Pharmaceutical poppies in Alberta? I’m all for rural diversification, but really – shouldn’t we be importing the stuff from Afghanistan? It’s a question others are asking;

The buds of millions of poppy flowers are swelling across Afghanistan. In the far southern provinces bordering Iran, the harvest will start later this month. By mid- May the fields around British military camps in Helmand will be ringing to the sound of scythes, rather than gunfire.
And this year’s opium harvest will almost certainly be the largest ever. In the five years since the overthrow of the Taliban regime, land under cultivation for poppy has grown from 8,000 to 165,000 hectares.
The US wants to step up eradication programmes, crop-spraying from the air. But, desperate to win “hearts and minds” in Afghanistan and protect British troops, Tony Blair is on the brink of a U-turn that will set him on a collision course with President George Bush.
The Prime Minister has ordered a review of his counter-narcotics strategy – including the possibility of legalising some poppy production – after an extraordinary meeting with a Tory MP on Wednesday, The Independent on Sunday has learnt. Tobias Ellwood, a backbencher elected less than two years ago, has apparently succeeded where ministers and officials have failed in leading Mr Blair to consider a hugely significant switch in policy.
Supporters of the measure say it would not only curb an illegal drugs trade which supplies 80 per cent of the heroin on Britain’s streets, but would hit the Taliban insurgency and help save the lives of British troops. Much of the legally produced drug could be used to alleviate a shortage of opiates for medicinal use in Britain and beyond, they say.
[…]
A spokesman for No 10 said that Mr Blair agreed to consider the idea, and would reply before Easter, adding: “The Prime Minister did note there were doubts about the capacity of the Afghan government in this regard.”
Mr Ellwood said: “It is ironic that the world, including Britain, experiences a shortage of diamorphine and codeine, but we choose to prevent the fourth poorest country in the world from producing it. Instead we are destroying the crops, alienating communities who then seek support from the Taliban. Five years since the invasion, peace remains a distant hope. Until the issue of poppy crops is solved, the fragile umbrella of security will never be strong enough for long-term reconstruction and development initiatives to take root.”

That’s right. There’s a shortage of the stuff. Meanwhile, poppy growing seems to be the one thing Afghanis are really good at and we’re trying to stop them from doing it.
With all the millions in foreign aid being poured into the country to plant the seeds for a stable economy, why wouldn’t rechanneling Afghanistan opium towards the legitimate pharmaceutical industry be the number one priority on the order paper?
Surely the problems in achieving legal commercialization of the crop can only pale against the problems created by eradicating it.
(COMMENTS NOTE: Please stay on topic. This is not an invitation for a debate on the pros and cons of legalizing recreational drug use.)

Russia is in the midst of choosing – organized crime? or re-Sovietization? – as they put the squeeze on former satellites.
Led by the planet’s best known basket case, the crime syndicate known as “North Korea” has claimed a successful nuclear test and a few unsuccessful long range missile launches aimed vaguely in an eastward direction. China is – with thousands of missiles aimed at tiny Taiwan and relations with old rival Japan decidedly tense – building up their military at an unprecedented rate.
Iran is working inexorably towards the day of Israel’s thermonuclear destruction. A nuclear equiped Pakistan is under threat of encroaching Talibanization, while Islamists wage terror from Thailand to Somalia to Turkey to Baghdad to Londonistan.
So, with those facts carefully considered, what better time for this?

The Air Force, U.S. Strategic Command and U.S. Northern Command are planning to shut down the huge underground command bunker at Cheyenne
Mountain, Colo., where U.S. nuclear war operations would be held and space
and missile tracking is done.
A defense official said Congress is being misled about the supposed cost savings for moving the mountain’s functions to other less-protected bases.
“The real cost will be billions of dollars, and we will lose the cornerstone of the U.S. nuclear command and control facilities,” said the official, who opposes the move.
Instead of placing command and tracking posts in the hardened, survivable Cheyenne Mountain, “we are going to base the deterrence for North America out of an office building.”
The official said that it took years to build the current team of U.S. and Canadian military officials at Cheyenne Mountain into “the most integrated, technologically fused, state of the art system in the world.”
“It is probably the Eighth Wonder of the World, but in six months it will be ripped asunder and nothing will be left,” the official said. “This country will be at a risk level rarely ever seen. But it’s like safety: Until something blows up, no one notices and everyone’s happy. Then you hear ‘how did this happen?’ ”
The official said an honest cost-benefit analysis was never done on closing the mountain and moving more than 250 North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command specialists to nearby Peterson Air Force Base.
The command center will be moved to a building at Peterson that is under the flight path of all commercial aircraft traffic at Colorado Springs airport and easily within target range of a terrorist with a shoulder-fired missile. The same building experienced two power failures last summer that “brought Northcom to its knees” while the command center at Cheyenne Mountain continued operating under generator power, the official said.
To move the Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center, the Space Control Center and the Missile Warning Center will cost $1.2 billion. To avoid drawing the attention of Congress, military leaders devised a plan to keep the mountain “open” but in reality “remote” all their systems to Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado and Peterson.
“There will be no cost savings for anyone; in fact this entire process will end up costing the taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars to move and then millions a year to keep up systems both in Cheyenne Mountain and at the remote facilities in three separate sites,” the official said.
A spokesman for Northern Command said Cheyenne Mountain will be placed in a standby mode over the next two years as its functions are moved.
“While the cost and security analysis studies are still being conducted, moving Cheyenne Mountain to an alternate command center status makes the country safer,” the spokesman said. “The GAO has released a preliminary report on the realignment and confirmed that the decision to move functions from Cheyenne Mountain significantly increases operational effectiveness for command and control in the homeland.”
Outgoing Northern Command commander Adm. Tim Keating told reporters in a press briefing in Colorado yesterday that the Cheyenne Mountain transformation proposal is “a sound plan that will save us money.”

