OVO

Trevor Blake: Prohibitionist Revisionism [LINK-ZUM]

Take a look at the picture of the statue of Hoagy Carmichael in this article. Now take a look at what must have been the source photograph here. Notice anything missing? Maybe this image will make it more clear. Hoagy's cigarette is gone. I think if a person does or did smoke, there's no use pretending they don't or didn't. Bette Davis looks like she is holding her hand in a funny way in this postage stamp until you realize her cigarette has been removed from the image. I'm kind of sad to learn this topic has a Wikipedia entry. People were smoking before mass media so it can't be they were made to smoke because of mass media. Mass media doesn't cause people to look fashionable, say funny things, crash cars or live in the USA so why should anyone think mass media can cause one to smoke?

Here is a public secret: advertising doesn't work.

Labels: prohibition

Wikipedia: Henry Earl [LINK-ZUM]

Henry Earl (born October 24, 1949) is a homeless man from Lexington, Kentucky famous for his extensive police record. Nearly all of his arrests have been for public intoxication, with a few charges of disorderly conduct, third degree trespassing, second degree trespassing, and apparently one count of begging. The Fayette County Detention Center's website, showing Earl's arrest record from 1992 to present, indicates that he has not been arrested for theft or any violent offences. [...] In 2008, Earl was arrested for the 1000th time since 1992.

[Article continues at link. Perhaps a better use of the limited resources of Fayette County could be found. Prohibition is not serving Mr. Earl or the taxpayers of Fayette County well. - Trevor Blake]

Labels: prohibition

Virginia Bridges: Judge dismisses woman's religious drug-use argument [LINK-ZUM]

For years Brenda Williams Shoop struggled in a journey to get closer to God, she told a judge Thursday. And then she found a textbook that discussed a marijuana side effect, and later discovered a church that classifies the illegal drug as a key ingredient to a sacrament essential to becoming a Christian, she said. "It opens up someone's mind and helps apply (Christian) missions," Shoop said of marijuana's effects. [...] The Shoops were charged with drug trafficking in December 2006 after authorities found about 28 marijuana plants growing in their backyard, according to Baldwin County Sheriff's Office Lt. Neil Holcombe. [...]

Brenda Shoop said Thursday that she grew up in a Southern Baptist church. In recent years, she has struggled to find the spiritual fulfillment she has been looking for while exploring other denominations. Her religious belief and understanding, however, hit a turning point in nursing school when she read about marijuana's disassociation side effect, she said. That side effect, she said, helped her get closer to God as it quieted all the voices in her head and helped her "rise above the mundane and see that you are part of a bigger picture."

The Shoops argued that since their arrest they have started a ministry in their Robertsdale home and serve as missionaries for Universal Orthodox Church, which is based in Atlanta. The Christian denomination believes marijuana has biblical origins and was a key ingredient in holy anointing oil of Moses and the christening oil of Jesus Christ, according to testimony and court documents.

[Article continues at link. My preference would be for the government to get out of both the religion business and the drug business. Let competent adults believe whatever they want, providing they do not harm others who may not share that belief. Sometimes what they will believe will be in error, but the freedom to be in error cannot be divorced from the freedom to innovate (which sometimes results in error). Let competent adults entertain themselves as they want, providing they do not harm others who may not wish to be so entertained. Sometimes the way they will entertain themselves will be counterproductive, but the freedom to be counterproductive cannot be divorced from the freedom to own (which sometimes results in wasted resources). My preference would be for an end to theocracy and prohibition. - Trevor Blake]

Labels: christianity, prohibition, theocracy

Science Daily: Increase In Drunk Driving Fatalities Followed Ban On Smoking In Bars [LINK-ZUM]

A ban on cigarette smoking in bars is meant to save lives by reducing patrons' exposure to secondhand smoke. But it may actually be having an unintended consequence, according to a study done at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. By comparing data from a variety of locations around the United States where laws requiring smoke-free bars exist with locations without bans, economists Scott Adams and Chad Cotti found a relative increase in fatalities caused by drunk driving following ban enactment. The results of their study appear in the June issue of the Journal of Public Economics and have also been reported in the May issue of The Economist.

