Shiv Malik went into the Beeston ghetto in Leeds to do research for a BBC documentary on the lives of the four 7/7 bombers, 3 of whom were from Beeston. What he found was a self-isolated Pakistani community in which a large proportion of the secondg eneration, having become alienated from the traditionalism of their parents, but unable to integrate into British society, found a spiritual home in the transnational Islamist movement of the Salafi-Jihadists.

After months of digging around and still unable to find anyone willing to honestly talk to him Shiv found out about Khan’s cabbie brother and took a couple of cab rides with him. Then finally more information was forthcoming from other sources and Shiv was able to piece together the story of Khan’s gradual radicalisation that finally led him to become a suicide bomber.

Serious problems started in Beeston some ten year ago, when the whole neighbourhood became increasingly infested with drugs. The community did not know how to deal with it. Then a group of second-generation Pakistanis emerged, known as the Mullah boys, who became a vigilante community work squad. They would forcibly take drug-addicted Pakistani youths off the street and detox them. Mohammad Sidique Khan was a part of this group and was looked up to in the community. But as the group’s religiousity increased so did their militancy. Meanwhile Khan came into conflict with his family over his Salafism and his choice of girlfriend, who was from a different sect (she was Deobandi, which is similar to Wahhabism, while his family was Berelvi, which is a type of Sufism). Read the rest of this disturbing story here.

You probably won’t be surprised to know, by the way, the documentary was never made. The BBC deemed the script to be too “Anti-Muslim”. Reality has become too anti-Muslim to talk about in Britain.

One other random fact that jumped out at me in the article:

Among those who study British race relations, there’s an informal theory that states that 30 years after the establishment of any sizeable ethnic minority community, there will be riots.

I wonder how the theory translates to other countries? The last 10 years has seen a level of migration all over the world unprecedented in human history, particularly into the First World. And 20-30 years from now will coincide with the West’s catastrophic demographic slump, which is likely to decimate a number of Western economies. I think Europe in particular is going to be seeing bigger trouble than just riots.

The grateful citizens of Kosovo are on their best behavior as the legitimization of their criminal “state” draws ever closer, writes Rebecca Thornton for Prospect magazine:

The UN has so far succeeded in maintaining relative peace within the province, but it is a peace built on black-market economics and organised crime. Kosovo might well be, along with its cousin Albania, the most criminalised place on earth. Evidence of criminal activity dominates the landscape of the province. Black-market trading goes on flagrantly in every town and city. The filthy roads are lined with new petrol stations, which the Kosovo Liberation Army uses for money laundering.

Since the end of the conflict in 1999, the province has seen spectacular rises in drugs, arms and people trafficking. Kosovar Albanians import 80 per cent of Europe’s heroin, worth up to £12bn a year. Meanwhile, a recent Save the Children report observed an alarming rise in the number of minors trafficked into Kosovo.

In July 2006, an email from Unmik’s chief security officer, which I have seen, informed all staff “that a number of establishments in Kosovo use what appears to be a legitimate front to further illegal activities such as prostitution. We as Unmik officers CANNOT be seen as condoning these activities.” According to Amnesty International, the Unmik personnel presence has boosted the demand for prostitution. Kate Allen, director of UK Amnesty, says, “Women and girls as young as 11 are being sold into sexual slavery in Kosovo and international peacekeepers are… fuelling this despicable trade by themselves paying for sex from trafficked women.”

A founder of Koha Ditore, a Kosovar Albanian daily newspaper, tells me, “The government is doing nothing. Drugs, rackets, prostitution—the criminals co-operate very well, regardless of ethnic background. The international community is not doing enough to fight organised crime. They like to say ‘We’ve fulfilled our mandate,’ but if you scratch beneath the surface… I never dare write anything about organised crime. If I touch this issue, then my chance is, at best, to live two hours more.”

