Drugs


Smurfing and other laundry methods

No-one can yet decide just how much cash was stolen in the robbery in Kent, but the Telegraph and the Times have started coinsidering the many ways in which the money can be successfully redistributed.

Smurfing involves breaking the haul down into smaller chunks and giving it to lesser criminals who then open their own bank accounts with it. But any large scale laundering is bound to be hard to do. The Times also suggests heading for the Balkans or somewhere else where bribery of officials is easier. The Telegraph hints at my idea, which would be to buy £20 million worth of cocaine and let the Colombians worry about dealing with the cash.

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Let loose the mosquitos of War

The Nazis in Italy released malaria carrying mosquitos in an attempt to halt the Allied advance, it is claimed. If true this would be the only known instance of biological warfare in Europe during WW2. Invading troops had been given anti malaria drugs and didn’t succumb, but cases of the disease soared amongst the civilian population.

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Gone in 60 Seconds

Forget the Cage/ Jolie/ Jones remake, this is the real deal.

H B “Toby” Halicki wrote, directed, starred in and did many of the stunts for this classic car heist/ chase movie. For $400,000 his character and a team of insurance investigators with a sideline in Grand Theft Auto have to steal 48 cars to order. Most of the thefts go smoothly, bar the occasional wild animal or trunkfull of heroin, but it’s the final car, Eleanor- a Mach 1 Mustang, that causes all the trouble and sets up a forty minute car chase across California.

The acting’s a little ropey, but in a charming way, and the film doesn’t slow down long enough for anyone to embarrass themselves with excessive emoting. The chase is the heart of the film, some of it shot on open roads and with genuine accidents incorporated into it. There’s none of the more-is-less feeling you get with car chases in so many recent movies. You know that half the stuff in Matrix Reloaded is done on a computer, so you’re not really excited by it (impressed, yes, but not excited). Plus it serves as a time capsule, holding the same sort of fascination as an episode of the Sweeney or similar, with all the 70’s hardware, cars and fashions.

Halicki died whilst making Gone in 60 Seconds 2, but also made Junkman, the trailer for which is one of the special features on this disc.

This is one of those cases where Amazon’s rental service has done its job.  I definitely want a copy of this film. As you can see from the list in the left hand column, we’ve got a varied selection of movies lined up for the coming months, all of which interest me, but none of which I’d just go ahead and buy without seeing them first. It’s a great system and I highly recommend it.


Reefer Madness

Three long essays, and an extensive notes and bibliography section, make up this book that looks at the US’ illegal and semi-legal economy. Eric Schlosser studies the politics and economics of marijuana, the growing illegal immigrant worker army and one man’s domination of the porn industry.

For over a century American politicians and moralisers have demonised cannabis and all who smoke it. The emphasis has always been on the harmful effects of the demon weed could have on middle class white kids. Senences for handling, or aiding the handling of, marijuana have escalated to the point where you can get a smaller sentence for murdering someone than for dealing a little dope. Meanwhile the system of paying informants and seizing assets has encouraged massive corruption.
As with any ill thought out, reactionary policy it’s the poor who suffer the mostwhilst the wealthy get away with their crimes and the powerful demonise those least able to fight back. The US prison system is underfunded and incapable of coping and the whole war on drugs is failing.

Per acre, strawberries are second only to marijuana. It is also one of the few cash crops that still cannot be effectively mechanically picked. So the strawberry farms of California rely on Mexican workers, many illegal, to harvest the berries and keep the costs down.

Conditions today are almost worse than thosefor the Okies in Grapes of Wrath. Unions have been broken up and pickers and sharecroppers exploited by unscrupulous farmers and combines.

The last essay traces the career of Reuben Sturman, a Cleveland comic salesman turned smut peddler who, at his peak, was the most powerful individual in the US porn industry. Consistently the obscenity cases brought against Sturman collapsed. In one ruling the jury produced a multi-page response berating the government for wasting time and money.

Such high profile embarrassments made Sturman a target for the authorities and in the end they got him for tax evasion. Not wanting to give money to the system that was trying to put him out of business, Sturman operated through increasingly complex series of shell companies and off shore accounts. Only by alleging, based on evidence it still won’t release, that Sturman had connections to the Mafia could the IRS get access to his Swiss accounts and make their case.

Throughout the essays it is clear that Schlosser is exasperated by successive governments’ inability to set the right priorities and hypocrisy in ignoring the behaviour of Enron et al. He seems to have warmed less to Sturman than his other subjects, but it is harder to feel for a tax cheat who resorted to strong arm tactics at the end than a man who could die in prison because he tried to supply somne medical marijuana.

Like Fast Food Nation, Schlosser’s look at junk food culture, this book makes you despair for the state of the US. However, unlike the expanding waistline, it looks like some of the problems aren’t going to exported, as other countries, including Britain, adopt more civilised drugs laws and others can manage to be grown up about sex.

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The man with the golden longbox

�For a bulky segment of a century, I have been an avid follower of comic strips � all comic strips,� Parker wrote. �This is a statement made with approximately the same amount of pride with which one would say, �I�ve been shooting cocaine into my arm for the past 25 years.��

The uneasy relationship of the literati and comic books.

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Don't eat and medicate

Government safety advisers are recommending that doctors check their patients’ diets before prescribing certain drugs, because some interactions can be detrimental or even fatal.

News like this is one of the reasons I’m considering a food/ diet/ health blog for the Spinneyhead family.

