The Case against Cannabis

“The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.” 
 ~ Carl Sagan


“A Bureau takes root anywhere in the state, turns malignant like the Narcotic Bureau, and grows and grows, always reproducing more of its own kind, until it chokes the host if not controlled or excised.”
 ~ William Burroughs



I felt that this topic could do with some clarification and some historical perspective, and even so, despite the fact that this is my third article on the subject of Drugs, including ; The Debauchery of Being Human I have still barely touched the surface...

Unfortunately, in an effort to be thorough, this piece has become larger and encompassed subject matter that I had not anticipated...

Note* This was entirely my own words in an attempt to be 'Creative' so-to-speak with History, and I allowed the subject matter to, in a sense, guide me and even take control completely at certain times in an effort to acheive authenticity and a kind of honesty of voice.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


The AMERICAN Government has literally been taken over, in a silent Coup D'etat which has spanned the decades!

This is not a hyperbolic statement, or some overblown rhetoric.
I outline some of the socio-economic and military/industrial connections in the article below :

Did you know this? ~ :

KEVIN SHIPP, possibly the most Senior CIA Whistleblower to date so far, quoted in an article on 'thedailysheeple.com'...:

'Shipp expressed that the CIA was created through the Council on Foreign Relations with no congressional approval, and historically the CFR is also tied into the mainstream media (MSM.) ~ hence my article;

  Zombies and Homicidal Puppet Shows
He elaborated that the CIA was the “central node” of the shadow government and controlled all of other 16 intelligence agencies despite the existence of the DNI.
The agency also controls defense and intelligence contractors, can manipulate the President and any political decisions he makes, has the power to start wars, torture, initiate coups, and commit false flag attacks he said.'

'In the shocking, explosive presentation, Shipp went on to express that there are “over 10,000 secret sites in the U.S.” that formed after 9/11.
There are “1,291 secret government agencies, 1,931 large private corporations and over 4,800,000 Americans that he knows of who have a secrecy clearance, and 854,000 who have Top Secret clearance'

As to the question of the War on Drugs, a review of our official attitudes towards Cannabis is well and truly overdue, as Doctors in the West have continued to play their part in a giant conspiracy which has kept Cannabis, a relatively harmless and benign plant classified as a listed poison, in the same category as Heroin.
The medical fraternity's mute complicity with giant Pharmaceutical companies that are collectively known as 'Big Pharma', over the agenda-driven classification of Cannabis as a heavy-duty schedule No.1 poison, and an addictive drug is a scandal and should be an embarrassment to Medicos everywhere, and it has been this way ever since the La Guardia Report on Marijuana which came out around 1940...over 75 YEARS AGO! AND COUNTING
Fiorello LaGuardia was a fascinating man with clearly modern views, a New York politician (LaGuardia Airport, NY) who was a personal friend of Howard Zinn the famed American activist and author.

La Guardia’s Report on Marijuana was as modern in its attitude and outlook, as La Guardia the man was himself, and his report turned out to be as enlightened in a progressive sense and direction, as his arch nemesis Harry Anslinger, the racist ‘Drug Cop’ was ignorant and unenlightened.

Whereas Anslinger promoted his toxic memes such as:
“REEFER MADNESS” to any within the government willing to listen, thereby neatly justifying his job and the creation of the first ever ‘Federal Bureau of Narcotics’ within which he naturally established himself in the position of its first Tsar.
La Guardia by contrast had become the Major of New York, and in this capacity he was the very antithesis of the prejudiced and racist Anslinger stating after his report on Marijuana had been released:

"My own interest in marijuana goes back many years, LaGuardia wrote in a foreword to the report to the time when I was a member of the House of Representatives and, in that capacity, I heard of the use of marijuana by soldiers stationed in Panama.
I was impressed at that time with the report of an Army Board of Inquiry which emphasized the relative harmlessness of the drug and the fact that it played a very little role, if any, in problems of delinquency and crime in the Canal Zone.” It soon became obvious to his critics that La Guardia was an unconventional different kind of New York Major, as he continued to display a native intelligence, explaining to the Press on the Report’s release; ‘that the harm-reduction potential of marijuana looked extremely promising as a substitute for hard drugs.’

