!= != != != != != != != != != != != != != !=

Some financial type (attribution on request — maybe): Ben, there is real food for thought in the article below. The submarine in the picture below looks pretty crude. Given the global cash flows generated by cocaine, traffickers should be able to afford much better equipment. And I think we, Tim Geithner, and congress should seriously [...]

Searching the Wii’s “Virtual Console” for “mari” — as in Mario — turns up one possible autocompletion that might explain why the Wii is so popular:

Kleiman: Cannabis is not “the largest cash crop in California.” That zombie statistic has a history: during the collapse of the lumbering industry in the early 1980s, the Ag Department county extension agent in Humboldt County, which grows timber and pot, was so angry about the suffering he saw around him due to unemployment among [...]

So says Ian Heap, chair of the Herbicide Resistance Action Committee, in response to a call about herbicide-resistant coca. (hb)

WP quotes Mark Lipinski, the editor of Quilter’s Home magazine on its Jan/Feb issue (Hesse, “Uncovered! The Unseemly Side of Quilts,” 5 Mar ’09): Jo-Ann [Fabrics] “might be out of touch with their customer base…. When you consider that a 70-year-old could have been dancing naked at Woodstock and a 50-year-old could have been smoking [...]

WashPost: The CIA is pushing Viagra on Afghan warlords. “Whatever it takes to make friends and influence people—whether it’s building a school or handing out Viagra,” said one longtime agency operative and veteran of several Afghanistan tours. Like other field officers interviewed for this article, he spoke on the condition of anonymity when describing tactics [...]

AJC (Schwartz, “Drug Violence in Atlanta Tied to Several Cartels,” 31 July ’08): “Powerful Mexican cartels have assumed control of drug distribution networks throughout the United States, sparking worry from U.S. law enforcement and experts that they may export the same violent methods that have ravaged Mexico for years.” Kidnapping, for example. Vast tracts of [...]

Bruce Schneier asks, “Did you know that, in some jurisdictions, police can inject midazolam into suspects to subdue them?” The article he links to (Demetria Kalodimos, “I-Team: Injection Used To Subdue Prisoners Medical Expert Says Practice Is Troubling,” WSMV [Nashville], 10 July ’08), seems either artfully or inartfully written: But many people said that the [...]

FT (Adam Thomson, “Drugs cartels targeting Mexico’s democracy, says intelligence chief,” 14 July ’08; BBC pickup here): The head of Mexico’s intelligence service has warned that the country’s democratic institutions, including the national Congress, are under threat from powerful drugs cartels. At some point, subverted governmental entities would make an announcement like this in order [...]