The northlondonhippy

Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

There are many big prob­lems in our lit­tle world here that could all be solved with some sim­ple, ratio­nal think­ing and com­mon sense.

Let’s start with a big one, admit­ting to our­selves just how prim­i­tive a species we are, even though we have iPods and Microwave Ovens and other mod­ern won­ders of tech­nol­ogy. We still remain quite prim­i­tive and rel­a­tively igno­rant of so very much regard­ing the uni­verse and our place in it.

We are extra­or­di­nar­ily prim­i­tive, more so than any­one would ever like to think. We are still a tribal race, unable to take a long term or global view of the true nature of our exis­tence or the context.

We still cling to an “us ver­sus them” men­tal­ity, we view peo­ple like us, liv­ing in the same place as more impor­tant than oth­ers, we fos­ter rival­ries and dis­sent between races and nations, rather than encour­ag­ing stronger ties based upon our similarities.

We are all the same, we are all earth­lings first and fore­most, every indi­vid­ual on this planet should have an equal worth, with the oper­a­tive word being “should”, because the real­ity is noth­ing like that.

We value dif­fer­ent peo­ple, dif­fer­ent races, dif­fer­ent classes, dif­fer­ent nation­al­i­ties as all hav­ing dif­fer­ent and unequal worth in our so called mod­ern soci­ety. We remain incred­i­bly self­ish when only self­less­ness will redeem the human race.

Imag­ine some space aliens arrived, imag­ine them any way you like, as long as they seem real and some­what ordi­nary, because chances are intel­li­gent life in the uni­verse would be both of those things, ordi­nary and most likely real.

Imag­ine they didn’t read the fine print in their Travel Guide to the Uni­verse which car­ried the caveat to our small blue planet, advis­ing against any direct con­tact when vis­it­ing, because of our unevolved and prim­i­tive nature. They missed that bit and landed their space craft in the cen­tre of a big city, expect­ing to be warmly wel­comed by the friendly res­i­dents of our world.

Imag­ine the many sur­prises in store for these space vis­i­tors as they dis­cov­ered our planet was not uni­fied, we still believed we were the only species in the uni­verse, cre­ated by an invis­i­ble, yet all see­ing, all know­ing space god, fight­ing each other for land and oil and reli­gious dif­fer­ences. Oh, how they would laugh and mock us, see­ing us as no more than insects scur­ry­ing around in the dirt.

They wouldn’t be too far off in their brief assess­ment of our world.

I keep com­ing back to the word “prim­i­tive”, because it truly applies. Our knowl­edge of the uni­verse, of our world and our­selves is so blink­ered, nar­row and incom­plete and yet we exist in a giant state of total denial. We have no col­lec­tive self aware­ness of this fact and most would scorn me for me sug­gest­ing it.

Some­times the bit­ter truth hurts.

If we want to have any hope of sur­viv­ing what lies ahead for us as a species, the start­ing point needs to be a giant col­lec­tive real­i­sa­tion of just how imma­ture we are as race, and that we con­tinue to evolve both bio­log­i­cally and socially.

Fol­low­ing that first real­i­sa­tion, must come another big real­i­sa­tion, that our knowl­edge of uni­verse is minus­cule and we know next to noth­ing about the true nature of mat­ter, space and time.

If we ever did truly under­stand the true nature of mat­ter, space and time, then most likely we could manip­u­late all three and make them bend to our will with ease.

We are eons from that point, but that doesn’t make it out of the realm of pos­si­bil­ity, it just depends upon how long we last as a species.

I’ll give you an easy exam­ple of what I am talk­ing about; the Large Hadron Col­lider (LHC) in Switzer­land, which cost a gazil­lion dol­lars (or pounds or euros, or what­ever cur­rency you pre­fer) and is the largest sci­en­tific exper­i­ment ever con­structed, is try­ing to find an invis­i­ble par­ti­cle which the­o­ret­i­cally gives mass to matter.

If that’s gob­bly­gook, I’ll try to explain it, though many of these ideas often feel unex­plain­able to our tiny, meat com­puter brains.

Our under­stand­ing of sub­atomic the­ory is so (and here’s that word again), prim­i­tive, that we can’t see what gives mass to mat­ter, because at the micro­scopic lev­els we can phys­i­cally observe, most of the struc­ture of an atom con­sists of empty space. Sci­en­tists the­o­rise that there must be addi­tional, invis­i­ble par­ti­cles that are part of the sub­atomic archi­tec­ture which give mat­ter mass. I hope I am get­ting this right, I am not an actual physi­cist, but I do play the home game a lot.

To me, this seems like quite fun­da­men­tal stuff that we are only guess­ing at, schol­arly straws at which we can only merely gen­tly grasp.

We are a long way away from any deep, mean­ing­ful under­stand­ing of any­thing big or important.

We still have no idea of the true ori­gin of our uni­verse. Again, we can and do only guess and then only to a point. Most the­o­ries start at some incom­pre­hen­si­ble sin­gu­lar­ity that some­how erupted into the Big Bang and many only start one sec­ond after the Big Bang happened.

I’m not deny­ing the Big Bang, on the con­trary, there is plenty of evi­dence to sup­port it as a the­ory, but many the­o­ries are incom­plete, or depend upon things like cos­mic infla­tion and expand­ing the­ory to fill in their quite con­sid­er­able gaps.

The term “sin­gu­lar­ity” is thrown around quite a bit in sci­ence and yet to me, it seems to mean some­thing that can’t be explained, or under­stood, so let’s just set it aside and take it as read that it exists and is a point on which we can build spec­u­la­tive theories.

Take Black Holes, which are pretty much the­o­ret­i­cal mind­fucks anyway.

There is a phys­i­cal point to a Black Hole that sci­en­tists refer to as the sin­gu­lar­ity, where all that is known about time, space and mat­ter doesn’t apply. Its just an easy way to admit our igno­rance in a schol­arly way.

The same is true for the the­ory sur­round­ing the day when our com­put­ers become smarter than we are and can autonomously design and con­struct ever smarter and bet­ter machines than them­selves. The­o­rists refer to this as the sin­gu­lar­ity as well because they don’t know what the impact will be on our world. Unless you’re James Cameron and you can envis­age a Skynet like com­puter decid­ing we are bad for the planet and seek­ing to wipe us off the face of the earth.

Wouldn’t it be pru­dent to bet­ter our­selves as a species and a race, so when that day arrives, the machines see us more of a ben­e­fit wor­thy of keep­ing around and allow­ing to flourish?

I’m just sayin’…

Per­haps we need to label more things that we don’t get with the word “sin­gu­lar­ity” and increase its com­mon usage and under­stand­ing. For exam­ple, when men col­lec­tively com­plain that they don’t under­stand a woman’s mind, instead of labelling it a mys­tery, you could say its a singularity.

Or these kids today, they are a total sin­gu­lar­ity to me. You get the idea.

Let’s take reli­gion. No, seri­ously, let’s take it some­where and dump it and leave it in the past, where it belongs.

