SeVeR

If Obama wins and gets stone-walled, it may open the eyes of a few decent people, possibly resulting in the change that Obama and anyone with half-a-brain for what goes on in Washington wants. It might not be in his Presidency, but in the long run his efforts may help to show the cracks in the system. McCain's negative political ads are merely a sign of what the Republican party has come to stand for. They don't campaign on policies, they use the stupidity of the populace to gain votes. They criticise Obama for stupid reasons like: 1. He says change too much. 2. We are sick of seeing him all the time. 3. He's a celebrity figure and not a politician. 4. He's only here because he's black. 5. He might not be patriotic enough. These are not political arguments. They mean jack-!@#$%^&*! The Republican party typically gains the support of Christians and hard-core Patriots, and that's simply because these groups of people are idiots. I don't want to elaborate on that, it would side-track the topic too much.

Holland: In the Netherlands 9.7% of young boys consume soft drugs once a month, comparable to the level in Italy (10.9%) and Germany (9.9%) and less than in the UK (15.8%) and Spain (16.4%) but much higher than in, for example, Sweden (3%), Finland or Greece. Dutch rates of drug use are lower than U.S. rates in every category. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_the_Netherlands (it's all properly sourced) So no, i'm not agreeing with you on this !@#$%^&*umption . And just out of interest, why would it be more severe? lol..

Lol, you quoted me but didn't reply to the point... On what you did say, I'd like to see the dealers try and cut out all their Middle-men, their risk-taking import costs and their only profit, in order to try to compete with a m!@#$%^&* supplier operating on zero profit, but i think we know it isn't going to happen. 1. They can't. 2. They won't want to.

How would my plan for legalisation do this? The information gathered by the legal suppliers would be confidential and not open to employers. The employers can still do their own tests if they wish, which is the same as the current situation. So what exactly is your point????.... You haven't made a single point about how this is not cost effective. I challenge you to make one. When i countered your point about costs from your last post, you didn't say anything. Again, you're exagerating something, using it as something you can argue against, and completely going off on a tangent.

I had no idea the difference was that huge. I guess this answers my question to Samapico, and kinda blows most of NBV's arguments about expenses out of the window. Imagine cutting out all of those Middle-men and dealers, and just shipping it over from the farms that produce it. Both your plan and mine recognise this, and both rest on the same basic principle. Why can't NBV grasp it? I want to extend your plan to only registering existing drugs users, as the dealers won't be able to stay afloat solely by addicting new users and then losing them to the government supplier. I think this would be an effective method of cutting down on new drug users. Sure, existing users might try and get their friends addicted, but this will happen anyway. My plan would reduce the number of outlets where new users can get addicted. I think my method won't completely stop new users but i'm sure it will have some effect. I'd rather not have people just walking into a shop and buying drugs legally, which they then become addicted too. In the same way, the psychological effect of de-romanticising drug-taking by treating it like a perfectly legal illness will also have some effect on stopping people from taking up the habit. Don't bite my head off here NBV, i'm talking about potential new users, not existing users (like i did before, although that didn't seem to help ). I want to kill two birds with one stone, although i'd be happy if the government simply followed your plan doc.

NBV: I haven't said that in this topic, stop misquoting me, i ignore your posts from the moment you misquote me. That seems reasonable to me. Anyway, onto more constructive debate... You can drug-test your employees all you want. You just won't have access to the records used by the government supplier as that will be (and should be) confidential. There are plenty of social workers, health workers and NHS employees who take up most of the work in England. Alot of drugs clinics could be run out of existing hospitals or rehab centres. It won't cost a great deal as the infrastructure is already in place. That's an American spelling.... No, i mean labelling.

