New Year's Revolutions

Happy nearly New Year, y'all.

Hopefully, you realise tomorrow is just another day, and you don't need to make lifechanging decisions while drunk tonight that will transform into mid-January bouts of guilt as you fail.

You could stop smoking, lose weight or try to get a new job starting any particular day. Why do it alongside the rest of the herd? Is there camaraderie in failing en masse? I don't know.

What I do know is that I think New Year's Resolutions are about as pointless as those 'Caution: Hot!' warnings on takeaway coffees - they're really only needed for the truly remedial.

So I've decided to go with some New Year's Revolutions instead. Here are the revolutions I'd like to see in 2010:

1. A Chinese counter-revolution. Seriously, fuck the Chinese Communist Party. I'd love to see them overthrown and subjected to a quick round of real people power, the human-abusing thug junta. This same prescription also applies to the scum ruling Belarus, North Korea, Burma, Zimbabwe and a host of other thugocracies.

2. A drugs revolution. The war on drugs is lost. Why are our governments still fighting it? Increasingly, world leaders, health experts, religious minorities and influential commentators have come out in favour of a complete reversal of current failed policies.
I hope that either the lawmakers start listening, or else a proper grassroots movement comes along and makes ongoing prohibition unworkable for good. If the EU reverted to the Portuguese model, we might finally get a handle on drug crime and on harm reduction for addicts.

3. An economic revolution. The return of the gold standard? The end of fractional banking? Back to barter? Jail for banksters?
I'm no economist (and am suspicious of that pseudoscience in any case), so I will refrain from being prescriptive.
But since the current system just went pop for the umpteenth time, you'd like to think we might rebuild with some new method that doesn't unerringly result in a bubble and collapse every decade or two.

4. A democratic revolution in Ireland. Take a look at the Dail. Do those people really represent you? Do they look after your interests? Well, why keep voting for them?
I'd love to see an end to the cronyism, the parochial parish pump politics, the gombeens, the brown envelopes and the nepotism in Irish politics.
But that would require an electorate to grow up and take responsibility for those they elect.

What revolutions would you like to see next year? And are there any that you're prepared to man the barricades to bring about?

The bhang-wallah of Varanasi

"When brown sugar first came in from Peshawar, about fifteen years ago now, it cost fifty rupees per gram," says the bhang-wallah.
"I selling, making ten rupee per gram profit, thinking I am rich man!" His hands thrust up into the air.
"Now, I have this shop, two hotels. I am one kilometre from Mama Ganga. Everyone know me. Baksheesh is high for me. When I lending to friends and sister, they not giving back."
He rummages in a drawer under the table and unwraps what looks like a shiny, semi-solid molasses, with a sharp, pungent, soil-like scent.
"Opium was only for the foreigners. India men not like. India men sell to foreigners, then drinking!" He grins a gappy grin, waving an imaginary glass between us.
"Then people start taking, enjoy the happy dreams. Now everything is possible, and for India men also. MDMA, heroin for snorting, ecstacy..."
The bhang-wallah is permitted by the government to sell a mild form of cannabis, known as bhang, to devout Hindus. Some Sanskrit on my back suffices as qualification in this regard.
Bhang comes in a smoking form, for use in pipes, and is also served in a lassi, a sort of curd milkshake.
However, the bhang-wallah appears to have expanded his product range beyond the entirely legal.
He picks up a brown tola, like a thick crayon a child might use, and hands it to me. I sniff it momentarily, run my thumbnail along its surface and then bang it, hard, off the side of the table.
He laughs.
"This is last year's crop," he chuckles. "Already stale. But good enough. I keep for the Japanese. They come to see Sarnath, where holy Buddha made his first prayers."
He hands me another tola, but this is flat and malleable.
"This year, this year," he trills. "Have whatever you want, sir. You name it."
"Cocaine?" I asked.
"No, sir," he shook his head sadly. "No cocaine. Too far from the source here. But I have opium from Lao, good Chandu, India man loving this Chandu, not normally for foreigners. And heroin, very good, from Taliban man."
I cut to the chase and ask for what I came for.
"Ah sir, this also is not possible," he sighs. "Today is festival day. Nothing is open. All shut. No curd delivery this morning. So I cannot make you a lassi."

I hate drunks

I don't mind tipsy people. Or merry people.

