Life, Love, and Liberty

Alix Lakehurst of Chicago was kind enough to quote me in one of her recent posts.

Thanks! Alix.

By the way, I’ll be revising and potentially expanding my comment on there in a future post.

“No one who supports putting a drug user in jail has any right to shed crocodile tears over the death of someone whose life they have proved willing to throw away. The middle class moralist prides emself for saving their victims from the shadows’ imagined atrocoties. Yet it is such a moralist who supports the real, unimagined atrocity of destroying other peoples’ lives because the moralist feels threatened by their existence as a creeping social plague. It would not matter if the prohibition laws could not be shown to have caused this young woman’s death. Every arrogant bourgeois who supported a law to jail her for her regulation alread pronounced their intention to regard her life, choices, and dreams as worthless.

I wish I had any hope of overcoming this dualised, fear-ridden and bigoted consciousness. But I think most Americans (and people throughout the world) are wedded to this kind of life, psychically and socially, which demands the forcible suppression of alternatives for its persistence. And I fear that this kind of life, while horrid, is ineradicable and dominant for socially functional reasons.

But that aside- I have no patience for those who talk of the ‘good intentions’ of those ‘concerned’ about drug use. Anyone who doubts that should remember that the same people who mourn that ‘drugs’ killed this woman would, if a miracle had granted her resuscitation, greeted her return to the world with courts, manacles, and jail.

For words constitute the distinct chime of the leper’s bell of social conservatism:

“FOR YOUR OWN GOOD”.

~ Lady Aster

“When you strip away all the verbiage, all the intellectual tap dancing, and all the efforts to “understand” and be “tolerant,” that is the inescapable, the terrible bottom line: many of you think we are Freaks. Speaking for myself with regard to these issues, I don’t want you to “understand” me or to be “tolerant” of me. I don’t want you to “study” me, and try to graph all the various points of similarity and difference between us: I want you to recognize that I am completely and entirely a human being, just as you are. And I want you to understand fully what that means, and to genuinely mean it.

It is one thing to be openly hated and despised, as gays and lesbians are by many on the right. We’re used to that, and we got used to it a long time ago. As was required, we manufactured intellectual and emotional armor to protect ourselves. In the current climate, we have to put it on every single damned day. It weighs a great deal, and it exacts an awful price. But without it, we would suffer injuries too grievous to be borne.

But how much worse it is to be cajoled into taking off that armor — to hear you tell us that you understand we’re “just like you” in all the ways that matter, and that we’re really “just the same” — and then to read or hear about “how easy” you think it is to “make fun” of us, especially when our status as Freaks is too obvious. How much worse it is when we believe you, when you tell us you think we’re all equal — except that you can get married, while almost every leading Democrat will say, well, no, we can’t get married. But we can have “civil unions.” Because, you see, Freaks don’t get married.”

~ Arthur Silber

“Love offers the model of perfect communication: the orgasm, the total fusion of two separate beings. It is a glimpse of a transformed universe. Its intensity, its here-and-now-ness, its physical exaltation, its emotional fluidity, its grateful acceptance of the value of change - everything indicates that love will prove the key factor in recreating the world. Our emotionally-dead survival cries out for multidimensional passions. Lovemaking sums up and distils both the desire for, and the reality of, such a way of life. The universe lovers build of dreams and one another’s bodies is a transparent universe: lovers want to be at home everywhere.”

~ Raoul Vaneigem

“One last thought needs to be considered. As mentioned, the apparatus necessary for a full-scale genocide has already been created. The Nazis managed to exterminate millions of Jews and other groups. The only active armed resistance occurred in the Warsaw ghetto. Originally containing three hundred thousand Jews, the gradual Nazi deportation program eventually reduced the population to forty thousand. It was at this point that an armed resistance movement, armed with homemade weapons and led by courageous youth in their twenties, began. They succeeded in warding off the Gestapo for a month before finally being crushed. So far the only public official courageous enough to advocate genuine resistance to what is being done to America today has been former New Hampshire state representative Tom Alciere. Let’s not make the same mistake as the Europeans of sixty years ago.”

~ Keith Preston

When you read about President Bush denouncing tyranny, you really have to acknowledge the hypocrisy. I mean; seriously.

Bush denounces tyrants from Cuba to Zimbabwe

James Bone for The Times in New York

US President George Bush urged UN members today to join in a “mission of liberation”, denouncing tyrants in Belarus, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Zimbabwe and announcing tightened US sanctions on the junta in Burma.

