Poor POW..........

[Brother None]

Re: Oh Kharn

ANd yes, those bastards who were behind the bombing should roast. My position on this is totally nationalistic.

Bah, that's not nationalism, that's common sense. Those against roasting those responsible are just being anti-Americanistic.

Do these folks deserve a trial, yes. ANd I think that the judicial branch should have the right to review the practices of the military in holding these folks captive. I am hoping that the legal system works out so that they do get their trial, and I am hoping that more people protest this.

Well, with Bush destroying checks and balances left and right, it's not likely.

I doubt that there will be an international criminal court for Al-qaida. As you point out, one persons terrorist is another person freedom fighter. And its easy to turn your back or hold up your hands and say, what a tragedy. Like Bosnia and Kosovo. Its easy to recognize one part of a fractured country, realizing that recognition will lead to violent civil war and ethnic cleansing, especially if you won't take responsibility for it. But that's German sovereignty for you.

Well, situations are a bit more complex than that, but fair 'nough

Personally I support the idea of more personal responsibility in international law. International criminal court, more international responsibility for companies too. I think it would be a wonderful thing if the other countries would pass a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act so that their companies would have some legal restraint in their business practices abroad.

Kharn, have the dutch passed a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act yet? Or Can Royal Dutch Shell do what it wants?

Ha, that has nothing to do with the US or any European country, that has to do with the G-8 and little else. Globalism is a terrible thing, and it'll wreck our world for sure, but as long as there are profits, you can be damned sure everyone will turn their backs.

Has the Netherlands made up for Indonesia yet, Kharn?

"Made up". I never liked that attitude. Most people think of handing out cash in such cases, but as Carrol pointed out, a good deed for a rich person is not handing out a part of his cash, but handing out a part of his potental labour.

The problem with Third-World countries is not cash (though it would help if we just forgot all their debts, as we bloody well should do!), but the way they're being strangled by the rich West. Damned globalism.

Have the Netherlands taken responsibility for the fact that drugs from Amsterdam are spilling over into other countries, that laundered money from drugs throughout the americans and europe, and the money flows through Dutch banks?

Hmmm, for the hard drugs, of course, we fight alongside the others as much as any country. "Bolletjesslikkers" (people that swallow a plastic bag full of heroin and then try to get it across the border) are filling our prisons to capacity.

As for weed, no, and that's another matter. You can't expect a country to forbid legal drugs like that, either, it'd be like America strangling the alcohol production because some of it is being exported to muslim countries (and we all know how well Prohibition works in the USA)

If the Dutch were still a major power, as once they were, would the world be that much better a place? The track record ain't great, Kharn.

No, but not bad either. You'll get no argument from me about America being a "bad superpower". America's not been handling all that bad as a superpower, I mean, most previous superpowers just marched over everyone else in wild search of conquest. It can allways be better, though.

That's hardly hypocricy. Hopefully the legacy of the past near 60 years is better than what came before that, but yes, there's a fair share of blood there.

Well, yes, but I'm not talking about that kind of hypocricy, I was referring to saying "your people" are worth more than "other people"

Is that barbaric? Well that makes us brothers, doesn't it Kharn.

*hugs*

I think the mankind just gave up on the future and chose to live like worms. Money and fun is more important than the survival of the human species.

Aye, aye, but so be it. There's no way the West is going to realise just how wrong it is before it's too late, and then...it's Fallout time!

Pffft, the world will live on, it holds no relevance.

 

[DarkShade1989]

(and we all know how well Prohibition works in the USA)

Yeah, all the Americans would just come up here to Canada for drinks (and likely pot, if it's legalized).

 

[Ugly John]

NOt legallized ... just not criminalized for under certain amount.
It will still be illegal to have it, since you'll get fined, it will also be illegal to buy or sell it.

Stupid law. They should make it harder not softer. You get caught with any amout... go to jail.

It's like saying well sir you beat up your wife and kids, but you did it open handed so it's okay.

 

[APTYP]

That's right! It's much cheaper to outlaw the drug rather than eliminate the reasons why one begins to abuse it! The very thought that drug abuse is not a disease, but rather a symptom is an absolute rubbish!

 

[Brother None]

Heh, say what you will, but drug legalisation worked pretty well here

It's all nonsense anyway. Caffiene, nicotine and alcohol are, in fact, harder drugs than mirahuana. It's all just a matter of culture.

I mean, harder drugs, 'course, those should be completely illegal, especially the selling and transportation of it, but that's because those "cause" (so-to-speak) crime.

It'll be a cold day in hell before mirahuana causes more problems than alcohol does over here.

 

[welsh]

legalizing grass?

From what I understand, grass became illegal in the state because alcohol didn't work.

The same bureaucrats that wanted to outlaw vices were behind both movements. But alcohol was too popular at the time while grass wasn't.

Admittedly grass is worse for your lungs than cigarettes, but in terms of social consequences its much lighter than alcohol.

Compare-
When was the last time you heard of some woman getting beaten to death by her stoned husband?

When was the last time you heard of some women getting beaten to death by a drunk husband?

