|
(click on ads for more
details)
|
|
- - Fight and Flight - -
It is hard to imagine another U.S. government policy that led directly to
the
murder of a young American woman and her infant daughter that would not be
the subject of immediate calls for reversal in Congress and across the
various organs of the supra-state.
Not so the War on Drugs, which claimed its latest casualties, Veronica
"Roni" Bowers, 37, and her 7-month-old daughter, Charity, in the
skies over Peru.
Yes, the practice of the CIA--one of a half-dozen U.S. agencies on the
interdiction front lines--painting big fat bull's-eyes on civilian
aircraft before leaving the wet work to the brown-skinned hired help is
now kaput, maybe even for good.
But the idea of trying to fence off 280 million relatively affluent people
from stuff that makes them happy lies unchallenged. No one rushed to the
well of the Senate to demand an end to the war. Perhaps a sense of guilt
stopped them, but that would be a rare thing in Washington.
Illuminating then to reflect on New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson's comments
before the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws just
days before the mishap.
Johnson said other elected officials over the years confided to him their
own doubts about drug policy. It speaks to Johnson's integrity that he
hasn't "outed" these folks, but the rest of us still get to ask
of these secret defectors, when?
When will it ever be "safe" to come forward? When will the
deadly hypocrisy of drug prohibition be more evident?
It would also be quaint to assume the Bowers family will receive some sort
of restitution for their loss. Do not count on it, especially without a
fight. Washington would be setting a dangerous precedent by paying off
survivors of drug war collateral damage.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/w
orld/DailyNews/peru_americanplane_0
10421.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,
12578,00.html
In a piece that got him called "an apologist for stupefaction,"
REASON's Nick Gillespie senses an imminent ceasefire in the War on Drugs
at
http://reason.com/0103/march.html
*********************************************** Prof. Smuggler - -
The War on Drugs also number among its victims a very different sort in
Gennady Danilenko, but one just as damning. The professor at Wayne State
University law school appears to have turned to drug smuggling as a way to
combat money woes. He was not quite successful.
In Amsterdam he evidently ingested 13 balloons filled with cocaine. On his
way back to Detroit, the balloons began to rupture in his stomach.
Needless to say, Danilenko wound up dead.
Now authorities are trying to figure out if he had ties to Russian
organized
crime. That reality--even though it means that cocaine smuggler and law
professor are not mutually exclusive--can't be any more comforting to drug
warriors than the alternative. Namely, that an upstanding citizen who hits
a rough patch, very quickly thinks of filling himself with coke for a
quick payday, and darn near pulls it off.
Only prohibition makes the prospect of a big score possible. And when
people like law professors deem the score is big enough to justify the
risk, you have a real problem.
http://www.freep.com/news/mich/nprof20
_20010420.htm
*************************************************
- - Blue Suit Mafia - -
The FBI decided to employ some heavy-handed tactics with a shakedown of
Karl August Mueller, a semi-famous Web site satirist.
Mueller's obvious Columbine satire page, complete with goofy "trench
coat
mafia" signage and a "tentative masterplan for seizing Columbine
High School by strategic military assault" consisting exclusively of
notebook doodles, spurred visit by FBI agents Peter Damos and Peter
Hoffman.
They very seriously wanted to know if Mueller made bombs. His page
includes a laughable seven-step bomb-making how-to, the final step being
"Run Away!" Similarly, the four-step how-to-shoot-someone
instructions conclude with "Shout Heil Hitler! and run away real
quick!" That evidently didn't threaten the FBI.
This hair-trigger response, of course, goes beyond Columbine to Tim
McVeigh. By citing the Waco immolations as his catalyst, McVeigh has
convinced the feds that commemorations and incitement have more to do with
outbursts of violence than do the sui generis intentions of bad actors.
In fact, all of law enforcement seems to accept without question a viral
theory of overt antisocial behavior. The theory seems to hold that there
are
sources of bad thought out there--usually on the Net--and if they are
sufficiently contained, bad things won't happen.
It must be too much to comprehend that angry, unhappy people quite
independently arrive at the idea to take on symbols of authority that in
their minds, and perhaps in reality, are mighty oppressors.