Sama: 1.. As i said before, and will obviously have to say again, you can have confidentiality agreements in place, so that no office has access to the information other than the government supplier.2. You can add any new types of drugs to the system. Ok Sama, lets get straight to the point. Do you think that the government supplying drugs without making a profit will be able to under-cut the prices of private dealers? Bear in mind a number of economic principles. Firstly, they will be a m!@#$%^&* supplier, and will be buying and selling massive quan!@#$%^&*ies. Even if they wanted to make the same percentage profit as the private dealers then they would still beat them for price. Secondly, zero profit means exactly what i'm saying it means. !@#$%^&*, they could even operate at a loss and call it a social scheme (although i don't think it's needed). So whatever "taxes" involved are included when i say non-profit. I guess we call them operating costs. Thirdly, there is no middle man. Fourthly, the cost of importation is minimal when it's legal and m!@#$%^&*-imported. They could pretty much sell it for what they buy it for off the !@#$%^&*ed poppy plant in Afghanistan. Seriously... it will be faaaaarrr cheaper. NBV: No offense, but if you could spell the word ridiculous, i might have taken a bit more time replying to your post. But here goes... Did i say this? Does what i say even imply this? Did i not say new users will be put off (not existing users)? Exactly.... there is no point in replying to your posts because you aren't arguing with me, you're arguing with a figment of your imagination. I'm not pissed off that you disagree with me, i'm pissed off because you constantly change my words into something you can argue back at.

WTF? Pay of the dealers? You've even put it in quotation marks. Tell me where i said that, or stop misquoting me. This is the second post in a row now after the "tax and regulations" rubbish from your last post. When did i say anything about buying now and paying later, or when did i ever say labelling drug addiction as an illness is anything more than a secondary POTENTIAL benefit that has nothing directly to do with the main argument, yet you still seem to focus on it because it's the easiest thing to pick holes in (of course it's easy to pick holes in it, it's psychology, and i'd like to see you try and prove the opposite!) Look, if you're going to misquote me and not read my posts, i'm not going to bother to answer your post with any kind of effort.

Not to mention, when professional experts come out with statements like "(my) views are shared by the "overwhelming majority" of professionals in the field, including police officers, health workers and members of the government.", I think legalisation is probably the right track, regardless of the method.

NBV: I never said anything about a tax. I'm talking about a non-profit government company, selling at the minimum price possible. The idea is to out-compete the dealers to such a massive extent that they are effectively wiped out. As for crime, we will significantly reduce the robberies, burglarys and muggings that drug-users carry out in order to pay off their dealers. We will also reduce the crimes committed by drugs-gangs and other dealers, as they will no longer have an income. By making the users buy their drugs from the government you can offer them help to kick the habit, and you can even build a rehabilitation centre right next door so they have to walk past it every time they buy drugs. The simple answer is, it's completely confidential, as it falls under doctor-patient confidentiality. Where is this "tax" idea coming from? I never said anything about that... This is getting tiresome. The whole point of this plan it to under-cut the dealers. If there were "taxes and regulation fees" then were wouldn't be any point would there?!? You're arguing a null point because if it were just as expensive as the dealers (who make massive profits from what would be a smaller supply chain compared with what the government can do) then there is no point in using this idea. It's obviously possible to under-cut the dealers given the quan!@#$%^&*y the government could purchase, combined with a non-profit approach. 5. Already answered. On the first sentence: Exactly. On the rest, well... if you can't figure it out from what i've said then it's pointless debating with you. I listed it as the last point because it's secondary to the main points. It's a psychological war, that is only a potential benefit. It may not work, but there is alot of reason to believe it will have an effect. Currently it's a crime, it's rebellious, it's romantic, it's daring, it's something cool people do. Turning that into an illness, emphasising the weakness of those affected, is going to have an effect on potential new users. How much of an effect, i don't know.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/au...ed=networkfront Finally, what i've been proposing for years has come out, and as it happens, anybody with knowledge of the drugs trade is in full support. Legalise drugs, why? 1. Selling drugs through legal, no-profit, government agencies would remove the drug-trade over-night, together with all the crime !@#$%^&*ociated with it. 2. Allowing the government to control the drug trade would have huge benefits such as being able to increase the availability of help to those addicted. 3. There are tests to determine drug-use, and these can be used to register anyone addicted to drugs. Thus, people who have not previously taken drugs before will not be able to buy drugs from the clinic. 4. Anybody desperate enough will still go to drug dealers. However, the dealers will immediately lose their new customer to the government addiction clinics, as they won't be able to compete with the price. 5. The dealers will disapear, and with the government providing for existing users only, there will be NO NEW USERS. Drug-use will drastically decline. 6. The crimes that drug-users commit to pay off their dealers such as burglary and assault will be vastly reduced. 7. If we treat drug-addiction as an illness rather than a crime we will remove the "coolness" of it, and reduce it's appeal.