Seven years of UN rule has done little to facilitate any kind of relationship between the Kosovar Albanians and the Serbs. The change of atmosphere in the north of the country, where the Serbs are concentrated, is visible; and in the south, the crisp I LOVE USA posters that were once tacked to the rusty railings are nowhere to be seen. The tensions are symbolised by the Mitrovica bridge, which both physically joins and spiritually divides the Serb heartlands north of the Ibar from the Albanian regions to the south. I recently attended “Zadusnice,” a Serb commemoration day for the dead. At a graveyard south of the bridge, on the majority Albanian side, mourning Serbs are escorted by troops with armoured vehicles from Mitrovica, north of the bridge. The families are given one hour to visit the desecrated tombstones of their relatives, rubbish-strewn monuments that have been broken into heaps of dirty stone, surrounded by piles of litter and cigarette butts. Most of the visitors fall to their knees immediately, spending their allotted hour trying to clean the graves. As a man pulled jerkily at the grass at his wife’s tombstone, he said, “I can’t come to my wife’s grave when I want to. When I do come I have to be escorted. This situation is all too cruel to be civilised.”

Aww, they’ve taken down the I LOVE USA posters? But have they started replacing them with posters of their good friend Uncle Benny yet?

I do like the way Rebecca ends her article:

“Kosovo” is Serbo-Croat for “crow.” The creatures are everywhere here, swarms of them, with squawks reverberating off the detritus of years of war and desultory nation-building, reminding one of the collective noun for this symbol of Kosovo’s identity: murder.

And how is it possible that the Europeans are allowing all this to happen in the own backyard? Hmm:

During a February mission to Brussels led by Kosovo Bishop Artemije, after getting the usual empty assurances that there will be guarantees of human rights and protections for Kosovo’s Serb minority, American Council for Kosovo director Jim Jatras asked a Hungarian member of the European parliament, “Isn’t all this talk of protections for Serbs a tacit admission that among the Kosovo Albanians are a lot of violent and intolerant people? Why would you reward their violence with state power?”

Looking Jatras in the eye, the parliamentarian replied, “Because we’re afraid of them.”

My previous posts on the developing situations(s) in the Balkans here.

Lisa Reitman-Dobi quizzed some 15 year olds at her daughter’s school about a video game they play, with the objective of making money from drug trafficking:

“You start off indebted to this Mafia guy, I mean he has an Italian accent, and he always asks, ‘Where’s my money?’ And he like f–ks you up if you don’t give it to him. In the beginning, however high your debt is, this is what you pay. Your debt also goes up as you move around. You can fly places but that’s more expensive. So I don’t do that. You start out with $5,500 debt and $2,000 spending money. You want to deal the higher quality drugs. You make more money that way. Ultimately you want to deal coke, because it’s most expensive.”

[..]

“You’re going to quote me, I know it. But I guess people want to read negative things the same way kids want to do negative things…I mean, we’re supposed to, like, detach from parents and all, right? But just so you know, I never buy heroin. It’s against my, like, policy. I have good values from, like, my parents and stuff.”

Lets hear about ‘em values when you’re a hundred grand down and there’s a gun to your head. With an Italian accent.

Drug and human trafficking in Kosovo and Albania:

[..]
As far as Albania is concerned “We do not talk in kilos any more but in tonnes of drugs,” a senior Western diplomat in Tirana told Irish Times in July of 2006.

“Albania is like a big drugs warehouse,” the diplomat concluded.

Statistics speak for themselves: 19,500 Kosovo Albanians are clogging German jails for selling drugs; 2,500 Kosovo Albanians are in Swiss jail for selling drugs; Hungarian anti-mafia chief Djerd Hološi says Albanians control 80% of Hungarian drugs; Czech’s attribute 70% of drug distribution to Kosovo Albanians… the Azuri coast in Spain is controlled by Kosovo Albanian Mafia…

The Franchises

The village of Veliki Trnovac was once all Christian when a family of Muslim Albanians were sold a Serb property to and by now, the village has no recollection of ever being Christian, other then dilapidated church stones no Muslim Albanian pays any attention to.

