Reversing the North Caucasian Diaspora

The current unpleasantness in Ukraine has caught my attention to a slight degree, especially in light of the Winter Olympics having been held nearby. The location of the Olympics gave me a hint as to the best way to handle the matter. As I am sure you know, Sochi was the principal city of Circassia before the Russians conquered that country to go along with the rest of their conquests South and East of Russia proper. I can understand the conquest of the Crimean Peninsula, which the Russians took over in the 1700's. And we all know that the origin of Russia was in Kiev, when the position of Grand Duke was given to Rurik in 862 CE. What is called Russia these days was just a lightly populated wilderness mostly populated by Finns (or a related people) back when Kiev was the founding city of Russia.

Since Russia is big on putting things that way they should be, instead of leaving things as they are, we should do that with a few parts of the Russian empire. Let's start by giving the North Caucus independence again. Chechnya, Ingushetia, North Ossetia, Circassia, Dagestan, and so on were only conquered in the 18th and 19th centuries; the Caucasian War only ended in 1864, when the Circassians were finally defeated after resisting Russian aggression for more than a century and never having accepted defeat. We can let the Cossacks have the Southern stretch on Russia; they've been the ones living there for several hundred years now, since the Mongols left, and the boundary between the Cossacks and the Circassians is still the Kuban River well up into the interior, and to the East the boundary between Russia and Dagestan and Chechnya and Ingushetia is the Terek River.

The people of the North Caucasus are worthy of consideration, and they have recent and current grievances against the Russians. If only one of the nations there were rebelling, then we could call them savages, and that’s how the Russians tried to paint the Chechens, but the Circassians have a long history of being cultured and respectable people, and the Circassian women are said to be the most beautiful in the world. But the Russians made war against women and children throughout the North Caucasus but especially in Circassia.

It is easy to find ancient examples of ethnic cleansing, but there have been only a few examples in modern times, and what was done in Circassia is one of the most extreme examples. "A Russian detachment having captured the village of Toobah on the Soobashi river, inhabited by about a hundred Abadzekh [a tribe of Circassians], and after these had surrendered themselves prisoners, they were all massacred by the Russian Troops. Among the victims were two women in an advanced state of pregnancy and five children. The detachment in question belongs to Count Evdokimoff's Army, and is said to have advanced from the Pshish valley. As the Russian troops gain ground on the [Black Sea] Coast, the natives are not allowed to remain there on any terms, but are compelled either to transfer themselves to the plains of the Kouban or emigrate to Turkey." (McCarthy, Justin. 1995. Death and exile: the ethnic cleansing of Ottoman Muslims 1821–1922. Princeton, NJ: Darwin. Chapter 2: Eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus)

The Circassians were not known as criminals or raiders. They had a settled culture for many centuries in that region, but they were in the way of Russian desire for empire, so they were slaughtered and driven out as much as possible. The commonly used number of Circassians driven out was 500,000, which was thought to be a little more than half of the total population. The Circassians were the most numerous of the nations of the North Caucasus, so the numbers of the people slaughtered among the other nations look tiny in comparison, but the Chechens, Ingushetians, Ossetians ( or Alans), and few even smaller nations were treated similarly. The Chechens have been the most violent in their recent resistance against Russian aggression, but Ingustia has been in civil war for several years, and the Circassians have been slowly filtering back to their homeland to fight for it. Most people would be better off, if they were peaceful, but the Russians have tried to crush a few too many others, and it might be a good idea, if there were some payback. To put it in proportion, the ethnic cleansing of Circassia is similar in nature to the theft of Kosovo, but many, many, many more people were killed or displaced in Circassia.

I think that the world would be a better place, if there were fewer people insisting that their tribe should have something, land freedom or whatever, and the easiest way to have fewer tribes and nations whining is to give them what they want, especially when all they want are some steep mountain valleys in an out of the way corner of the world. Let’s encourage Russia to negotiate the independence of the North Caucasus countries, and let us encourage the UN to oversee the peace in that region for some time.

