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Radio War Nerd EP #30—Opium Wars (Patreon)

Published:
2016-04-25 02:59:10
Edited:
2017-08-04 01:52:14
Imported:
2026-06

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Content

The Opium Wars

War Nerd stuck in Bangkok . . . Turkey's genocide-deniers take to NYC's skies . . . Azerbaijan president's insane tweets . . . Israel celebrates soldier who executed wounded Palestinian, reminds of US turning Lt Calley into a hero . . . Egypt sells 2 islands in Gulf of Aqaba to Saudi Arabia . . . The Opium Wars . . . 

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No Thanks

Awesome episode. Just a quick note on tobacco companies suing the Australian government; Australia won. Sort of. The federal government introduced laws which limited the packaging of all tobacco products to a drab olive box with the name and brand printed in a standardised typeface, carrying the already mandated health warning and body horror picture. Phillip Morris tried to sue using a subsidiary in Hong Kong under a pre-existing free trade agreement. They lost, but only on jurisdictional grounds. The tribunal they sued in can't award costs to the winning party, so the Australian taxpayers still have to pay their lawyers. There's another WTO case on the same thing pending, where the governments of several countries which definitely aren't being influenced by the tobacco industry are suing Australia for the same thing. We'll pay for that one either way too. It's a very low-risk strategy for the tobacco companies. I don't think an Australian has ever come across something they didn't want to regulate into submission, but I can't fault our government on this one.

Jed Hovey

I saw one these skywriting things from my office window. The words in front of Armenia were too blurry to be legible. I told a coworker I assumed it was about the genocide, that the primary instigator was Enver Pasha, who was an incredibly shitty military commander in addition to being a genocidal swine(that episode in the Carpathian Mountains during WWI). It was so poorly done I actually thought it was trying to raise awareness about the genocide. I should have known it would be the opposite.

Hanso

Sorry to tell you that Northern Europe is turning around as well. Now that the industries are leaving, the socialists are moving from being the representatives of the silent, working-class majority to being more and more associated with the cosmopolitans. Right-wing populists are using the resulting frustration, which of course goes hand in hand with that connected to the entire immigration issue. There is a semi-rural and anti-intellectual majority there - just like anywhere else. Difference is that the sociaist parties usually knew how to keep them happy, and that is changing right now. Also, the internet is giving populism a voice like never before (for example - Swedes are too shy to go out and protest on the streets or even talk openly in their coffee rooms - but the internet give them an opportunity to vent and fertilize their fears and frustrations).

Blue

About the Swedish thing. In all comments on the internet in all languages in all countries on Earth it is almost always the political right, usually the neanderthal right, that dominate any forum. They are a small but very very loud minority with lots of free time because they are unemployable and have very few friends and have no chance with the opposite sex. Their opinion has nothing to do with what the average citizen thinks.

Blue

To answer the question how to fix the drug problem without harming anyone is not an answer that I have. But I do have a solution for the drug problem overall and the war of drugs. The solution is EXTERMINATUS, the physical destruction of all drug users. Go forth and exterminate all the druggies, that is how you win the war on drugs, victory through extermination.

OccludedRose

We actually studied Late Victorian Holocausts by Mike Davis in a 101 History course a couple years back in Pittsburgh at CMU. I tell ya what, there's nothing like watching some beleagured TA get screeched at by some ex-jock Econ freshman who's just realized he's going to spend a semester hearing blasphemy against the One, Holy, and Apostolic Free Market

Rich

"Ancient community based living" isn't all its cracked up to be, in fact they were usually just a "xenophobic" and "Nationalist" as any of the modern forms of life can get. All forms of human life are going to involve some people trying to "escape" their neurochemistry. It's a basic human need and a basic fact of life - like sex or sleep. The real issue in my opinion is a matter of SCALE. It is not contradictory to allow individuals to make choices for themselves while regulating the macro-level economic and social reality. In other words, there's no inconsistency with a country like Vietnam restricting tobacco influence without literally banning cigs. If anything the real problem is ownership and control - we all may love opiates, but what happens when the Marlboro of Heroin appears? Criminalization is a really roundabout way of regulating control/ownership structure (and criminal cartels form now anyway) but to me that's the even scarier question.

Factory Troll

Could you elaborate on, or prodivde some supporting evidence for, your two first claims (keep in mind that when I say "ancient", I dont talk about the middle ages, but rather about the pre-neolithic era). I´m genuinely intrested in how you argue to reach such conclusions, though, I cannot help but feel that what you are describing seems like basic human behaviour because you underestimante how fundamentally technology and society alter human conciousness, compared to the other way around. It leads one to think that nationalism will create nations, xenophobia will cause conflict and a need to escape will condition diversity when in fact the reverse is much closer to the truth. The rest of your statements I can agree with. It really is a matter of ownership and control, or more specifically the power of public interest over private interests. Basically, drug use is on the rise, and the war of drug seems to be losing because private interests for a multitude of reasons are more powerfull today than 5, 20 and 50 years ago, helped on by the aforementioned issue of private enterprise going global while their public regulators remain limited to national domains. Again, this is becuse the free enterprise makes no distinguisment between what is good and bad for the general public, only what is good and bad for short term profit. In the mind of a free marketer there is no black market, only a "market", so if a government lose its power to enforce regulation of drug prodution (such as has been the case), this only represent an invenstment oppotunity. Thus, when private intrests have as much power as they currently have over puplic intrests, criminalisation or legalisation will first and foremostly mix up market shares among producers and distributers, rather than effect long term supply and demand. However, this doesn't imply legalisation is stupid or meaningless, if let's say you would want to reduce street violence, then shifting market shares away from mexican drug cartels and their subsidiaries might be a great idea, but it wont stop excessive durg use, at best it will be curbed.

Shad Narcher

Whiskey is my spirit animal.