With an armed Muslim Albanian force of 15,000, Veliki Trnovac is a fortress, impossible to enter unless a sustained military campaign is organized in order to bust the drug warehouses that are spread across the village. Serbian military is under orders not to enter the village to take down the Albanian drug lords because the West will interpret this law enforcement action as an ethnic attack against Albanians.

Some say that Veliki Trnovac is protected by Western political correctness, but whatever the case, the Muslim drug entrepreneurs of Veliki Trnovac have, in the true spirit of capitalist labor division, split their activities along the clan lines: the Fis, or Muslim Albanian clans that run the heroin trade are Osmani, Halili and Bunjako while human traffic, especially the lucrative sex slavery of women, is run by Albanian Muslim fis of Morina and Keljemendi.
[..]
“Albanian mafia is essentially what we can loosely call the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) although it now goes by various names,” writes Gregory Copley from the Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis. “KLA exists, and is able to access much of its narcotic product, because of its close interrelationship with jihadist movements and foreign state sponsors,” writes Copley.

Europol Annual Report for 2005 similarly states that the Albanian organized crime is related to the Islamic terrorism where the Brussells based “Bureau also cooperated in other operations, investigating the dismantling of OC groups that are known for suspicious financial transactions, Albanian organised crime, producing synthetic drugs and related to Islamic terrorism.”
[..]

And lets not forget the weapons. The rocket-propelled grenade fired at the US Embassy by leftist nutjobs in Greece in January arrived in Greece via Kosovo:

Kosovo link to embassy strike

The missile fired at the US Embassy by Revolutionary Struggle last month reached Greece via Kosovo, police sources told Kathimerini yesterday in what authorities believe is a breakthrough in their investigation.

Greek and US security agents have discovered that the rocket-propelled grenade was removed from an army warehouse in Albania in 1994 and taken to Kosovo, where it came into the possession of an arms smuggler.

Authorities believe that the arms trader held on to the weapon until 2001 and they are investigating his contacts and dealings in the hope they will find out who smuggled the rocket into Greece.

A high-ranking police source said that officers had contacted foreign security services to obtain more information and they hope their investigation will develop further this week.

No member of Revolutionary Struggle, the leftist group which claimed the embassy attack, has been caught since the organization became active in 2003.

Guess this country.

It’s army, under the command of the ruling regime, is engaging in a campaign of genocide against racial and religious minorities, often beheading, raping and torturing its victims, but it is not the Sudan.

Children as young as 12 are being forcefully recruited into this army, but this is not the Taliban in Afghanistan or “Saddam’s Lion Cubs” in Hussein’s Iraq.

The military regime is busily building bunkers in a strongpoint defence matrix, allegedly in anticipation of a US attack, but it is not Iran.

This country is removing any crosses or other Christian symbols from public spaces, bit it is not Algeria.

This country has the world’s largest narcotics-trafficking militia operating on its territory, but it is not Columbia.

This country has a health crisis worse than the poorest areas of Africa, with more children dying before age 5 in some areas, than the Congo, but it is not Afghanistan.

This country has recently agreed to allow Russia to share in exploitation of its oil fields, in exchange for weapons shipments, but it is not Venezuela.

This country, while shunned by the West, counts China as its main political and economic ally, but it is not North Korea.

While the world’s attention is focused on several noisy ideologically and religiously driven nutjob regimes, one old backyard hussler is slowly but surely losing touch with reality, seemingly by way of good old fashioned drug-induced psychosis. That twitchy little battler is Burma.

“The side road the soldiers have blocked off is 15 kilometers (9 miles) north of the city of Pyinmana in the central Burmese plains. The jungle stretches for more than 400 kilometers (249 miles), like some vast, green carpet, toward a line of jagged peaks on the distant horizon marking the Golden Triangle bordering Laos and Thailand. The only destination worth seeing in this rural stretch of Burma is its tropical rainforest research institute.

But Burma’s ruling generals recently declared the region a restricted military zone, making the trip to the institute off-limits to outsiders. The Junta is having its new capital built somewhere at the end of this 20-foot-wide highway. The central government’s officials were already required to move there last November.

..

