Politics

"Some people get the giggles after using cannabis -- you may laugh at the most random things" cautions "FRANK," the UK's anti-drug website. Despite declining drug use in the country, in January the British government changed marijuana's classification from a "Class C" to a "Class B" drug; possession now carries a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment, while dealing can get you 14 years in jail.

Professor David Nutt, formerly a member of the UK's independent Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, was fired for publicly disputing the decision; five other members of the 31-person Council have since resigned in protest of the politically-motivated firing. In a lecture (later published), Nutt argued that the use of illicit drugs like marijuana and ecstasy poses less severe health risks than the use of alcohol or tobacco. Nutt has also equated the dangers of ecstasy use and the risks of horseback riding.

Nutt's firing and the subsequent resignations have caused quite a political row, with politicians and scientists making pointed attacks on home secretary Alan Johnson, who gave Nutt the axe. "Your leader on drugs policy is long on righteous indignation but short on logic" wrote Johnson in a defensive letter published in The Guardian.

Nutt fired back in a column published in The Telegraph, writing, "Some politicians find it easier to ignore the evidence, and pander to public prejudice instead."

Photo: SCOTT BARBOUR/Getty Images

According to opposition parties in Ethiopia, nearly 450 of their members have been jailed, as part of an effort by the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) to secure national elections being held this May. One opposition party reports that seven of its members have been murdered for political reasons during the course of this past year. The allegations fit Ethiopia's history of violent repression, including arrests and harassment of dissenting students and teachers.

During Ethiopia's last elections, held in 2005, widespread protests led to violent clashes with police, with about 200 protestors killed and many opposition leaders jailed. The ruling party, led by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, said that the crack-down was simply to maintain law and order, and to stave off widespread ethnic conflict. Members of the opposition said it was a means of denying opposition parties electoral success.

The ruling party's bid for electoral dominance has certainly been effective -- during last year's local and bi-elections, the EPRDF and affiliated individuals lost only three seats, out of nearly 3.6 million contested seats. This past January, the government took another step towards consolidating its power by essentially outlawing human rights work and curtailing freedom of association. And according to a Reuters news analysis, the EPRDF's dominance is bolstered by a general sense that the West "would be comfortable with Meles staying on - as long as he remains a loyal ally in the volatile Horn of Africa and liberalises his potentially huge economy."

Even so, former Ethiopian Minister of Defense Seeye Abraha characterizes his country as a dormant volcano. A recent statement posted by the opposition party Ginbot 7 makes it abundantly clear that tensions remain high:

[One type of nation] is composed of countries that are ruled by corrupt tyrants whose governance is characterized by gross human rights abuse, economic polarization, ethnic conflict and political intolerance...almost all of these dictators have become turn coat democrats and hold sham elections to satisfy the demand of donor nations. The reality, however, is that they never respect election results, or care for democracy. A perfect example of one such government is the illegitimate regime of Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia that deviously preaches democracy, but has ruled the country with an iron fist for the past 18 years."

Tom Ricks shares an interesting theory from researcher Kyle Flynn about why the Obama administration is delaying a decision on a new Afghanistan strategy:

Nov. 3, gubernatorial elections in both Virginia and New Jersey. The latter of which is my reasoning why the decision was delayed this long. Corzine is in the fight of his life and Obama is going to piss people off either way. 

I'm not sure I buy this. I doubt most voters have Afghanistan on the mind when they decide whether they should pull the lever for Jon Corzine or his Virginia counterpart Creigh Deeds. It's possible that there could be some protest votes from people infuriated with the White House's decision, but while Afghanistan is increasingly becoming "Obama's war," I don't think most people see it as the "Democrats' war."  If anything, most of the opposition to an increased U.S. commitment comes from within Obama's own party.

Looking ahead to 2010, this raises the quesiton of how big a campaign issue Obama's Afghan strategy will be. Because this debate doesn't divide easily along party lines, the political questions are pretty complicated.

If Obama to go along with the McChrysrtal plan, it seems unlikely that the majority of Americans who oppose the war would vote for Republicans as a result. Some antiwar voters might choose to stay home out of apathy but it seems like the partisan fury brought on by the healthcare debate alone should be enough to drag them to the polls. If Obama chooses a more limited strategy, I can't image there are that many voters who would have gone Democrat but see Afghanistan as a dealbreaker.