Knuckle-dragging turns by g-men sure do nothing to dissuade such beliefs.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,128
3,43175-2,00.html
http://www.spies.com/~gus/trenchcoat/
*************************************************
- - High Rollers - -
A cautionary tale from Colorado for all those states and locales that
think state-run gambling is the ticket to a gold-plated polity. It took a
ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court, but a grand jury report was made
public that details how one gambling town set out to cripple another's
gambling offerings.
Officials in Black Hawk are accused of blocking Central City's attempts at
infrastructure improvements that could've siphoned off gamblers.
A $40 million highway sought by Central City was hamstrung by Black Hawk
efforts to buy land needed for the road. In the process some $50,000 of
public money was used and basic cover up tactics employed.
The investigation returned no indictments, just a really bad smell, if one
judges things by the report's findings.
Of course, these kinds of tricks are what you would expect if you
essentially
put government units into business for themselves. Government power
becomes just another competitive level to pull. Done on the sly and behind
closed doors, safeguards disappear along with little thing called consent
of the governed.
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,100
2,53%257E22545,00.html
REASON exposed the power politics behind the prohibition of online
gambling at http://reason.com/9910/fe.tb.gamblers.html
**************************************************
QUICK HITS
- - Quote of the Week - -
"If speed bumps are the only available fast-track solution offered by
the city
to an obvious community problem, it will not be long before driving or
bicycling in Athens is impossible."-- rock star Michael Stipe on
speed bumps installed on Athens' Hill Street, where he owns a historic
home. Stipe also let his feelings be known via a large anti-bump sign
painted on his house. That sign, neighbors sniffed, violates the county's
historic home ordinance and must be removed.
http://www.charlotte.com/justgo/ent/pub/
rem.htm
REASON's Brian Doherty examined the strange politics of millionaire rock
stars at http://reason.com/0010/fe.bd.rage.html
- - Filter Filter - -
A workaround for those infamous federally mandated Net filters is already
out there. Hydrant Internet Security claims to be able to defeat firewalls
or filters that block access to web pages by encrypting your requests for
pages. The makers specifically tout being able to surf anonymously
"from any location, be it your office, [or] school."
http://www.the-hitman.com/wtm/
- - Tea and Trouble - -
Officials in Britain continue their push for a global "data
trap" of all communications that pass through he country. Roger
Gaspar, deputy director general of the National Criminal Investigation
Service (NCIS), says the only question should be "what kind of data
is held and for how long."
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/2001/15/ns-
22306.html
- - Two-Tracked - -
Ford, Prudential, and Marriott are just a few of the employers who've
begun
giving childless workers perks concomitant to those employees with kids
get. In other words, it is market response to keep a scarce good.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
articles/A43172-2001Apr20.html
REASON's Virginia Postrel argued against politicizing parenthood at
http://reason.com/0010/co.vp.politicizing.
html
- - Bell Clarity - -
A move is afoot in Congress to deliver more high-speed Net business to the
Baby Bells.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/164
709.html
- - Blown Away - -
A federal judge blocked publication of Alice Randall's novel "The
Wind Done Gone," saying it infringed on the copyright held by the
heirs of Margaret Mitchell. Randall's novel uses Mitchell's "Gone
With the Wind" as a jumping off point for a tale told from a
different point of view.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
articles/A44186-2001Apr20.html
#################################
REASON NEWS
The Scene! Check out Reason Editor-at-Large Virginia Postrel's frequently
updated observations on current events and ideas. Visit The Scene at
http://www.dynamist.com/scene.html
For the latest on media appearances by Reason writers, visit
http://www.reason.com/press.html.
#################################
Reason Express is made possible by a grant from The DBT Group
(http://www.dbtgroup.com),
manufacturers of affordable, high-performance mainframe systems and
productivity software.
Current Circulation: 6570
We encourage you to forward Reason Express. If you received this issue
from a forward, please subscribe.
Previous issues of Reason Express are available at
http://www.reason.com/re/re.html
To subscribe visit http://www.reason.com/re/subscribe.html
Or:
To subscribe to the TEXT version just send a TEXT ONLY message to
Majordomo@free-market.net
with this in the body of the message:
subscribe Reason-Express youremail@yourdomain.com
For the HTML version the TEXT ONLY message would be:
subscribe Reason-ExpressHTML youremail@yourdomain.com
Your email and your domain would be something like gillespie@reason.com.
To unsubscribe, use unsubscribe in place of subscribe.
|