Burma’s leadership apparently plans to barricade itself into its remote new capital, from which it expects to control the country in the future. The nearest major city, Mandalay, is a 250-kilometer (155-mile) journey away on a deeply potholed road, and the trip to Rangoon takes about eight hours. Naypyidaw, or “Royal Country,” is the name Than Shwe, the junta’s 73-year-old leader, has personally selected for his government’s secretive new headquarters. According to official instructions to be followed in the event of a foreign attack, “Naypyidaw is our war bunker, where we will wait, during an American attack, until the Chinese hurry to our aid.”

Sounds like a brilliant plan. Although, considering the pace of events in Iraq and throwing in some generous estimates for the actions against Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and Trans-dnestr my estimated date of invasion is somewhere around hmmm.. how does 2090 sound? By which date you won’t need to wait long for China to help, because you’ll be a part of it.

So what the hell is going here? Well, I did mention drug-induced psychosis, didn’t I?

“Beheadings by troops are common. So too are beatings, the use of forced labour and rape. Growing use of amphetamines among Burma’s 400,000-strong army is fuelling this violence.

A narcotics expert from the Australian National University who is based in Thailand, David Matheson, said researchers had concluded that many troops went into battle high on amphetamines. “When they come across dead Burmese soldiers, they find methamphetamine tablets on most of them if not all of them, particularly in the Shan state.”

The brutality of the attacks is evident in video footage, taken by members of the evangelical Christian missionary group the Free Burma Rangers, of the burning of villages. The video shows young men, armed with AK-47 rifles, setting fire to bamboo homes as residents flee in terror.”

Lets put two and 400,000 together here. “Most if not all” of the military is marching to the rhythm of an ICE binge, and its leadership is barricading itself away from the world in the middle of the jungle, declaring their new place of residence “Royal County”. Add the delusion and paranoia up with the erratic acts of violence, and this is obviously one hell of a tweak out. And it is sure to be followed by one hell of a come down, yet oddly enough “Royal County” just doesn’t sound like a rehab centre to me.

But I propose a solution. Send in the bicycles. That should keep them busy for at least a couple of decades. Heck, maybe after that we can arrange for them to sort through the world’s garbage for recycling, and get on top of that global warming biznit too. Hey, its far more likely to have an effect than another UN Resolution.

Everyone loves a good spy story, a daring conspiracy, a glimpse of the invisible hands that shape the world, the steadfast men of ideas that direct history from the shadows, manipulating events on the world stage from behind a curtain of intrigue.

One such “man of ideas”, a ruthless wheeler and dealer and a man who certainly left his mark on history, in ways both overt and covert, was the French spychief Count Alexandre de Marenches. The Count was the longest serving head of the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (SDECE, France’s version of the CIA), serving as its director from 1970 through to 1981. Below are a couple of tales from Count de Marenches’ large arsenal. But first a little more about the man and his ideas.

In 1992 the Count co-authored with NY Times’ Paris correspondent David A. Andelman, “The Fourth World War: Diplomacy and Espionage in the Age of Terrorism”, a book that has since revealed itself to be ahead of its time, but back in 1992 was snubbed by reviewers for making unfounded claims from an “extremist” viewpoint. The book is perhaps the first instance of the suggestion that the next World War would be against international terrorism and rogue states. In it the Count called for the establishment of a “Decent People’s Club” of countries that would band together to crush the new slippery bad guys. Count de Marenches’ name for this new conflict was the politically incorrect “South-North War”.

Allister Heath wrote of Count de Marenches and his book last week:

When it came to fighting terrorists, Count Alexandre de Marenches, the legendary former head of France’s intelligence services, knew what he was talking about. In a prescient book published just after the end of the Cold War, he was the first to warn that a fourth world war had already begun — a war waged by ‘small, highly deadly units of terrorists’ with ‘the very real prospect of ending civilisation, at least Western civilisation, as we know it’. A lone voice, Marenches was ignored in Britain and America; it was far easier to believe in reassuring theories about the ‘end of history’ and the supposedly inevitable victory of liberal democracy in the great ideological conflicts of the 20th century.

