I ended up overhearing some NPR show (I hate NPR) and some expert was being interviewed, blathering the usual Western mainstream media blather. "So what can be done to calm all this down? " “Calm it down? Well, Hamas has to stop launching rockets into Israel. If that can be enforced this time, if their rockets can be taken away, things will calm down again (aural shrug).”
Did I mention that I hate NPR?
Y’know it’s hard to remember this kicked off when a far right leader was missing his deadline to reform a government and sent some thugs in with flash bombs into a mosque…
Because nobody is remembering the hard right criminal isn’t democratically elected in “The Only Democracy in The Middle East ™” right now.
I would say “this episode kicked off” but yes.
To be fair, they had on Ambassador Areikat this weekend:
And they’ve had on Palestinian activists this past week or so:
Gosh, I wonder if those two facts are in anyway related! Must not be! All in our minds, of course! /s
I don’t really think I was being unfair. National Propaganda Radio consistently toes the general US imperial line, even if they do make an effort to seem fair once in awhile.
You can not show support for Palestinians by building more illegal settlements and displacing more people. Erdoğan is as bad as Netanyahu.
Agreed…
Also…
Performative cruelty.
Things are looking bleak for English lower league and non-league football.
Two years ago it was Bury, last year it was Macclesfield Town, will it be Dover Athletic and Southend United’s turn to be bankrupted into non-existence this year?
Covid has made things worse, but this has been a problem that was about to happen for years now.
In neoliberal terms of analysis: these groups are working in a highly regulated market, and reaping the inevitable profits from that regulation, but are also working to maintain a favourably regulated space for themselves on Spain’s southern coast in order to reduce their core costs. One is led to ask the question, given the failure of both demand- and supply-side regulation to mitigate increasing negative externalities: might an overall structural market reform be the solution? 
It does sound like El Pais/The Guardian got a bunch of “honest crooks” to go on the record. I found the candour of the Napolitan Camorra enforcer to be particularly refreshing (or perhaps “bracing” is the word).
Last year, I was sad to see what’s happening in Mexico after watching a travel piece on Acapulco. Cartel-related crime in Puerto Rico and other popular tourist destinations in the Caribbean is increasing, too:
Not sure what these groups would do in a legal market, since they’ve spent so much time and money on controlling the illegal ones.
Not sure what these groups would do in a legal market, since they’ve spent so much time and money on controlling the illegal ones.
I’m sure in pure economic terms this is “Dutch Disease” (although, ironically, the El Pais/Guardian article does note Dutch gangs are prominent in Marbella). You would be looking at 20 years before the economies readjusted to other sources of income. I’m sure the Dutch and Canadian legalization stories will prove informative: drug consumption will drop after legalization and former “informal” drug industry people will move on to the next thing as margins shrink (ideally).
Unless we design our economies to provide employment opportunities that are more attractive than crime (and the mirror economy in enforcement/suppression) we’re likely stuck for now.
There has been commentary that it’s unfair that in now legal places cannabis sales are now the province of white folks with the money and bank connections to open stores and the black entrepreneurs who use to be the main source are left behind.
I’m guessing that there aren’t MORE Black weed dealers than white weed dealers… if more Black weed dealers ended up in jail, it’s because of racism in our criminal justice system. Whites dominate both the illegal and legal market, because we live in a white supremacist system. White people have more access to capital to open new businesses. I find it highly unlikely that the people who are dominating the legal weed business are former illegal drug dealers.
The biggest dealers I knew prior to legalization were White frat boys.
I find it highly unlikely that the people who are dominating the legal weed business are former illegal drug dealers.
Can’t comment on the U.S. side… especially with how I pronounce “shibboleth”… 
Here 
the bag gets a bit mixed not only by the medical cannabis companies’ head start, but with the general lack of profit to be made. We have a “personal use” 4-plant exemption and, based on the reports of an acquaintance, modern strains produce jaw-dropping amounts from 4 plants. Mix in a little neighbourly co-operation and you have a local surplus that can render the legal market a tad redundant. When street prices are lower than legal retail you know you have a problem.
Buy me a 
, however, and I will tell you a couple of entertaining stories of local entrepreneurs from well established Upper Canada demographics and their exploits in the space. “Dominate” is not a word that applies…
It is astonishing that the FA has allowed clubs like Macclesfield to die when their total debt was approximately the per-game salary of Manchester United’s second goalkeeper. (I saw this video the other day, right after the EPL team I support self-destructed. I’m thinking of switching to bowling or fishing as a sport to follow.)
(We were a Chicago Daily News family when I was growing up, and I’m still not a Tribune fan, but this is a major blow to news coverage in Chicago.)
Shit. Our neighbor down the hill was shouting in a more alarming way than usual, so we walked down our trail to see if everything was okay. She ended up shouting at us about 5G and how people were spying on her and there are no more dandelions (Narrator: there are), and claiming another neighbor called the cops on her and, and, and.
Anyway, last night I was sitting out on the porch alone at around 9 pm, and she goes walking by the house screaming up at me that I’m a nazi bitch and how dare I threaten to call the police on her (I didn’t) and tell her to shut up (also didn’t, though mr. Linkey did politely ask her to keep it down after 10 pm) and that she was going to break into our house and it’s illegal to spy on people…
I wish we’d never gone to check, and I don’t want to engage anymore than we already have, but I’d like to anonymously help hook her up with social services that might be able to help her. And I’m kind of scared of running into her on a regular walk on our rather rural road by the river.
Does anyone have any wisdom to share? I’d rather not involve law enforcement.