Despite such an illustrious beginning for the Age of Cannabis, La Guardia’s Report was actually widely criticized for its unconventional assessment, and it was completely ignored on the Federal level.
The government of the day was preoccupied with quite a different business, as it had already begun precociously applying the bad habits which had been so effectively learned under the harsh military heel of the Empire of Great Britain.
Fundamentally this was concerned with resource exploitation via an agenda of regime change that would spear-head the way for US Corporations to follow in a scramble of Neo-Colonial exploitation, rapaciously and systematically stripping the resources of the South American continent for example.
It was a perfect atmosphere in those innocent early days...;

The fertile night airs in summertime swarmed and billowed out of sweltering factories, ran along broad toxic gutters and rose up from tenement rooftops where the air was thick and stifling and warm like blood but not quite as hot as the sidewalks, and sometimes after your shift, looking up into those big beautiful stars which you could own, seeing your city laid out like that, in a carpet of lights against the velvet dark, it was very easy in that slumbering summer haze to forget the noxious smells which came off dumped trash in the streets and the smells like a rancid kerosene and something like almonds and gun-powder which could almost make you retch every time, or go straight to your head, while all around you in the wide avenues and endless cross streets, great plumes of steam poured up towards the night skies, instantly filling our eyes with white clouds all around us so that for a minute, you could have been with the angels swarming in heaven instead of a type of Hell which ran deep beneath the tar and cement of the city streets...whole dark avenues of subterranean mist from which poured out ancient segmented beasts that clanked and rumbled through the dirty dream-laden tunnels.
It was just the right climate for the rising mobs of Jingoism, a type of advanced or super-heated patriotism to flourish.
Wars and commercial conquests were afoot, it was 1930 and America's first Drugs Tzar had arrived...

Harry J Anslinger a jingoist, renowned racist and a narrow-minded segregationist could not have been a worse choice if they had tried, and he was to have a profound influence on Americans and their leisure time activities for the next 32 years...

America's Neo-Colonial expansion has been extensively detailed by the great General Smedley Butler in his influential book, and the practice he discusses, of using covert Intelligence agents employed for the sake of American Corporate Profits, has been continued in one form or another and with few interruptions ever since.
“WAR IS A RACKET”
And it was an old one at that.
It was an agenda which General Butler had personally played a significant role in on 3 continents, and it was an agenda which La Guardia, like all true progressives, had more than once spoken out against to his ultimate detriment...
General Butler for example had once boasted that :
"I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics
for the benefit of Wall Street.
I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers
in 1902-1912.
I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916.
I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903.
In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.
Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints.
The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts.
I operated on three continents.”
With the truth about Cannabis, along with the La Guardia Report itself, safely dispatched to the dusty bottom-drawer of an abandoned, lonely office somewhere on the lower-east side, thus began the crazy era of Anslinger and Edgar Hoover and Joe McCarthy which only finally ended in 1962.
Their feverish insanity of ‘Reds under the Beds’ became the prevailing meme as the anti-pot propaganda became widespread, disseminated with the help of William Randolph Hearst and his gargantuan media organization into theaters across America. Today, in our modern world of Big Pharma and their 'legal' highs we can see that their behavior is merely that of an unscrupulous drug-dealer.
The high cost of pursuing these punitive policies for Western societies in terms of the hidden psychological damage has been astronomical in the US and far more than any other country.
The acid attack on social cohesion caused by an ever-widening inequality, and the enormously disproportionate Prison Population that has mushroomed beyond reason is automatically created by Obama's misguided policy of zero tolerance.
The damage to the individual is, in many cases irreparable.
Which is especially shameful considering how long now we have known of Marijuana's relatively benign and beneficial properties.
Our human concerns regarding the damage to the individual, the Family and society at large, harm which is carried out by the State through it's vilification, victimization and unlawful harassment and persecution of the Cannabis smoker is especially infuriating when we realize that Former President Jimmy Carter had already officially made preparations to decriminalize pot as early as 1976.
Even earlier than Carter was the Nixon Administration which had also been familiar with the La Guardia report, but suppressing the burgeoning Anti-Vietnam War movement had become a major head-ache and a preoccupation for Nixon as the long-haired generation of Hippies and Yippies had erupted right across the country from coast to coast, and releasing or sanctioning results such as the La Guardia report would have been like handing the enemy a cause for celebration...
A Party among the long-hairs!
Viva La Revolution!
This would have produced exactly the opposite of the desired outcome, as Nixon wanted to completely suppress and control their behavior, and not encourage their liberation.
So once again we discover the raw dishonesty of those at the top, at the highest level and again we see how the scientific truth has been sacrificed for the sake of political expediency.
Wait, they KNEW pot was harmless then, and they did nothing about it?

Well...the question is not quite accurate, as the American government did do a great deal about it, they went after these left-wing consumers of cannabis by brutalizing them back to the stone-age with heavy-handed tactics and equally heavy prison sentences.

Similar repressive behavior against the Left has always gone hand in hand with a rise in government fascism.

This is an utterly shameful indictment of the State today as it's increasing trend towards a reduction of civil liberties and Social policies is driving us alarmingly close to the realization of the true definition of fascist totalitarian control.

Our human concerns are no longer relevant as they no longer exist according to today's Economic lexicon, they are considered merely as 'externalities' which no longer factor into the equation.

The only consideration in today's world of extreme Capitalism are the digital concerns of the corporations and the potential return on their investments.

Privatized Prisons, have finally exposed the ugly brutal nature of today's Capitalist ethos, with a thriving industry that is essentially based on human slavery.