Well, not completely ignored. Eliot A. Cohen wrote the following in Foreign Affairs back in 1992:

“[the author] goes off track … when he looks to the future. He sees the opening skirmishes of a new world war — between South and North — the new enemies being terrorists, drug lords and dictators. ‘Mutual Assured Destruction’ must now be replaced by a doctrine of `Certain Destruction’ of terrorist groups; a ‘Decent People’s Club’ of nations that believe in individual liberty must be created. These extreme views inadvertently cast some doubt on his judgment while running French intelligence.”

It has now become much clearer whose judgement doubt should perhaps be cast on.

Now to the stories. The first one is short, sweet and unfulfilled. The year before his death in 1995 the Count told Time magazine’s Thomas Sancton the following tale over lunch:

“Shortly after your hostages were taken in Tehran in 1979,” he recalls, “the Americans asked my advice. I told them, ‘When dealing with rug merchants, you need something to trade.’ ” The count’s modest proposal: kidnap the Ayatullah Khomeini and exchange him for the 53 Americans. “After weeks of reconnaissance, my people came up with a detailed plan to land a helicopter near Khomeini’s residence, neutralize his guards and whisk him away. The CIA loved the idea, but Jimmy Carter nixed it. He said, ‘We just can’t do this to an old bishop.’ ”

Naive sentimentality driving Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy decisions?! Shock and horror all round. Perhaps he was using the more colourful meaning of the term “old bishop”? Alas, we’ll never know. I do know that had the Israelis gone and kidnapped that other “old bishop” Hassan Nasrallah to exchange for their soldiers the Middle East would be a whole other ball game just about now. Although Ayatollah Khomenei would have been even better.

Possibly de Marenches’ favourite spy story is the one about “Operation Mosquito”.

Here’s one version of it (questionable source, but you can read the condensed version from Count himself in the same Time magazine article):

Both the colonial French and the theoretically anti-colonial Americans used, and were in turn afflicted by, drugs, during the wars in Indo-China from the 1950s until the 1970s. Memories of this must have been uppermost in the mind of a certain big, burly mustachioed Frenchman. He appeared by appointment at the Los Angeles mansion of President-elect Ronald Reagan’s advisor and friend, Alfred Bloomingdale, one day in December 1990. This was to be the Frenchman’s first meeting with Reagan, whose anti-Communist and anti-Soviet views he fully shared.

The big Frenchman was Count Alexandre de Marenches, head of France’s secret foreign intelligence service, the SDECE (later the DGSE). [..] He had accurately predicted the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Despite some serious problems between the French agency’s men and American drug-enforcement officials, de Marenches had good access to the Washington of the Reagan era. General Vernon Walters, just promoted from his old post as US defense attaché in Paris to become deputy director of the CIA, was one of de Marenches’ oldest friends. He put in a good word for the robust French spy chief. This assured him of a good reception by President-elect Reagan in Los Angeles. The two men sat down to study maps of Afghanistan. Before he left, de Marenches warned Reagan that the rank-and-file staff of the CIA, where a mutual friend, William Casey, would soon take over as chief, was not to be trusted.

“These are not serious people,” de Marenches said. They couldn’t keep secrets, he added. It was too easy to spot their officers and agents. Usually they were under highly transparent cover as diplomats in American missions abroad.

Soon after his inauguration in January 1981, Reagan saw the Frenchman again. This time it was in the Oval Office of the White House. De Marenches had a concrete suggestion for a Franco-American venture to revive the old alliance and counter the Soviet threat in Afghanistan. He called it Operation Moustique or Mosquito. “You know,” he told the President, “how much trouble a mosquito can cause a bear. If you’re not in a position to shoot the bear yourself, you should consider this method.”

