MiniSky: Thoughts About Everything

I have a half dozen different squares in my shop. My framing square isn’t accurate enough for fine woodworking. A good try square is plenty accurate, but its uses are limited. The combination square, on the other hand, is one of the most versatile layout and measuring tools in my shop. That’s why it tops the list of my “10 Essential Hand Tools for Your Shop.”

If you’re interested in purchasing any of the items I mention in this Woodsmith Woodworking Podcast, be sure to check out the Woodsmith Podcast Store. You’ll find links to many of the items listed there.

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I remember growing up that my dad always had a sharp pocketknife in his pocket. He still carries one with him all the time. He could never stand not having a sharp knife and sharpened it often. So, I guess I picked up the habit of carrying a pocket knife from Dad.

My first decent pocket knife I purchased for myself was a small, two-bladed Buck knife. It had stainless steel blades and real wood scales.  I bought it on my honeymoon and carried it with me every day for about 15 years. Imagine how heartbroken I was when I emptied my pockets one evening and it wasn’t there. I looked all over, but couldn’t find it. A few weeks later, I resigned myself to the fact that it was long gone. Soon after, I replaced it with a Case knife. It, too, had stainless steel blades.  Some months later, I pulled into our gravel driveway, and as I was getting out of the car, I saw what remained of my original Buck knife.  Actually, it was pretty intact, but the combination of gravel and cars running over it removed one of the wood scales.

When I carried a pocket knife, I used it mostly for opening packages, cutting cardboard, and tightening the occasional screw.  (I know…don’t tell my dad.)  Every so often, I’d take it out to the shop and sharpen it. But it seemed like it never held an edge for very long (even when I didn’t use it as a screwdriver). I’m no metallurgist and certainly don’t understand the finer points of blade steel, but I wondered if the stainless steel blades were the problem.

It occurred to me that the reason my dad’s knife is always sharp might not be just that he sharpens it often, but perhaps his has a high-carbon steel blade. (I’ll have to ask next time I see him.) I think carbon steel can be sharpened to a finer edge and holds its edge better than stainless steel. All I want is a knife you can almost shave with. I could never get that with my stainless steel knives.

I’ve been intrigued by these little Opinel knives from Lee Valley. The smallest one is small enough to carry in a pocket. And the blades are made from high-carbon steel. The price is right at just under $11US each for the two smaller ones. I’ve been carrying one around in my pocket for a few weeks, so maybe I’ll get a feel for how well the blade holds up to packing tape and cardboard and maybe the occasional whittling (but no tightening of screws). When I got it, it just took a little honing to get it impressively sharp.  A lot sharper than my Buck or Case stainless steel knives, anyway.  So far, for being an inexpensive knife, I’ve been impressed.

Cinekids are here with a special 15th edition, or better yet, a special halloween edition!!! The kids, now in disguise as the Flash and an Angel, review some of their favorite DVDs! Nick reviews “Yu gi oh: The Movie”, “Bionicle 2″, “Jurassic Park 3″, “Jumanji”, and “The Flash” while Kayla reviews “The Lizzie McGuire Movie”, “The Cat in the Hat”, “Alice in Wonderland”, “Superman 2″, and “Spaceballs”. All that and some special, nay, SUPER suprises!

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Laura Carlsen | October 4, 2007
Americas Program, Center for International Policy (CIP)

U.S. drug czar John Walters heaped praise on Mexico’s drug war this week, to prepare the ground for a billion-dollar counter-narcotics aid package expected to be announced within days.

The latest statistics purported to show that the street price of cocaine has doubled in some cities and that purity has decreased, indicating restricted supply. According to Walters, the United States and Mexico are winning the drug war, and ” the real challenge is to continue it.”

Walters presented a preview of the highly secretive document that will set out terms for the multi-year package. According to press reports, the plan includes objectives in the areas of gathering and sharing intelligence, interdiction at ports of entry, aerial monitoring and intervention, investigation and legal processing, measures against money laundering, and cooperation with Mexico.

If that sounds vague it’s because it is. Almost no details have been released about the deal. So far, the public has only been told that the money will be for intelligence equipment, wiretapping, and military and police training programs.

Buzzwords—like fumigation, arms, and foreign agents—have been left out of public statements, although they will most likely not be left out of the package itself.

Fumigations have been a social and environmental disaster and proved ineffective in Colombia, leading to dead rivers, devastated lands, and contributing to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of villagers. Opening up the flow of U.S. arms is a sticky subject between the two nations. The Mexican government has protested uncontrolled illegal arms shipments from the United States to Mexico, and the suggestion of more weapons feeds Mexican civil society’s fears of militarization. These fears have heightened dramatically with the active participation of the Mexican army in the drug war under Calderon’s administration.

Both Mexican and U.S. officials have gone to great lengths to explain that the Mexican counter-narcotics plan will not be a repeat of the disgraced Plan Colombia. While ignoring the overall failure of that plan, they have emphasized that Plan Mexico will not include U.S. troops in Mexico. Concern in Mexico on this point has run so high that Minister of Foreign Relations Patricia Espinosa has repeatedly made public statements denying that U.S. troop presence forms part of the new package.

While it is unlikely that U.S. troops will be sent into Mexico due to political sensitivities, troop presence is a relatively minor part of the problem with the Plan Colombia model (recall that even Plan Colombia maintained a tight cap on direct military presence). Greater U.S. presence in Mexico will occur, at U.S. taxpayers’ expense and to Mexican citizens’ chagrin. DEA agents have already requested offices in two more Mexican cities and it is very unlikely that all the proposed training will take place in the United States.

But the real threat to Mexico lies in the fact that the plan proposes that the U.S. government be the funder and co-designer of a cornerstone of the nation’s national security strategy. Already it claims to be working with Mexico to build a central command to coordinate the work of internal agencies and facilitate binational coordination.

It’s no coincidence that the new plan concentrates on measures in Mexico, despite the obvious fact that the U.S. market drives the drug trade and illegal drugs couldn’t make it to the streets there unless organized crime and the complicity of government agents existed in the United States as well.

But it’s better business to attempt to remove the speck from your neighbor’s eye than the log from your own. Although Mexico’s drug problem is far more than a speck (the General Accounting Office recently reported that it accounts for as much as a $23 billion-dollar a year business), the new deal will offer up lucrative contracts to U.S. military and intelligence equipment firms, long-term maintenance and training contracts, and related services. In a recent Washington Post article, Misha Glenny cites a GAO report on Plan Colombia that finds that 70% of the money allotted never leaves the United States.

The billion-dollar drug deal may be a bonanza for Boeing, but the pay-off to the U.S. taxpayers who have to foot the bill is much less obvious.

Despite Walters’ claims, a tremendous amount of evidence exists to show the consistent failure of the supply-side model of drug war that relies primarily on military and police enforcement measures. When that model goes international, it becomes even more problematic, feeding conflict as it starves social investment.

This policy approach would seem to warrant at the very least a cautious attitude toward applying it in other countries—especially one as geographically and economically close as Mexico. A more sensible approach would involve creation of mechanisms of cooperation and intelligence sharing with each nation responsible for its own security policies and focused on the problem within its own territory and among its own populace.

Laura Carlsen (lcarlsen(a)ciponline.org) is director of the Americas Policy Program (www.americaspolicy.org) in Mexico City where she has been a writer and political analyst for two decades.

Plan Mexico and the Billion-Dollar Drug Deal

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