Reli­gion is a prime exam­ple of our prim­i­tive nature that we des­per­ately cling to like a com­fort blan­ket. Reli­gion is a prim­i­tive way of deal­ing with sin­gu­lar­i­ties, by fill­ing in the blanks in our rudi­men­tary knowl­edge of the uni­verse by con­sign­ing every­thing we don’t under­stand to a benevolent/vengeful space god.

Reli­gion is the epit­ome of our prim­i­tive­ness, it is the best exam­ple of how unde­vel­oped we are, because we still allow it to colour how we treat each other and dic­tate our moral code.

When we finally tran­scend reli­gion, as we need to do if we want any hope for a bet­ter future for our species, we will need to base our moral code on more human­ist ideals.

I try to be a good per­son, not because I want or hope for a bet­ter place in the after­life, but because being good and doing good is some­thing that mat­ters to me. I care about my fel­low man and woman. We all need to find that spirit of kind­ness in our own hearts, from a gen­uine belief in the bet­ter­ment of our world.

What we don’t need to do is base our moral­ity on the fear of a non-existent god who will pun­ish us for our bad deeds.

Mur­der is wrong, not because it is in the Ten Com­mand­ments, but because it is immoral to unjustly take another’s life. We should under­stand that at an innate level, in our bones we should all know that killing is wrong.

And we do all know that, but we find ever more cre­ative ways to jus­tify killing on an indus­trial scale, all over the place. We kill with weapons just as much as we kill with our own self­ish­ness and greed. There should be enough of every­thing to go around for every­one, no one should starve or lack fresh, clean drink­ing water, yet we all know that is not the case.

We don’t view the world as one big extended fam­ily, we high­light our dif­fer­ences, rather than stress­ing our sim­i­lar­i­ties. Its actu­ally amaz­ing if you think of what we all on this planet have in com­mon, yet you never hear any­one talk about it.

We all want a bet­ter world, the dif­fer­ences lie in how we all think we get there.

We need to move to a post-tribal mind­set, we need to view things glob­ally, rather than locally.

We need to care more about what’s hap­pen­ing to every­one, not just the peo­ple who are exactly like us.

We need to move to a point beyond reli­gion, where sci­ence explains as much as it can, while actively pur­su­ing answers to the things that remain unknown.

We need to put indi­vid­u­als first and agree at every level that we are all truly equal on this earth.

We need to act respon­si­bly and think in terms, not of years or decades, but mil­len­nia, because if we want to have any hope of sur­viv­ing, we need to be that for­ward thinking.

I know I’ve been knock­ing us for being prim­i­tive, but I don’t want to take away any of our already con­sid­er­able achieve­ments. We’ve worked out some impres­sive things, but we’ve only really scratched the sur­face of what there is to be known in the uni­verse. I’m glad I have a microwave oven and flat screen tv, but we can go so much fur­ther and at an expo­nen­tial rate.

I dream of a time in a time in a few thou­sand years, where we are the mas­ters of all time, space and mat­ter, where all the mys­ter­ies of the uni­verse are finally revealed and under­stood by one and all.

I like to think of the many devel­op­ments I’ve seen in my short lifes­pan, and how many more I will see in my remain­ing years.

I’ve joked before that they will dis­cover the key to eter­nal youth and longevity the day after I die. But in the back of my mind is the tiny hope that I will find a way to cheat death, even if it is only in machine form, so my con­scious­ness can carry on learn­ing about and observ­ing the human con­di­tion. Our best days still lie ahead of us and it dri­ves me nuts that I won’t be here to see it all.

You might not have heard, but there’s a gen­eral elec­tion here in the UK on Thursday.

That is, you might not have heard if you’ve been in a coma, but even if you’ve been semi-conscious, it would be dif­fi­cult to have missed it with the blan­ket cov­er­age avail­able on every media platform.

This has been one of the most inter­est­ing cam­paigns in decades and one of the most enter­tain­ing. With just a few days ago, there is no cer­tain out­come and pre­dic­tions vary widely on what sort of gov­ern­ment we might be wak­ing up to come Fri­day morning.

Cool by me, I enjoy uncer­tainty and I like the up-in-the-air-ness of the whole thing. I watch the daily polls rise and fall with amuse­ment, because any sen­si­ble per­son knows the only poll that mat­ters is the offi­cial one on Thurs­day. All the rest are just idle spec­u­la­tion and spin.

The truth is, you can’t really trust most of the polls, because the data is weighted and manip­u­lated before it is released, usu­ally to reflect the bias and opin­ion of the media out­let who com­mis­sioned it. Yes, I’m look­ing at you News Inter­na­tional, your stilted cov­er­age and unbri­dled analin­gus per­formed on the Tories has been shame­ful. Ol’ Rupert Mur­doch anointed David Cameron as the cho­sen one and all of his news­pa­pers and his TV news chan­nel went about craft­ing a nar­ra­tive that tried to assure an out­right Con­ser­v­a­tive victory.

How’s that work­ing out?

Pos­si­bly not as well as they had hoped, as the polls sug­gest the Tories are only slightly ahead, with strong pos­si­bil­ity of no out­right major­ity. Ooops.

I think one of the biggest sur­prises for me in the cam­paign is how dis­ap­point­ing Cameron’s per­for­mances have been, espe­cially at the leader’s debates. I really expected Dia­mond Dave to walk this elec­tion, but he is not nearly as charis­matic or mag­netic a speaker as I would have expected. Part of their poor show­ing in the polling is down to this.

This elec­tion isn’t about pol­icy, though of course it should be, but it is about per­son­al­ity. Cameron has revealed him­self as lack­ing in that department.

And speak­ing of some­one com­pletely void of per­son­al­ity, have you caught Gor­don Brown lately? Just look at his forced, fake, uncom­fort­able smile; I have a the­ory (that I’d be happy never prov­ing) that he has the same expres­sion on his face when he smiles as he does when he is tak­ing a dump.

I have never been a fan of Gor­don Brown.

OK, that’s an under­state­ment, I detest him and have him a vocal and vit­ri­olic critic of him since he assumed power. I can never for­give him for pub­licly labelling cannabis a “deadly drug”, prop­a­gat­ing other false claims about it and ignor­ing all the advice, sci­en­tific and oth­er­wise by re-classifying cannabis to Class B.

Gor­don con­tin­ues to go on and on about the “global finan­cial melt­down” which he claims can only be fixed if he remains in office. Well, there’s some logic to that, because as he was Chan­cel­lor for so many years, he must feel very respon­si­ble for the mess he cre­ated and he would like to mop it up. No thanks.

Brown really showed how deeply nasty he is to the core, with his shame­ful treat­ment of Gillian Duffy, who by all accounts seems to be the sort of salt-of-the-earth Labour Party sup­porter that has kept them in the game for a very long time. If he treats his base with this much con­tempt and scorn, imag­ine what he must think of the undecided.

I feel sorry for the poor saps who have to media-manage Brown on a daily basis. What­ever you’re get­ting paid, its prob­a­bly not enough by half. Wran­gling that sour­puss from appear­ance to appear­ance would destroy the soul of the strongest PR flack.

The one good thing about Brown’s piss-poor per­for­mance dur­ing this cam­paign has been my absolute vin­di­ca­tion that he would drag the Labour Party into the polit­i­cal wilder­ness for generations.