De Marenches continued that he was in contact with a bunch of bright young journalists. They could produce a perfect specimen of a convincing but false Red Army newspaper. Other friends could print Bibles in the Cyrillic alphabet, and in languages of the Central Asian Muslim Soviet republics. They could be put around in Red Army barracks and do a lot of damage to spirit and morale. There was another thing: “What,” he asked Reagan, do you do with all the drugs seized by the DEA [the US Drug Enforcement Administration], the Coast Guard, the FBI, the Customs?” Reagan responded that he didn’t know. He supposed they burned them. “That’s a mistake,” the Frenchman said.” Take all those confiscated drugs and do as the Vietcong did with the US Army in Vietnam. Supply them on the sly, to the Russian soldiers.” In a few months, he explained, they would be demoralized and their fighting ability would be gone. De Marenches added, according to his published memoirs, that a few trusted people could do all this at a cost of only about one million dollars, truly a bargain in subversive warfare.

After very short reflection, Reagan, according to his French visitor, replied that this was a great idea. No one had suggested anything like it to him before. He picked up the phone and told William Casey. The two should meet and discuss Operation Mosquito. When de Marenches met Casey two days later and explained the plan, the Frenchman recorded in his memoirs that Casey “… loved it. He leaped from his chair and sliced at the air with his fists.” Although Casey knew there would be problems with Congress, he was eager to go ahead. Would, could, France carry it out if the CIA put up the cash? Yes, de Marenches agreed, but only on condition that no Americans were directly involved. “Your compatriots,” he told Casey, “don’t know how to do this type of work. They’re likely to get a pile-driver to crush a fly, rather than turn a mosquito loose to make life impossible for a bear.”

By the French spymaster’s account, planning then began. Pakistani operatives and Afghans would handle the distribution of the black propaganda material — phoney Russian newspapers with demoralizing articles and exhortations to desert the Red Army; Christian Bibles — and hard and soft drugs for the “Russkies.”

Casey had an afterthought. Wouldn’t Pakistan’s ISI be involved? “We need the Pakis,” he mumbled, with the habitual intelligibility which made him hard to understand. “I’ll take care of that,” said de Marenches. “But I have another condition. This kind of operation is very delicate. I want to be sure that France won’t be mentioned in published articles. I want to be sure that I’ll never see my photo in the New York Times or the Washington Post, along with a little item about what I’m doing.” Sorry, Casey retorted. Washington leaked like a sieve. Casey couldn’t promise anything of the kind.

According to de Marenches, the joint Franco-American project was dropped: in other words, France withdrew, after having provided the idea. However, the fake issues of Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star), the Soviet army newspaper, did appear later in Kabul. [5] So did large quantities of hashish, opium straw (a dried poppy product used in the area to make mildly narcotic “tea”) and packets of heroin, all made easy for the Soviet personnel to buy for nominal prices or “find” as free gifts. There were even small quantities of cocaine, not produced at this early time in the South Asian war boom in drugs, in laboratories in Pakistan or Afghanistan.

Hashshashin warriors the Russkis obviously weren’t.

Of course it took a lot more than hard drugs and some depressing tabloids to get the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Helping out with the gathering and funding of the mujahideen was the House of Saud. The head of Saudi intelligence all through the 80s and 90s, and in fact right up until mid-2001, for a total of 24 years was a close colleague and protege of Count de Marenches, Prince Turki bin Feisal. Here’s a story all about him:

One of Turki’s assets was Osama bin Laden, one of the 56 children of a Yemeni-born construction tycoon who had a monopoly on the building of all royal palaces in the kingdom.

Osama collected tens of millions from wealthy Saudis for the Afghan campaign. He also took under his wing Arab and other Muslim volunteers funded to fight in Afghanistan by Turki and wealthy princes and private sector entrepreneurs.

By the time the defeated Soviets left Afghanistan in February 1989, bin Laden had been elevated to hero status in Saudi Arabia. So when bin Laden asked to see Turki Aug. 2, 1990, the day Saddam Hussein invaded Iraq, he was not kept waiting.

What followed was described by Turki as one of history’s most expensive laughs. Bin Laden told Turki the royals must not invite the U.S. Army to the kingdom to push the Iraqis out of Kuwait. His “Afghan Arab” fighters could do the job. Turki laughed and a furious bin Laden stormed out.

