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SAYING WHAT I THINK BEFORE

SAYING WHAT I THINK BEFORE I THINK IT: PENNY-ARCADE

My favorite online comic strip (and that's saying something) scored a winner this week, that resonated beautifully with all the bizarre holiday spam I've been cleaning out of the email inbox today. (Note to reader Josh: got your T-Bomb missive: as soon as I read and delete these other 3,000 messages I'll post a reply.)

REASON NO. 1 WHY THE

REASON NO. 1 WHY THE YOUNG SHOULD CARE ABOUT ARGENTINA'S POLITICAL CRISIS: SHAKIRA

Sure, four Argentine presidents have come in two weeks, and there's 20 per cent unemployment, but is anyone calculating the most devastating side effect of the collapse of Argentina's De La Rua presidency? I'm talking, of course, about the disastrous effects this is all having on Shakira's singing career.

The 24 year-old Lebanese-Colombian pop sensation and 26 year-old lawyer Antonio De La Rua, son of Argentina's now-disgraced ex-president, have been the talk of Latino gossip mags all year: they were even reputed to be secretly engaged. The singer's current single "Whenever, Wherever" ("Querto" in Spanish) was reportedly written about "Antonito" ("Lucky you were born that far away/So we could both make fun of distance/Lucky that I love a foreign land for/The lucky fact of your existence"), along with the rest of her current album. (The video features Shakira gyrating in front of a massive slow-motion explosion, which could be taken by some as a metaphor for her future in-laws' attitude toward their country's economy.)

Argentines, perhaps feeling flashbacks to the Evita days, never seemed to see much of a "lucky fact" in Shakira's existence... she was, after all, stealing away their equivalent of JFK Jr. But now that their First Family has fallen, amidst charges of corruption, people are getting downright ornery... seeing her and Antonito as belly-dancing while Rome burned, as it were. The marriage may even be off.

The controversy came at the worst possible time for the singer, who had hoped to have an Enrique Iglesias-style breakthru into the North American market with her new album, which came out in November... only days before President De La Rua's resignation. It's not unthinkable that her status as a bauble of the ruling family's lascivious lifestyle may even have contributed to the public antagonism that drove De La Rua from office, resulting in the current political crisis... top that, Kylie Minogue...

A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE, vol. 2:

A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE, vol. 2: GEOFFREY YORK AND THE AFGHAN POPPY PROBLEM

The Globe's having a bad day today, with Campbell (see below) being joined by Geoffrey York, who laments the inevitable rise in heroin production under the new Afghan government:

While the Taliban banned all poppy cultivation in its regions of Afghanistan last year, Northern Alliance commanders continued to allow poppy crops and narcotics production in their regions. Analysts estimate that the Alliance controlled about 3,000 hectares of poppy crops last year in the Badakhshan and Takhar regions of northern Afghanistan.

I've heard this one from other commentators (Margolis, Walkom, et al), so maybe it's time for some truth. Going back to the far more reliable Ahmed Rashid (Even Ted Rall has heard he's seminal, so he must be good!), and his must-read book Taliban, we find the real Taliban record on drugs: that it was only in 2001 that Mullah Omar cracked down, after 5 years of financing his Islamic revolution with poppy profits. (Analysts still don't know if the last-minute burning of poppy fields by the Taliban was an attempt at gaining Western legitimacy, a newfound religious conviction, or an attempt to drive prices on the surplus heroin already in their warehouses higher.)

Between 1992 and 1995 Afghanistan had produced a steady 2,200-2,400 metric tonnes of opium every year... in 1996 [the Taliban-controlled] Kandahar province alone produced 120 metric tonnes of opium harvested from 3,160 hectares of poppy fields... Then, in 1997, as Taliban control extended to Kabul and furthur [sic] north, Afghanistan's opium production rose by a staggering 25 per cent to 2,800 metric tonnes...
...it is conservatively estimated... The Taliban were thus raking in at least US$20 million in taxes and even more on the side.

Take a look at those numbers above again, and then York's. Assuming crop yields across Afghanistan are comparable, the Northern Alliance can't be producing much more than 100 metric tonnes of opium a year at present, from their 3,000 hectares, and assuming they're no more greedy than the Taliban, probably are clearing around $750K US in profits a year for tolerating it. (This would be consistent with the UNDCP's estimate that 97 per cent of Afghan opium after 1997 came from Taliban-controlled areas.) But it's the Taliban, who made a cool hundred million in five years of increased cultivation of poppies, before shutting the trade down just this last year, who have somehow come out of this looking like the anti-drug side.

The Taliban actually signed a deal with the UN in October of 1997 to eliminate poppy farming, in return for US$ 25 million over 10 years. They then waited three years to do anything about it. Instead, up until this spring, writes Rashid: "the taxes on opium exports became the mainstay of Taliban income and their war economy. Drug money funded the weapons, ammunition, and fuel for the war. It provided food and clothes for the soldiers and paid the salaries, transport and perks that the Taliban leadership allowed its fighters."

It gets even better. The Taliban used torture to "cure" any of their own drug addicts they could catch, but were ruthless in pushing the stuff into neighboring Muslim countries. Imagine if the Americans had to deal with a Mexican government that was aggressively trying to export cocaine into Texas. That's what Iran had to deal with, reports Rashid: even though that government has made heroin possession a capital offense, "since the 1980s Iran had lost 2,500 men from its security forces in military operations to stop convoys carrying drugs from Afghanistan." This is the havoc wrought by Mullah Omar, the self-proclaimed Amir ul-Momineen, "Commander of the Faithful", ruler of all Muslims in Mohammed's name.

MARC HEROLD'S SINS, PT. 4:

MARC HEROLD'S SINS, PT. 4: GLOBE AND MAIL FALLS HOOK, LINE AND SINKER

A shameful piece by Murray Campbell of Canada's national newspaper today, repeating without criticism the claims of UNH economics professor Marc Herold, that to date over 4,000 Afghans have died due to American bombing. See the stories below for the problems with Herold's "methodology", if such a word can be used for such a slipshod piece of work. But the worst part of Campbell's article is he derides the much more believable and unbiased alternate estimates that contradict Herold.

Other organizations, whose monitoring has been less rigorous [than Herold], offer lower figures.

Human Rights Watch, a U.S.-based organization, offers a rough estimate of at least 1,000 civilian deaths, while the Reuters news agency said Wednesday that perhaps 982 people have died in 14 incidents where non-military targets were hit by bombs.

Less rigorous? My change jar uses more rigorous accounting methods than Herold did.