Typical conservative drivvel... You create or exaggerate a foe in order to justify being aggressive towards it. The definition of a Christian conservative government, and lets be clear that conservatives couldn't get into power without being Christian, is a government that tells people how to think. It wouldn't say "have whatever religion you want" and it wouldn't say "welcome to our country Mr Mohammed Iqbal Mustapha".... no, it would say "radical islam is about to bomb our country and take over our government, we must batter their horribly oil-saturated countries with tomahawk missiles and give them the democracy that we, i mean they, deserve.

Is that what you call yourself?

Do you mean that everything is part of everything else? The way you put it sounds quite dumb tbh lol

Israel is not a pawn. It's more likely that the U.S. is 90% of the whole chessboard and Israel is the chess player. I dislike Israel but i'm going to be realistic and say the U.S. will come to their aid quick enough. Even if Israel has completely lost all their land, and their government is holed up in a secret bunker, then the U.S. will come along and bomb the muslims until the land is empty of them. Only in the most serious of cir!@#$%^&*stances will be see how much the U.S. is in the pocket of Israel. -EDIT- I think we've all seen the !@#$%^&*urances that Obama has been forced to give the American-Zionists about being pro-Israel. This is a given for McCain of the Ziopublicans, but with Obama it shows how much influence, or even control, the Zionists hold.

McCain is still stuck in the Cold War. Typical aging conservative.

I'm pretty sure that Israel is still in violation of the UN right? They need to give back the land they took in 1967, and the additional illegal settlements since then. 1 & 2: What Finland said. I couldn't have put it better myself. 3. It's not politics, it's corruption. Although i like to say: In America power doesn't corrupt, it's a pre-condition for getting into power in the first place. Let me elaborate quickly. Truman was getting slaughtered within the Jewish controlled press, he made a U-Turn on his Middle East policy, gave birth to Israel, and got re-elected for a second term as President on the back of some VERY favourable press coverage. If that's not corruption then i don't know what is. I think we all know that if America were to have gone the other way at the UN vote, then at least 20 other countries would have followed suit (Europe and South America). Even so, that's only one point from many. South America were given as much say in the future of Palestine as the countries of the Middle East were. War-torn economies from around the world, who were now utterly dependent on the one country that decided to stay out of the war for 2-3 years whilst wracking up billions of dollars in loans, were given a vote. What were the going to do with it? The vote was a sick joke for so many reasons, and the product of American corruption. It pretty much hinged on America. 4. NBV, i never said you did, it was more of a statement on my part. Finland, I actually started a topic on this "Anti-semitism" rubbish a few months back when this article came out: http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idU...lBrandChannel=0 ..sporting statements such as: "The distinguishing feature of the new anti-Semitism is criticism of Zionism or Israeli policy that -- whether intentionally or unintentionally -- has the effect of promoting prejudice against all Jews by demonizing Israel and Israelis and attributing Israel's perceived faults to its Jewish character," and this: "Such unremitting criticism of Israel "intentionally or not encourages anti-Semitism." This hostility can translate into physical violence, as in the surge in anti-Semitic incidents worldwide during the 2006 war between Israel and the Shi'ite Muslim group Hezbollah, the report said." Whilst mentioning Ahmadinejad and Chavez and the leaders of any government not on America's Christmas card list. In Iran they distinguish between anti-Zionism and anti-semitism, and we should do the same. When articles such as this one come out i feel sick to my stomach, because even if i can see straight through it, i know millions of Americans are going to think criticism of Israel is racist.

