Bear In Mind

We went along today with the nipper to see the creche he’ll be attending in another six months or so. The place was bright and airy and colourful, and the people were nice. But I couldn’t get this video out of my head:

I like the bit with the bear the best.

Weeding Out Extremism

Leaving to one side the need to curb the savage marijuana-fuelled glassings in the country’s pubs and clubs and so on, what is it about the properties of marijuana that sends authorities demented?

One explanation often offered is the fact that it is perceived as the drug of those who would represent the greatest threat to the ideology of the ruling class, as enforced by the state. Since this ideology tends to see people as human resources, to be exploited like any other resource in the pursuit of profit, there is something inherently threatening about a human resource allocated inefficiently, i.e. sitting around getting baked and listening to… help me out here, what is it that people listen to these days for such moments?

True, drink and fags might also represent inefficiency, but the state is limited by the facts that many people are heavily addicted to both, both generate massive revenues for the exchequer, and that the abolition of what is, for many people, a means of making wage slavery bearable, would likely result in massive drops in both production and productivity, accompanied by all sorts of subversive behaviour.

My suspicion is that there is a close relationship between decision to reclassify marijuana and other Labour government policy concerns, in particular the influence of ‘extremist’ ideology and processes of ‘radicalisation’. It is not so much that Jacqui Smith thinks bongs will lead to bombs, but that the approaches developed by the British state to tackle ‘extremism’ inform those developed to tackle caners. Consider the ‘crackdown on “head shops” which sell cannabis paraphernalia, including seeds’, and compare with the same government’s guidelines for mosques which should ‘pledge to have programmes that “promote civic responsibility of Muslims in wider society” and that “actively combat all forms of violent extremism within the society at large”’

For all the general nonsense about enlightenment values that wafts around the Labour government, there isn’t much concern for scientific method in the decision to recriminalise:

The ACMD, the government’s own expert body on drugs, decided by 20 votes to three to recommend that cannabis remain a class C drug. Its nine-month review concluded that while more potent, homegrown strains of herbal cannabis, such as skunk, now dominate the British market, the evidence of a substantial link with mental illness remains weak.

But even though the ‘evidence of a substantial link with mental illness remains weak’, the Home Secretary has opted ‘to act now rather than risk the future health of young people’. If she had been smoking hash, one would be inclined to conclude that it was making her paranoid. But this approach is reminiscent of other apparently paranoid measures in the area of counter-terrorism (the evidence of the possibility of blowing up a plane with bottles of Tango also remains weak, but that doesn’t affect the draconian measures introduced to address such a possibility). One must also take into account the fact that quite a lot of cannabis products come from countries also known to produce terrorists (Afghanistan, Morocco, Pakistan, Egypt, Lebanon, and so on). In a time where the Prime Minister is emphasising the importance of ‘Britishness’, smoking draw may start falling into a category of anti-British activities.

For Inspection

From The Guardian:

Last month, the Republic of Ireland witnessed the resignation of Bertie Ahern as the leader of Fianna Fáil. He has been succeeded by a new leader of the party, Brian Cowen, who will now go on to become Taoiseach.

We believe that this transfer of political power presents the Irish government with a significant opportunity to review its policy on the use Irish airports by US aircrafts suspected of involvement in illegal kidnappings, the so-called “extraordinary renditions“.

Aircraft landing at Irish airports, such as Shannon in the west of Ireland, are suspected of regularly travelling to and from countries such as Afghanistan, Egypt, Jordan and Morocco where torture is used. Such aircraft, usually owned by commercial companies, but actually operated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), are also suspected of heading for countries in eastern Europe, where secret internment camps exist.

However, since the inception of the seemingly endless and calamitous “war on terror”, the Irish government has merely accepted “diplomatic assurances” from the US administration that Irish airports are not being used as stopover points for aircraft carrying kidnapped individuals. Thus, requests by peace activists for the Garda Síochána to search suspected airplanes have been refused. We believe that this situation is no longer politically or morally tolerable.

For example, in April, the Council of Europe’s rapporteur on secret detentions, Dick Marty, castigated what he referred to as the “hypocrisy” of European governments in continuing to deny their involvement in secret detentions or illegal renditions. Speaking at a Brussels conference (pdf) about reporting on torture, Mr Marty asserted: “The United States made a choice… to fight the war on terror using illegal means, but they at least made it openly and defend it. European governments, on the other hand, have been entirely hypocritical since their complicity has been clandestine. Even now, they do not have the courage to declare their involvement, unless forced to do so.“

Furthermore, we agree with Mr Marty that governments “must also stop hiding behind the hypocrisy of diplomatic assurances… They are not worth the paper they are written on, and it is to be complicit in torture to accept them… European governments are not merely involved in violating human rights”, they are even embroiled in the “process of trying to sabotage efforts to find out the truth”.

We, the undersigned – comprising diverse groups and individuals living and working in the west of Ireland, elsewhere in the state, and in other jurisdictions – have now decided to form a People’s Inspection Team. From today, we are, therefore, beginning to recruit active lay inspectors, to aid the Irish government and the Gardai, in undertaking thorough and meaningful inspections of all aircrafts suspected of involvement in “extraordinary renditions” landing at Shannon.

We also want to have others, who are no longer willing to accept shallow “diplomatic assurances” and are keen to act and inspect, join the People’s Inspection Teams.

Signed:

Rhuhel Ahmed, former detainee, Guántanamo prison facility
John Arden, playwright and fellow of the World Society of Literature, Galway, Ireland
Tony Benn, former Labour MP, London, England
Ronan Bennett, author, London, England
Richard Boyd Barrett, chairperson of Irish Anti-War Movement
Professor Noam Chomsky, academic and author, Cambridge, Massachusetts, US
Sarah Clancy,Galway One World Centre, Ireland
Rev Canon Patrick Comerford, president of Irish CND
Catherine Connolly, city councillor, Galway, Ireland
Dr John Cunningham, historian, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland
Margaretta D’Arcy, member of Aosdana, Galway, Ireland
Mary Dempsey, artist, Galway, Ireland
Dr Saber Elsafty, Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, Ireland
Niall Farrell, Galway Alliance against War, Ireland
Dennis J Halliday, former UN assistant secretary general
Brian Hanney, teacher, Galway, Ireland
Edward Horgan, Irish Peace and Neutrality Alliance
Paul Michael Garrett, SIPTU Shop Steward, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland
Jimmy Kelly, regional secretary, UNITE, Ireland
Frank Keoghan, People’s Movement, Ireland
Marilyn LaRosa, Galway, Ireland
Ken Loach, film director, London, England
Donal Lunny, musician, Okinawa, Japan
Patricia McKenna, Green party, Ireland
Dette McLoughlin, Social Workers party, Galway, Ireland
Phelim Murnion, Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology
Joe Murray, Afri: Action from Ireland
Monsignor Raymond Murray, Armagh, Ireland
Treasa Ni Cheannabhain, Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, Ireland
Seosamh O Cuaig, County councillor, Galway, Ireland
Laurent Pardon, Galway, Republic of Ireland
Professor William A Schabas, director, Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland, Galway

Bold bits mine.