To understand how cannabis became so stigmatized, you have to understand something about a plant that is very similar to cannabis but different enough that making it illegal would be preposterous: hemp.
If I told you there was a plant available to us today that could be grown in pretty much any soil, could thrive without the use of pesticides, and could be farmed with very little maintenance, and that this magical plant could be used for a very large number of necessities and goods we use today, but we are doing nothing about it, would you think to yourself, “Joe you must be high or on some other cheap drug”?
Well, I’m not high nor do I get high, but let me tell you, there is a plant available right now and it is often mistaken for marijuana, but it has capabilities that are beyond what you could imagine. It’s called hemp.
Right off the top, hemp looks very much like marijuana and is technically in the same family of plants. But unlike modern maryjane, it does not contain anywhere near the amount of THC needed for someone to get high if they were to smoke it. The funny thing is, in the United States, hemp is just as illegal to grow as marijuana is. But how can this be? If we can’t get high from it, then what’s the problem?
In the past, hemp was used for many things: clothes, cars, plastics, building materials, rope, paper, linens, food, medicine and so on. In fact, it used to be mandatory in the United States for farmers to grow hemp if they had the land. You can find out even more about hemp here.
The fact is, hemp was very popular throughout the 1800s and 1900s because it was incredibly useful and easy to grow, and its derived products were so long lasting. But one day that all changed; it became illegal and so did its friend cannabis (marijuana). How did this happen?…. Read More
There are over two million inmates in American prisons, or one in 743 people. Communist China, which has five times the population of the United States, has 500,000 less inmates. The United States has only 5% of the world’s population, but has 25% of the world’s prison population.
The American prison system represents the new “Plantation” system. It is racist and illegal but American politicians reap major financial benefit from its existence. the owners of this heinous system control much of the mainstream media, so you will never hear of it on CNN.
In 1972, the U.S. had less than 300,000 inmates. By 1990, the incarceration rate had skyrocketed to one million and by today, the rate has more than doubled again. Again, I ask why? Because there is very big monied interests behind the growth industry of privatized prisons.
According to Charles Campbell, author of The Intolerable Hulks (2001), the privatization of the prisons movement has its origins in the Revolutionary War period. England began to put undesirables and prisoners in prison ships. The U.S. fully embraced the use of private prisons during the Reconstruction Period (1865-1876) in the south, following the Civil War. Plantation owners and business owners needed “free” replacements to compensate for the loss of their previous slave laborers. In 1868, convict leases were awarded to private business interests in order to bolster their labor workforce and the practice continued until the early 20th century.
Today, this practice has been taken over by private corporate interests who are increasingly taking over our prison system and this unholy practice is no less exploitative than the slave labor abuses of the past and as in all forms of slavery, it is being fueled by profit.
If only the stock market was so reliable as a revenue generator. America leads the world in incarcerated people. Even Communist China, with over 1.2 billion people has fewer prisoner that the United States.
According to the California Prison Focus “The private contracting of prisoners for work fosters incentives to lock people up. Prisons depend on this income. Corporate stockholders who make money off prisoners’ work lobby for longer sentences, in order to expand their workforce. The system feeds itself,” says a study by the Progressive Labor Party, which accuses the prison industry of being “an imitation of Nazi Germany with respect to forced slave labor and concentration camps.”…. Read More
In 1972, Newsweek published what must have been considered by many readers to be a shocking commentary on the drug war by libertarian Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman. Entitled “Prohibition and Drugs,” Friedman’s article called for the legalization of drugs — all drugs.
Friedman made two primary libertarian arguments in favor of drug legalization: freedom and practicality. He wrote,
On ethical grounds, do we have the right to use the machinery of government to prevent an individual from becoming an alcoholic or a drug addict? For children, almost everyone would answer at least a qualified yes. But for responsible adults, I, for one, would answer no. Reason with the potential addict, yes. Tell him the consequences, yes. Pray for and with him, yes. But I believe that we have no right to use force, directly or indirectly, to prevent a fellow man from committing suicide, let alone from drinking alcohol or taking drugs….
Whatever happens to the number of addicts, the individual addict would clearly be far better off if drugs were legal. Today, drugs are both incredibly expensive and highly uncertain in quality. Addicts are driven to associate with criminals to get the drugs, become criminals themselves to finance the habit, and risk constant danger of death and disease…. Read More
“The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread. When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out ‘stop!’ When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.” ― Bertolt Brecht, Selected Poems
There are days I wake up, and I’m not sure what country I live in anymore.
There are days I wake up and want to go right back to sleep in the hopes that this surreal landscape of government-sanctioned injustice, corruption and brutality is just a really bad dream.
There are days I am so battered by the never-ending wave of bad news that I have little outrage left in me: I am numb.
And then I get hold of myself, shake myself out of the doldrums, and remind myself that it’s not yet time to give up: America needs our outrage and our alertness and our tenacity and our fierce determination to remain a free people in a land where justice matters.
Mind you, this is not just a Trump problem. A recent report indicates that under President Obama’s watch, migrant children were allegedly beaten, threatened with sexual violence and repeatedly assaulted while under the care of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials. According to Newsweek, “Border authorities were accused of kicking a child in the ribs and forcing a 16-year-old girl to ‘spread her legs’ for an aggressive body search. Other children accused officers of punching a child in the head three times, running over a 17-year-old boy and denying medical care to a pregnant teen, who later had a stillbirth.”
ACT. It doesn’t matter what your politics are or where you stand on immigration issues. There are some lines that should never be crossed—some government actions that should never be tolerated or justified—no matter what the end goal might be, and this is one of them. Demand that Congress stop playing politics and endangering children’s lives.