[Article continues at link. Prohibition never succeeds, prohibition never avoids unintended and awful consequences. - Trevor Blake]

Labels: prohibition

Trevor Blake: Two Ways of Funding the Taliban [LINK-ZUM]

I can think of two ways to fund the Taliban. First, you can do it by accident. The Evening Echo reported on 13 April 2008: "Afghanistan's intelligence chief said today a coalition helicopter accidentally dropped food and weapons in a remote area of southern Afghanistan where Taliban fighters recovered the supplies. Amrullah Saleh, the head of Afghanistan's intelligence service, told members of parliament the supplies were intended for police at a checkpoint in the southern province of Zabul." That's one way to fund the Taliban, by accident.

The other way to fund the Taliban is to do so deliberately. The Los Angeles Times reported on 22 May 2001: "Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush administration will embrace you. All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation still takes seriously. That's the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today. [...] Never mind that Osama bin Laden still operates the leading anti-American terror operation from his base in Afghanistan, from which, among other crimes, he launched two bloody attacks on American embassies in Africa in 1998."

Say now, didn't something happen involving Osama bin Laden a few months after the Bush administration gave the Taliban $43 million? I can't remember. Anyway, there are at least two ways to fund the Taliban. The Bush administration has been involved in both.

Labels: 9/11, fascism, islam, prohibition

MTV: Fascism Happened... [LINK-ZUM]

These two videos from think MTV [1] [2] are presented as a warning of what could happen in the United States of America. But they look to me like nothing so much as a depiction of what has been happening for quite some time as part of the war on drugs.

Labels: prohibition, television, video

Adam Liptak: 1 in 100 U.S. Adults Behind Bars, New Study Says [LINK-ZUM]

For the first time in the nation's history, more than one in 100 American adults is behind bars, according to a new report. Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million. Another 723,000 people are in local jails. The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars. Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 black adults is, too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34. The report, from the Pew Center on the States, also found that only one in 355 white women between the ages of 35 and 39 are behind bars but that one in 100 black women are.

[Article continues at link. One quick way to reduce this horrible statistic by a quarter would be to end prohibition. And while we're at it, we could decriminalize the other victimless crimes. - Trevor Blake]

Labels: books, prison, prohibition

Trevor Blake: Gulfstream II # N987SA [LINK-ZUM]

It appears that the United States Government is using a single aircraft to both kidnap people from Europe and the United States to fly them to the Guantanamo torture camp in occupied Cuba and to run drugs. I'd prefer to be paying my taxes to a government that did neither of these things.

30 August 2007: Gulfstream II #N987SA is bought by Donna Blue Aircraft Inc.
16 September 2007: Gulfstream II #N987SA is sold to Clyde O'Connor and Greg Smith.
18 September 2007: Gulfstream II #N987SA takes off from Ft. Lauderdale Executive Airport headed for Toluca (near Mexico City).
24 September 2007: Gulfstream II #N987SA takes off from Rio Negro, Colombia. It is chased by Mexican military helicopters and crashes near Tixkokob, Mexico. Soldiers find 132 bags containing about 3.6 tons (3.3 metric tons) of cocaine inside.

Reporte Oriente, Avion usado por la CIA y la DEA traficaba drogas 29 November 2007: "An executive jet that the United States government used for years to extradite criminals from Colombia and Taliban from Europe to the base at Guantanamo, Cuba, is the same jet which two months ago crashed in a jungle area of the Yucatan Peninsula , Mexico, with a cargo of 3.3 tons of cocaine that apparently were loaded in Medellin." [Translation via Google]

More links, dates, information:
Daily Kos: CIA Torture Jet wrecks with 4 Tons of COCAINE.
Narco News: New Document Provides Further Evidence That Owner of Crashed Cocaine Jet Was a U.S. Government Operative; Mysterious Jet Crash Is Rare Portal Into the
'Dark Alliances" of the Drug War.
Pimpin Turtle: CIA Plane Crashes in Yucatan Carrying 3.2 Tons of Cocaine.
Sacramento for Democracy: Gary Webb Vindicated by the Crash of N987SA.

