play the persecuted victims, the likelyhood of BNP members being beaten up because they appeared on this list is small. A lot of people in sensitive positions will have some explaining to about their membership.

So we shouldn’t shed too many crocodile tears about this leakage by the way. These are people who have not just decided to vote for a racist party, which can –barely– be excused as protest voting, but are so hardened in their racism as to join the BNP. These people are not just a theoretical danger: they act on their odious policies and the BNP has always had ties to fascist terrorist groups like Combat 18. If you’re Black or Asian or gay or in some other way a target of the BNP, this list is a godsend, as it can help you avoid these people. Thanks to whoever leaked this lists these fascists can no longer hide themselves. And they’re very upset about it, as this comment thread on Northwest Nationalists shows.

Can’t get the list yourself (it’s on bittorrent via Mininova and Piratebay)? Then use the very web 2.0 BNP proximity search. Enter your postcode and see if there’s a BNP member living near you…

Night and fog

Israel/Palestine
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Israel is disappearing Palestinian minors:

On 2 November, a military court of appeals judge in Ofer Military Base denied the appeal of Salwa Salah and Sareh a-Siuri, both seventeen years old, to overturn renewal of the administrative detention orders issued against them.

The two were arrested in the middle of the night in June and have been held in administrative detention in Israel since then. In October, the army renewed the detention order until 3 January 2009. B’Tselem calls on the army to release the two girls immediately or, if it has evidence against them, to prosecute them as provided by law.

Yes, it’s all done nice and legal, but it shows how any justice system is perverted when it has to operate in service of an Apartheid
state.

See also The Heathlander on this subject.