They had sev­eral chances to replace him and they lacked the courage and balls to do it. Now they will suf­fer and get what they deserve, a com­plete dec­i­ma­tion at the polls on Thurs­day. It will be the worst show­ing by Labour in his­tory, any other MP from the party wouldn’t have done as badly as Gor­don. They really only have them­selves to blame.

I like being right and I love say­ing “I told ya so”.

Hey Labour.… I told you if you stuck with Gor­don, you’d be fucked. Yep, I TOLD YA SO!

Oh that felt good!

I’ve always been a big fan of the Lib­Dems, if not an out­right sup­porter. Their poli­cies seem to be anchored in real­ity, with a healthy dose of com­mon sense. We could use both of those qual­i­ties in government.

The best exam­ple I can site is their drug pol­icy, which in their man­i­festo, loosely says that they would take a sci­en­tific and evi­dence based approach. In prac­tise that would mean they would fol­low closely the advice of their advi­sors, in this case the ACMD.

Tak­ing it fur­ther, in pre­vi­ous state­ments, the Lib­Dems have sup­ported decrim­i­nal­is­ing or legal­is­ing cannabis, though with all the bull­shit media non­sense over the dis­cred­ited research into the (very much unproven) link between weed and psy­chosis, they haven’t men­tioned it recently. I don’t blame them as it would only be used against them as a sign of weakness.

The Lib­eral Democ­rats are not a weak party, they are actu­ally the strongest on sen­si­ble poli­cies that work towards the com­mon good and ben­e­fit the most peo­ple. It takes strength to fly in the face of con­ven­tional (media) wis­dom and openly declare that the “war on drugs” is an absolute fail­ure that does more harm than the drugs them­selves. The Lib­Dem party is the one party that’s not afraid of speak­ing the truth.

They’re also not aligned with big media or big cor­po­ra­tions, they seem to be more inde­pen­dent of the estab­lish­ment and there­fore more able to do good for the coun­try, rather than serv­ing spe­cial interests.

Nick Clegg has impressed every­one and made them sit up and take notice of his party. Its about time they get taken seri­ously. Clegg has also fright­ened the two “old par­ties”, which has been fun to watch as they both mount attacks him.

The leader’s debates have truly changed the face of pol­i­tics in this coun­try, see­ing Clegg go toe-to-toe with the other two showed the nation in a very tan­gi­ble way that there is an alter­na­tive to old-style pol­i­tics. After thir­teen years of Labour gov­ern­ments, this coun­try is in des­per­ate need of a change.

The Lib­Dems are the only party that really offers that change.

The Tories won’t change any­thing so much as bring back a same­ness. They don’t have any new ideas or energy or per­son­al­ity. Don’t vote for them.

Gor­don Brown is a mega­lo­ma­niac dic­ta­to­r­ial buf­foon and embar­rass­ment to the nation, but the rea­son not to vote Labour is sim­ple, one word: Iraq. This is the party that dragged this nation into an ille­gal and point­less war, for absolutely no good rea­son. And they lied to us about it, repeat­edly and they still do. They deserve to come in third or worse.

A vote for the Lib­Dems is a vote for change and a vote for a brighter future.

Peo­ple say they can’t win with an out­right major­ity, but they could if every­one voted their heart. If you think the Lib­Dems are the best choice, and I believe a lot of you out there do, then vote for them. You are NOT throw­ing your vote away on a minor party, real change comes from peo­ple hav­ing the strength of will and con­vic­tion to not fear change. If every­one who sup­ports them fol­lows through on elec­tion day, then Nick Clegg could be the next Prime Minister.

More likely, if you believe the polls, is that we are headed for a hung par­lia­ment and the pos­si­bil­ity of a coali­tion gov­ern­ment. There are worse things that could happen.

Many other coun­tries have coali­tion gov­ern­ments, formed by oppos­ing par­ties. Guess what hap­pens? They learn to work with each other and com­pro­mise and things get done. You have noth­ing to fear from this out­come and maybe we all might even ben­e­fit from the mix of the strongest ideas from both par­ties involved.

But which par­ties? That’s the real question.

If I was going to gam­ble on the out­come, I would say a Tory-LibDem coali­tion, with Cameron in charge and a healthy mix of both par­ties in the cab­i­net. I could live with that.

Less likely and cer­tainly less appeal­ing would be a Labour-LibDem gov­ern­ment with some­one other than Brown as PM.

And at the very out­side and many would say implau­si­ble, a Tory-Labour gov­ern­ment. I have this weird the­ory that these two polar oppo­sites (who really aren’t that dif­fer­ent) could do a deal with each other to lock the Lib­Dems out. Maybe its not as impos­si­ble as it sounds and if it does hap­pen, won’t I look like the poly-sci genius?

What­ever hap­pens, of one thing I’m cer­tain, come Fri­day, Gor­don Brown will no longer be Prime Min­is­ter and will go down as one of the most unpop­u­lar, unsuc­cess­ful, worst PM’s in history.

Yes­ter­day, leg­is­la­tors in the US state of Cal­i­for­nia took the first real step towards a fully legalised, reg­u­lated and taxed cannabis mar­ket. Ear­lier this week, the US state of New Jer­sey legalised cannabis for med­ical use.

All over Amer­ica, atti­tudes and laws are chang­ing and chang­ing fast.

What are we doing wrong here in the United Kingdom?

Lots, by the look of it. How is it pos­si­ble that we are falling behind Amer­ica on this very impor­tant issue?

A few years ago, the sit­u­a­tion was reversed. The atti­tude here to weed was relax­ing, Tony Blair and David Blun­kett down­graded cannabis to Class C, mak­ing pos­ses­sion a very minor offence. In Amer­ica, so much as a seed or a used hash pipe was enough in most states to get you a lengthy, manda­tory prison sentence.

Cannabis didn’t remain Class C for long, as Gor­don Brown asked the ACMD to review its sta­tus. The ACMD did just that, twice and rec­om­mended that it remain in Class C. That was unac­cept­able to our very des­per­ate and weak, make-believe Prime Min­is­ter and he pushed ahead with restor­ing cannabis to to Class B. Class B increased penal­ties for pos­ses­sion, but had no effect on pro­duc­tion or dis­tri­b­u­tion, the penal­ties are the same for either clas­si­fi­ca­tion. Gor­don wanted to send a “strong mes­sage” that cannabis was a “dan­ger­ous, deadly drug”.

Now, you can ask any teenager if cannabis is lethal and once they stop laugh­ing, they will set you straight. Cannabis is in no way lethal, but our cur­rent gov­ern­ment and rul­ing party don’t have a prob­lem lying to the gen­eral pub­lic about any­thing. These are the same shit­bags that invaded Iraq on the basis of utter fab­ri­ca­tion, so a lit­tle white lie about weed won’t cause any issues with their consciences.

Well, I can tell you right now, its caus­ing major issues with mine!

Amer­ica is mov­ing apace to legalise weed. This is a huge shift in atti­tude and approach from their pre­vi­ous pol­icy of “just say no” and the war on drugs. Its seismic!