“This great institution must work for great purposes: to free people from tyranny and violence; to combat disease, illiteracy, and ignorance and poverty and despair,” Mr Bush told the 192-nation UN General Assembly. “Every member of the United Nations must join in this mission of liberation.”

Making only a glancing mention of the violence in Iraq, Mr Bush saluted “young democracies” in Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan and called on the world to support the “moderate” leaders of the Palestinian Authority.

Avoiding any specific reference to al-Qaeda, the president warned that extremists were trying to impose a “hateful vision.”

“The followers of this violent ideology are a threat to civilised people everywhere,” he said. “All civilised nations must work together by sharing intelligence about their networks and choking off their finances and bringing to justice their operatives.

“In the long-run, the best way to defeat extremists is to defeat their dark ideology with a more hopeful vision - the vision of liberty.”

As protests grow in Burma, Mr Bush announced that expanded financial sanctions and an extended visa ban on members of the ruling junta and their families.

“Americans are outraged by the situation in Burma, where a military junta has imposed a 19-year reign of fear,” he said. “Basic freedoms of speech, assembly and worship are severely restricted. Ethnic minorities are persecuted. Froced child labour, human trafficking and rape are common. The regime is holding more than 1,000 political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi.”

“The military junta remains unyielding, yet the people’s desire for freedom remains unmistakable,” he said.

He excoriated the “brutal regimes” in Belarus, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Zimbabwe and said “the long rule of a cruel dictator is nearing its end” in Cuba.

“The Cuban people are ready for their freedom,” he said. “As that nation enters a period of transition, the UN must insist on free speech, free assembly and ultimately free and competitive elections.”

Although he was speaking just hours before Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mr Bush made no specific mention of Teheran’s suspected nuclear weapons programme.

He also call for the reform of the UN Human Rights Council, which was only created this year after a revamp that failed to earn Washington’s support.

“With commitment and courage of this chamber, a world where people are free to speak, assembly and worship as they wish, a world where children in every nation grow up healthy, get a decent education and look to the future with hope,” he said.

And I read the above on the day that the Drug Enforcement Administration conducts another Gestapo raid on medical marijuana collectives in California.

Dear Friends of MPP:

Right now, the DEA is currently raiding the River City Patient Center in Sacramento, California — the longest established medical marijuana dispensary in the city. Protesters have gathered outside the building in support of the collective.

And yesterday, the DEA began threatening landlords in the Santa Barbara area who lease space to medical marijuana dispensaries — activity that’s legal under California state law — with federal prison time and forfeiture of their properties. Several dispensaries closed right away.

This follows a similar move in Los Angeles in July — a maneuver that was condemned in a Los Angeles Times editorial as “a deplorable new bullying tactic.”

No matter what state you live in, will you please take a few minutes to write all three of your members of Congress to protest this federal interference in state law? MPP’s action center is easy to use: You can send one of our pre-drafted letters, or you can personalize the letter.

This is just the latest in the campaign of terror the DEA is waging on the sick. In June and July, the DEA conducted extensive medical marijuana raids in several California counties and in Oregon, including raids on at least 10 Los Angeles clinics in late July. Most were aimed at medical marijuana dispensaries operating legally under state and local laws, and in several cases the DEA detained and terrorized individual patients.

If this outrages you like it does me, would you help MPP hire a new grassroots organizer in California, as well as to retain a lobbyist to help push legislation in Sacramento to protect these dispensaries? If enough supporters on this e-mail list donate today, MPP will be able to fully pay for both positions.

These reprehensible DEA attacks — which run counter to state law, as well as the 78% of the American people who support “making marijuana legally available for doctors to prescribe in order to reduce pain and suffering” — are preventing effective local regulation of medical marijuana: Cities and counties in California are passing ordinances to ensure that medical marijuana dispensaries follow the law and serve patients properly. But by treating all who provide medical marijuana to the sick as common drug dealers, the DEA has become the single largest obstacle to effective regulation of these establishments.

A major Los Angeles raid actually occurred at the exact moment that members of the city council were holding a press conference to discuss an ordinance to regulate medical marijuana providers.

Local officials and major newspapers are outraged by the DEA’s actions. After the July raids in Los Angeles, L.A. City Councilman Dennis Zine — a Republican and former police officer with the L.A. Police Department — said, “I am greatly disturbed that the Drug Enforcement Administration would initiate an enforcement action against medical marijuana facilities in the City of Los Angeles during a news conference regarding City Council support of an Interim Control Ordinance to regulate all facilities within the City. This action by the DEA is
contrary to the vote of Californians who overwhelmingly voted to support medicinal marijuana use by those facing serious and life threatening illnesses. The DEA needs to focus their attention and enforcement action on the illegal drug dealers who are terrorizing communities in Los Angeles.”