Not only does it bring into sharp relief, the hollow morality and questionable validity of Obama's continued counter-intuitive policy of harsh criminalization, but it also provides us with a classic example of the shortsightedness of our Western governments, as they appear to be following the leader, and with the exception of certain Scandinavian countries, Canada, the Netherlands (which has always been ahead of the pack) and of course Portugal, they appear individually to have absolutely no ideas or solutions, just more of the same incompetence of punitive jail sentences.

This effectively demonstrates how entrenched attitudes can blind us to the Science of the day when Corporations are involved, even in the face of indisputable evidence by scientists through out the World, it seems that truth or evidence count for naught when a Corporate profit margin is at stake.

Why are we imprisoning and ruining the lives of people over a harmless herb?

Have these government entities and so-called experts learned nothing as in zero? Zilch? about human psychology from the roaring twenties and the wicked era of Prohibition?
Have they learned nothing from the countless scientific reports which have been released, echoing the results of the La Guardia report?
Or have they been Co-opted by money as the cover picture illustrates to remain quiet on this issue?
Unfortunately, their brutal, heavy-handed treatment has always been justified by outdated, antique reports and archaic attitudes that claim still to this day, despite all evidence to the contrary, that marijuana is a harmful drug requiring classification as a narcotic poison.
Toxic memes that were intentionally spread. Tape-loops which still to this day fester somewhere within the halls of government, that have long since congealed, and become like a solid mass of prejudice and misinformation within the minds of those who would enthusiastically ban Cannabis for the good of one and all.

BILL HICKS

How often society seems to suffer at the hands of an elite but powerful few men, usually religious men doing so-called ‘Good'.
So often apparently that I hear the Road to Perdition is paved with their Good Intentions.
These men are the Dinosaurs of Conservatism, who yearn ever more to return to the good ole Apple-Pie days of the 50's, just take a look at these timid, fearful creatures...
They are so indoctrinated by their governments that they would happily sacrifice their own security and privacy for the sake of an illusion of safety from the Government.
"TRUST US... "

These paranoid men had mistakenly attributed their own problems, and society's ills to what they saw as a deliberate campaign of cultural decadence, which in their paranoid mindset was the secret weapon of the Cubans or the Russians;

to intentionally corrode the morals of America's Youth, to poison the minds of America with the toxic memes of Socialism, which had always loudly supported Trade Unions and other social justice issues...
but they never marched with the Corporations!

This official strategy and ultimate goal to break the backs of The Unions and root out the left-wing red influence was a Federal Government policy that worked hand in glove with Anslinger's cliched vision of a racially 'pure', clinically sterile America.

At this point I should note that this article was not meant to be history, but rather a brief look at the history of Cannabis and it's suppression by governments over many decades.

But I need to connect the pieces in order to explain how the innocent Cannabis smoker has been caught up in a far larger Corporate battle, which began way back in 1886 with the 14th Amendment and the creation of the synthetic person...

The synthetic Corporate Citizen, was granted his rights back in 1886 as a citizen to sue anyone in society, the same rights which were granted to all corporeal, flesh and blood citizens...an equal voice in a court of Law.

This arrangement turned out to be so popular among 'corporate citizens', that an entire industry of 'Corporate Lawyers' has grown up around them, flooding our law courts with their 'corporate grievances.'

The only problem with this covenant between corporations and society-at-large was that when, or if it ever came to your turn or society's turn to sue this corporate citizen, whereas you could potentially go to jail for 'life', he or she, this corporate entity was to all intents and purposes immortal...

And when that day had finally arrived, and it came to your turn to knock on his door and throw him in jail for breaking the law...this corporate citizen vanished into a puff of cigar smoke...leaving 20 or 30 empty chairs, assorted papers and partially-filled ashtrays.

From that seemingly innocuous beginning we have seen the Rise and the Rise and the Rise of the Corporate entity ad nauseum, and the rapacious appetite for merger, take-over and buy out acquisitions has continued at its dizzying exponential pace until in our modern era we have finally witnessed the birth of the semi-divine, Too-Big-To-Fail corporate entity.

The Priorities of Junior...

One of the very first right 'out of the gate' acts of the Bush Administration in January of 2001, according to Michael Ruppert was to cut and thereby cripple the Securities & Exchange Commission's 'Enforcement Budget'.

Similar in ideology and design to Reagan's:

"We're going to let the Bulls loose" quote from the Stock Exchange floor.

Not to strengthen and reinforce the agencies teeth and hence its safeguards, but to weaken them.

The first acts of any Government are it's priorities, obviously.

These are like the first acts if you were planning a Kleptocracy wouldn't you agree?

A Coup D'etat which has been micro-managed, with entire armies from those spectral 'Institutions of Lost Souls'.

Scurrying around inside their bee-hive, checkerboard edifices of glass and granite like demented members of a ghoulish cult inside a giant Machine.