Amer­ica is the most liti­gious coun­try in the world, if there were any risks to cannabis, some­one would be get­ting sued for dam­ages, whether its the gov­ern­ment for allow­ing it or the peo­ple who pro­vide it. Amer­ica has accepted that cannabis is not a bad thing, but a ben­e­fi­cial prod­uct that can help mil­lions medically.

C. Everett Koop, for­mer Sur­geon Gen­eral of the United States declared that cannabis was the “most ther­a­peu­ti­cally ben­e­fi­cial sub­stance known to man” years ago, but it is only now that Amer­ica is accept­ing his assess­ment. At least they got there in the end.

We are still so far away from tak­ing a com­mon sense approach that I’m not sure what to do. Gor­don Brown, in his igno­rance and desire to appear strong on drugs, has set the cause back at least a decade. Its time we regain some of our lost ground.

Its not just Amer­ica, many coun­tries have relaxed their drug poli­cies to reflect com­mon sense, the most recent being the Czech Repub­lic. How could the UK be lag­ging behind them?

We’re lag­ging behind almost everyone.

I want to change that. I am going to change that.

I just don’t know how yet.

Every jour­ney starts with a first step and this is mine. My goal for 2010 is to com­bat the igno­rance and stu­pid­ity that is UK drug pol­icy. Its time for all decent, upstand­ing, oth­er­wise law abid­ing res­i­dents of this fine coun­try to stand up and demand that they are not crim­i­nalised for enjoy­ing a smoke.

We can fight the lies, we can fight the igno­rance. We can fight, fight fight until we get what we want, which is a legalised, reg­u­lated and taxed cannabis mar­ket. The time is now!

A year from now, we will be closer to our goal.You have my word on it.

Mar­tin Luther King, the famous and revered Amer­i­can civil rights activist once said, “…there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advo­cate obey­ing just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral respon­si­bil­ity to obey just laws. Con­versely, one has a moral respon­si­bil­ity to dis­obey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augus­tine that, “an unjust law is no law at all.””

As part of my never-ending quest to seek noth­ing but the truth, I’ve decided to pro­vide the only gen­uinely hon­est review the decade that’s nearly finished.

It fuck­ing sucked. Really, it did. I’ll be glad to see the back of it.

Besides iPods, name one good thing about the noughties? Even its nick­name is pathet­i­cally lame.

The decade started with the Mil­len­nium, which was sup­posed to be the biggest cel­e­bra­tion of all time. I spent the night in cen­tral Lon­don, on the River Thames, broad­cast­ing live to all over the world. Maybe you saw me there, I was in charge of a broad­cast tent near Lam­beth Bridge, block­ing people’s views of the fire­works and River of Fire.

Ha, the River of Fire was the first major dis­ap­point­ment of many in the noughties, a damp squib rather than spec­tac­u­lar and a giant let down for those who braved the cold to wit­ness it. I’ve never heard such a loud, col­lec­tive, “is that really it?” in my life.

Lon­don crowds can be drunken and angry and the night of the Mil­len­nium was no excep­tion. As the clock struck mid­night and I was trans­mit­ting live on behalf of four dif­fer­ent for­eign broad­cast­ers, some­one unplugged our gen­er­a­tor cable and every­thing went dark.  

Don’t worry, one of the tech­ni­cians man­aged to get it recon­nected and it all worked, though the cables were cov­ered with human urine, which wasn’t so pleas­ant for the engi­neer. On top of that, the crowd attacked us and tried to steal our expen­sive TV gear. I can remem­ber smack­ing peo­ples’ arms and hands away from tripods and lights as the fire­works began.

We were all ready for the Y2K bug, a pecu­liar glitch in some older com­put­ers that pre­vented it for han­dling 4-digit years, mean­ing some unpatched com­put­ers would think it was 1900, not the year 2000. We expected the tele­phone net­work to col­lapse, the power grid to crash, along with all the jumbo jets fly­ing overhead.

It didn’t hap­pen, noth­ing hap­pened, cri­sis averted.

But that didn’t mean the noughties were cri­sis free, because less than a year later, George W. (for What the fuck?) Bush stole the elec­tion and became the most pow­er­ful sub-normally intel­li­gent per­son in his­tory. His pres­i­dency dom­i­nated the decade and his poli­cies made the world a much shit­tier place.

Think for a sec­ond, if Al Gore had claimed the pres­i­dency instead. He should have won it, he did win it, but the Supreme Court had other ideas.

Do you think we’d be in Iraq if Gore had two terms in the White House? Prob­a­bly not, but then we most likely wouldn’t have Barack Obama now.

Who’s to say?

The Bush pres­i­dency was built on the foun­da­tion of the Neo-Conservative moment and the Project for a New Amer­i­can Cen­tury. How’d all that turn out?

Let’s see, the entire econ­omy melted down to near col­lapse and we seem to be engaged in George Orwell’s never-ending war while his Big Brother keeps track of our every thought and action.

Cool.

Bush was stu­pid, his advi­sors no smarter. They dug one stu­pid hole after another, each a lit­tle deeper than the last.

When the attacks of 11th Sep­tem­ber 2001 took place, you couldn’t imag­ine a worse com­man­der and chief to have at the helm, unless you enjoy children’s books about pet goats, in which case he would be your num­ber one choice.

9/11 changed every­thing, but the real shock and awe was how we felt as we watched the twin tow­ers come crash­ing to the ground.

I’m old enough to remem­ber when the World Trade Cen­tre was built. I’d been lucky enough to visit the obser­va­tion deck more than once, its a view you wouldn’t be able to dupli­cate again today with­out a helicopter.

We were dev­as­tated by those attacks, fiendishly sim­ple, yet exe­cuted to max­i­mum effect. I remem­ber think­ing that this was the begin­ning of the end of west­ern civil­i­sa­tion and soon we would all be crawl­ing through noth­ing but rub­ble, drink­ing brack­ish water from pud­dles in the streets.

How wrong I was!

9/11 was a blip, a lucky shot, a once in a life­time ter­ror strike from a group whose suc­cess exceeded even their own expec­ta­tions. I’m sure they didn’t think the entire world would change so rad­i­cally as a result of their actions, but change it did.

Keep­ing us secure became the num­ber one pri­or­ity, the cost being a dra­matic reduc­tion in our lib­erty and per­sonal free­doms. Any extreme, rad­i­cal action taken by a gov­ern­ment could and would be jus­ti­fied by tag­ging it with an anti-terror bent.

Do you want to mon­i­tor all tele­phone calls and email mes­sages? No problem.

Do you need my bank­ing and credit his­tory before I get on a plane? Sure thing!

How about my shoes, should I take them off too? Gosh, hope I don’t have holes in my socks!

Think how quickly we all sim­ply adapted to these new real­i­ties, we made hardly a peep as our civil lib­er­ties were sys­tem­at­i­cally stripped away.

Its become such a farce now, here in Lon­don you prac­ti­cally can’t even take a pho­to­graph in a pub­lic place with­out the police swoop­ing down on you like you’re Mohammed Atta, scop­ing out another attack.

Think that’s good for busi­ness and tourism? Think again?

Ter­ror is not the only thing that’s been scar­ing us in the last ten years, as the environment’s been on our minds too. You won’t see any gov­ern­ment declar­ing war on cli­mate change, even though its prob­a­bly more of a threat to more peo­ple than ter­ror­ism could ever be.

