Thankyou MO MOWLAM: a voice crying in the wilderness.
Mo’ introduces some ANTI PROHIBITION wisdom with a paragraph we should pay close attention to for clarity upon the DOPY Terrorism inflicted by our Czarist government upon us every day. To me now, in 2009: INVESTMENTS, BANKING, PROHIBITION & TERRORISM seem connected to the MILITARY and INTELLIGENCE agencies, based on the new data since MO passed away. The FALSE and so miss-information of NUKES being in IRAQ to hypnotize and dazzle.
“While the United States and Britain continue to assert that toppling Saddam
Hussein’s regime in Iraq is the best next step in the war against terrorism, I
would like to suggest a more productive course of action. The problem with
terrorism, as has been recognised from the beginning of this campaign, is that
it does not occupy a particular territory nor own clearly identifiable assets
that can be attacked and destroyed. Many terrorists live in the United States
and Europe; their assets are the funds they keep in conventional investments,
and the only means of detection is through good intelligence.”
MO then goes on into her LEGALIZATION strategy and i’ll quote her to the end, as i feel its so good, progressive and amazes me that it comes from a BRITISH politician as it sounds nothing like LINDA WALL THROW or Maggie Thatcher to me, or like the chest beating M.P’s, except one or two – George Galloway and maybe another?
“Even President Bush has made the connection: “It is important for
Americans to know that the traffic in drugs finances the work of terror,
sustaining terrorists, that terrorists use drug profits to fund their cells to
commit acts of murder.”
May I suggest that rather than bombing civilians in
various Muslim countries, the United States and Britain begin to take a more
intelligent approach to the international drugs trade: namely, to legalise it.
For by doing this, not only will we help solve one of the major problems facing
the world today, the unregulated growth of drugs trafficking, but it would also
further isolate the terrorists.
It is hard to assess the size of the
international drugs trade, but in 1999 the UN Human Development report estimated
it to be around $400bn a year, equivalent to the GDP of a country the size of
Spain and representing, at that time, about 8% of world trade. This makes it
second only as an industry to the arms trade at $800bn a year, and ahead of oil
and gas, and chemicals and pharmaceuticals.
Not only does this point to the
existence of widespread criminal activity, it also indicates that a large amount
of corrupt money is being fed into the world economy on an annual basis. There
is a corrosive effect where money derived from crime is introduced into the
legal economy – who is to say that large-scale financial decisions are being
made not for the most efficient use of such funds, but because they will
facilitate their most efficient laundering.
But it is not just corruption
that is the issue. The harmful effects of drugs are multiplied around the world,
as traffickers pay “mules” and others involved with heroin and cocaine,
spreading both addiction and HIV. It has been estimated that there are 190
million addicts worldwide.
It is clear that the present approach to drugs is
not working, and if the war against drugs fails then we can be sure that the war
against terrorism will also be unsuccessful.
From my experience of being
responsible for drugs policy in the previous government, I came to the
conclusion that legalisation and regulation of all drugs was the only way to
reduce the harmful effects of this unstoppable activity. There are many reasons
why I reached this conclusion, which are too extensive to go into here.
One
of those reasons, though, is that we need to detach the international drugs
business from criminality – not least because it would further isolate
international terrorism by removing the finance and other resources, such as
places for training, and money laundering facilities. It would be a big step
forward in reducing criminality in the world’s financial system.
Drugs and
terrorism are linked and are set to become more so. Legalisation of drugs would
stop this connection: it would begin to solve problems caused by drugs today and
would isolate the terrorists.
· Mo Mowlam was in Tony Blair’s cabinet from
1997-2001 and was responsible for the government’s drugs policy from 1999-2001.
Her memoirs, Momentum, were published in May.
MoMwlm@aol.com
DEEP SCRATCH 