Filled with poisonous black-ops cabals and rancid nests of corporate Lawyers and Lobbyists which seek out the weakest points and then go to work attacking the fundamental pillars of the American Constitution, stripping and shredding like an insidious, invading horde of termites attacking a house of cards.

Trillions in Dark Money are beginning to swarm through our lives unrestrained...

Due to the corrosive power of money to break through any obstacles and circumvent any borders in our modern world and our cyberspace world, money has broken through and now infects not only our Media, but our entire societies and of course our Politics as well.


 

In the divine Halls of Finance, where rumors are born with the downpours of acid-rain and cluster in corners like whispering termites, reassuring drafts of belief maintain an orderly Persistence of Vision for the ghostly edifices of Wall Street.

Where holograms of impossibly tall, icy towers of greed are substantially suspended in 3-D space on lines of credit and chains of debt so colossal in scale and magnitude it is said they are held aloft by virtue of their own unfathomable immensity...

So vast that in the process of attempting to comprehend the intangible fabric of Dark derivatives on a daily basis, many it is rumored, in their bee-hive offices on Wall Street are driven to the edge...to the shores of insanity.

It was as if the World was being officially told to believe that the Universe had been compelled to bend to the exigencies of fate and accede to the demands of mathematical algorithms which, thanks to the assistance of a species of Super-computers had attained a type of virtual quasi-reality brought about by the unforgiving nature of an intractable paradox residing at the heart of an entanglement of theoretically infinite numbers.

Time waited for no Man but could it, would it wait for a Machine?

In the truly heart-stopping reality which lay beyond the facade of Wall Street, a reality which was only ever spoken of in whispers was the fact that if realization ever dawned in the great big soft doleful eyes of the Public, it would bring this nauseous monument to greed and short-sightedness crashing down, as this entire ball of wax was just a giant magic-show being played by Confidence-tricksters together on an international stage, and it was all based on IOU's of debt, and a kind of eyes-wide shut CONFIDENCE .

In order to achieve such a momentous accomplishment as the complete and utter Take-Over of America and it's government, a massive, co-ordinated campaign of manipulation and brain-washing has always been an essential component.

Goebbels and his Department of Propaganda were as vital to Hitler and his mad designs for World conquest as Foxnews...CNN...CBS and the remaining members of America's media cartel are to America's War designs.

The Neo-Cons of the Corporatocracy and the Military/Industrial war-hawks have committed serious mass atrocities in the Middle-East, and indeed all over the world, yet if you listened and watched the war reporting which came out of the illegal Iraq invasion for example, you would have sworn you were watching a B-Grade Hollywood War movie...

And if you listened to some of the live-stream telecasts which were beamed into our homes from places like Iraq 24 hours a day, oh gosh, how they gushed...those embedded journalists could not have been more excited to be there...

If you closed your eyes you would have sworn that it was a Grand Final football match we were attending, not the criminal invasion of another sovereign Middle-Eastern country.

Get out the Popcorn and Beer quick!

The massive investment in an American 'cartel of propaganda' eventually gave impetus to the ushering in of Industries such as 'Public Relations' and Advertising, both of which are Industries whose only raison d'etre is to persuade you...influence you...manipulate your subconscious.

These Harpies that call to us...these succubi that know just how to entice us...these serpents that whisper in our ears are polluting our minds 24 hours a day with their toxic, commercial abstractions.

Which is why the famed comedian Bill Hicks once said live on a recorded concert of his...:


"Oh, and by the way...if you are in Advertising?

Or Public Relations? ~ Kill yourselves...

Hah hah, you think that I'm joking don't you?...

but I'm not!

There is no joke here.

I'm serious.

Seriously, Kill Yourselves!"


A Musical Improvisation.....:~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This program to control the World,

if it existed in any informal, intuitive capacity,

and if it were constantly being reinforced by the whispering

memes of the System itself,

and if it had buried copies of itself, which chattered and

whispered from within the System's trumpeting mouthpieces

such as Newspapers, and out of the mouths,

of the other heads of this hydra-headed beast ?

and if it was constructed out of tasty memes which caressed

your brain, tantalyzing sound-bites which made you laugh

and captivating eye-candy..?.

What if this System was everything?...

all at once...

all encompassing and all that you knew?

or would ever know,

or ever could possibly know,

from the moment of your excruciating birth to the

endlessness of your final kiss...

your last goodbye...?

And what if it felt, and tasted,

as real as the hot tears sliding down your face,

on the day that your sister died?

so that you could never possibly tell whether this...this

moment shared, right Now, between us...

if it Was real, or just a dream,

and if so, if that was all there is?

and how would you know, with any degree of certainty,

or clarity whether this particular American dream,

was not just one giant hoax constructed out of Holograms...?