That was a crucial turning point in history. Bin Laden became convinced the royal family was conspiring with Washington to facilitate the occupation of Saudi Arabia and control of its oil production facilities and that Saddam had been entrapped into invading Kuwait to provide a pretext for U.S. occupation. That was when he decided to take on the royal family – a career path that led him to become the world’s most wanted terrorist.

Prince Turki is the current Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington. It seems that since his “expensive laugh” the Prince has acquired a real penchant for missing the mark with his communiques, even if at times it has been somewhat deliberate.

The UK Science and Technology Select Committee has put forward a new classification table, ranking drugs in terms of the harm they cause, based on scientific evidence. (New Scientist)

What makes more sense than allocating resources in combatting drugs in proportion to the actual harm the drugs cause in the community?

Here’s the table. The committee’s assessments have been handed over to the UK government.

Two points however. Firstly the table does not differentiate methamphetamine from amphetamine and crack cocaine from cocaine. In both case the drugs should be classified separately. Meth and crack and far more costly to the users and to the community than amphetamine and cocaine. Besides the fact that they are totally different drugs, that is. The second point is that the “scientific evidence” that places GHB next to ecstacy is tragically flawed. Although GHB, when used in safe doses, is possibly the least harmful physically (note: not a derivative like 1,4b or GBL, which are potentially more harmful) and is not addictive, the potential for misuse (eg “date-rape” etc), dose volatility and the potential for overdose should have propelled it much further up the list.

You can get it while crashing your car through someone’s bedroom, you can get it while winning the Tour de France. As a matter of fact I’ve got it now. (that will probably only make sense to the Aussies)

We all need the occassional feel-good beer story.

A MAN who crashed his car into a sleeping couple’s bedroom allegedly cracked open a beer after freeing himself from his crumpled sedan and declared: “I’m going to jail for sure.”

A 36-year-old man and a 29-year-old woman, asleep in the room, cheated death when the runaway car shunted their bed sideways.
..
They escaped serious injury. The man said: “The crash was bizarre. I’m glad no-one was injured. I am very, very, very lucky.”

Unit owner Danielle Loy agreed the sleeping man was lucky to be alive. “They were sleeping on the other side of the bed, cuddled up,” she said.

“If he had slept like he normally did he’d be dead.”

“They’ve basically just cheated death.”

The couple told Ms Loy the driver had quickly emptied a beer after crashing the car, allegedly saying: “I’d better have another beer, I’m going to jail for sure.”

And he didn’t even offer a cold one to the couple whose sleep he just so rudely interrupted (and who were saved by the beer Gods, obviously)? Hmm, thats just Un-Australian!

Another man who knows the value of beer is the 2006 Tour de France champion, Floyd Landis. Cheers, Floyd, nice one!

UPDATE (28/7): Tsk, tsk, seems beer wasn’t Floyd’s secret weapon after all.

Various bits and pieces gathered this morning:

• From various news reports Israel has launched attacks against Hizbollah’s Al-Manar TV station in the Hizbollah controlled part of Beirut and bombed several runways at Beirut airport, flights are bring diverted to Cyprus. The road between Syrian capital Damascus and Beirut has also been bombed. A coastal blockade of Lebanon is in place. The Israelis are cutting off all of Hizbollah’s supply lines.
  
  Israel has also attacked the Palestinian mininstry.

