The Bush Administration’s avoidance of the global environmental crisis needs no further elaboration. The water crisis is something I have not thought much about, but droughts are happening with increasing frequency. Africa is seeing the Sahara expand and China is finding it has more desserts.
Securing fissile material floating around the former Soviet Union is massively important as is dealing with Khan’s shop in Pakistan. Neither has gotten much attention from Rice or Cheney.
I’m surprised at the emphasis he places on international crime. Is it more than just a problem in a few countries like Columbia?
Finally, pandemics are dangerous. AIDS is a kind of laboratory where other pathogens can mutate into ever more virulent strains (example: tuberculosis). Controlling AIDS is not just an act of altruism.
The book itself is an odd mixture of insight and cliché. Phrases like “throughout history”, as in the opening quotation, pop up too often. The opening chapters on fear television were insightful.
i’m not sure what is meant by this. is he talking along the lines of international trafficking of sex slaves/prostitutes? Or more along the lines of HaliburtonCheneyCo types causing regional or global chaos so that they can get hired to mop up?
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Regarding drugs, does he entertain the possibility of legalizing certain drugs rather than “warring” against them?
The passage on crime & corruption was remarkably short. He inveighed against Haliburton-esque corruption in a different chapter. The focus seemed to be on drugs in the section I’m presenting.
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Has any country taken the libertarian approach and legalized heroin and cocaine? (Confession: I don’t follow drug policy.)
as to which countries have legalized heroin and coke, i honestly don’t know. here is my unresearched impression: most things are available legally in the red light zone of Amsterdam; many countries that may or may not technically have legal prohibitions don’t or can’t enforce them. the result is de facto legalization. i’m thinking india.
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interesting that you bring up those drugs. i was thinking marijuana. i do think that certain classes of drugs could be legalized and taxed, just like alcohol and nicotene are now. perhaps others should always remain regulated or illegal – i don’t know. i did learn something interesting recently, and that is that the dutch gov’t is the chief supplier (the only legal one?) of mj in the country. they have a very tight control on the strains of plant grown, so that the various products are of known strength and provenance. i find that to be a very smart approach. of course, that would earn bloody cries of socialism if suggested here in the land of free marketry, but the idea has real merits.
I think coke and heroin are illegal in Holland. (At least they were when I was reading about the Netherlands before my previous visit. Disclaimer: I don’t even like mj.)
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The Dutch government does have the very sensible idea of offering to test confidentially and for free any drug one might bring to them. No doubt this has saved lives.
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I get the impression that their enforcement is fairly lax.
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Do you know whether marijuana is a large or a small percentage of the illegal economy in drugs? I suspect small, but that’s just my duodenum speaking.
i have no idea how important mj is dollar-wise in the u.s. but i’m not sure that that is the most important question. mj is extremely pervasive, so legalizing it should pull the rug out from under the crime rackets that produce/import/distribute it now. if whoever wanted it could grow it on their own back porch, or buy it from the state farm, the mj mafia wouldn’t be able to extort money for it, and there would no longer be incentive for crime surrounding it’s procurement and dissemination.
The tax revenues wouldn’t hurt that much either. I’ll never understand the sense of banning marijuana while permitting assault weapons.
it you’re going to create a ‘war’ on drugs, you need two things at least: illegal drugs, and the tools of the trade for the “evil doers”, such as weaponry.
about cocaine & heroin being illegal. i finally did a little (and i mean little) digging, and found this report from the Canadian Parliament. it gives a brief synopsis of dutch drug history and current policy (or almost current – they still refer to guilders). seems that marijuana & hash are legal in certain amounts, whereas ‘hard’ drugs are not. however, the netherlands approach to users is not so punative as is ours.
I know that it is illegal to possess cocaine or heroin in the Netherlands. Interestingly, in Singapore, you can have up to 30 grams of it. Heroin is also widely illegal, including for the Dutch.
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However, I didn’t find much information on Central and East Asia, the two areas that I would expect to be more tolerant of particularly heroin usage. And more importantly, I imagine such bans are not stringently enforced through much of the world…
… People who are intolerant of other people’s cultures and the Dutch.”
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Nigel Powers in Austin Powers: Goldmember
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Sorry. I couldn’t help myself.
Still thinking about your question, I finally remembered that Russia now has a huge organized crime problem. The transition from state-owned enterprises to privately owned ones was not handled in a squeaky clean manner — with the expected results. That, coupled with the amount of unsecured fissile material, makes of Russia a significant security concern.
Don’t have to go to Africa to see the effects of the water crisis — just need to look at the Colorado River at the US/Mexican border. I still can’t comprehend why Phoenix, Tuscon, and Las Vegas are flourishing in areas where humans aren’t environmentally equipped to live. It’s akin to hearing that Alert, Alaska has trebled in size.
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A great starter source on the water issue is the works of the late, great Senator Paul Simon, who was talking about this 10 years ago. It’s nice of Al Gore to notice. Frankly, the rest of the American political institution may catch up to this thanks to the Nevada caucus; unless Edwards, Clinton, or Obama start learning a little bit about this issue, they may as well keep ignoring the contest.
Not to mention the Great Plains. There have been threats for years, ever increasing, that Great Lakes water will be diverted to TX and points between. Seems the people down there have used up/squandered the Oglala, and are setting their sights on extra-regional water.
Why don’t we use the capitalist system to solve our water problems? I don’t know much about the water crisis that now seems to be gripping the world. (Not a week goes by without some new environemental catastrophe) But, I do know that there are a number of companies that manufacture water purification systems.
A relative of mine works for a company in New Hampshire that does this very thing. My understanding is that the machines will purify, for consumption purposes, many thousands of gallons a day. Sure the machines are expensive and for the time being used primarily on military ships so that they have an endless supply of drinking water. But, if enough private companies invest in these machines we could drive the price down and make them available for home use – just like we did with the personal computer.
I think the wrong answer is to get the government involved because they will start to ration, regulate and report on the issue instead of solve the issue. Let the free market solve the problem.
I am sorry kbusch. Government is the answer to all things human.
to simply delete this vacuous, catty comments without warning, going forward. For now, I’ll simply give this comment a zero.
Purely formally, if this thread appeared out of the air with comments signed by people we had never heard of before, my comment might regarded as catty too. True I pointed out the weirdness of laying down a solution to a problem absent an understanding of what the problem is in the first place. Were I more polite or patient, I might have explained what the problem was and gently indicated that the commenter was being ideologically narrow by applying the government-is-overused theme as broadly as margarine on toast at a breakfast diner.
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I didn’t. I consciously didn’t. The experience we* had on other threads was that this person is difficult to engage in discussion. By discussion, I mean acknowledging the other side’s points and responding to them somehow — hopefully thoughtfully.
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What do you think is appropriate here?
Global Warming/Climate change? OK, yes, there is a perceived threat of bad things happening.
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But this is pretty far removed from bad guys/organizations/entities with gunsd and/or bombs no?
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This seems to be somewhat of a fuzzification of the concept of national security, in the same way that calling poverty or homelessness “national security” concerns are. Democrats have the opportunity to reclaim the lead on national security concerns for the first time in my lifetime. It would be unfortunate if they squander it with the warm and fuzzies.
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I’m glad Al is done with politics.