I'm also not convinced that, despite the increased concern, Afghanistan will a dominant politicial issue in U.S. politics in 2010. Even with 40,000 more troops, the total number will be nowhere near the half million that were deployed at the height of the Vietnam war. Unless you know someone in combat, the war in Central Asia is still a farily abstract concept compared with, say, healthcare. And given that it's much more clear what side everyone's on, healthcare makes much better material for attack ads.  

So while it's probably true, as it is frequently pointed out, that there's no political upside to the war in Afghanistan, the downside may not actually be that big. Whether or not that's a good thing is a whole other question. 

MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

It seems that Karma is alive and well in the universe.

Allegations of fraud have surrounded recent elections in Russia. In 2007, in what has been described as "the least democratic election since the USSR collapsed," opposition parties alleged that campaign literature was seized and candidates were excluded from the ballot; The Kremlin apparently forced millions of public workers to vote; and a senior election official reported that he was instructed to make sure that United Russia, the ruling party, received double the number of votes expected -- the claim of rigging is strongly supported by a number of statistical anomalies.

The 2008 election of President Dmitry Medvedev also had plenty of allegations of stacking the deck; including further claims that public employees were pushed to vote for Putin's favorite, that local officials were told to produce a strong majority on Medvedev's behalf, and that potentially strong opponents were excluded from the ballot.

Yesterday, elections for a new city council in Moscow were held, and it should come as little surprise that there have already been more allegations of fraud. But even if Medvedev had a hand in ensuring the re-election of the sitting mayor, a member of the United Russia party, there was a twist of poetic justice. The president struggled to vote -- an electronic box repeatedly refused to take Medvedev's ballot.

Photo: VLADIMIR RODIONOV/AFP/Getty Images

Now that it seems Costa Rican President Oscar Arias' mediation has been de facto rejected by Honduras' de facto government, everybody seems to be proposing their own creative solutions.

South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, who has already contributed to the situation by holding up the Senate confirmation for proposed assistant secretary of state for the region, Arturo Valenzuela, is travelling to Tegucigalpa Friday -- skillfully avoiding maneuvers by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry to keep him in the United States, and blithely side-stepping the question of legitimacy altogether -- in order to lend his support to the coup government and express his belief that "Hondurans should be able to choose their own future."

They'll do so to the tune of Caribbean music and announcements of curfew times, about the only thing currently transmitted by obedient television channels, fearful of the repression suffered by intransigent media outlets earlier this week. This as deposed President Manuel Zelaya continues to be holed up in the Brazilian embassy, along with a shrinking number of family members, supporters and his cowboy hat.

Is compromise possible? Honduran business leaders, horrified by the revenue loss provoked by the curfews imposed by the coup government -- or perhaps more disturbed by the loss of their U.S. visas -- suggested a multi-party interim presidency until the Nov. 29 elections, after which point Zelaya would stand trial and face house arrest. The plan also calls for tossing coup president Roberto Micheletti a congressman-for-life position as a sop and bringing neighboring countries troops in to keep order. Faced with an array of unappealing options, others are turning to higher powers, in the form of the Virgin of Suyapaor.

So best of luck to DeMint, but if he fails, his colleague Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen will get a chance during her visit next week -- also to support the coup government of course. 

Earlier today, former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential hopeful Sarah Palin gave a speech to a group of investors in Hong Kong, for which the brokerage firm CLSA allegedly paid her $300,000.

Former McCain foreign-policy adviser Randy Scheunemann and a bevy of other veteran Republican aides reportedly prepped Palin for the speech, which Politico and other outlets have suggested implies she's prepping herself for 2012.

No reporters were allowed into the private event, but some investors passed good information on to Bloomberg News (which dryly notes that Palin first got a U.S. passport in 2007). The Wall Street Journal also seems to have some inside sources. Washington Wire offers a number of lengthy quotes.

Let's take a look.

The foreign-policy sections were something of a snooze -- some gentle urging for China to become more responsible on human rights, some criticism of its treatment of ethnic minorities and aiming of arms at Taiwan, some commentary on the trade and currency imbalances, some criticism of the United States for utilizing China as a "lender of first resort."

Regarding economics and the recession, though, Palin got a lot more interesting.