1. You cannot compare the Arab conquest of the holy lands 1400 years ago with the Jewish conquest 60 years ago, unless you want to ignore almost two millenia of human moral development. 1400 years ago it was right, 60 years ago it was wrong. 2. Saying the British had a right to give the land to the Jews is quite frankly ridiculous. The British had no right, and it is even more criminal that they (but mainly America) gave the land to their political allies, the Jews. The par!@#$%^&*ion gave 55% of the land to a Jewish population that was 1/3 the size of the Arab population, and additionally, most of this Jewish population had only been living there for a few decades as a result of the American government changing laws in order to allow m!@#$%^&* immigration to Israel. 3. I hope we've all seen the "UN vote", and i have discussed this in detail on other topics. Suffice to say all neighboring countries were against the par!@#$%^&*ion plan, almost guaranteeing the wars to follow. They were over-ruled by the corrupt America-allied South American dictatorships of the time, a crippled group of European countries who were reliant on U.S. loans and thus had no choice but to follow America, and chiefly, an American government run by Harry Truman... who at the time of the creation of Israel was urged by U.S. diplomats from the Middle East not to heed Zionist urgings. He replied: "I'm sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism: I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my cons!@#$%^&*uents." . Extremely racist... 4. Lets be absolutely clear that Judaism and Jewish people are not the enemy, Zionism and Israel is. Nothing about the Muslim aggression against Israel is racist, although we are led to believe they are racist through our carefully controlled media who want us to dismiss these people as irrational nut-jobs by attributing them with the ultra-sensitive, absolute moral crime that is racism. If the majority of Americans knew their history, and knew why the Muslims were fighting, then the Muslims would actually get some public support. This is a clear example of how the views of the people have been aligned with the views of their leaders.

"If we were weak, Israel would not hesitate to start another war," he said. "We are stronger than before and when Hizbollah is strong, our strength stops Israel from starting a new war... We don't seek war, but we must be ready." Very well put. Alot of truth in this statement, not only for Israel but for the USA. Hezbollah have survived being labelled a terrorist organisation, and the truth is starting to break through that they're actually a civilian army from Southern Lebanon who represent the views of the people in that region. They hate Israel as a result of the Israeli occupation of Lebanon for about 20 years up to the year 2000, they hate Israel for the massacre of their people in the recent conflict where over 1000 Lebanese civilians died (about 30% were children, so don't tell me they were soldiers), and they hate Israel for the kidnapping of their people who remain without charge in detention centres in Israel. When Hezbollah returns the favour by kidnapping SOLDIERS (not civilians like Israel), Israel kills a thousand civilians. Hezbollah target military bases with their rockets and kill more Israeli soldiers than civilians. These kind of facts don't get reported.

You seem to have socialism confused with a dictatorship.

What Finland said. Where is the evidence for comments like this: "he lacks common sense" and this: "Obama simply doesn't have enough real-life experience" ???

..... Always used to think, what sort of no-conscience people do this sort of thing. Lol, can't say i'm surprised.

You can expect the right-wing, historically and ideologically, to use misleading propaganda. And as for Aileron, well, i would expect him to buy into it.

I don't disagree with your post NBV, although i don't think Astro said a society isn't made of individuals. What makes a good society is being greater than the sum of it's individuals. Hence Astro's sarcasm when replying to you with "A society is just the individuals in it and nothing else "

Lol conservatives make me laugh. I think the first time they build something by themselves, or make their first $1000 dollars, they take it upon themselves to turn that good feeling into a demand that everyone should be utterly self-sufficient. In a way they're more of a socialist than i'll ever be, because they would rather force us all to not have a society. In a conservative world we'd all have our little plot of land, fenced off from the next plot, sitting on our porch with a gun, with 15 bolts on the door, a guard dog, and an American flag waving from the rooftop... Some people don't realise that civilisation is the reason we have guns and houses and supermarkets.... and flag manufacturers....