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October 11, 2007
Blog post taken down by homeopathic complaint: a chill wind is blowing
I've previously blogged about attempts to censor a UK blogger, and the problems that this caused to the would-be censor. It seems like chill winds are blowing, again: the Quackometer blog has just been forced to take down a post, while Prof Colquhoun has recently had to fend off legal threats.
Andy Lewis' Quackometer blog has just posted that:
My web hosting company Netcetera have received a complaint from the legal representation of the Society of Homeopaths about this posting. On the request of my hosting company, I have taken down this post while I try to understand the concerns of the Society of Homeopaths.
This is rather worrying: it sounds like Andy doesn't even know why his post has had to go, and the Society of Homeopaths (SoH) have complained to his hosting company instead of to Andy himself. This seems like rather an unfortunate way to go about things: clearly, most hosting companies are keen to avoid law suits; this could, therefore, provide a worryingly easy way to censor any dissent.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been concerned about the abuse of takedown notices in the US - and these being used to silence critical sites about certain organisations. Hopefully, we are not now seeing a similar phenomenon spread to the UK.
It wasn't long ago that Prof Colquhoun at UCL was threatened with legal action as a result of some of his blogging about nutritionism. The same nutritionist also went so far as to try to contact some of those who posted comments on Colquhoun's blog, leading one blogger to express his surprise that
it seems that Patrick Holford thinks it worth hassling people posting comments on a blog. Why, I don't know, but there it is...As for me, I'm flattered that Holford thinks me important enough to bother with.
It will be interesting to see how all this plays out. This could work as a chill wind to silence dissenting speech. However, the Internet is unpredictable - and often rather productive - in this type of situation: there's always the possibility that the SoH's attempts to silence Andy Lewis will backfire, and only lead to more widespread criticism of the organisation.
[b]UPDATE[/b] It looks like mirrors of the 'offending' page, along with more commentary on it, is spreading across the Internet at a good rate (faster than I can keep up with it). See David Colquhoun's blog for an updated list of relevant posts.
Posted by jon_mendel at 12:41 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 08, 2007
Bush administration lobbying to use pesticides to eradicate Afghan opium poppies - what are they smoking?
Reported in today's NYT:
After the biggest opium harvest in Afghanistan’s history, American officials have renewed efforts to persuade the government here to begin spraying herbicide on opium poppies, and they have found some supporters within President Hamid Karzai’s administration, officials of both countries said. ... The issue has created sharp divisions within the Afghan government, among its Western allies and even American officials of different agencies...officials said the skeptics — who include American military and intelligence officials and European diplomats in Afghanistan — fear that any spraying of American-made chemicals over Afghan farms would be a boon to Taliban propagandists. Some of those officials say that the political cost could be especially high if the herbicide destroys food crops that farmers often plant alongside their poppies.
It's hard to know how to respond to this, aside from with a big 'doh'. It's difficult to earn a 'legitimate' income in Afghanistan - e.g. unemployment is c. 40% - and because of the weapons that have been poured into the country for decades, arms are relatively easily available. Depending which estimate you take, the opiate industry's turnover makes up 30-60% of Afghanistan's GDP. If international and Afghan government forces are able to effectively destroy much or most of this major part of the economy, as well as damaging 'legitimate' crops into the bargain, what do they expect to happen? If you take away a major source of income when there is a shortage of alternatives, and destroy peoples' crops, one would expect that a number of people will find alternative income sources through serving with and for the Taliban and other armed groups.
Not to mention that it seems likely that poppy farmers would - in time - find alternative means of producing their crops. After all, pesticides have been used in Columbia for some time and, as everyone knows, no illegal drugs are produced in Columbia any more...
As the NYT notes
diplomats worry particularly that aerial spraying would kill food crops that some farmers plant with their poppies. European officials add that any form of spraying could be cast by the Taliban as American chemical warfare against the Afghan peasantry.The British have been so concerned that on the eve of Mr. Karzai’s trip to Camp David in August, Prime Minister Gordon Brown called President Bush and asked him not to pressure the Afghan premier to use herbicides, according to several diplomats here.
It's good to hear that the UK government have been opposing this policy - many of the troops who will have to deal with the fallout from this are British. And, yes, this 'chemical warfare' would hand an easy propaganda victory to the Taliban. As Lt Gen David Richards noted last year, "we are deeply cautious that if we get it [poppy eradication] wrong and create the wrong environment, we will tip otherwise perfectly law-abiding and cooperative people into the opposition’s camp." But now it looks like the Bush administration is pushing for this to be got badly, badly wrong.
The major problem with the NYT article is its claim that "there is no debate that Afghanistan’s drug problem is out of control". There is debate about how this 'problem' is - and should be - conceptualised. I should know: I've argued for the need to rethink these things in my PhD thesis (admittedly, no-one will have read that, but it's certainly not an original point for me to make).
The Afghan Opiate industry is actually working strikingly 'well': a great example of the efficacy with which a globalised industry can freely ship goods over national borders, meet and create international demand, etc. The 'problem' is not in Afghanistan - or, at least, is not just in Afghanistan. The criminalisation of most of the world's opiate trade - and the ways in which international markets are functioning - plays a key part in the distorted (and growing) nature of the opiate trade. There have got to be better ways to manage and regulate these markets and this international industry - it should be possible to find alternatives that allow both harm reduction at home and a more beneficial (or, at least, less damaging) opiate industry in states such as Afghanistan.
Posted by jon_mendel at 03:48 PM | TrackBack
October 04, 2007
Military Accidents
Interesting RAF story in the news yesterday - they accidentally dropped a 14kg bomb from a plane during an exercise. Luckily, it was a practice bomb (with a fuse, not live) and didn't hit anybody but, still, it's quite a thing to drop my mistake.
There is, apparently, something of a history of interesting problems in the RAF. For example, to take a story from 1981:
Just a little additional info on the F-4E crash on 15 Apr 1981. The aircraft I don't know, but the unit was the 526TFS/86TFW Ramstein AB, FRG. The 526TFS was deployed to Eglin AFB for WSEP (before the move to Tyndall). The aircraft (Lead) was shot down with a Aim-9 from his Wingman. As Leader, this was "Ruddy" Dixon's first trip up the rails. For Charlie Sallee, his second set of Martin Baker test pilot wings.
As far as the UK forces go, the film Buffalo Soldiers is also great fun, and well worth a look (though I certainly can't vouch for its accuracy).
Posted by jon_mendel at 07:55 PM | TrackBack
October 03, 2007
Patriot Act surveillance provisions ruled against by US courts
Sorry for the lack of blog entries - just got my PhD submitted :) which has been keeping me fairly busy lately - but in terms of getting back into the swing of things, here's a link to an interesting article on two court rulings on the Patriot Act. It seems like the provisions of the act for searches and surveillance are coming under attack.