It's hard to kill some one when you're feeling mellow, social and maybe suffering from a significant case of the munchies.

Or how many vehicle deaths are caused by alcohol each year? Compared to the number of vehicle deaths caused by marijuana?

While Marijuana mellows you out and slows things down it lacks the effects on the mind one finds with alcohol.

Also alcohol and tobacco are addictive. Marijuana is merely a habituate.

If you legalize it you can tax it, and if you can tax it you can kill it. In fact there are many who believe that if you legalize it will become more expensive because of taxes. However, the alternative is that it will be cheaper to get because one can sidestep the added rents that come with engaging in an illegal commodity.

Think of all the money currently lost to illegal businesses, criminal organizations or other wise escaping the tax collector, when a portion of that revenue could go to making the world a better place.

That said, one also has to admit significant limits on the argument for legalizing marijuana.

 

[Ugly John]

Re: legalizing grass?

When was the last time you heard of some woman getting beaten to death by her stoned husband?

Let's just leave it at someone close in my familly, But these do not make the news.

When was the last time you heard of some women getting beaten to death by a drunk husband?

These make the news

It's hard to kill some one when you're feeling mellow, social and maybe suffering from a significant case of the munchies.

Except when you are getting stoned while driving and you just run over a whole bunch of kids in a school crossing.

My problem is that a lot of users do not have a head on their shoulders. Two years ago my oldest son went to daycare in a local college. So one afternoon i go over there to pick him up, leaning against the fences that delimit the playground for the (real) kids were five 18 yo guys smoking pot (or whatever).
I went to security, they told me that even if they did interfere, these kids woudl just go someplace else. The police would not come because it was private property.
I handled it myself. I went to these five 'kids' and i asked them politetly to do the intelligent thing and go away from the daycare ... they blew me off.
So i explained to them very graphicaly and very close to their face (about an inch) what would become of them if i came from work once again and found them hanging around the daycare getting stoned or just being there. I also pressed the fact that anything that would happen to my car parked there anytime would be paid back to them in pain. And they cooperated.
So basically these idiots woudl have been in a whole world of pain because of pot. Even if i had had to go to hurting them, what would they have said to the police 'Uh! like man.. we were getting hammered next to a daycare .. and uh! like this dude came and broke our ribs and jaws because we would not go away'
Then what police believe these stoners or a businessman picking up his son in daycare?

 

[APTYP]

UJ, what welsh is saying is that marijuana is no more dangerous than alchohol. What you appear to be saying is that it is a horrible killer drug that eats babies, up there with crack cocaine and heroin. Now if you feel the same way about alchohol (which was condemned by the Bible that itself was responsible for many crimes against humanity), that's fine with me, but if you don't then you're just being hysterical.

 

[Brother None]

You need a level of social control on weed. There are few people in Holland that smoke pot on the street, not so much because it's illegal, but because you're just not supposed to (though, obviously, a lot of people carry it, you can smell that, at times, but heck, you need to get the stuff from one place to another). You can smoke in the hash bars (coffee shops) and just hang out on the couch there. Or smoke it at home.

And because most people smoke pot at home, there's not much of a problem with smoking and driving. And even if there was, there have been tests in which people actually drove better after one joint than without a joint (because of the relaxation factor, prolly).

And John, your example is a strange one. What are you complaining about, the drugs or the fact that those youths were hanging there in defiance of authority? Because the second has nothing to do with any kind of drugs.

 

[Ugly John]

I'm not saying that pot is a baby killer, what i'm saying is that pot related accident and/or else things are not statisticly kept, unlike alchool related. You always hear on the news drunk this, because alchool was related, DUI this.
You hear of driving while impaired (alchool) for the past ten years, they just started to publicized the danger of drivig while impaired (pot).
To my knowledge, police do not run road block to check if people are impaired by pot and/or marijuana, they do it for alchool. And if these people that they stop are drunk and stoned, they get arrested for being drunk, because they have a test to detect that.

Yes the case i stated about the kids around my son was emotionnal, because while they mellow out they don't have the same judjement as when they are not stoned. And i'm sure that any of you guys would have done the same, if they had done the same thing around your kids(just pretend you have kids if you don't).
Someone in my familly was almost beaten to death in front of her kids by her husband while he was "mellowed out". So yes it's a very sensitive subjet. Don't get me wrong, i know that happens a lot with alchool also.

However the big thing around the de-criminalization of marijuana is that most people think that it will become legal (and socially acceptable) to posses and smoke pot, wich is not it will still be illegal, you just won't go to jail.
Also 15 grams is a lot. Dealers will just keep less on themselves, pay the fine if they get caught and do it again.

 

[Brother None]

Hmm...

No, there are no statistic on pot in most countries. There are over here, though, and as I said, you need a level of social control.

But alcohol is just so much worse than weed. Of course, if you turn the blind eye, the lack of social control will make the weed-troubles explode, but confine it a bit and it's not a quarter as bad as the trouble arising from alcohol-abuse.

 

[welsh]

legal?