The effects of cli­mate change are appar­ent to any­one who can be both­ered to look, yet there are peo­ple out there in the world who try to deny this inevitabil­ity. If you tried to deny the threat of ter­ror, you would be labelled a trai­tor, but being a climate-change doubter will not earn you the same label.

Its prob­a­bly too late to slow down cli­mate change because we pissed away the last decade argu­ing about it. It would be funny, if it weren’t so damn tragic as the recent Copen­hagen Cli­mate Sum­mit heartily illustrated.

The wars in the last ten years have been quite tragic too, espe­cially the two major con­flicts insti­gated by the West, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The war in Iraq was jus­ti­fied with false pre­tences and bla­tant, pre-meditated lies. I knew there were no weapons of mass destruc­tion in Iraq and I had no access to any of the intel­li­gence avail­able to our lead­ers. They knew it too, but made up a bunch of non­sense any way.

I can remem­ber being the only idiot in the world who thought that Amer­ica and Britain wouldn’t go to war in Iraq. I gen­uinely believed they had no grounds to ini­ti­ate a con­flict and that they would back down at the last minute. I don’t think I’ve ever been more wrong, but not as wrong as launch­ing that ille­gal and point­less war.

George W (for War Crim­i­nal) Bush and Tony Blair should both be sit­ting in prison cells in The Hague, await­ing their tri­als for crimes against human­ity, but no one has the fuck­ing balls to send them both there. The Inter­na­tional Court should have charged them already, even if extra­di­tion would never hap­pen. They both should pay for their crimes and sins.

But they won’t.

How many inno­cent lives have been lost in that point­less war? Iraq was far from per­fect before the “allies” invaded, but the elec­tric­ity flowed, the streets were safe and Iraq still had an edu­cated, func­tional mid­dle class.

I’m not a Sad­dam Hus­sein apol­o­gist, the guy was a nasty piece of work, repres­sive, iron fisted, unpleas­ant and vicious. But so what? Lots of coun­tries are lead by shit­bags, we don’t invade them and impose regime change just because we feel like it.

Regime change on its own is not a valid rea­son for war. In the case of Iraq, it turns out it was the only reason.

Sad­dam Hus­sein got strung up in a hastily organ­ised hang­ing. There’s mobile phone video of it on the inter­net, that I’m sure you’ve seen by now. It was a very undig­ni­fied end for an odi­ous, hor­ri­ble man. Though back in the 1970s, Sad­dam was friendly with Amer­ica and funded by them, because he opposed Iran.

Things change, shit happens.

Afghanistan is a dif­fer­ent shade of grey.

After 9/11, there was some sense in going into Afghanistan since that’s where the ter­ror bases and train­ing camps were. That’s also where the leader of the bad guys lived, oh what’s his name again?

Osama some­thing or other.

They had the chance to cap­ture or kill him in Tora Bora and blew it. He’s still allegedly alive and on the run in the bor­der area between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The prob­lem with Afghanistan is after they chased Al Qaeda out, they were left fight­ing the Tal­iban. Big coun­tries like Amer­ica are crappy at fight­ing insur­gen­cies and guer­rilla wars, see Viet­nam for proof. They’ve been dragged deeper into a civil con­flict than they need to be.

Today, Afghanistan is a law­less basket-case of a nation, with a cor­rupt, inef­fec­tual gov­ern­ment at its cen­tre and pow­er­ful war lords scat­tered through­out the country.

Pres­i­dent Obama seems to think more troops will help and the decade is end­ing with him announc­ing fur­ther deployments.

When will they ever learn?

How’s never sound?

And speak­ing of America’s first black pres­i­dent, Barack Obama is one of the good things to come out of the noughties, but he wouldn’t have been pos­si­ble if it weren’t for George W. (Where’d he go?) Bush. Bush paved the way for Obama, with his stu­pid­ity, mis­takes and far right ideals.

Whether you agree with Obama’s poli­cies or not, hav­ing a mixed race pres­i­dent in Amer­ica is good for the entire world. I never thought I would see it in my life­time, and like most peo­ple I was moved deeply by his election.

Do I think he’s doing a good job? Its way too early to tell. He hasn’t even been in office for an entire year yet. We should give the guy a chance. Ask me again in 3–7 years, when he’s fin­ished and I’ll have enough infor­ma­tion to form an opin­ion. Clearly, I wasn’t a vot­ing mem­ber of the Nobel panel, because I never would have given the prize to Barack, at least not yet, anyway.

Per­son­ally, it wasn’t such a hot decade for me either. Both of my par­ents passed away, my father in 2004 and my mother in 2008. I miss them both every day.

This was the decade I well and truly entered mid­dle age. I’m going to be forty-fucking-seven next month. The last decade saw me diag­nosed with a stu­pid ill­ness and I had a sus­tained period of unem­ploy­ment while I was between jobs.

The ill­ness, Hashimoto’s Dis­ease, is allegedly under con­trol and I did man­age to secure gain­ful employ­ment, for which I am very thank­ful, but nei­ther period was par­tic­u­larly pleas­ant for me.

The progress of tech­nol­ogy is one good thing to come from the last decade, I’ve got the some of the coolest toys I’ve ever owned cur­rently in my possession.

I’m on my 3rd iMac, the lat­est a 27” beast with a quad-core proces­sor that is light­en­ing fast, its like hav­ing a styl­ish super­com­puter parked on my desk.

By far, the most amaz­ing thing I own is my iPhone 3GS, it is a gad­get of unri­valled beauty, power and use­ful­ness. If I had to choose one piece of kit that’s rev­o­lu­tionised my life, its my iPhone. It does more than I could have ever imag­ined and its abil­i­ties just keep grow­ing with every app I install.

Cit­i­zen jour­nal­ism came of age in the noughties, with web­sites sim­i­lar to this one spring­ing up at a rapid rate. The word “blog” didn’t even exist ten years ago and now there are mil­lions of them.

Blog­ging came along when I needed it most, I started this one nearly 6 years ago dur­ing my dark and depress­ing period of unemployment.

Blog­ging gave me some­thing to do, some­thing to focus on, some­thing to make me feel like I was still a func­tion­ing mem­ber of soci­ety. I had a way to con­tribute, a way to par­tic­i­pate. Some­how, I still mat­tered, even if I felt like I didn’t.

Blog­ging may have saved my life. I would have con­tin­ued to sink deeper had I not dis­cov­ered Blogspot back in 2004. 

And that’s where you all come in.

With­out an audi­ence, blog­ging is a bit point­less and while I am still not and will prob­a­bly never be main­stream, I’ve had a level of sup­port and inter­est that still astounds me. I’m thank­ful for every vis­i­tor I’ve ever had who has dropped by and hung out with me virtually.

With­out all of you, I’d just be some guy writ­ing long­winded essays for my own amuse­ment. Ok, even with you all around, that state­ment is true, but its still bet­ter for hav­ing you all here.

Thanks very much for stop­ping by, you’ll always find a warm wel­come here and I always put out on the first date.

I wish each and every one of you the very best of the hol­i­day sea­son. I hope the next decade sees all your hopes and dreams come true.