After a series of DEA medical marijuana raids in San Francisco, the city’s health director, Dr. Mitchell Katz, wrote to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, “These actions have resulted in 4,000 persons with chronic illness left without access to critical treatment upon which they rely. Certainly in this post-September 11 environment, it seems that a DEA priority punishing organizations for distributing cannabis for medical purposes to chronically ill individuals is misplaced.”

Would you help us fight back against the DEA’s deplorable attacks on sick patients? Please write your three members of Congress now, and then consider making a donation to MPP today.

Sincerely,

Rob Kampia
Executive Director
Marijuana Policy Project
Washington, D.C.

Could politics get anymore ridiculous? Probably.

Hat tip to the Times Online UK via Antiwar.com, and the Marijuana Policy Project on MySpace.

The Global Marijuana March is happening this Saturday. There will be a march going on in Kansas City with live music to follow.

Here is a message from MoHemp:

When: 05 May 2007, 12:00 PM
Where: JC Nichols water fountain
50w 47th st
Kansas City, MO 64112
United States

I’ll be there to show my support and see who I can meet. I’d like to promote the ideas I put forward in this post, but I don’t know if they are of much use in the present cultural climate. I do think that making people more aware of the right of jury nullification may be the best one to adopt. I plan on doing a bit of research tomorrow, so I can speak to people about it at the event.

Death to the drug war! Ok, that’s my militant war cry moment

Since 1998, nearly 200,000 aspiring college students have been stripped of their financial aid just because they have drug convictions, usually for small-time marijuana possession. Meanwhile, convicted murderers and rapists are eligible to continue receiving federal student loans and grants.Thankfully, Congress is currently considering getting rid of this harmful and unfair aid elimination penalty. But legislators won’t act unless they hear from you!To make taking a stand as easy as possible, we’ve created a pre-written letter that you can edit and send to legislators.

Just thought folks may be interested in this.

(Another piece I wrote for English class with revisions. It was in response to an online post so that’s why it starts with “All very important questions that you raise!” )

All very important questions that you raise!

I would argue that the American government already maintains the equivalent of Soviet gulags in principle. To make sure that I am not misunderstood when I say this, here’s a few definitions of gulag from Dictionary.com.

“1. the system of forced-labor camps in the Soviet Union.

2. a Soviet forced-labor camp.

3. any prison or detention camp, esp. for political prisoners.

Obviously, the first two can’t apply to any situation in the United States but the third quite rightly could. The prison-industrial complex does fall under the third definition. An unnecessarily large prison population exists in the United States. The United States has only 5 percent of the world’s population but a quarter of the world’s prison population. A great deal of those imprisoned are nonviolent drug offenders or other victims of cultural persecution.

Another example of how gulags connected to the United States are existent is Guantanamo Bay where the prisoners are held indefinitely (not being able to challenge their imprisonment in the courts system after the passage of the Military Commissions Act)

Good further reading on prison abuse can be found at Once Upon a Time under The Alice Miller Essays.

Scrolling down should eventually get you to a heading called About Prison Abuse and Torture in the U.S., and in Iraq.

Just some food for thought!

(I forgot to mention the ghost prisons maintained by the CIA)

“The problem I face is much deeper than that, and it goes to the fundamental manner in which we confront the world: our basic stance is a warlike one. It is a perspective that splits the world into halves engaged in endless battle. In this sense, the wars we perpetually fight across the globe are only the external sign of the psychological and emotional conflicts that precede and give rise to them.”

-Arthur Silber

One constant theme in our political and cultural atmosphere is the use of militaristic language to describe whatever latest crusade the state — with accompanying support from some members of the ruled — has decided to embark on. Witness the phrase “War on Drugs” — although it’s more accurately stated as the “War on Some Drugs” or the “War on People Who Use Drugs We Happen to Disapprove of” (unlike alcohol, Ritalin, caffeine, and so on) — for a perfect example of this phenomenon. The world is divided into two groups of individuals who are allegedly ethically separated by their consumption patterns with respect to illicit substances.

