I am Joe Blog’s Left Ventricle

Yesterday I had a great conversation with a colleague of mine who emigrated here from Iran. While the conversation touched on Iraq, the big surprise for me was the role of Oil in the iron grip Iran’s totalitarian government has on its people.

One: When a government obtains all of its income from industry/business it owns and operates, the people have even less control over it. Here in Australia, about half the government’s income comes from personal income tax, with the bulk of the rest coming from other taxation (company tax, etc). In a very real sense, the government needs us to survive, and I’ve taken that for granted my entire life.

‘Basically government does not rely on people in anyway, the first (and pretty much the only) step required for corruption’

‘The main reason I migrated: I wanted to live someplace where government does not have it’s own independent source of income which has nothing to do with people and everyone in the world is after it!’

It’s a factor which may’ve helped with the downfall of many communist nations - and something Socialism as a theory needs to take into account. More on that another time.

Two: Religion reinforces totalitarianism in government. Religion has a bad habit of suppressing questioning and scepticism, two tools the people require for democratic leadership.

‘People can easily be accused of being against religion which is a serious crime if proved and the proof is simple being against the government because “Government comes directly from the heart of religion!”‘

Three: A difficult life leaves little time to think about your government.

‘People are so involved with their own problems and are so afraid of accusements and things that might happen to them that won’t complain. Those who do will be in deep trouble’

Four: A lack of a sense of history endangers the population further.

‘There are also other conflicts in there, we were at war with Iraq for 8 years and that was a disaster. Now Iran’s supporting Iraq and poeple are supposed to be friends because US has invaded Iraq! That’s just a political combination which as always is based on people forgetting the history’

‘And believe me, Iranians have the shortest historical memory ever! They are well known to make the same mistake several times’

This worries me a bit personally, because when I hear or read what the average Australian thinks, I see a lack of historical knowledge as well. Perhaps not so terminal as to forget that you were being bombed by somebody for 8 years in the 80’s, but certainly enough to forget who saved our asses in the second world war, or that dictators don’t wake up one day and realise they should be nice to people.

‘For the past 200 years people have been trying to get rid of a dictator and every single time they have ended up having a more cruel dictator!’

Five: Education is the enemy of totalitarian control, and the uncontested grip on people’s minds held by religion.

‘There are all types of people in Iran and in big cities most people are not religious or at least that religious anymore, but considering the whole population I’d say 80% is still extremely religious’

I asked why this was happening in the big cities first:

‘Education and time! Education is always the base. For ages it has been going through especial channels, with new technology you can get it without going through those channels’

I asked if he was referring to the internet:

“That’s a big one, but every technology has been a step, be it TV, radio, newspapers, Phone, and of course Internet which has a strong international aspect”

As to Iraq:

‘In general people are too involved in their day to day lives and stuff that they hardly care what other people’s problem is.’

So, not such a big deal to the general population - but as he made clear above, the Government can act without any support from the general population at all.

“And they feel like US is causing a conflict between Shia and Sunny (do you spell it like this?) to keep the area under controll and justify it’s troops being there.”

Oddly enough, that’s the same response a lot of westerners give for the reasons the US has troops in Iraq. Personally, I don’t buy it - the ‘war’ in Iraq has cost the US republican party control over congress and will cost them the next election. It’s also cost the US a vast sum of money. They know it, and they had to have known it was going to be some variety of shit-blizzard, even before they went in.

I also find it a little scary that the lines peddled to the Iranian people by their government as to why they should help members of Saddam Hussein’s former regime fight the Americans, (for those that don’t remember, Saddam invaded Iran in 1980, starting the 8-year Iran-Iraq war that killed almost a million people, mostly Iranians) are the same lines coming out the mouths of my westerner friends.

In closing:

I mentioned that Iran would probably make a great democracy one day - with such a strong history of science and art, and a big population.

‘One thing is for sure, whether they ever make it or not that is definitely not going to be in my life. I prefer to join a society that can make it while I’m alive.’

Note about quotes: I promised to leave my friend’s name out of the post, and I have only fixed typos - not spelling or word use.

So, we’re chucking $150 million at “Ice“.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200704/s1903572.htm

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200704/s1903603.htm

I dug up the PM’s actual media release here - but here’s my summary:

• $79.5 million over four years to the NGO drug and alcohol treatment sector (rehabilitation)
• An additional $9.2 million will be provided over the next two years to supplement the $23.7 million in funding for the national drugs campaign (education)
• additional resources of $37.9 million over four years to strengthen law enforcement efforts offshore, at the border and domestically (do as you’re told)

A careful note here - this isn’t about ‘ice‘ at all. Ice is the smokeable, or crystal form of Methamphetamine, and if you read the wording of the PM’s release, this is a general anti-drugs funding boost. Ice is in the media as the new bad boy, so that’s the headline.