More background here

Don’t let home reno get you down.

(Captured at National Newswatch

Message brought to you by that well known institoot of higher lurning, the University of Regina.
(Via a reader who spotted it here.)

Despite the number of miles I travel each year, I’m not much of a conventional tourist, seldom going out of my way for the advertised attractions. I’ve been to Philadelphia 7 or 8 times, for example, but have never ventured south of the Turnpike.
Our recent trip home from Phoenix through Las Vegas, however, just happened to send us over the Hoover dam. I was really quite blown away by the whole thing – and the fact that it was constructed 70 years ago. If this isn’t one of the world’s 7 modern wonders, well – they need an 8th.
But that isn’t why I’m mentioning it.
This is.

This illustration from the Hoover Dam Bypass website shows what they’re up to.

It hasn’t been without problems…

(full size)
A couple more photos taken from the truck window;
East side.

West side.

Just. Wow.

Chris Muir is back from his Mosul embed;

What? You were looking for trenchant analysis? Sorry.
C-A-R-T-O-O-N-I-S-T.

Related – Bill Ardolino interviews Marine Staff Sargeant Tyler Belshe on the difficulties of “winning hearts and minds” in Fallujah.

“This is what we want. We want them to engage with us. We don’t care
if they spit in our face, they yell at us. We want them to start exercising that.’ And just to have one girl stand up and really express herself, or one small boy or one adult finally express himself … I think that’s worth the seven months I’ve been here.”

Read ’em both.

But we just can’t kill the beast.

Goes unpunished;

McAllister helped put together the ill-fated reef project with the approval of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He helped raise several thousand dollars (the county also chipped in), organized hundreds of volunteers with boats and barges, and got tires from Goodyear.
Goodyear also donated equipment to bind and compress the tires, and the Goodyear blimp even dropped a gold-painted tire into the ocean in a ceremonial start to the project.
The tire company issued a press release at the time that proclaimed the reef would “provide a haven for fish and other aquatic species,” and noted the “excellent properties of scrap tires as reef material.”

And ocean bottom scouring pads, as it turned out.
(h/t reader Linda R.)

Or memory hole.

Your Academy Awards open thread.
(Link here if you experience trouble loading)

‘Nuff said;

The aggressively photogenic John Edwards was cruising along, detailing his litany of liberal causes last week until, during question time, he invoked the “I” word — Israel. Perhaps the greatest short-term threat to world peace, Edwards remarked, was the possibility that Israel would bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. As a chill descended on the gathering, the Edwards event was brought to a polite close.

I scored a 1 out of 10.
And that’s because the previous generation spent so little money on my education.

More
h/t

You’ve heard about it, right?

This is Linux.
Details here.

If this look replaces the below-the-waist pant, I’m all for it.

Reader Bruce shares his observations on the gated-community community in the comments;

I had a number of lawyers that I considered friends who subsequently became judges. Intelligent people, reasonable people (at least at the time). I have never, ever been able to figure out what exactly happened to some them after they were elevated to the bench.
One example, and this is after I left drug enforcement; I believe I was on homicide at the time. The RCMP arrested a notorious drug importer, and someone that I had been chasing (and had caught a few times) for years when I was still doing that type of work. He was a vicious, nasty guy who had become filthy rich by importing copious quantities of drugs, of all kinds, into Canada.
A judge, a friend of mine, presided over the trial. It was a slam-dunk case. He was convicted. All of the precedents called for a very lengthy prison term, especially considering the previous lengthy record of the accused. The judge ( I’ll call him Doug because, well, because that is his name) ignored the submissions of the Crown calling for a sentence of between 12 to 20 years) and sentenced the man to 18 months. This meant he would be out on day parole in 3 months. Needless to say, the druggie was led from the court, snickering – even HE thought the judge was an idiot..
A couple of weeks later I had occasion to have dinner with Doug, the judge. The issue of this case came up in conversation. I expressed my shock at the sentence, pointed out that this particular offender was one of the biggest dealers, at least in western Canada, that he had in the past actually put out contracts to kill police officers and that he had been responsible for killing several associates and/or competitors.
The response: “But Bruce, it was only marihuana”.
My response: “But Doug, it was FOUR TONS of marihuana.”.

For those who missed it, the videos are up at Hot Air.

h/t

“You wanna see something really scary?“
*