I ran across an article on the Kurdish militant group PKK from the Turkish Weekly, which refers to the PKK as terrorists, since the Turks and the Kurds have longstanding bad blood between them. But within this political context some interesting facts about terrorist financing come into focus:

Terrorist organizations are based on two main columns: The first one is ideological/political base. Terrorist organizations exploit mistakes of states, areas where there is no state authority; the more these exploitation facilities continue, the more these organizations grow fast. The second important column terrorist organizations based is the economic infrastructure. Money is requisited for weapons, explosive materials, daily needs of terrorists etc. Contrary to general perception, money mostly has not come “directly” from other countries. When other countries want to assist, they prefer utilizing from “natural ways”; randomly cash money is given directly to the terrorists by foreign countries. There are two fundamental principles to maintain economic infrastructure of terror. 1) tribute \ blackmailing \ donation, 2) robbery, 3) narcotic money, 4) other illegal revenue. Among these, since it is relatively easier way and more sustainable, mostly, narcotic money catches attention. If it is considered that world’s drug market is around 400-500 billion dollars, this amount will not only sustain terrorist organizations but also countries. The money, circulated in the drug market, is almost equal to the USA’s defense expenditure in a year and it is approximately over Turkish gross national product.

Of course they never come right out and say that decriminalization of drugs is the way to take revenue away from militant cartels, but I suppose that would just be funneling the money from one militant cartel to another.

I nearly spit out my morning coffee all over today's edition of The New York Times:

Cigarette Bill Treats Menthol With Leniency

By STEPHANIE SAUL
Published: May 13, 2008

Some public health experts are questioning why menthol, the most widely used cigarette flavoring and the most popular cigarette choice of African-American smokers, is receiving special protection as Congress tries to regulate tobacco for the first time.

The legislation, which would give the Food and Drug Administration the power to oversee tobacco products, would try to reduce smoking’s allure to young people by banning most flavored cigarettes, including clove and cinnamon.

...

The reason menthol is seen as politically off limits, despite those concerns, is that mentholated brands are so crucial to the American cigarette industry. They make up more than one-fourth of the $70 billion American cigarette market and are becoming increasingly important to the industry leader, Philip Morris USA, without whose lobbying support the legislation might have no chance of passage.

“I would have been in favor of banning menthol,” said Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, who supports the bill. “But as a practical matter that simply wasn’t doable.”

Before anyone says "It will never happen, there's too much money in the cigarette industry", plz note that Phillip Morris is supporting this legislation. This has apparently been underway for a while, but somehow I only just now became aware of it. The Netherlands are banning a great many psychoactive mushrooms (including amanita muscaria and amanita pantherina), Britain is upgrading the legal status of cannabis, Kansas has banned datura stramonium - the dominant worldwide trends in drug policy are depressing the fuck out of me.

classic trip hop & a li'l liquid-funk dnb

Mixed live on vinyl by DJ Lp3 (aka Waldemar)

8.18.01

Greenville, Mississippi Delta

Dedicated to Marvin Woods and Scott & Joe Middleton (Greenville)

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1. Cheech & Chong - 'Blind Melon Chitlin'
2. Meat Beat Manifesto - 'Not Playing God' (Funny Noises mix)
3. Smith & Mighty - 'Anyone...' (remix)
4. Attica Blues - 'Blueprint'
5. Rae & Christian - 'All I Ask' (DJ Spinna mix)
6. John Scofield - 'A Go Go (Attica Blues Morphed Schofield mix)
7. Tabla Beat Science - 'Secret Channel' (Asian Resistance mix by Bedouin Ascent)
8. Massive Attack - 'Safe From Harm' (12" mix)
9. Source Direct - 'Complexities'
10. Massive Attack - 'Be Thankful For What You've Go' (Perfecto mix)
11. DJ Food - 'Nevermore (Sleep Dyad 2)'
12. Plug - 'Military Jazz'
13. DJ Food - 'The Crow...'
14. Amon Tobin - 'Slowly'
15. Silent Poets - 'Neighborhood'

Oh yes, two of our very favorite repeat offenders are teaming up for a musical collaboration. Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty, you were made for each other. Dare I say, it's love?

But wait! Isn't Pete supposed to be in jail? For those of you following our ongoing story, Pete was released from jail last week after serving 29 days of a 14-week sentence. Good behavior mate!

One of the most significant breakthroughs in neural stimulation technology has come in the form of neurally-implanted electrodes which regulate dopamine supply for Parkinson's patients. But what if your implant doesn't deliver as expected? A recent study shows that tweaking the location of the implant may improve performance. From the cutting edge of neural implant tech:

All patients except for one displayed improvement after the second surgery. When they were not on medication, treatment improved the patient’s motor scores by 26.7 percent following the first operation and 59.4 percent following the second procedure. Their dose of levodopa, a medication treating Parkinson’s disease, decreased from 1,202 milligrams to 534 milligrams. The average distance between the electrodes and the target point of stimulation—a location in the subthalamic nucleus identified by evaluating electrode placement in patients whose surgery was successful—decreased from 5.4 to 2 millimeters. The shorter this distance, the greater the patient’s improvement in motor scores.

I have my own personal theories about how these devices might aid neural synchrony in complex logic tasks, but I don't want to get all "Lawnmower Man" on you right now.

If you follow quirks in neuroscience you'll know that there are a rare few people who can remember specific details from every single day in their life. Two of these people have already been identified, but now a third has come out and been verified:

The third person found to have an ultra-rare memory gift — recalling in detail most days of his life — is 50-year-old Rick Baron of suburban Cleveland, scientists confirmed Monday after Baron contacted USA TODAY.