• Hizbollah has fired around 85 Katyusha rockets into Israel in the last 48 hours. Two rockets of another type and reportedly of Iranian make, have also hit Haifa, the first time they have reached that far. There are also reports these were fired by Iranian Revolutionary Guard. At least 2 people dead and over a hundred injured. (Jerusalem Post)
• Syrian troops are massing along the Israeli border. (via via Right Truth)
• There are reports that Hizbollah is in the process of transferring the two Israeli hostages to Iran. Iran has flatly denied this. (via via Right Truth)
• Israelis in Tel Aviv are being told to get out their gas masks and stay inside, soldiers are patrolling the streets. (via via Right Truth)
• Stratfor has reported Israel has called up its reservists. According to them this can only mean one thing – a full scale invasion of Southern Lebonon, to take out Hizbollah. Expect the attack to begin in the next 48 hours. They may have brought their plans forward after the attack on Haifa.
• Israel has been dropping leaflets along the southern Lebanese border, according to the Lebanon Daily Star, warning Lebanese citizens to avoid areas where Hezbollah is active. The leaflets say the folllowing:
  “Due to the terrorist activities carried out by Hezbollah, the Israeli Army will continue to work within Lebanese territories for as long as it deems fit to protect Israeli citizens… You should know that the continuation of terrorist activities against Israel will be considered a double-edged sword for you and Lebanon.” (Stratfor)

An interesting aside from Stratfor (subscription):

“In illicit terms, the bulk of Lebanon’s economic involvement is in the drug trade. Here Hezbollah — the very same Hezbollah that Israel is likely to attack in Lebanon — is the primary player. Hezbollah maintains a network of processing centers for turning Afghan opium into heroin and methamphetamine labs in the Bekaa Valley, with some opium and marijuana produced locally as well. The Bekaa Valley will be a primary target for Israeli forces in the upcoming war.”

Remember, these people want to destroy the Satanic West any way possible – bleed it dry enonomically, by dragging it into expensive wars, and even damage it socially by flooding it with drugs (and make a few extra dollars to buy weapons in the process). The other obvious offensive is of course through the media, by appealing to the degraded moral sensibilities of the Western leftards, rendering impotent any impulse toward self-defence.

In recent years, slowly but surely, scientific research has again begun on the possible medical uses of various psychedelic substances. After several decades of almost total absence for mostly political reasons, small, often privately funded, studies have begun springing up around the world. MDMA has been showing very positive results in the treatment of anxiety and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Ibogaine has been haled as nothing short of a magical wonder cure for opiate dependence, at least in comparison to other treatment options currently available. Now recent research has added “magic” mushrooms, used by many cultures all over the world, from the South American Aztecs to the shamanic tribes of Siberia, for thousands of years, to the list of potential treatment options for a variety of psychological disorders.

From “‘Magic’ mushrooms blow many minds: study” on NineMSN:

“Magic mushrooms,” used by Native Americans and hippies to alter consciousness, appear to have similar mystical effects on many people, US researchers report.

More than 60 per cent of volunteers given capsules of psilocybin derived from mushrooms said they had a “full mystical experience.”

“Many of the volunteers in our study reported, in one way or another, a direct, personal experience of the ‘beyond,’” said Roland Griffiths, a professor of neuroscience and psychiatry and behavioral biology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who led the study.

A third said the experience was the single most spiritually significant of their lifetimes.

Many likened it to the birth of their first child or the death of a parent.

And the effects lingered.

Two months after getting the drug, 79 per cent of the volunteers said they felt a moderately or greatly increased well-being or life satisfaction, according to the report published in the journal Psychopharmacology.

Griffiths said the drug might be used to treat addiction as well as severe pain or depression.

Other teams are also exploring some different posibillities:

Food and Drug Administration, and one team led by Dr Charles Grob at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, California is testing the drug on patients with end-stage cancer.

“Our specific aim is to learn whether this psychoactive drug, psilocybin, might be effective in reducing anxiety, depression and physical pain, and therefore improving your quality of life,” the researchers say on their website.

Dr Solomon Snyder, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins who says he has experimented with LSD himself, said the experiment might lead to a way to find the “locus of religion” and the biological basis of consciousness in the brain.

What do you know, for a change the hippies were onto something. Of course too much of a good thing..

I highly recommend supporting MAPS: the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a non-profit organisation that assists research into the medical and spiritual potential of psychedelic substances, by helping scientists and research teams in securing funding, obtaining approval for and designing their studies. You can read about the many research projects currently under way in the US and around the world on their website. Current research includes MDMA, LSD, Ibogaine, psilocybin/mushrooms, mescaline/peyote, DMT, Ketamine, Salvia Divinorum and ajahuasca.