It’s not my intention to accuse any supporter of state involvement in regulating the sale and consumption of drugs — although as an anarchist, I’m a proud extremist on this issue who wishes to see the Federal Drug Administration, Drug Enforcement Agency and so on abolished — of holding this dualism of “good” versus “evil”, but it’s clearly a view espoused by some individuals. One excellent example is former drug war czar William Bennett who has provided the following monstrous statements:

“Drug users who maintain a job and a steady income should face stiff fines…These are the users who should have their names published in local papers. They should be subject to drivers’ license suspension, employer notification, overnight or weekend detention, eviction from public housing or forfeiture of the cars they drive while purchasing drugs”

Source: Drug Warriors & Their Prey: From Police Power to Police State by Richard Lawrence Miller that gives LAT (Los Angeles Times), Oct. 21, 1994, A1, A27; NewsBriefs, Nov. 1994, 16.

“It is a product of the Great Deceiver.”

Source: Drug Warriors & Their Prey: From Police Power to Police State by Richard Lawrence Miller that gives Free Inquiry, Fall 1990, 39.

Note how Bennett does not even pretend to offer a “humanitarian” rationale for the drug war but simply engages in propagandistic demonization based on a dualistic world-view. The “evil” other must be destroyed, even if they are indistinguishable from what Bennett would likely view as normal — although I should make clear that conforming to what is ordinary is not something I would encourage — or worthwhile aside from illicit drug use. This kind of thinking is utterly disgusting and does immense damage. If people view Bennett’s arguments as being worthwhile for the basis of public policy , then they are offering support for the destruction of life and liberty on a horrific scale.

Unfortunately, the basic principles underlying Bennett’s perspective are at work in many outlooks a great number of people hold on numerous issues. In future posts, I will explore the problem of either/or models of approaching the world with respect to everything from romantic love to foreign policy.

A pamphlet for informing people of ideas that might be useful in attacking the drug war’s prohibition on any particular substance.

Looking for tactics to combat the criminalization of ______(insert illict drug)?

Here are some that might be helpful.

-Passing out Fullly Informed Jury Association (http://fija.org/) materials in an effort to get defendants off by a refusal of jurors to convict. If done in conjunction with information challenging the government line, jurors might end up exercising jury nullification.

-Peaceful protests, sit-downs, and lock-downs at courthouses where people are being tried on drug charges in an effort to complicate the procceedings.

-Encouraging groups of individuals to agree ahead of time not to plea bargain on a drug offense. Defnese lawyers could then demand that a speedy trial be given in all cases or the defendants be let off. Such a paralyzing of the system could bear fruit.

Readers should know that all of the above carry risks. Jurors could be held in contempt for exercersing the right of jury nullification. See http://www.levellers.org/jrp/kriho.new.htm for an example.

Reading Resources

General

Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use by Jacob Sullum.

The Case for Legalizing Drugs by Richard Lawrence Miller.

Drug Warriors and Their Prey: From Police Power to Police State by Richard Lawrence Miller.

Specific

List material pertaining to specific substance in question.

I haven’t been involved in activism since working with Food Not Bombs and participating in protests against the Iraq war a few years back. Recently, I’ve decided to hop back into the fray. The issues I’m most concerned about are economics, war, and the drug war. In light of the last concern, I put together this writing with suggestions for direct action related to the War on Drugs. Let me emphasize that I don’t speak from much experience and I’m always looking for constructive feedback on my ideas.

-Researching where people are being tried for drug charges then staging protests outside. If strength in numbers than peaceful disruption (sit-downs and lock-downs) with an aim to making the process too costly or shutting it down.
-Passing out Fully Informed Jury Association material to jurors in an effort to encourage the defendant getting off by a refusal to convict.
-Groups of people who decide ahead of time to not take plea bargains if facing charges for a drug offense. Forcing the state to stay lockstep on the Sixth Amendment with overwhelming numbers of defendants could possibly lead to their release if the system couldn’t process all cases speedily enough.

On the question of sit-downs and lock-downs, I’ve got mixed feelings on whether they’d be a help or hindrance. The possibility of negative publicity and thus voters not feeling inclined to support repealing laws criminalizing currently illicit drugs is one concern. On the other hand, we’ve seen that where anti-drug war electoral initiatives are successful on the local level the feds sometimes step in. There’s also the fact that the lives and liberties of innocent individuals are at stake. Knowing that context and circumstances can vary widely among people, the effect of a conviction or jail time could be especially disastrous for some. Successfully monkey wrenching the state by not making it worthwhile to conduct unjust trials would be a glorious achievement. It’d require hefty strength in numbers and good coordination to pull off. In the end, this idea may be unrealistic but I’ll throw it out for constructive criticism.