PS
I’m sure there’s plenty of stuff I left out of my review of the decade, but this short video review from Newsweek Mag­a­zine should fill in many of the gaps. Its quite US-centric, but its only 7 min­utes long, so enjoy!

The Cli­mate Change Sum­mit opens up in Copen­hagen on Mon­day, where a bunch of world lead­ers will add to the prob­lem by pro­duc­ing a lot of hot air, but prob­a­bly no viable solu­tion to this very real problem.

Yep, I believe the cli­mate is chang­ing. I can see it and feel it and have done for a while now. Here in the UK, the win­ters seem milder and though last sum­mer wasn’t one of the hottest on record, it was hot enough. I’ve seen what’s hap­pen­ing to the polar ice caps, not first hand, but com­puter graph­ics aren’t that good, so the footage has to be real.

Is it just a nor­mal cycle? Maybe. Is human activ­ity con­tribut­ing or accel­er­at­ing the process? How could it not? We live in a closed ecosys­tem, our atmos­phere is sealed tight against the vac­uum of space. The more green­house gasses we pump into this sealed bub­ble, the hot­ter it will get.

I don’t want to be a hyp­ocrite, I want to do my part to help pre­vent cli­mate change. I use low energy light bulbs, which aren’t as bright as the old incan­des­cent style. I recy­cle as much as I can, which is messy and time con­sum­ing. And I don’t take unnec­es­sary car jour­neys, which means rid­ing the bus and tube with unwashed strangers.

I know its not much, but its some­thing. I’d like to do more.

That got me think­ing, what more could I do to help slow down cli­mate change? Then it hit me, there’s some­thing we all could do that would have an instant, imme­di­ate and mea­sur­able effect on the amount of green­house gasses released into the environment.

All liv­ing things exhale car­bon diox­ide, or CO2 as its known. Humans are the only liv­ing crea­tures to under­stand this and to be able to adjust their own output.

I’m propos­ing that every human being who is phys­i­cally able, should hold their breath for at least one minute per day. You could do it all in one go, or you can do two 30 sec­ond peri­ods. You could even go longer if you like, but I can’t be held liable if you pass out, fall down and hit your head. I only sug­gested a minute a day.

If every­one held their breath for one minute daily, that would have a huge impact on the amount of CO2 released into the atmos­phere annu­ally. These things add up quickly and if I were a sci­en­tist I could esti­mate how much CO2 would be saved, but I’m not, so I can’t. So we’ll stick to “a lot.”

Look man, if we don’t do some­thing and pretty god­damn soon, breath­ing won’t be an issue that most of us will need to worry about any more.

So I’ll be hold­ing my breath, and not just for one minute every day. I’ll be hold­ing it while our lead­ers meet this month to work out whether they can save the human race. If they do come up with a solu­tion, I’ll cer­tainly be sur­prised, but I’ll also finally be able to exhale.

You don’t want me to turn blue, do you?

Nearly 5 years ago to this very day, I wrote a lit­tle some­thing here on the hippy that is one of my favourite posts ever. Back when I had a top-ten favourite list, this par­tic­u­lar post was fea­tured prominently.

Its called ASS BOMBS

Don’t worry if you can’t be both­ered to re-read it right now, I’ll sum­marise it for you: I spec­u­lated on the lengths future ter­ror­ists would have to go through to sneak explo­sive devices on to planes and the addi­tional secu­rity mea­sures that would have to be put in place to main­tain safety. This wasn’t long Richard Reid tried to blow up his shoes.

I the­o­rised that a ter­ror­ists’ rec­tum would become a com­part­ment for hid­ing plas­tique and air­port secu­rity screen­ers would have to play proc­tol­o­gist to make sure all air trav­ellers were not car­ry­ing any­thing up their bot­toms. Instead of “take off your shoes and remove all metal objects”, their instruc­tion would be to “bend over and spread those cheeks.”

It would cer­tainly put fly­ing into a brand new per­spec­tive. Mak­ing sure you wear clean socks with­out any holes wouldn’t seem so impor­tant any more.

It turns out, I was par­tially right. An alleged Al Qaeda fanatic tried to blow up offi­cials at a meet­ing in Saudi Ara­bia with some TNT shoved up his ass, only the idiot left it stuck up there when it det­o­nated and it only killed the bomber. You’re sup­posed to take it out of your bot­tom before it goes off.

You can read the report here in The Sun news­pa­per, under their clever head­line; “Sui­cide Bum­mer”. Did you see what they did there?

Its unlikely as fuck that Al Qaeda visit my web­site, so they prob­a­bly worked this one out on their own. Now that this fright­en­ing and icky tech­nique is out there, how long before air­ports imple­ment new secu­rity pro­ce­dures? Not long is my guess.

Still, there’s an upside. If you’re going to have to dis­play your ring­piece in air­ports for all to see, anal bleach­ing is set to be the next big growth indus­try. They’ll even have a new slo­gan: “Anal Bleaching…its not just for porn stars any more!”

The pow­ers that be haven’t really sold us on the com­ing cli­mate apocalypse.

I’m not deny­ing its hap­pen­ing, I can clearly see its effects reg­u­larly on a world wide scale, I just don’t think our politi­cians and sci­en­tists have explained it to us very well.

“Cli­mate change” has a PR prob­lem, but don’t worry, I’m going to attempt to offer a sim­ple solution.

The planet Earth itself is not threatened.

There, I said it.

Cli­mate change is not going to destroy this rock we’re stuck on, regard­less of the atmos­pheric tem­per­a­ture, Earth will keep spin­ning through space for a very long time, prob­a­bly until our Sun turns into a Red Giant or Super­nova or what­ever it is stars do and that’s mil­lions of years away.

Cli­mate change might kill every liv­ing thing on the planet, or at least most of them. That should be a strong sell­ing point, only we don’t really care that much about liv­ing things other than humans.

And it seems we don’t care that much about all the humans any­way, only some of them. You know, the ones that look like us, dress like us, talk like us, ummmm, us.

Not them.

But most of all, we care about our­selves. Self-preservation is some­thing we all seem to have in common.

Tack­ling “cli­mate change” has to be about sav­ing one’s self from the com­ing Armaged­don. Fear is always an excel­lent sell­ing point.

Slow­ing cli­mate change will save your life and the lives of every­one you care about. Not slow­ing cli­mate change will prob­a­bly kill us all.

“All of us” includes you. You might really die from the effects of a warmer planet.

If the global tem­per­a­ture goes up, more peo­ple will die from heat-related ill­nesses. Remem­ber all those old French folks who died in the heat­wave in 2003? There’d be a lot more deaths like that.

Got air con­di­tion­ing? If the energy sup­pli­ers can’t keep up with demand, it won’t mat­ter and you’ll still fry.

Large, cur­rently heav­ily pop­u­lated areas of the planet will become unin­hab­it­able, poten­tially dis­plac­ing mil­lions. All those refugees will have to go some­where, which will increase crowd­ing in more tem­per­ate regions while stretch­ing dwin­dling resources beyond capac­ity. Life will become more dif­fi­cult to sustain.

Trop­i­cal dis­eases with­out known cures will spread out from the cur­rent hot zones to increas­ingly wider areas and even more peo­ple will die.