I have just three small bones to pick with this release.

Firstly, the $37.9 million on enforcement is money down the toilet. If enforcement worked, I’d probably back it for drugs like ‘ice’, cigarettes, and heroin - they’re highly addictive, and their end result is all-too-often death, or dire health consequences. However, enforcement doesn’t work - there is very little evidence at all that anti-drug enforcement reduces overall drug usage. It is capable of manipulating the black market, sometimes increasing the cost of one drug over another, but in general it does sweet fuck all. Why? Because we live in a mostly free society, and in those circumstances it’s impossible to stop people from doing what they really want to do. Take this haul of ecstasy that the cops grabbed today - that one catch is as big as the PM’s entire 4-year law enforcement funding boost, and it’s going to put a very small and very temporary dent in the ecstacy market. The bad guys have way more money to play with than the police ever will.

Secondly, it’s massively hypocritical. Smoking kills around 19,000 Australians a year, with health costs estimated at $21 billion. Alcohol kills perhaps 3,000 people per year. Heroin, the worst of the illicit drugs, kills between 400 and 800 people per year. Methamphetamines? Perhaps 68 deaths a year - at most. As for MDMA/ecstasy - well, I recall two deaths in the news over the past 10 years. There may have been others - but for a drug which perhaps six percent of Australians use or have used, it seems unusually safe. Cannabis? I can’t remember hearing of anyone actually dying of it. It’s allegedly dangerous to the mental stability of people who are borderline schizophrenic, but I haven’t seen conclusive proof of that. For a drug that pretty well everybody tries at least once in their life, Cannabis has a surprisingly good safety record too.

Meanwhile, after decades of anti-drug education in high schools, we’re giving our teenagers prescription happy pills for depression - which has been newly identified as a medical condition - not teenagers correctly identifying that their country/world is run by fucking retards and quite naturally getting depressed about it.

Third, the ‘education’ portion of this money wont tell young people anything they might actually find useful. It will tell them things they already know “drugs are dangerous!”, but it wont tell them how to take them safely. Folks, they’re going to take them anyway, it might be an idea to warn them of the specific dangers and tell them exactly how to avoid them.

Overall, this is a strategy that lacks vision. If the PM really wanted to enforce illicit drugs away he would have to turn this country into a police state, and spend billions on it. He’s not, so this is yet another silly token gesture that will achieve absolutely jack shit.

Ask me?

Legalise the lot.

Heroin kills 400 to 800 people a year? It also costs the country billions(1). At that death rate, by my calculations it’s between as deadly and twice as deadly as smoking. (5 million smokers, 19,000 smoking deaths, 100,000 heroin addicts, 400-800 heroin deaths). If it was legal people could get it pure and know their exact dose. Overdose would need to be more or less deliberate. Overdose is the root cause or a contributing factor in most heroin deaths - therefore its likely that as a legalised drug, even Heroin is safer than cigarettes.

Heroin’s the worst. At the other end of the scale, you have to basically shove a crowbar with a kilo of MDMA up someone’s ass before it will kill them. The only two deaths the media’s reported (that I recall) from it could both have been prevented if the people taking it were educated adequately - about its safe and sensible use.

Aside from getting a lot of people very, very high, and offending the living fuck out of all the religious nuts in this country, legalising everything would:

• Destroy most of the income of organised crime. How can people not go for that?
• Bring many, many billions back into the taxable white-market economy. Cannabis is $5 billion per year on its own - 1% of our GDP we’re refusing to tax.

Yes, I’m applying a certain amount of brutal pragmatism to this. But were I in charge, I’d push the policy. On balance, it would be a good thing. I think it would destroy organised crime, boost the economy (and available government funding - want more money for real education and health?) by billions, make people who would be taking these drugs anyway safer, and make other people who start taking them happier. Yes, happier. People are happier on drugs. That’s why psychiatrists prescribe happy pills for depression, and that’s why people keep going back and taking their drug of choice.

And most importantly to me, it would take one huge layer of lies and hypocrisy out of our society. This endless doublethink/doublespeak, the “war” on drugs, when everybody knows everybody is taking them.

1: Can’t find a reference, but clearly recall estimates between 5 and 9 billion per year.