Over the centuries Russia has subjugated other nations, but let’s start with an area where a single campaign can do a great deal of good. If you are interested in the issue, then searching for information about the North Caucasus peoples, the principle nations are the Adyghe (or Circassians), Chechens, Ingushetians, Ossetians (or Alans), and there are numerous smaller peoples in Dagestan. If you are interested in other nations subjugated by the Russians, then look into the Bashkirs, Crim Tatars, Mari, Finns, and some of the peoples mentioned in the pages linked below. Borders have moved over the centuries, so some groups that were subjugated centuries ago now live in other countries; only the Circassians (Adyghe) emigrated in great numbers.

http://www.euratlas.net/history/europe/1200/
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...1200,_1127.svg
http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/russia/ru01.html
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...56_%28A%29.jpg

http://www.rferl.org/content/circass.../24674280.html

The Caucasian War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_War

Russian - Circassian War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian...Circassian_War

Pricing Marijuana

I’m not in Colorado or Washington or Uruguay or any other place where marijuana is legal, but I expect to be in not too long a time, because the legalization movement will be spreading. With that in mind, I looked at process in Colorado, and I was shocked. The prices look like they still have a premium of risk in there, even though most of the risk has been removed by legalization. It’s not easy to estimate how large the risk premium is, but we should be able to make a reasonable estimate by comparing marijuana with other crops that require similar inputs, similar soils, etc. After getting a general idea from a direct comparison, we can make adjustments to reflect differences.

Hemp, whether for fiber or smoking requires good quality soil and some additional nutrients. The soil requirements are similar to corn or tobacco, but hemp does not require the special soils that some tobacco requires. Per acre labor costs are said to be comparable with specialty grains and oilseeds.

Processing costs would be similar to industrial hemp. Although different parts of the plants are taken for industrial hemp; the kind of handling would be similar. There probably be additional handling costs that would cover drying and packing in small quantities, but that is a simple kind of adjustment to make, especially since we know the time and equipment that would be necessary.
To start off.
Corn (ave.) 495.00
Canola (SK) 375.00
Canola (AB) 390.00
Flaxseed (SK) 450.00
Flaxseed (AB) 400.00

These are recent spot prices stated in cents per pound in different markets. Considering that this is a small and speculative market it would be reasonable to start with the high price ($4.95) that is for corn. This is only a starting point, because the harvesting and handling of smoking hemp is more labor intensive than is the case of crops that are loaded in huge quantities. The exact cost of the handling can’t be determined in detail until the actual market will exist. A reasonable estimate is that it will take less than a quarter of a person hour and the handler probably will make about $20 per hour. Handling facilities will eventually be rather specialized, but that will be mostly for drying and controlling dust.

It is difficult to estimate costs beforehand, so it is better to estimate on the high side, but thinking of a grading and drying facility for tobacco and assuming that a plant for hemp would be similar in type, size, etc. The handling time would also be similar to tobacco, so let’s look at the costs of that commodity also. Dried tobacco leaf sells for $5 to $20 per pound depending on type and quantity. Considering that smoking hemp would be a smaller crop, it would be reasonable to say that wholesale smoking hemp prices should be about $20 per pound. Tobacco is somewhat easier to work with, because the leaves are thick and less likely to crumble (which also suggests that a moisture controlled facility would be a good idea). The retail price of cigarettes without the taxes is about $2.50 per pack of twenty cigarettes, which has a weight of about one ounce.

Putting all this together a reasonable price for an ounce of marijuana, smoking hemp, is about $2.50 plus a reasonable tax. The federal excise on cigarettes is just over a dollar a pack, and the average state taxes are $1.91 per pack. This level of taxation is silly, but it doesn’t look like it will rationalized soon, so let’s live with it and make the taxes on marijuana equal to tobacco taxes. If the feds and the states decided that taxation based on the THC content would be preferable, then the total price probably would end up in the same range, from $4.50 to $10.10, but the way to get there would be different.

Pricing marijuana like this would allow the participants in the industry to make good money, and government could make an obscene amount of money, and consumers could get a good product at a reasonable price without paying the criminal risk premium. The reason why I wrote this was that I looked at pricing in Colorado and found prices per ounces ranging from $90 per ounce to more than $300 per ounce. That level of pricing is theft. Perhaps prices will come down when the markets learn the economics, or when the owners of markets become so rich that they won’t need any more money, but it is possible the economies of scale are not coming into play, yet. Until that happens I think that most people should scream, unless they grow their own, in which case they should smile.

