Cannabis: Strong Medicine For An Ailing Democracy
By David VanThournout
October 24th 2010
With the release of yet more secret documents by wikileaks.org, reputedly the largest in history, it is becoming even harder to deny the bloody handed nature of empire and it's very serious impact upon "This Non-Negotiable American Way of Life". I'm not really in particular slamming Hilary Clinton on this one because she's not the only one that is guilty of believing that we Americans have the right to use the bulk of the worlds resources to sit on our butt's and do worse than nothing. We watch Television on average 7 hours a day and we have been thoroughly divided and conquered by the David Koch's of the world. Now we (as a nation) sling the equivalent of political dung on the "enemies of capitalism" and carry "dirty tea" for our puppet masters.
Not that this image of dung slinging monkeys carrying dirty tea for their rich "friends" isn't funny, it's just not going to be too funny when these angry hordes of useful idiot proto brownshirts actually gain enough traction to repeal the 21st century.
Unfortunately, with the recent release of many new secret documents, pentagon and white house officials are no doubt scrambling to find a thread of hope that they can have a position of power from which to speak on this subject. However, any moral high ground that "America the Empire" had, was gone mostly when George W. Bush snubbed the civilized world in favor of a "kick their ass and take their gas" foreign policy. Well, now the entire world has the proof that American Peace activists have spoken the truth from day one. War is hell. But Illegal wars are a hell all their own. And make no mistake, the war on Iraq was an illegal war, as the british courts may be about to decide. It seems that some of the deaths resulting from torture may have actually happened "technically" on the brits watch, and so Nick Clegg, deputy prime minister of the UK is calling for an investigation of these allegations of abuse. "Any suggestions that the rules of war have been broken or torture condoned are 'extremely serious', says deputy PM". It appears that secret US Army field reports reveal two cases of alleged involvement of British Troops in the abuse of Iraqi detainees.
As [Julian] Assange [of wikileaks.org] defended the decision to disclose the documents – saying it was of "immense importance" to reveal the truth about the conflict – the UN warned that if the logs pointed to clear violations of the UN convention against torture, Barack Obama's administration had a clear obligation to investigate them.
Manfred Novak, the UN special rapporteur on torture, said: "President Obama came to power with a moral agenda, saying we don't want to be seen to be a nation responsible for major human rights violations." A failure to investigate credible claims of complicity in torture, Novak suggested, would be a failure of the Obama government to recognize US obligations under international law.
Taken from: WikiLeaks Iraq war logs: Nick Clegg calls for investigation of abuse claims
While I do understand that the American People have an unprecedented ability to ignore facts, the world has no such problem. This is of course going to be fuel for the fire that the radical right is building upon which they intend to burn anything and everything that stands in the way of an American theocratic dictatorship.
Meanwhile Back At The Ranch
In California Marijuana may be about to be legalized. Why is this important? Because the rise of the new left depends upon healing the rift created when the Nixon administration pursued the drug war as a way for the right to permanently divide the left. This was the big right wing plan, funded by corporate money, to guarantee that the left will never again have anything to say about America's going to war. I know, I paid the price of going to prison for my beliefs regarding Marijuana. It was not a small amount of time either, I spent 5 years and 8 months behind bars for Marijuana and LSD. Two of the safest drugs ever discovered by man. Well, that is unless you're rich and own a slice of the American Military Industrial complex. Or even if you're poor and you've been carrying water for the people that sent your sons and daughters off to be killed for corporate profit. So I see that there are a number of forces at play, unfortunately, the left doesn't recognize this, nor do they realize the rise of the immigrant hate balloon in AZ (known as S.B. 1070) was all in the interest of countering what was going on the ballot in California for this November.