ACT: Call the Justice Department (202-353-1555) and read them the Fourth Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
When you find out that Amazon is selling police real time facial recognition software that can scan hundreds of thousands of faces, identify them, track them, and then report them to police, don’t just shrug helplessly.
ACT: Harness the power of your wallet to urge Amazon to favor freedom principles over profit motives. It’s only a matter of time before these programs are used widely here in the U.S. They are already being used and abused abroad. For instance, Amazon’s Rekognition software was used by broadcasters to identify attendees at the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Chinese police have used similar facial recognition tools to scan crowds at rock concerts, malls and gas stations in order to catch alleged lawbreakers. Just recently, Chinese police used the technology to capture a suspect who had been living under a pseudonym after he failed to pay for $17,000 worth of potatoes. Chinese schools are even employing the facial recognition cameras in classrooms to alert teachers to students who aren’t paying attention.
When you hear Sessions bragging about how much he loves civil asset forfeiture, which allows the government to seize Americans’ personal property—money, cars, homes and other valuables—without having to first prove that any criminal conduct has taken place, don’t just take his word for it.
ACT: Do your own research. You’ll soon discover that because of the corruption that surrounds this abusive program, countless innocent Americans have been robbed blind by government agents out to get rich at their expense. Billions of dollars have been taken without probable cause. Anthonia Nwaorie, a Texas nurse who had saved up $41,377 to start a medical clinic for women and children in Nigeria, had her life savings seized by Customs Agents who refused to return the money unless she agreed to pay their “expenses.” Six months later, even though Nwaorie was never charged with a crime, she’s still waiting to get her money back…… Read More
Everybody’s least favorite homeland security goon squad, the Transportation Security Agency (TSA), is back in the news again this week, and for precisely the same reason as it always is: Engaging in the degradation, humiliation, dehumanization and molestation of innocent people which is its real raison d’être.
This time the victim was Jeanne Clarkson, a 96-year-old WWII veteran who the jackbooted thugs of the police state decided would be a fitting target for their “deluxe” treatment, i.e., a full six minutes of groping, patting and molestation. The only reason this even made it as a blip on the news radar (and even then, only in the tabloids and the alt media) was that her daughter had the sense to record the entire ordeal and post it to facebook, where the post went viral.
Sadly, there is nothing new here. Nothing shocking. Nothing unexpected to those who have seen this taking place for nearly two decades now. Whatever one makes of how long (or short) a journey it was from the pre-9/11 airport security experience (the waltz through the metal detector) to the police state gauntlet of today (removing shoes and belts, bomb swabs, radiation scanners, and the dreaded molestation pat-downs), the only surprising part of this story is that people are surprised by it.
As Matt Agorist notes in his write-up on the Clarkson incident and its context:
The TSA – whose job is supposedly “fighting terrorism” – is, without doubt, one of America’s most corrupt and incompetent agencies. However, last year, they apparently became so unsatisfied with the mere ability to strip search babies, remove colostomy bags, beat up blind cancer patients, and fondle your genitalia, that they announced a more invasive physical pat-downs. The pat-downs, which TSA warned would probably prompt assault complaints with the police department because of their invasive nature, have been implemented and a 96-year-old WWII veteran has become their latest victim.
To those who are truly surprised at the latest TSA outrage, I could point out yet again that the TSA is pure security theater, nothing more.
They have repeatedly failed to find bombs, massive shipments of narcotics, loaded guns, and even the very types of box cuttersused on 9/11.
And, in the ultimate case of “pot meet kettle,” even the US Congress itself has excoriated the TSA as an “enormous, inflexible and distracted bureaucracy, more concerned with human resource management and consolidating power, and acting reactively instead of proactively.”….. Read More
and here
This is the land of the free? Where we have to worry about order following goons dressed in blue coming to kidnap our children with ZERO due process. You certainly get no jury trial such as you get for important things such as littlering! Thank a troop for all of our freedoms next time you see one. AND where in God’s name are the fake “pro life” people? Where indeed….
Reporter Sara Tiano of The Chronicle of Social Change, an online news publication dedicated to solution-based news coverage of child welfare, juvenile justice, mental health and educational issues faced by vulnerable children, has written an investigative report about the case of Dr. Susan Spell, a Harvard-trained Beverly Hills California doctor who has been fighting to regain custody of her children for over 6 years.
Health Impact News originally reported on Dr. Susan’s case back in 2015. See:
MFP commentary: Cops that act like criminals, belong in jail…. not their victims. (what ever one decides to ingest is right not a permission, and “drug warriors” are criminals that deserve our full wrath)
Austin, TX – When a SWAT team initiated a no-knock raid in search of cannabis, they were met with gunfire, and while the resident surrendered as soon as he realized his home was being raided by police, the fact that he opened fire on the intruders and shot one of them in the leg has resulted in a 13-year prison sentence…. Read More
We labor today under the weight of countless tyrannies, large and small, carried out in the name of the national good by an elite class of government officials who are largely insulated from the ill effects of their actions.
We, the middling classes, are not so fortunate.
We find ourselves badgered, bullied and browbeaten into bearing the brunt of their arrogance, paying the price for their greed, suffering the backlash for their militarism, agonizing as a result of their inaction, feigning ignorance about their backroom dealings, overlooking their incompetence, turning a blind eye to their misdeeds, cowering from their heavy-handed tactics, and blindly hoping for change that never comes…. Read More
Give the state ANY power and you are 100% guaranteed that they will abuse it. Study your history….
This one is really infuriating.
It started back in 2016… on April 6th to be specific. A Philadelphia-area mother walked into a clinic because her 7-month old baby was being excessively fussy.
The doctor performed a cursory examination, concluded the baby had an ear infection, and prescribed an antibiotic.
Later that day, the mother noticed what seemed like a bone popping in the baby’s side and thought this might be the source of the discomfort…. Read More