Food pro­duc­tion will be dis­rupted, prompt­ing star­va­tion on an unimag­in­able scale.

I’ve read that Lon­don has only a 48 hour food sup­ply at any given time, because of the way super­mar­ket stock is man­aged. Food prac­ti­cally goes from lorry to shelf with­out sit­ting long in the back room. Its a deliver-as-required system.

If your local super­mar­kets ran dry, how would you feed your­self and your fam­ily? Even if you stock­pile long-life meals, they’ll run out even­tu­ally. Think you can get a farm up and run­ning before it does? Assum­ing there’s still enough water and the sun’s not so hot that it fries your plants and live­stock before you have the chance to take the first tasty bite.

Unre­strained cli­mate change means death for you.

Its sim­ple math really, if we don’t do some­thing soon, we’re all gonna end up dead.

It won’t be the end of the planet, or the end of the world, but it will be the end of us.

And that includes you.

Sud­denly, those low energy light­bulbs don’t seem so bad and sep­a­rat­ing your recy­clable goods doesn’t seem like such a chore, does it?

A bunch of world lead­ers are head­ing to Copen­hagen this Decem­ber to go through the motions of a Cli­mate Change sum­mit. Per­haps, if they adopted the fol­low­ing slo­gan, peo­ple might finally start pay­ing attention:

Cli­mate Change = Death

And once everyone’s pay­ing atten­tion, per­haps we all can start tak­ing the right steps to slow down cli­mate change. The life you save just might be your own.

The National Health Ser­vice (NHS) here in the UK has been in the fir­ing line this week as Amer­i­cans “debate” over­haul­ing their health­care sys­tem in an attempt to extend access to their 50 mil­lion res­i­dents who have absolutely no cover or access to care.

Amer­i­cans are being led to believe that the free health­care avail­able to all of us in the UK is no good. This is so far from the truth that it would be funny, except for the fact that people’s lives hang in the balance.

The UK has a much higher life expectancy than the USA. Check your sta­tis­tics and see that I’m not lying. The UK also spends less on health­care per per­son than they do in the states, yet they yield bet­ter results.

Go fig­ure!

The Amer­i­can health­care sys­tem is run like a for-profit busi­ness. Think about that, some­one prof­its from your ill­ness and the per­cent­ages of profit are obscenely high.

Insur­ance com­pa­nies, drug com­pa­nies pri­vate hos­pi­tals, pri­vate doc­tors are all in the game to make money from your mis­ery. That can’t be right, can it? Every test ordered that you don’t really need, every over-prescription is money in the bank for someone.

Just ask Michael Jack­son if pri­vate health­care on demand is a good thing. Oh wait, you can’t because it killed him.

In Amer­ica, health­care is seen as a priv­i­lege, not a basic human right. Should one only be enti­tled to health­care on the basis of qual­i­fy­ing for insur­ance, rather than qual­i­fy­ing for need? Shouldn’t every­one have access to healthcare?

Of course they should!

Some of the scenes I’ve caught on tele­vi­sion, of the so-called town-hall meet­ings have been very amus­ing, well amus­ing in as much as the igno­rance fuelled anger is sim­ply surreal.

It seems to me, that the loud­est voices at these town-hall meet­ings are com­ing out of the mouths of peo­ple with the least infor­ma­tion on the sub­ject. These sad, twisted, igno­rant peo­ple have an unjus­ti­fi­able hatred of Pres­i­dent Obama that is prob­a­bly rooted in their inher­ent racism rather than any actual dis­like of a new health­care system.

All you need to do is lis­ten to what they say, their buzz words, like “social­ism” and “this isn’t the Amer­ica I know” to under­stand just how mis­guided and ill-informed these folks are on the subject.

Ok, any subject.

At the heart of all of this is FOX News, the biased and unfair pseudo news net­work owned by Rupert Mur­doch. FOX News pro­vide the stilted talk­ing points and their legions of view­ers turn up at town-hall meet­ings, par­rot­ing the same lame shit.

I can’t say I’ve looked into it, but I am guess­ing a wealthy guy like Mur­doch must have busi­ness inter­ests out­side the media world, say per­haps insur­ance or drug com­pa­nies. In other words, he may have a vested finan­cial inter­est in how this debate plays out. And if not him, then some of his rich robber-baron mates have got invest­ments in the med­ical field. There’s a lot of profit to be protected.

Its funny how SKY News, the sis­ter sta­tion of FOX News, under the News­Corp cor­po­rate umbrella is tak­ing a dif­fer­ent tack here, right­eously defend­ing the NHS against the FOX News inspired attacks. Does one hand not know what the other is doing? Or is SKY sim­ply pan­der­ing to their UK-based subscribers?

I think we both know the answer to that one.

I’m in a fairly unique posi­tion, hav­ing lived con­sid­er­able lengths of time under both health­care sys­tems. Nei­ther the US or UK sys­tems are per­fect, both excel at some things and lack in oth­ers, but over­all, I know which sys­tem I would choose, if I had to…

The NHS all the way!

In the UK, I’ve never had any con­cerns about insur­ance, access to the med­ical sys­tem or being able to afford the costs. I’ve for the most part, had excel­lent care of a world class stan­dard cour­tesy of the NHS.

In Amer­ica I’ve been charged one hun­dred bucks for a wooden tongue depresser — you know what I’m talk­ing about, a wide wooden pop­si­cle stick.

Open your mouth and say “ahhh fuck, you just charged me a Ben­jamin to do that!”

In my world, life is usu­ally quite sim­ple and this unhealthy debate is no dif­fer­ent. What it boils down to is this: “I’ve already got mine, so screw you if you don’t have yours!” It all comes down to com­pas­sion and America’s appar­ent lack of it.

The Chris­t­ian right in Amer­ica preach some­thing known as “com­pas­sion­ate con­ser­vatism”, but sadly they don’t prac­tise it in any mean­ing­ful or tan­gi­ble way. Where’s the com­pas­sion? What would that guy Jesus do?

Jesus would move to the UK, sign on to the dole and get those holes in his hands and feet looked at for free, same for that nasty stab wound in his side.

Uni­ver­sal health­care is an unde­ni­able right, yet 50 mil­lion Amer­i­cans are being denied it. Any com­pas­sion­ate per­son would recog­nise the inequal­ity in the cur­rent sys­tem and want to do all they could to change it.

Where are all the com­pas­sion­ate folks in Amer­ica? Don’t they care about their fel­low man? Maybe if there are any, they could go to those silly town-hall meet­ings and shout down all the igno­rant idiots that are mak­ing Amer­ica look so stupid.

Oh and while I’m at it, lay off the NHS. Ill-informed opin­ion does not make a debate, it just makes you look even more like morons to the rest of the (bet­ter informed) world.

That’s an actual photo of a Lon­don bus advert placed by Release, an organ­i­sa­tion com­mit­ted to reform­ing UK drug laws.

Here’s Release’s mis­sion state­ment, from their website:

“Release is the national cen­tre of exper­tise on drugs and drugs law – pro­vid­ing free and con­fi­den­tial spe­cial­ist advice to the pub­lic and pro­fes­sion­als. Release also cam­paigns for changes to UK drug pol­icy to bring about a fairer and more com­pas­sion­ate legal frame­work to man­age drug use in our society.”

