Lighting a cigarette linked to bushfires! Motor vehicles emissions linked to cancer! Drinking a beer linked to corporate takerism! Would you mind telling us why other dangerous products and legal drugs are not included in the UN'shit list?

Big Pharma linked to WHOM? Ford and Holden linked to WHOM?

Mazda linked to, Zoom, Zoom Zoom! Oil linked to greed and war!

And he tipped his hat and said 'happy motoring'...

ABC - SPECIAL: The United Nations drug agency has warned that even occasional use of marijuana is a link in a long and dangerous cycle of crime, degradation and terrorism.

I can see the versatility with those links now? All pot smokers are urban terrorists? Great way to curb the habit? Lock em all up and rendition them to china?

ABC: "The links between organised crime, drug trafficking, drug consumption, drug money, arms trafficking and terrorism become clearer every day," said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

But not the link between organised governments, oil, corporations, big pharma, breweries, and tobacco? I wonder why that is?

Antonio Maria Costa: "We know that even the occasional marijuana smoker is a link in a much longer and more dangerous chain."

Just like a rock is linked to an earthquake?

We also know that even the occasional driver, pill popper, smoker and drinker is linked in a much longer and more dangerous chain. So what! All matter is linked no doubt.

In a message to mark an international anti-drug day, UN secretary-general Kofi Annan warned that drugs are "little more than tickets to a dead end."

Just like Central Governments, Wars, Big Phama, Texico Oil, Holden, and Ford perhaps, and also like some other corporate media giants.

Governments marked the day with drug bonfires, and, in the case of China, by executing convicted drug traffickers.

Beauty? We could start with hoWARd!

Is this another attack on the indigenous people of Afghanistan or what?

In Afghanistan, where the UN has warned that narcotics trafficking is undermining the country's fragile security, officials put almost 60 tons of opium, heroin and hashish to the torch, according to General Mohammad Daud, the deputy minister for counter-narcotics.

What has that got to do with smoking herbs you might ask?

Afghanistan is the world's largest drug producer and supplies almost 90 per cent of the opium used to make heroin.

In Burma, the world's second largest drug producer, the military regime used the occasion of the anti-drugs day, as it does every year, to burn a huge stash of opium, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines at a ceremony attended by diplomats and foreign journalists.

In China, still conditioned by the awareness that opium ravaged previous generations and opened the door to foreign imperialists, the Government marked anti-drug day by executing dozens of traffickers.

Is that a joke son? Perhaps Geoff Raby can put that on his Human Rights agenda with Minister Shen Guofang in the current discussions about Australia and China's human rights records.

In the southern city of Guizhou, 24 people were convicted of trafficking this weekend, and five were immediately executed with a bullet in the neck, according to official media.

The Vienna-based UNODC, which was to publish its annual report in Stockholm on Wednesday, estimates that 200 million people are users of illicit drugs around the world, with 40 million of those chronically addicted.

But killing people is good way to solve the problem? Immediately executed, but I wonder, 'were they given a fair trial'? That's what you call setting an example?

Thought police

Illicit drugs don't include central governments, corporations, big pharma, oil companies? The tobacco industry? Or even the Alcohol industry? Mmmmm!

'Tickets to a misinformed end me thinks'

ABC: In his message, Mr Annan said that drugs "might have names that sound colourful or enticing, such as crack, pot, junk, crystal meth and disco biscuits".

"But these are little more than tickets to a dead end," he said.

But not unlike illegal and degrading wars? Inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners, torture, and the Coalition of the Killing I suppose? As well as george w bushit, tony blurter, john hoWARd, oil, plonk, fags, diazepam, piss, Johnny Walker, Jack Daniels, or even margaritas? Not even a Tooheys or two?

But at last some good advice

As one means of combating drugs, Mr Annan recommended "participation in sports to improve health and well-being, teach the value of teamwork and discipline, and build self-confidence".

As long as it's not military training in the special-forces or army to improve teamwork, discipline, and to build self-irrationalism then that's okay!

All things in moderation can help as well and also to stay away from things that might harm you if you know about it that is?

A good place to start would be to stop illegal and degrading wars, killing, maiming and torture, motor vehicles, harmful products and some of the legal drugs first so the government's and corporations can set an example for the rest of us?

War in Afghanistan

ABC: "In Afghanistan, last year's poppy crop was the largest in history "because everyone thought they could grow poppy with impunity," said Habibullah Qaderi, the minister in charge of counter-narcotics.

He said that Afghanistan had "turned the corner" in the fight against drug trafficking, but Mr Costa said recently that while the area planted with poppies was shrinking, the productivity for each hectare was increasing.

Afghan and Western officials have said several senior officials, including provincial governors and police chiefs, were involved in the narcotics business.

Mr Costa, who also heads the UN's Vienna office, said "traffickers, warlords and insurgents in Afghanistan control quasi-military operations" in a trade that last year was estimated to be worth $A3.6 billion.

Burma, where the ruling military is accused by the United States of participating in the drugs trade, says it has destroyed drugs with a street value of almost $19.5 billion and slashed its production of opium.

Nevertheless, UNODC says at least 1.15 million people still depend on poppy crops, and narcotics produced in Burma continue to flood Asian markets, Europe and North America.

Despite draconian punishments for traffickers, the drug problem is getting worse in China, and contributing to the spread of AIDS through the sharing of contaminated needles.

The official China Youth Daily said the number of drug addicts in China reached 791,000 at the end of last year, an increase of 6.8 per cent on a year earlier.

But the official figure is "just the tip of the iceberg," legal scholar Pi Yijun told the Beijing News. The real figure, he said, is "shocking".

Still, the drugs agency was able to point to a few successes in the war against drugs, including Laos, which for the first time in many years is no longer consider a supplier of illegal opiates to the world market."

But what has all that got to do with smoking herbs in Australia? Nothing! Just more propaganda so the government can send troops to Afghanistan to help out with the occupation and to get everyone else hooked on legal drugs that they benefit from and can procure.

Related:

Searching for resistance in Afghanistan

After the assassination plot against U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad was revealed to Kabul officials, spokesman Jawed Ludin said, "Our people are dying, our schools are getting burned, our mosques are getting blown up, and our clergy are getting assassinated."

More:  http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2005/06/92992.php

Howard off to US, UK - part 5

But what does it matter the first time or the second time "since the illegal and degrading war on Iraq"? Incidentally, a war, that killed, maimed and injured over 100,000 innocent men, women and children? It only matters I suppose to get the second part of the paragraph into this article.

More:  http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2005/06/92954.php

Drugs firms 'creating ills for every pill'

The report from the Commons health select committee is also expected to criticise the secretive process of licensing medicines in Britain, following several safety scares in which so-called 'wonder drugs' have turned out to have serious side effects.

More:  http://www.melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2005/04/90356.php