Baron came forward after a USA TODAY story Thursday on Jill Price of Los Angeles (health.usatoday.com). She is the first person to be verified by memory experts at the University of California-Irvine to have such a superior autobiographical memory. The second, La Crosse, Wis., radio newscaster Brad Williams, already had made his identity known. Baron wasn't in the USA TODAY story because researchers didn't have permission to release his name.

As is true for the others, he can tell the day of the week for given dates, and the day and date of noted events during his life. "It's got to be something I've seen or heard or read about once in my life. Then it stays in my head eternally," he says.

Now some have suggested that this super-memory thing may actually be a simple trick employing an elaborate mnemonic device, or perhaps a kind of savant mutation only seen once or twice in a generation. It would be interesting to do a genetic workup on these people to see if there is some generic synaptic pruning mechanism which has been disabled, or if they have an extra sequence for expressing essential memory formation enzymes. Either way they are probably mutant freaks plotting to rule us all, and we should outlaw their kind immediately.

Standing in the supermarket the other day, I glanced over at WIRED, which commanded me to "GET SMARTER!" As it happens, intelligence enhancement is already a passion of mine, so I needed little persuasion. As I flipped through the articles and read of (among other things) the cognition boosting properties of caffeine, amphetamine, methamphetamine, nicotine, aniracetam and modafinil, I found myself thinking "Wow, the boys and girls at DoseNation must be shitting themselves with glee." Picture my dismay when I came here and found not a word about it. I imagine that the information presented will be old-hat for most of us, but it's nice to see our mutual geekdom penetrating further into the mainstream. Here you go; I love you.

The entry on methamphamine reads, in part:

Can increase concentration and creative output. Prolonged use can also make you stupid and crazy.

Also, a recent article on the WIRED blog discloses this shocking information:

PEOPLE ARE USING ILLICIT AMPHETAMINES TO GET THINGS DONE.

Even with a drug like methamphetamine, most heavy users in our research engaged in "functional use."

Plz, try to contain your shock/surprise.

Jack Shafer of Slate asks:

Whatever happened to robotripping? Send your personal accounts to slate.pressbox@gmail.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name in "The Fray," Slate's readers' forum, in a future article, or elsewhere unless the writer stipulates otherwise. Permanent disclosure: Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co.)

If anyone wants to share - and we know from the active comment logs that a lot of you do - you know what to do.

trip hop, downtempo, IDM with just a taste of DnB here and there. :-)

Mixed live by Waldemar (as DJ Lp3) at a used CD shop (Discworld) that Chris Roberts was working at in Greenville, Mississippi Delta

4.13.01 - Download Now

Hot Coffee is perhaps my very very favorite vinyl mix...It's got a very personal and mystical appeal to me.

This mix is made up totally of pieces from Chris John Valentine's massive vinyl collection (at this point he has around 5 or 6,000 CDs & over 1000 vinyl). We crossed each other's path while both bidding on the same Em:t CD (Undark) back around late 2000 or very early 2001, met at his house in Cleveland & proceeded to start a good friendship. He turned me on to a bunch of music I'd never knew existed. He is one helluva music historian.

[I've lost the complete tracklisting, so there are 2 tracks unnamed.
CAN YOU HELP?!]

1.) Gus Gus - Barry (M&L mix)
2.) Laika - 'Black Cat Bone'
3.) Neneh Cherry - 'Manchild (old skool mix)
4.) Statik Sound System - 'So Close' (J-Relph mix)
5.) A Guy Called Gerald - 'Hekkle & Koch'
6.) Mike Ink - 'Paroles' (Autechre mix)
7.) Techno Animal - 'Bass Concussion'
8.) Silent Poets & Ingrid Schroeder - 'Cherry Tree' (Attica Blues mix)
9.) Andre Estermann - ?????????
10.) Michael Fakesch - 'Rand' (Andre Estermann mix)
11.) Artificial Duck Flavour - ?????????
12.) Statik Sound System - 'Amazed By You'
13.) One Dove - 'Jolene' (Dolly Parton cover)
14.) Stacey Pullen - 'Vertigo (4 Hero mix)
15.) One Dove - 'Why Don't You Take Me' (Underworld mix)
16.) Statik Sound System - 'Valentine'
17.) DJ Food - 'Inosan'
18.) Michael Fakesch - 'i:omac'

An interesting story caught my ear over the radio this week, I thought it might be of interest to the Dosenation readers;

And if you ask Christopher Ratte and his wife how they lost custody of their 7-year-old son, the short version is that nobody in the Ratte family watches much television.

The gist of the story is this: while at a Detroit Tigers game, a University professor allegedly "accidentally" purchased an alcoholic lemonade beverage for his seven year old son, thinking it was regular lemonade. The situation for some reason spiraled out of control, with the son being placed in foster care. More a matter of protocol than prudence, this family has been broken up by a simple oversight. Whether due to the drink's alcoholic content, or the likelihood of being caught, is not clear at this point.

The parents have taken a firm stance that they were unaware the lemonade contained alcohol. But the argument never made is quite compelling: "So what?" I know, it sounds shocking, but fetal alcohol syndrome doesn't apply to children. Back in the day, the cure all for a crying baby was a wee bit of whiskey, to calm the nerves.

So, is this a big deal? Even the police and social services officers involved thought the actions taken by the state were excessive. Are these parents being made an example of, to deter others from similar circumstances? Is this a plot perpetrated by communists to undermine our common sense? Are beer companies pressuring officials to take a firmer stance on alcoholic citrus? What's the real deal here?