I don't mind people who enjoy a glass or two of wine with dinner.

I actively seek out the company of people who appreciate the virtues of a good whiskey.

I don't mind people who go out for a few pints once or twice a week.

I DO mind people who have destructive drinking habits, who cause rows or violence when drunk, who fail to accept that their drinking is problematic, who end up in A+E with self-inflicted injuries, who drink unhealthy volumes on an almost daily basis, often on their own.

I mind the arguments and hurt they cause, the vomit they produce, their unreasonability, the stink of alcohol on their breath, their red, rolling eyes, their slurred speech, their failure to see the harm their dysfunctional drinking causes.

If we were starting over with our drug laws, we'd probably ban alcohol. Which from my point of view would be sad, because I genuinely do appreciate a good whiskey, a fresh artisan beer, a carefully distilled gin, a finely matured wine.

But I think I'd actually accept prohibition of alcohol if I could be sure it would rid our world of 100% of arsehole drunks. It wouldn't of course, because prohibition doesn't work.

So I guess we're stuck with the drunks and their fucking up. Presumably they're all someones sons (or daughters.) Probably they were all decent skins once before their drinking got out of hand. Or maybe not.

I don't care. They're a pain in the arse and they are conduits of misery, spreading it like a cold in November among everyone else.

I fucking hate drunks.

UN prohibitionist website hacked

The UN office on Drugs and Crime, long run by notorious "Drugs are baaaad, mkay?" moron Antonio Costa, has had its website wonderfully hacked.

Before normal prohibitionist service is resumed, I thought I'd take a screengrab of their hacked jobs page for all to see and enjoy.

While it's still up, feel free to enjoy reading some sense about drugs policies on the UNODC's website for possibly the first time ever here.

But you better be quick. They'll be back to hiring shills to sell the world on prohibition very soon.

Congrats to the publicly minded IT wizards behind this splendid hack.

More preaching from the perverted

Hooray for the Catholic Church. They've got a new two-for-one offer on deadly sins. Pope Benedict has issued seven more deadly sins to go with the ones they already had identified.

So, are these new sins for you, you may ask? Could they possibly be as much fun as sloth, gluttony or lust? Sadly, no.

Here are the 21st Century additions in full:

Genetic modification
Performing experiments on people
Environmental pollution
Creating social injustice
Causing poverty
Being extremely wealthy
and Taking Drugs.

Let's examine that list a little carefully. According to the Catholic Church, it is now a mortal sin to smoke a joint, litter, or lead third phase medical testing of new medications. I don't see raping children in your care on that list, strangely enough. Funny that.

Let's leave aside the issue of the Catholic Church ruling out contraception, abortion or stem cell research. We already knew they didn't like those.

But the Vatican's opposition to extreme wealth takes some beating for chutzpah. And the Catholic Church, with their tithes on peasants and collections at mass, have shown themselves extremely efficient at causing poverty too when it was their inclination.

The two that stick in my craw particularly though are the edicts against littering and taking drugs. Which drugs exactly do the Vatican have in mind? The legally available ones that kill more people than all the others, like nicotine? The one that causes most social and family dysfunction and anti-social behaviour, alcohol?

Or perhaps they mean the available-on-prescription medications which big pharma sold as treatments for the depressed, which ended up killing them?

I'm guessing they might mean illicit drugs, like cannabis, which has been freely and safely used in dozens of cultures for over 5000 years.

The environmental pollution one is a bit much too. Would it be too much to ask for a sliding scale of penitence for these sins? Like, is it one Hail Mary after confession for smoking a spliff, but three rosaries if you've been dealing cocaine to Katy French?

And if I drop my mars bar wrapper on the ground, would I get only one Our Father from the priest in the box, but a few hundred if I admitted fly-tipping medically hazardous waste?

In their attempt to update themselves, the Catholic Church merely shows once again just how out of touch it really is.

Here's a tip for them: next time they feel like a make-over, try ordaining women, paying compensation to abuse victims, permitting priests to marry and allowing condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS and other STIs. That would get them to the mid-20th Century anyhow.

High Times

First, Cork was literally awash in cocaine.

Now it's growing on trees in Limavady.

So, can anyone tell me how the war on drugs is to be won when Columbian marching powder is so prevalent in Irish natural surroundings?

We'll have to start banning things that grow wild shortly. Oh, we did that already...