I think Kharn is right on the issue of social control, but that's often where the problems lie. For instance, a lot of the problem with grass is what else is in the joint you're smoking which is a consequence of unregulation. Also the relationship between grass and crime is stronger, but that's also a consequence of illegality.

So the antisocial event that John is at might be, in part, because its illegal to begin with.

But, I think there is a good argument for keeping it criminal as well.

For one thing, if cigarettes do lots of nasty stuff to your body, grass is even worse. Part of this might be the lack of filter, but the damage to lungs is generally worse than tobacco.

That said, lets not forget that tobacco is addictive, grass is a habituate. One can get into the habit of toking up, but that doesn't mean you have to. Tobacco addiction, like alcohol addiction is a monkey on your back that is hard to shake.

John is also right to point out that the effects of tobacco are not as clear as with grass. Part of the reason is that tobacco and alcohol are transparent due to being legal. Grass is not. There's a lot of folks who toke up, but its generally more expensive but also more hidden. So we don't know how bad the social impact might be.

But there are other reasons to question illegal grass, but I think the argument that tobacco and alcohol are worse falls flat. Just because they are bad doesn't mean that we should legalize something that is also bad. Two wrongs don't make a right in the case of marijuana. Rather we would have just one more crappy vice which people waste their money on.

If tobacco were legal would it change the drug industry in any meaningful way? Well for grass perhaps. Instead of tobacco people might be growing weed. Would it replace opium or cocaine? Doubtful. Those industries are just too profitable.

Would society become more tolerant? Perhaps. If we open the door to grass what's next. Many people say that grass is often something that people start with before moving on to harder drugs. Do we want more people experiencing harder more dangerous drugs?

About 5-6 years ago, I remember being in Switzerland and seeing all the heroin addicts in the park and thinking it pretty tragic. But if we were to allow grass, why not allow esctacy?

 

[Brother None]

Re: legal?

For one thing, if cigarettes do lots of nasty stuff to your body, grass is even worse. Part of this might be the lack of filter, but the damage to lungs is generally worse than tobacco.

This is not true. It's true that a joint does more damage to your body than a cigarette, because you inhale a joint much more deeply into your longues than you would with a normal cig. Remember, it's still the tobacco that does the damage as a carrier for the weed, not the weed.

However, smoking through a joint is not obligatory. If I smoke weed it's through a water-pipe, which is much healthier (a vaporizor is the healthiest, since you inhale only THC). It's true that weed can cause long-cancer, but not at the level that tobacco can do the same.

But there are other reasons to question illegal grass, but I think the argument that tobacco and alcohol are worse falls flat. Just because they are bad doesn't mean that we should legalize something that is also bad. Two wrongs don't make a right in the case of marijuana. Rather we would have just one more crappy vice which people waste their money on

(...)

Would society become more tolerant? Perhaps. If we open the door to grass what's next. Many people say that grass is often something that people start with before moving on to harder drugs. Do we want more people experiencing harder more dangerous drugs?

About 5-6 years ago, I remember being in Switzerland and seeing all the heroin addicts in the park and thinking it pretty tragic. But if we were to allow grass, why not allow esctacy?

These are not "real borders", these are social borders. Most countries drew the line at tobacco, the Netherlands chose to draw the line at weed.

The problem is that the lines are age-old. If you break an age-old social border, you do risk going over that border in a big way later on. There is currently no real discussion about legalising the harder drugs in Holland, but I wouldn't be surprised if we did legalise those later on.

The reason grass leads to harder drugs is not because "grass is the first drug you use", the first drug people use tends to be caffiene, followed by alcohol, followed by nicotine (I don't smoke, btw, I do drink cofee, alcoholic beverages and smoke weed, though).

The reason, rather, is that you've stepped over a certain border that people for some stupid reason once chose to draw, and now you can step anywhere you want.

True, I've seen a lot of people that went from grass to hard drugs, but half of those people I know aren't addicted to those hard drugs, they just used them once or twice (generally XTC).

PS: Ever read A. Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories? You'll notice how Sherlock keeps shooting himself full of "cucaine" (=cocaine). Yet while abuse of cocaine was accepted back then, England was not in chaos.

 

[APTYP]

Kharn, not entirely true. In one story Watson went to an opium den to find a husband who spent days there without contacting his wife. His appearance was really pathetic.

 

[Brother None]

Yip, I know that story. In that same opium den, he also once finds Sherlock Holmes, though I can't quite remember the reason why Sherlock was there.

That wasn't really the point, though

 

[DarkShade1989]

Wow, who would have guessed my one wrong comment would turn this topic from POW's to drugs?

 

[Brother None]

Kharn, not entirely true. In one story Watson went to an opium den to find a husband who spent days there without contacting his wife. His appearance was really pathetic.

There, I finally got around to looking it up in my "Illustrated Sherlock Holmes Treasury" (great stuff).

I suppose you're referring to "The Man with the Twisted Lip", in which Sherlock Holmes goes undercover in an opium den to find none other than the owner, who is his enemy/prey (as he puts it himself)...

This is only an introduction to the rest of the story and has nothing to do with the main case, which is about a rich man that makes his living begging.