Would you know for instance,

that you were not exactly like that Fish...

swimming in a Fish-bowl,

and never becoming aware of the medium through which it swam?

How?

First, you need to become aware of the bowl...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This unspoken program of creeping indoctrination was close to the hearts of true Neo-Con Capitalists, as it was merely a continuation and an expansion of their current activities.

It turned out to be a serendipitous state of affairs for Edward Bernays, as it was from his first office of Public Relations in Madison Avenue that dear old Uncle Sigmund Freud's original insights into the subconscious mind were first used in an agenda to fashion public opinion and manipulate the behavior of the masses.

Corporations required the mute and implicit consent of the people, the great unloved, unwashed masses in order to be able to usher in policies that would gain them greater Profits, but this was always at the expense of the average American citizen's standard of living for example, along with the steady erosion of the American middle-classes, as someone had to lose in a game of monopoly and inflationary musical chairs.

The smoking of Marijuana was seen as anathema to the corporation's social aims of compliance and conformity, as the effect seemed to liberate smokers rather than create obedient, unquestioning box shifters.

A steady, slow-motion Corporate Coup D'etat was occurring...

Meanwhile, a large segment of the American population continued to sit glued in place as they had been trained to do,
ready for the next thrilling instalment of :


'Celebrity Chef of Death' Live on their plasma boxes,

while they were slowly basted to a fine caramel glaze and simmered alive...

Relax America...

Go back to Sleep America...

That's just the flames of ecstasy which burn so brightly in your eyes...


An operation on the scope and magnitude described, one that spanned the decades required a two-pronged attack for the hearts and minds of America...

Simultaneous with the battle for America's minds came the attack on the judicial arm of government.

Laws were placed on the statute books which only ever ran in one direction i.e favoring the Corporations and titans of Industry.

Wicked Republican laws that for example, pilfered 8 Billion dollars in Food Stamps from the poor, equally unjust laws against women have again been recently passed by SCOTUS.

Laws that leave me speechless with the blatant nature of their corruption, or by the obvious structural violence contained therein, as it is usually hidden within reams of legalese language, purposely designed to obfuscate the real, wicked intent behind the enormous reams of needless paper-work.

America's Corporate agenda continues to transgress the core principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, thus grievously betraying the citizens of the US by shredding the rights and liberties which Americans have always assumed were sacrosanct...unassailable, and impervious to being overturned or rescinded.

The real powers which gathered behind the American government, behind the velvet curtain, have cleverly played a Joker in the deck...the only constitutional card which enabled them to override the protections that were put in place by their wise forefathers i.e the WAR card.

A threat of War which came from outside their borders..

An invented War which could make society jump as if bitten on the Achilles heel, a war on terror which could be tweaked and made to last for 30 Years!

'Innocent until proven Guilty' was a legal right and protection under the Law for example, as it was a concept with a lineage that stretched all the way back to ancient Roman times...:

'Let the burden of Proof be on him who declares'.

Yet Bush, and OBAMA the God-forbid former Legislative Analyst who should have known better and probably did, in keeping with his customary measured, smiling and affable betrayal of the American people managed to have this torn up like confetti in a heartbeat with the signing of the N.D.A.A.

It is these and other similar judicial and legislative manoeuvres, which I have pointed out and discussed in previous posts, that are chilling in their design and remind me ominously of the ancient Chinese method :

Death By A Thousand Cuts

Due to the creation of the emergency War-time powers which occurred after the catalyzing Pearl Harbor event of 9/11, powers such as Homeland Security and scores of other agencies concerning security were waved into existence.

Almost overnight a giant security industry took over Washington.

The mushrooming of cops and security into a vast industry which is centred around Washington is symptomatic of the rise in FEAR and Paranoia in the American psyche, as the US has become the indisputable champion, in the history of empires or indeed civilizations, of War...

Number #01 with a Bullet in the "Game of Thrones"...in the game of war as a business model, and the security state which has built up around it's capital city confirms this.

Designed to fight wars against heavily-armed terrorists, the increasingly excessive militarization of today's police in our streets is quite ridiculous and out of place when it is for example, a visit over the consumption of a benign weed.

Just the colossal amount of military equipment required by these 'attack dogs' simply to knock on a door in some cases or to deliver a summons is absurdly, mindlessly out of proportion.

All dressed-up in their bullet-headed best kevlar gear, the thermometer of fear begins to rise in a vicious feed-back loop as soon as those sirens go off...echoing down the granite canyons of America's big cities like wounded animals.

Fear is contagious for animals as it harks back to an ancient instinct for survival, and as the police raise the fear level of the public, it catches the mirror neurons like a flame and raises their own anxiety, and ultimately it feeds back to the public infecting the entire nation, and it is in this theatre of war atmosphere that they are sent out to raid harmless, passive Cannabis user's homes unannounced, and without even so much as a "how do you do?"