Labels: fascism, prohibition

Trevor Blake: Paul Crouch [LINK-ZUM]

Paul Crouch is a good Christian man. He is one of the multi-millionaires behind TBN. Let's look into the virtue and leadership Brother Crouch offers.

In 1991 Crouch went into a 'Christian drug treatment program' for cocaine use, where he met and had sex with a man named Enoch Ford. Ford was eventually paid US$425,000 to not speak of the encounter. In 1994 Crouch pleaded no context to having sex with a seventeen-year-old boy and spent six months in jail for it (age of conscent in California? Eighteen). Crouch tested positive for cocaine during his probation, but TBN successfully petitioned the judge to not put him back in prison. In 1995 Crouch spent thirty days in jail for possession of cocaine. A woman who knew of Ford's intimacy with Crouch was paid US$12,000 by TBN; since then she doesn't giving her name, fearing 'reprisals.' In 1988 Crouch's defense for an accusation that he had sex with a male chauffeur was that he was drunk at the time. More recently, Enoch Ford has reconsidered the value of his silence and asked for US$10 million - TBN's counter-offer was US$1 million. (LA Times article, bugmenot to avoid registration).

What of Crouch's company, TBN? TBN lost its license to broadcast in Miami in 1999 for violating FCC laws: they had created a fake minority-owned company to meet requirements for diversity in programming. In 2002 they settled a multi-million dollar plagiarism lawsuit for basing their movie The Omega Code on a book called The Omega Syndrome. Crouch campaigned in 2001 for his childhood friend John Ashcroft on Crouch's 501(c)3 non-profit television network, claiming that since the Attorney General is an appointed rather than elected official there is no conflict with the law. TBN even dropped all of its coverage of professional wrestling (read the depth and detail of this link before you laugh). Paul Crouch has said that if more people went to church then 9/11 wouldn't have happened - and that people who do not donate to TBN will go to hell (Crouch would know, having made the claim that hell was accidentally discovered by a drilling company in 1989). Crouch 'healed' someone by faith on his TV show; that someone nearly died because they stopped taking their medicine. Strangely, Crouch was outted on his own TV show once.

Having sex and taking drugs are a personal decisions with all sorts of consequences: some good, some bad. But using one's position in life to put down those who make those same decisions is contemptable. Paul Crouch is just another typical good Christian man in this regard.

[American Samizdat, September 13 2004. - Trevor Blake]

Labels: christianity, prohibition, sex, television

Bush Funds, Fights Taliban [LINK-ZUM]

Caren Bohan, August 6, 2007, Bush, Karzai hold strategy talks on Afghanistan : "The struggling, six-year effort to rebuild war-ravaged Afghanistan and defuse the threat from Taliban and alQaeda militants hiding over the border in Pakistan will dominate talks this weekend between U.S. President George W. Bush and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. [...] Karzai is grappling with numerous challenges, including suicide bomb attacks by the Taliban, mounting deaths of civilians killed in the cross-fire of fighting between Western forces and militants, and a booming opium trade. Afghanistan supplies around 92 percent of the world's opium, and the crop has become a source of cash for the Taliban and a corrupting influence in the government."

Robert Scheer, May 22, 2001, Bush's Faustian Deal With the Taliban: "Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush administration will embrace you. All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation still takes seriously. That's the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today. The gift, announced last Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell, in addition to other recent aid, makes the U.S. the main sponsor of the Taliban and rewards that 'rogue regime' for declaring that opium growing is against the will of God. So, too, by the Taliban's estimation, are most human activities, but it's the ban on drugs that catches this administration's attention."

[Articles continue at link.]

Labels: islam, prohibition

unreason tags 2 [LINK-ZUM]

objectivist orgone overpopulation prohibition race radionics slavery socialism synanon taylorism technocracy ufo

Labels: objectivist, orgone, overpopulation, prohibition, race, radionics, slavery, socialism, synanon, taylorism, technocracy, ufo

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