Release have launched this new pub­lic aware­ness cam­paign, please visit their site for more details. Its sen­si­ble, log­i­cal and very true.

And click here for the The Guardian’s take on the campaign.

Could this be the first step in the right direc­tion? Let’s hope so!

Update 10th June 2009:
Since post­ing this a few days ago, the ad cam­paign has been cen­sored by adver­tis­ing reg­u­la­tors and taken down. Click here to read more.

Happy 420 everyone!

If you’re not famil­iar with 420 (four-twenty), click the above link. Its prac­ti­cally a national hol­i­day in Amer­ica and if we’re lucky, it could very well catch on here in the UK.

Amer­ica is usu­ally sev­eral steps ahead of the UK and the US’s atti­tude to cannabis is a great exam­ple of this fact. Its where the point­less “war on drugs” began and it just might be where it ends too.

Since Obama got hit with a “legalise cannabis ques­tion” from an over­whelm­ing num­ber of peo­ple online, all of Amer­ica is rolling with fren­zied momen­tum towards legal­is­ing this hippy’s favourite plant.

The O-man shouldn’t have been so dis­mis­sive of such a seri­ous and rel­e­vant ques­tion, but he’s a pop­u­lar politi­cian so he can’t be seen to be soft on drugs.

That hasn’t pre­vented Sen­a­tor Ron Paul, who is also a pop­u­lar politi­cian, from call­ing for an end to the war on drugs, but he is a hero and lib­er­tar­ian and not afraid to express an opinion.

Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive mag­a­zine can see the pace of change regard­ing cannabis laws in Amer­ica. And the con­ser­v­a­tive right seem down with it too.

Even the main­stream press is get­ting in on the act, with Time Mag­a­zine ask­ing and answer­ing, “Why Legal­is­ing Mar­i­juana Makes Sense”.

Not only that, Time Mag­a­zine also asks and answers, “Is Pot Good For You?” Of course it is!

Why the sud­den shift in America?

Two things right now are forc­ing peo­ple to rethink their stance on cannabis in the states, one of which already applies here in the UK.

Its the econ­omy, stupid.

With this whole recession/depression non­sense, can any­one dis­re­gard the effect a legalised cannabis mar­ket would have on a nation’s GDP?

Legal­is­ing weed, in an instant, would cre­ate legit­i­mate jobs that would be taxed, not to men­tion a tax on the actual prod­uct itself. It would raise a lot of money and fast.

Wait, let me revise that. It would bring an already estab­lished and thriv­ing black mar­ket econ­omy into the main­stream. Ka-ching!

Its been said that if weed were legal and 420 were a proper hol­i­day, it would have the same sort of effect on the econ­omy as xmas. Ka-double-ching.

Weed smok­ers would will­ingly be taxed in return for not being crim­i­nalised, so says Salon Mag­a­zine. I sure as hell would be ready to pay tax on my dope, if I didn’t have to worry about being arrested for toking!

The other prob­lem in Amer­ica is one that hasn’t reached Europe yet, but it could in the future and that is gang related violence.

The south­ern bor­der of Amer­ica is where the real drug war is tak­ing place, but not between law enforce­ment and crim­i­nals, but between rival drug gangs. Police on both sides of the bor­der have been inef­fec­tual and pos­si­bly cor­rupt, when they’re not get­ting caught in the cross­fire. The death toll is sadly, quite high and its bad for busi­ness on both sides of the border.

The trou­ble on America’s bor­der is forc­ing peo­ple to realise that the drug mar­ket should be under some sort of gov­ern­ment con­trol and reg­u­la­tion, for with­out that, it leaves crim­i­nal gangs run­ning the show.

Just as the pro­hi­bi­tion of alco­hol in the states in the early part of the last cen­tury cre­ated gang­sters like Al Capone, the pro­hi­bi­tion of drugs cre­ated Pablo Esco­bar and those like him who con­trol the indus­try today.

America’s finally grasp­ing that legal­is­ing cannabis would solve more prob­lems than it could ever cre­ate. By legit­imis­ing an exist­ing indus­try, Amer­ica will reap the rewards finan­cially and it would help cre­ate a new sta­bil­ity along the Rio Grande.

Check out this report from the very respected Cato Insti­tute, which looks at the pos­i­tive effects of the decrim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of all drugs in Por­tu­gal. Its very enlight­en­ing and worth a quick read.

You’ll notice in all of debate and dis­cus­sion in Amer­ica, there hasn’t been any talk of cannabis-induced psy­chosis or schiz­o­phre­nia, nor the demon­i­sa­tion of the stronger strains of cannabis known as “skunk”. That’s because its all spin and bull­shit cre­ated here in the UK to allow our politi­cians to use weed as a polit­i­cal foot­ball that scores easy own-goals with the ill-informed electorate.

In the states, stronger weed is prized and cel­e­brated for being par­tic­u­larly “med­i­c­i­nal” and is seen to be more ben­e­fi­cial, not less. There are no “cannabis hys­te­ria mums” and no men­tion of unproven links to men­tal ill­ness. Remem­ber, a for­mer Sur­geon Gen­eral in Amer­ica (C. Everett Coop if mem­ory serves), called mar­i­juana “the most ther­a­peu­ti­cally ben­e­fi­cial sub­stance known to man”.

Con­fu­sion con­tin­ues to reign where cannabis pol­icy is con­cerned here in the UK, with ran­dom, point­less changes in clas­si­fi­ca­tion and penal­ties every cou­ple of years whether we need them or not.

Even the government’s own drug coun­selling ser­vice, Ask Frank, is telling younger callers that “cannabis is safer than alco­hol.” Its com­pletely true and in line with what the experts say, but its incon­sis­tent with the government’s own stated pol­icy, which of course, ignores the advice of the afore­men­tioned experts they employ.

There are already whis­pers in White­hall, many politi­cians here can see the scrawl on the wall, but are won­der­ing how to right all of the wrongs of the last few years. The gov­ern­ment has used the media to paint a totally false pic­ture of the dan­gers of cannabis, so how do they turn it back around?

Sim­ple, just let the lies qui­etly fade away and replace them with the promise of cold hard cash.

Is it going to take open gang war­fare on the streets of Britain for our lead­ers to deal with cannabis respon­si­bly? I hope to god it doesn’t come to that, but I don’t see any other way for them wake up and start deal­ing with reality.

The Guardian pub­lished a great report last week, which states that end­ing the pro­hi­bi­tion on drugs would save the UK around £14 bil­lion pounds. That’s an amount that can’t be ignored, espe­cially in these dif­fi­cult eco­nomic times. Law enforce­ment, the penal sys­tem could all be over­hauled and the resources could be redi­rected to actual crimes with vic­tims and everything…!

They’re search­ing for the green shoots of recov­ery, per­haps cannabis is lit­er­ally the cash crop green­ery we’ve all been seeking.

And maybe one day, we’ll all be able to openly com­mem­o­rate 420 in the man­ner appro­pri­ate to the event. And that’s exactly what this hippy is going to do right now, as I spark up a juicy, skunky spliff.