The noticeable lapse in dignity and civility that was occurring in this docile little town was undoubtedly due to the fact that there was a swarm of hostile-looking Cops threateningly approaching a tiny cottage of a house, with a lovely rose garden in the front and a white-picket fence, a child's swing was down the side along with some children's bicycles and down the back?

Two plants either side of the back-door and some seedlings.

The officer in charge, who resembled a cartoon more than anything else, looked as if he had just been pumped up like a balloon with a bicycle-pump and some steroids, as if there was not a chance in hell of seeing anything remotely like a bedside manner, and he was menacingly holding in his hands , not a card or papers, but a weapon which apparently had stopping power like you wouldn't believe...

So efficient at killing humans was the technology which he clutched at awkwardly, and with one finger resting nervously and unconsciously on the trigger, that the best grade-A Terrorists wouldn't be caught dead seen with anything else!

Of course, here I'm talking about the Good 'moderate' terrorists...

The hush-hush, multi-million dollar research project had eventually delivered, after it's innumerable lemons and failed attempts had hit the headlines, and after what was described by the local media as the Defense Department's continuing capacity to demonstrate bureaucratic inefficiency and how to waste a fortune in tax-payer's money.

It was a type of comedy of errors that everyone was unfortunately familiar with, and it was out of this bungling incompetence that a one-size-fits-all weapon was finally produced on account of the fact that weapons were the only thing which they had ever produced or knew how to produce.

The concept of 'Defense' was actually something which a local reporter had brought up at a press conference one day and it had caused a fair amount of offense as no one at the Defense Department could explain what the sentence meant to be opposed to an offensive strike against an enemies defensive position.

After that particular day the reporters were no longer permitted to bring up the subject of Defense as it caused quite a bit of consternation with a lot of uniformed people milling around looking mystified and scratching their heads... but at least the new gun boasted of the latest and greatest in modern, 'offensive' technology.

Purpose-built for the slaughtering of large herds of soft, fleshy organic beings, yet designed with all the comforts of high-velocity, laser-precision, ram-jet action, a mega-capacity magazine, the handy-dandy Swiss-design with the one-click action, plus the American designed triple-locking mechanism, enhanced by a micro-on-board computer, and a high-powered targeting system, all of which was neatly rounded off with a smoothly machined, walnut finish.

This was an assault rifle which yelled at the top of its lungs to everyone within a 3 mile radius that you meant business.

Why wouldn't you want one?

"Take it absolutely anywhere at all!" Jake read from the side of the case.

"With it's Walnut finish, it's the perfect dinner companion...!"

"And nobody ever complains!" added the packing case as if it were the greatest of mysteries.

Jake the Cop looked down at his Police Mutt, Butch the dog and read the words on the box out loud, pausing for dramatic effect before the last line...

He checked himself nervously in the mirror for the umpteenth time, puffing himself up and pulling a fantasy magnum out of his fantasy holster on a phantom evil-doer, gotta keep those reflexes sharp he thought sternly and suddenly leaned in and gave the wall beside the mirror a quick 'one-two' to the wall's mid-rif...

"Take That!" he said to the Wall viciously.

With its usual stoicism The Wall remained dead-pan and silent...it obviously wasn't impressed.

It was about the element of surprise, thought Jake getting back to business, about looking the part, and being ready for any type of action at a moments notice he reminded himself.

He pointed at the packaging case for Butch the Police dog, tapping the words for added impact with the obligatory beer now in one hand and a half-eaten slice of toast in the other, making sure that the dog was paying attention and that it was suitably impressed, as he read the muffled words out loud with a slurp and careful deliberation saying:

"Now I want you to pay attention now, Y'hear?"

"CAUTION: Lethal Action Guaranteed in 49 States!" he read the words like precious words, like slow-motion, staccatto bullets as if straight out of 'The Naked City'...

This morning, the fact that Jake, and his overly zealous group of Kevlar-Flacked mates had swarmed threateningly like an invasion from Mars into the tiny streets of Howdyville USA was a type of civic or community issue which was permanently out of reach for Jake.

He was deaf and apparently blind as well to such matters.

It wasn't anything to do with him he shrugged metaphorically, after all...he was just following orders.

Often heard in Jake's vicinity was the phrase 'a bit backward in coming forward'

People, 'were just not his thing' he would explain as if he were boasting, as if this lack of ability in communicating with others was 'Cool' in a police officer, as if he were proud of his general illiteracy and general inability to engage with, or feel any empathy for...others.

As if this lack or hole in his chest, which sometimes ached in a way he couldn't describe, as if this was a good thing something to be proud of.

"HOWDYVILLE" USA said a rusted sign that swayed wanly over the dusty road.

It blearily informed any motorists that drove by underneath in case they were lost, and had mistaken the lonely road which ran through the center of town for the bright lights of New York say or Chicago...

"The Friendliest Place Ever!" yelled a billboard by the side of the road encouragingly.