Public Policy Lies

Today I was reminded, yet again, how much of the information that the general news media provide is wrong. I would prefer to use a milder word for the incorrectness, because reporters often just report things that they don’t understand, and many facts are dropped, because they don’t fit, or the reporter doesn’t understand what is being said. Then there are the things that are deliberately misreported; much deliberate misreporting is done, because public policy or editorial policy says that certain things are facts regardless of actual fact.

And there I was, talking to a young woman, and tobacco prohibition came up as an aside. And as a further aside I mentioned what good stuff nicotine is and how tobacco got a bad rap, because the way that the matter of tobacco and lung cancer was reported didn’t mention that defective genes were the actual cause of the cancer, and tobacco, or some other irritant, was just a trigger.

Unjustified condemnation of tobacco isn’t the only way that a prejudice against tobacco is shown. There is also the matter of nicotine being an effective anti-depressant and brain stimulant; these characteristics have been ignored by the press, and major investigators only recently started to look into these characteristics. Nicotine fills acetylcholine receptors, and this causes dopamine, endorphins, and glutamate to be released. Dopamine and endorphins act as anti-depressants, and glutamate is a memory enhancer. Nicotine is now being studied as a treatment for Parkinson’s Disease and treatment for Alzheimer’s Disease. It has been said that nicotine cures Parkinson’s, but the results with Alzheimer’s are not as complete, but it has been shown to slow the onset. The federal government, which has led the effort to demonize tobacco, is involved in research on nicotine against Parkinson’s. So there is a sign that the public policy condemning tobacco may start to crumble. All of this was completely new that person I was talking to, and she may not have believed a word of it.


Tobacco isn’t the only thing that gets a bad rap that way. Sunlight is commonly called the cause of melanoma, but that isn’t what the evidence shows. Melanoma is caused by any of several genetic defects that appear to cause, but it is not certain that all such defects have been recognized, and some people without genetic defects do acquire melanoma. But exposure is only a small part of the whole, and there are other advantages to exposure to sunlight. If we have a few more years of evidence that will show that sunlight is a trigger, at most, in causing melanoma, then public policy might again favor the Sun, not that it needs our approval.

The funniest example of policy opposing something causing reporting problems was in regard to a study that had found that alcohol was good for health in all quantities; that is, that moderation was not necessary. I was listening to the radio fairly early one morning when that report was read. The reader made some surprised comment after reading it. I expected to hear more about it later in the day, but there were no more reports about alcohol that day. Apparently the reader let his prejudice get the better of him, so he ignored new evidence. Oh well.

Nicotine isn’t the only psychoactive drug that has been condemned by the government, etc. Pretty much all psychoactive drugs are condemned by public officials. Marijuana is now getting a lighter treatment, because it is very common and very, very safe in addition to having therapeutic value. Apparently public policy has decided that the good that marijuana can do outweighs the calm and relaxation that it can provide people. It also helps that it was completely unregulated until a few decades ago. I haven’t been able to figure out why legalization didn’t become public policy after the Prohibition Era. As with alcohol, drugs are not as harmful as the battle to stamp them out became, and the experience with the prohibition of alcohol should have shown how things would work. Marijuana wasn’t criminalized until after alcohol was legalized again, which makes no sense at all. Anyone who has known any drug addicts or users of any illegal drugs knows that the problems are not with the drugs; the problems involve the illegality of the materials.

A few years ago it became public policy to desire government intervention in the medical industry after decades of it being public policy to keep government out of people’s lives. The government intervention was supposed to make medical care available to everyone, even though it had been available to anyone who wanted it. And there started to be more pushes to sell more medical services to more people and to make payments for the services through insurance companies, which would do nothing except put money into the insurance companies. But all this was supposed to make medicine cheaper. Even without all of the changes in place it has become clear that this activity is making medical care more expensive and limiting how much care some people can get. The changes were supposed to be paid for by getting more healthy people covered by medical insurance, but it turned out that the healthy people already had medical insurance, so the new people were starting to demand more services. Anyway, the public policy was wrong; healthcare reform has not made medical care more accessible for anyone, and it has not reduced the costs of medical care, and it has not provided care for more people, because many people who had medical insurance have lost it. We don’t know how things will end up, but it will be uglier than it already is.

Through history there have been times and places where public policy was on the right side of an issue, but that hasn’t been in the United States recently.

Don’t forget to tell me how wrong I am in clear and accurate terms.


http://skincancer.about.com/od/riskf...noma_genes.htm
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/p...essional/page4