Avoiding interaction: what not to mix

Warfarin to prevent blood clotting

Reacts with cranberry juice and green vegetables. Efficacy may be reduced by ice cream, soya beans and avocados, although clinical significance and prevalence of this problem is unclear

Cholesterol-lowering or immunosuppressant drugs

Patients should not drink grapefruit juice

Sedatives; other drugs including paracetamol

Should not be mixed with alcohol

Lithium to treat bipolar disorder

Patients must not vary intake of salt once they have been stabilised on the drug

Oral contraceptives; anti-depressants in the SSRI class; anti-HIV drugs

Do not mix with St John’s wort, even though there is evidence that it can help treat depression too

Antibiotics in the tetracycline and quinolone classes

Milk and dairy products can reduce their effectiveness

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You got a revenue plan?

Problogger is looking for a business plan and so am I. Tomorrow I have an interview set up by New Deal that may get me some support to go self employed (I’ll try not to bitch about how the system will offer me all this help now that I’m a statistic when I really needed it when I first signed on and….. Oh. Failed.) so I’m looking at ways to make Spinneyhead a realistic (rather than pocket) money making concern.

None of PB’s ideas will work for Spinneyhead. The basic requirement I keep coming back to is Increase Traffic. From my end I have a number of plans to make Spinneyhead more popular. I’m going to start putting up more media on the main blog- that parrot gave me a huge boost in visitors- and I have some plans to get more in-depth with Eco House. There’s also Spinneyworld, which is taking shape, even if only in my head.

In the meantime, you too can do your bit. Tell a friend about Spinneyhead. Don’t worry, it’s not like introducing them to crack cocaine or midget porn, it will actually make them a better person. Mail a link to the parrot post to everyone who hasn’t seen it yet (in a non-spammy kind of a way, I want good juju from this viral marketing, not bad) or tell them about one of the other really cool things you found here. That is your mission, should you choose to accept it.

This post will self destruct.

Maybe.

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That would explain the paranoia

Wubble U did cocaine at Camp David when his father was President, a Bush family biography claims. The book’s by Kitty Kelley, who has a reputation for doing biographies that concentrate on the dark side- Sinatra, the Royal Family and Nancy Reagan have all had the treatment. she’s even become famous enough to merit an unauthorised biography of her own.


Keep them off the streets

My opinion of the Manchester City Centre Management Company and the Council sinks lower. Not content with fining skateboarders a grand for making Cathedral Gardens look like a fun place to be, it turns out they’re charging kids to use the pokey little skate park they’ve built as an alternative.

Edit I started writing a comment in reply to Ian J’s, but it stretched out, and rather than risk spreading it over several boxes, I thought I’d put it in here-

Ah, you’ve fallen for the lie. I bet MCCMC would be hard pressed to find any instances of collisions between boarders and pedestrians that have resulted in injuries. They’re just trying to create a fear of these “tearaway youths”. It’s not as heinous as their earlier lie- that they were doing this to protect the kids from drug dealers. (By moving them from an open, easily policed area where they had strength in numbers and lots of passing traffic to a dark little cage far away from watchful eyes. Right.)

These people have a blinkered, commercial view of what should go on in the city centre. It’s just another example of the recurring problems Manchester’s councils have had with youth culture, the worst example of which being the destruction of a thriving nightlife in the 60s when the abomination that is Arndale was dropped on top of the most popular venues. This was achieved by, amongst other things, the planting of news stories about the prevalence of drugs amongst this subculture and its implied danger to the children of good families. There was also an appeal to parents’ racism, you can’t have a good smear campaign with out a bit of xenophobia. (Potted version, a more complete telling of the tale can be found in Shake, Rattle and Rain.)

It’s a bit harder to play the race card in a debate about skate boarding, but I think they may have gone for a more contemporary bogeyman. Notice in the first report the reference to older boarders leading the youngsters astray. Older boarders, hmmmmm. What interest could they have in hanging around with children? There’s no way it could possibly be a love of the sport- must be kiddy fiddlers in baggy clothing.

I’m not a skateboarder (though I admit, if I had a BMX I’d want to play on the street furniture) so I can’t really explain why this makes me so angry.


Heavy Plant

I only got one suggestion for an addition to my hundred things list. Damian thought I should get an allotment. I like the idea, but it’s a bit too long term for now. So I’m going to modify it. Thing 103 will be Go Guerilla Planting in and around Manchester. Next Spring I’m going to potter around Manchester’s car parks and other spaces with a stick and some seeds. The stick makes the hole, I drop the seed in, and then I use the stick again to cover the hole up. I’m reckoning peas, herbs and other food plants. Though if I can find somewhere that sells marijuana seeds…….


Where were you when….

I was in a car near Cambridge at about two in the morning when I heard about Kurt Cobain’s death on the radio. I swear it was snowing (in April?) but that may be an implanted memory or the effects of the dope (I don’t smoke the stuff very often, so I’d amused everyone by giggling a lot and occasionally sliding under the table.)

(Nevermind, Nirvana)


Google Challenge- Sleep Deprivation

The first sensible suggestion for my challenge was sleep deprivation, so here goes. All links were found within a few clicks of the first three pages of Google results for the search.

Symptoms and causes of sleep deprivation. It can have similar effects to drink or drugs, with the brain’s functions visibly changing. Worried yet? Take this test to see how badly afflicted you are.

The flashing lights in video games can knock your circadian rhythms out of sync, resulting in sleeping later, drowsiness etc.

How to deal with sleep deprivation on the high seas. Don’t mess with your circadian genes- it’ll kill you. How a teacher can tell if their pupils are sleep deprived. It’s important you spot the symptoms because sleep deprivation can make teenagers even more depressed and moody.

(Bonus section. I got two other suggestions last week so- How to attach soffits. Where to get California redwood soffits. And Pro Series Vinyl Soffits.

Canadian Beavers. All about Beavers. The Oregon State University Beavers. Angry Beavers. Bare-Beavers (Not Safe For Work, natch) And, from yesterday, Mary and her beaver (also NSFW))

Post suggestions for next Friday’s challenge in the comments.