Foremost, she pinned the blame for the financial crisis on the U.S. Federal Reserve. Not the interplay of investment-bank profits, trade imbalances, the rise of securitization, the creation of zero-deposit loans, oil prices, the housing bubble, the credit rating agencies, and other commonly cited factors. Just the Fed.

"How can we discuss reform without addressing the government policies at the root of the problems? The root of the collapse? And how can we think that setting up the Fed as the monitor of systemic risk in the financial sector will result in meaningful reform?," she said. "The words 'fox' and 'henhouse' come to mind. The Fed's decisions helped create the bubble. Look at the root cause of most asset bubbles, and you'll see the Fed somewhere in the background."

She added, "The government forced lending institutions to give loans to people who, as I say, couldn't afford them." (Emphasis mine. These assertions reportedly caused two observers to walk out, saying "It's awful." Notably, the Chinese government actually does force banks to lend.)

Finally: "[Alaskans] have much in common with Hong Kong. We're both young and transient, independent and libertarian. Places that continue to show the world, the power and the resilience of the free-market system at a time when too many are questioning it." (Emphasis mine.)

It seems Palin -- whose prior public pronouncements have been somewhat ideologically incoherent -- has finally picked her strand of conservatism: libertarianism. It's a choice that makes sense. If the economy recovers well by 2012, conservatives of all stripes will have, well, several trillion reasons to talk about government spending and U.S. deficits.

But, I really think if Palin wants to establish her economic conservative credentials she should head back to the statehouse and encourage the state to go Galt -- turning Alaska into the United States' Hong Kong, a relatively tax-free, regulation-free, federal government-free zone. It would be rough. Alaska receives more federal subsidies per capita than any other state. But managing the Last Frontier without this Washington cash would demonstrate her executive prowess -- and would show that no entity should need interventionist government life-support to thrive.

But, sigh, I guess she'll probably just continue to brush-up on foreign policy and beef up her conservative credentials in more conventional ways.

Photo of Palin's resignation speech by Eric Engman/Getty Images

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, who was just reelected to a second term, is about as establishment as you get, a staunch defender of free trade and open markets. 

But in the mid-1970s, soon after Portugal's transition to democracy, Barroso was a committed member of the Maoist Reorganising Movement of the Proletariat Party. Here he is at a meeting of leftwing students in 1976, laying into Portugal's bourgeois education system in a somewhat confusing statement:

Barroso switched to the mainstream Social Democratic Party in 1980, going on to become Portugal's Prime Minister two decades later. 

Barroso has clearly come a long way since those days, though I would imagine that the mastery of bullshit jargon and obfuscation that he apparently acquired as a young Maoist must serve him well in Brussels. 

In response to Admiral Mullen's testimony on the need for more troops in Afghanistan, Senator Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) asked, "Do you understand you've got one more shot back home? Do you understand that?"

The question is reflective of polls showing distinctly waning support of the war effort in the United States. A Washington Post-ABC News poll has found that only 46 percent of respondents thought that the war was worth fighting; 51 percent said that it wasn't.

It's certainly a dramatic change since the time of the U.S. invasion. According to Gallup numbers, a whopping 93 percent of respondents in 2002 agreed with the decision to send U.S. forces to Afghanistan. That number steadily declined to 72 percent by mid-2004. Between that point and mid-2007, however, that number was remarkably stable, dropping only two percentage points over the course of three years. That might be reflective of Afghanistan's status as "the forgotten war;" people's opinions probably don't change much if they aren't paying attention.

It's interesting to compare this trend to the United States's other war. In the case of Iraq, there's an obvious decline in the number of Americans who think sending troops to Iraq wasn't a mistake (from 75 percent in 2003 to 39 percent in 2009) and an increase in the number of people who think that it was a mistake (from 23 percent in 2003 up to 58 percent in 2009). But whereas opinion on Afghanistan has been steadily declining; virtually every poll on Iraq represents another significant fluctuation. In mid-2004, for example, the percentage of supporters swung from 58 percent down to about 44 percent, and then back up to about 56 percent.

In general, there certainly seems to be decreasing support for any war over time; another Gallup poll suggests that soon after wars end, there is a consistent increase of people who "feel that war is an outdated way of settling differences." 

Photo: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images