BiCon diary?

Maybe I'll make this my BiCon diary, in honour of JWZ's DNA club diary.

At one stage, I thought I'd have to announce to the world that I couldn't do it, and publically back out, but I'm increasingly thinking I could and should run BiCon and I might even like to. So I've started pulling my finger out. I've mailed Jenni from last year to ask for her attender figures and suchlike, after posting to uk-bi to track down her address, and I've mailed Nick Smith on an alternative email address to report problems with mailing bi.org.

And me and Alison spent the day in the sunshine with pen and paper talking about what needed to be done and how best to do it. So it might go OK.

In fact, I think it might even be an occasion for giving one of those mood icons a go.

Bush gives $43 million to Afghanistan for drug war

Today's breathtakingly evil doing:

The moral bankruptcy of the drug war was highlighted again last week as US officials announced that the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan would be receiving about $43 million in anti-drug funds for forcing farmers to abandon opium crops that had previously been tolerated.

As columnist Robert Scheer pointed out in the Los Angeles Times ( below ), the Taliban has created one of the world's most repressive governments. Women have been effectively stripped of all rights in Afghanistan, and leaders have caused other recent international uproars by destroying ancient Buddhist statues and announcing that religious minorities will soon be required to wear identification tags.

Full story on Taliban's Tyranny No Problem For Anti-Drug Aid. Oh, and here's some coverage from the Los Angeles Times just to confirm the story isn't cut from whole cloth - apparently it's humanitarian aid. So that's OK.