Posted by Greetings from Amsterdam. I got in last night around midnight, checked into my hostel and promptly went out to survey the city at night.
red lights, bright city – a crazy spectacle really. <knock, knock> “Come talk to me, darling!” “mmm, no.” I think it’s a brave attempt on the part of the Dutch government to acknowledge a certain reality and try to mitigate the more exploitative possibilities for those who participate in such a market. Human beings are far from living in a society that can guarantee perfect security for anyone in any particular ‘trade’ and given the grave iniquity of such exploitation, the question arises as to whether it makes sense to even attempt such an arrangement.
However, the stigmatization caused by our modern moral structures is a dis-service to us all. In this arena of all, it is the worst possible consequence of our policies to accede that a few eggs be broken to make an omelette but I see no other recourse, no other way to progress. So says the king from up on high.
green lights, hazy city. Probably the more popular aspect of Amsterdam’s liberal political philosophies is the legalisation of cannabis. It’s not my thang, the spicy schmoking. Give me some shisha and my hookah and I’m a happy and relaxed Maher. But the variety is amusing – from China to the homegrown Dutch variety.
Bill Maher made an interesting point about the US “War on drugs” a few weeks ago. He said that one of its primary motivations is essentially to prevent brown men from getting rich. The best in the world doesn’t come from the US – it comes from Colombia, from the mideast, from south asia, from the far east. What of the fortunes of a place like Afghanistan if its government didn’t have to be h*llbent on destroying thousands of poppy fields. What of Colombia where its economy and society are shredded by the internal violence caused by our drug policy and the pressure brought to bear by the United States.
Now I’m not advocating legalisation. However we cannot simply fight this war (any war) without planning to win the ‘peace’. ahem cough. If you destroy poppy fields in Afghanistan, you better be ready to provide trade & education assistance so that Al Qaeda doesn’t step into the economic and political vacuum. If you want to take on the cartels in Colombia, better make sure that there are alternative business practises available to the businessmen whom you label the kingpins. The world is too nuanced, too complicated to be left to either/or, “with us or against us” strategies.
And with that, let’s go see what the city is like by sunlight instead of neon light.