It's not entirely surprising that the Obama administration isn't going along with prop 19. To date, I believe that not one single iota of the power that George W grabbed for the Imperial White House has been returned to it's rightful owners, the people. We on the left had hoped that the Obama administration would for the most part do the right thing and reduce the tendency of the POTUS to disregard domestic and international law and consensus when forging our country's policies. However it appears that it will remain business as usual when it comes to war. It is clearly in the vested interests of the military industrial complex to stop the passage of proposition 19 since this will potentially heal the rift in the left and allow people to recapture that which made the left a vibrant, active, compassionate, force to be reckoned with in the 1960's.
I'm always amazed at how simple this has always been. I've known for so long that the alternative to an alcohol soaked public discussion was to legalize Marijuana. As soon as you do this, we can start healing as a nation from the nearly the worst recreational drug ever discovered; Alcohol. There are few drugs as toxic as alcohol. Marijuana on the other hand is actually the least toxic substance ever discovered. LSD is the second least toxic drug discovered. They are only toxic to the status quo.
So, perhaps it's time for America to really wake up and take back our freedoms. Freedom to choose what medicine we use, and freedom to choose a safer drug for our recreation. The legalization of Marijuana represents our best chance as a nation to come to grips with the rise of fascism in America. It is exactly a civil rights issue that would go a long way to restoring real freedom in America.
On The Wings of Hate
In 1913 California became the first state to pass a law against Marijuana. State after state followed suite and in 1937 the federal government stepped in and made it illegal nationwide. This was sold to the public as a drug which made normally lazy Mexicans go crazy and rape white women. Ditto for African Americans, lazy until stoned then crazed white women raping machines. We have long said on the deeply marginalized side of the Marijuana subculture that the only real difference between alcohol and marijuana prohibition was the number people effected. If like alcohol marijuana was used as the drug of choice by the dominant culture it would have been legalized a long time ago. Instead, as a nation, we engaged in a systematic assassination of the truly good character of the cannabis plant and of the diversity of the people who depended upon it for their medicine, their recreation, their clothing and in many cases even their food. It occurred immediately to the military industrial complex that they’d better do something about this wave of awareness of the realities of war and they identified marijuana, the drug that turned our youth from good all American boys and girls into pot smoking, draft dodging hippies bent on a world at peace. This sparked a resurgence of the war on drugs in 1968, particularly marijuana, as a way to divide the left. It has worked famously.
Decades of Misinformation Ensue
In 1974 I distinctly recall hearing that smoking Marijuana caused head and neck cancer. Many years later I find out that in fact the exact opposite is true. People in charge at the time decided that it would send the wrong message to our youth (yes they justified lying to save the children). Recently we’ve discovered that marijuana may be the most potent anti-cancer drug ever discovered. Two effects were discovered on tumors. One was that programmed cell death was facilitated by cannabinoids. The second effect observed was that the growth of blood vessels to the tumors was suppressed. These are exactly the two things that are the very hallmarks of cancer. Unregulated growth and the ability to coerce our bodies into growing blood vessels to the tumors. Now clinical studies have shown that there is a significant health benefit to smoking marijuana. In fact, it has been suggested that people that smoke both cigarettes and marijuana have about the same (or perhaps even lower) risk of getting lung cancer as a non-smoker.
I realize that people reading this article might think that I've been scattered all over the place but really, there are major forces crashing together this November 2nd and when the dust settles we will either be firmly on the pathway to either recovery of our democracy embodied in the passage of proposition 19 and the denouncing of politicians that push (hate) bills like S.B. 1070, or we will take one more step to the right down the slippery slope of fascism. Trust me, I’ve been the proverbial canary in the coal mine on this one, and my time in prison helped me recognize when I’m in one. We are headed for fascism if the tea party loony tunes takes over in November.
I've said that It's no surprise that Obama isn't backing legalization of pot but he and all the Dems running for office should have. Nothing would speak to young people more than the idea that our president not only got the point of inhaling, but the whole point of an alternative to the hate and fear mongering of the right. Cannabis is strong medicine for an ailing democracy.
Sources;
Pot Shrinks Tumors; Government Knew in '74
YesOn19.com
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WikiLeaks Iraq war logs: Nick Clegg calls for investigation of abuse claims
Marijuana as Medicine