"Drop in and say :

"HOWDY" added another sign innocently and clearly not knowing what else to say.

However...socializing with the locals was not something which often occurred to these police men and women and besides, their outfits and heavily-weaponized vehicles would have been just a tad obvious to any sane passerby as monstrous "Overkill".

With cannons drawn and 'Born to Run' blazing away at impossibly high decibel levels from a collection of mounted speakers on their camouflaged tank, Jake imagined himself as a ruthless modern-day captain Blue Beard as he sat on-top with a snarling expression, displaying all of his usual native charm which basically resembled a skunk-rat trapped by a wired picket-fence, an encounter which he had come across one day as a young man and which had so fascinated him that it had remained totem-like, permanently embedded in his psyche.

Jake the Cop had often been described by those who had the misfortune to meet him personally as:

"a real piece of work..."

Jake didn't mind, altho he always pretended not to hear because in his mind 'they were all just jealous of his motor-bikes and amazing tatoos' and anyway...he had always felt that 'a real piece of work' was a kind of weird compliment.

Hadn't his poor mother always said that about his father?

Fortunately for the Boys their brand-spanking new military-grade tank which had only been delivered last month, came covered in camouflage, and so clearly nobody saw a thing as not a word was uttered...in fact even the birds were silent that day as the big city police rumbled into town...this was just another typical day in the American Dream.

Unhappily for the little town which could have been ANYTOWN, USA and boasted of a laconic Jimmy Stewart as Major, the fact that this town had it's early-morning Sunday-serenity shattered with noises that much of the townsfolk only ever heard in movies, haunting them particularly the young girls for years after mattered about as much to Jake as the loss of another bug's life in the crackling sparks of blue light which emanated from Jake's 'Zapper'.

Jake metaphorically shrugged, as he knelt down, poking reflexively at a mutant moth with a long screw-driver, which had buzzed and spun erratically through the night air, finally plummeting kamikaze-fashion into the insect killing-ground at his feet.

His sensitive side was rarely seen when on patrol due to the fact that he and his mates no longer really cared about what anyone else thought...

They had the LAW on their side.

A law which had been co-opted by an agenda of War...

And they were at War, with Overtime, practically every day of the week!

More specifically America was at war not only with the rest of the World...but with Itself, and as it began to writhe in its own death-spasms, as it consumed itself from the inside out in the final vestiges of Empire, it infected the rest of the world as well with it's bitter torments.

That is why there is so much violence happening in America.

And Black Lives Matter more now than they ever have.

Homeland Security, the Defense Department and countless government Security and Intelligence agencies along with the CIA which uses Hollywood almost Religiously, to pump out messages about good guys with toys that go boom, these have all contributed to this increasingly rabid military madness which came in the wake of the invented "War on Terror".

Honestly? When I see this, I am clearly reminded of the initial armed take-over of Germany and then Europe by Hitler, and seriously America?

It is Not your best look!

All in the name of a Corporate business-model such as the 'War on Terror' which has usurped government control and granted itself free reign, carte blanche to harass, intimidate and interrogate, incarcerate or even assassinate it's own citizens as if the streets of downtown middle America were a War-zone in Syria or Iraq, thanks to America's increasing military mania and the shredded remains of it's Constitution.

There is a delivery at your door America...your War has finally come home.





 I shouldn't forget a big Shout Out to America's wonderful system of lobbying, which could best be described as bribery dressed up in a suit.

The Corporations began to throw so much money at Senators and politicians that something had to eventually give.

It was what Noam Chomsky had referred to as; 'Regulatory Capture'...where those who wrote the regulations  were controlled or 'Run' by Lobbying Money...

The emergence of something like Citizen's United was inevitable and with it's advent, we have witnessed the flood-gates open to the final, complete and utter unhinging and corruption of the political process!

Corruption is rife!

Here is some news which may be of interest according to

Election Justice USA...:

Bernie Sanders literally had the election stolen from him!!!

But that's alright...

don't get excited...

go back to sleep America...

Here you are America...

try some more Selective-Serotonin-Re-uptake-Inhibitors...

The militia are everywhere today, there is no escape, and we are reminded of our own captive destinies whenever we enter any portal of a modern metropolis, and this adds an extra edge of tension to all of our lives in the cities of the West, even the most bland and innocent or charming of spots have been hijacked by security with intelligent scanning cameras on every corner...

Imbuing us with an unrelenting awareness that we live in extreme anxiety-ridden times like disturbed, genetically-modified rats waiting for Godot as we stumble through a giant maze of concrete and glass.

As George Orwell or KAFKA might have said; in this our new modern era of Security, we are merely flies caught in aspic, trapped in a Prison of our own designs.

I do not expect any salvation for America until it has at last entered down that fabled pathway to REVOLUTION.

Marijuana as a mood-altering substance was commonly regarded as a relaxant rather than a stimulant.

It was a 'Hang-Loose' kind of drug, and it's use engendered a laid-back lifestyle more suited to a beachcomber than a Wall-Street executive.

Apart from which it grew everywhere, and you could find this hardy ubiquitous plant as easily as the poet Walt Whitman had done in a dream of mine, by the side of road...

For America's increasingly authoritarian and violent culture the plant appeared to be entirely uncooperative, that is at least if one was preparing it for sale for eg. to tax it's consumption, or preparing to go to war for that matter.

This was something that simply could not be tolerated by the Corporations...

Furthermore there was overwhelming evidence on the nightly news and in the streets of the Hippies and the Yippies, which clearly portrayed this relatively harmless weed as a heinous influence, propaganda in exactly the same manner as Socrates was targeted and portrayed as a wicked corrupter of the youth of Athens.

For the people, after Haight-Ashbury had erupted around the world, there was a kind of happy synchronicity surrounding Cannabis Sativa, adding to the general aura of mystique, and the hint of hedonism, and there was the undeniable fact that you were giving an emphatic F* You to the authorities every time Cannabis was consumed.

It was compelling, this feeling of sharing and it radiated like ripples in a pond among brothers and sisters everywhere, quickly becoming an intuitive response of fellowship...

Cannabis had become emblematic of an entire generation.

The Counter-Cultural Movement had visibly endorsed it's consumption.

It was about 'connectivity'and a tender idealistic belief that we could have a pacifist, non-violent collective influence on the behavior of our governments towards a peaceful revolution, if only we would unite.

In the face of a type of daringly bold psychological conquest of inner-space by a generation that became the Counter-Cultural Movement, straight establishment mores and values were forced to shift...this was an unavoidable conclusion as it's members were splashed all over the mass-media everywhere including the nightly news, yet in spite of Marijuana's evident advocacy by a large slice of the population, the Capitalist agenda pressed on inexorably.

Governments by their very nature are authoritarian, but when their DNA is mixed with that of a Capitalist a dangerous political entity emerges, one with entirely and distinctly contrary goals and ambitions to that of 'the people'.

Fascism for eg. requires the complete control of a product and obedient robotic workers, and it appeared that neither of these attributes could be reliably produced in a population that indulged in such uncooperative chemicals as Mary Jane.

We have at last arrived full circle, with just a single example of where the motivation was coming from to vilify and oppress the harmless Pot-smoker so vehemently.

Thus we see that the hilarious propaganda posters of the 40's were not so hilarious after-all, they were insidious and came as part of a giant collective campaign, with unspoken objectives and yet a clearly defined philosophy that was forming on the horizon towards the complete Take-Over of the American government, total control.

This is why Americans needed to be made pliable, submissive and amenable, so that Wars could be profited from...
and World Wars could turn a profit that not even a King's ransom could match.

The omni-present propaganda machine in America continued for decades to arrest and brutalize Socialists, Union members and long-haired Smokers in the streets for eg. even women, in their efforts to convince Americans that Socialism was evil.

This was the first, the original climate of Fear, and it was unfortunately repeated again after 9/11.

It was a period during which anything that was deemed 'too liberal' or for the benefit of 'the people' was to be shunned, ostracized in no uncertain terms as a fiendish Communist plot.

This simplistic, Lone-Ranger view of politics with its primitive cartoon-like obsession with the Red Menace, namely:

"Russia" was ironically Hitler's old foil of 'US' against 'THEM' i.e the ages old strategy of uniting against a common enemy and Sen.Joe McCarthy's patriotic hysteria was perfectly suited, and his voice had the ideal penetrating urgency for a manufactured climate of Fear.

Posters and short movies began to saturate America's popular culture with paranoid messages such as :

BEWARE OF THE FRIENDLY STRANGER






How ironic that we are once more going through our very own renaissance of paranoia, a repeat performance of another McCarthy-like era, where Russia is again, as in a Disneyland fantasy being portrayed as the 'devil', and we are once more living in a manufactured climate of Fear being stoked like a fire, and intentionally kept alive to suit their agenda of a manufactured 'War on Terror'.

This has all graphically provided us with a clear frame of reference, and an indication of just how much hysteria has been generated over the past decades surrounding this topic.

And some of us, I believe, are still unfortunately held captive to their indoctrinations, still caught mentally somewhere in the 50's, the 60's or 70's, and they are still deeply afflicted by this corrosive hype.

Remember the secret weapon of all Advertisers...:

Repetition will get you there, when an eloquent, persuasive argument won't...

In conclusion, because otherwise this article will continue to run for another 10 pages or so, I will say simply this

The fact that this ubiquitous weed has been in use by mankind for 2 and a half thousand years or so, is to my way of thinking more than sufficient time for any deleterious effects to have manifested themselves...

and it is surely large enough as a test group, China and India, for even the most jaundiced and cautious of Cannabis skeptics.