7/31/2005 02:32:00 PM|W|P|Doc|W|P|Or are they mostly victims of government-controlled propaganda? Why do they just tolerate such outrageous bullshit like deer blinking in headlights? I could be talking about the WMD sham perpetrated by Team Bush and their Republican followers, but I am really talking about, of course, reefer madness...a core belief of those same republicans who control so much of the government and the "liberal media". I am talking about the arrest of and US plan to extradite Marc Emery. From the London Free Press:
The arrest of Canadian pot activist Marc Emery is being used to advance the agenda of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, a London friend charges. "Someone needed to made an example of (him) to further the agenda of the American drug enforcement agency," said Teresa Tarasewicz, co-owner of the City Lights Book Shop. "He's a pawn in the politics of drug enforcement between the two different countries," she said. "It'll be interesting to see whether Canada holds fast or hands him over." Tarasewicz bought the bookstore from Emery, a former Londoner, in 1992. She last spoke to him about a month ago. Emery was arrested Friday by RCMP in central Nova Scotia after Vancouver police raided his pot seed and paraphernalia store and arrested two others, Gregory Keith Williams and Michelle Rainey-Fenkarek. They are wanted in the U.S. on charges of conspiracy to manufacture marijuana, conspiracy to distribute seeds and conspiracy to engage in money laundering. A conviction on the charges carries a sentence ranging from 10 years to life in prison. Emery, leader of the B.C. Marijuana Party, was in a Halifax-area jail yesterday waiting to be returned to Vancouver, while U.S. authorities try to extradite him. The U.S. Attorney's Office has said the three were indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury in May after an 18-month U.S. police probe of the sale of marijuana seeds on the Internet and by mail.
Reefer madness - the desire to suppress by any means necessary the cannabis plant and the global culture that celebrates it - is at least as important as the so-called "war on terror" global struggle against violent extremists. Marc Emery, a Canadian citizen, has been arrested after an 18 month "investigation" by the DEA. Cannabis Culture Magazine reports :
The search warrants were authorized at the highest levels of the provincial government in concert with a cross-border US-Canada law enforcement pact created by a US-authored Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters treaty (MLAT) between the US and Canada. ***** The use of MLAT to take down Emery implies that Canadian Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler, who has been harshly criticized by Emery and his employees due to Cotler’s refusal to back American-born marijuana refugee Renee Boje in her bid to avoid extradition from Canada to the US to face cultivation charges, signed off on the MLAT operation. It is likely that the highest levels of the Canadian provincial and federal governments were involved in setting up the MLAT investigation and raid, which raises obvious issues of Canadian sovereignty and reveals to Canadians in a very stark way that Canadian law enforcement can sometimes be a tool of US drug agents. Emery was secretly indicted by a US federal grand jury in May, 2005, officials said, after an investigation that began in early 2004.
It cannot be shouted loud enough - The US Federal Government cares more about stifiling pot smokers than protecting the citizenry from "terror". They just do. They saved us from Tommy Chong and his son's online bong trade - via a very sneaky quasi-abuse of obscure laws making it illegal to sell paraphernalia over the internet to people in Pennsylvania. They saved us from Ed Rosenthal who was working with the City of San Francisco to help ill people obtain cannabis for medicianal use. The fact is that this group of people - republicans mostly - have de facto control of the media. You can tell Americans anything over the TV and they fucking believe it. Look at the utter lies of the Bush Adminstration regarding the non-existent "WMD's" in Iraq. Like the lies of reefer madness, the lies of WMD's have been utterly smashed, but you have high-level goverment people with unfettered access to the media constantly repeating these lies. Us regular folks are simply powerless to bring the established truth to the same media. As long as it is on TV Americans believe it, hook, line, sinker, no if's ands, or buts. Many STILL believe that WMD's were "found" - despite 3 definitive reports to the contrary. Many americans STILL believe marijuana is harmful and leads to herion overdoses - despite the gateway myth having been dismantled time and time again. They believe the Government lie that cannabis has no medical properties despite the existence of Guy Pharmaceuticals and Savitex. They only believe this because this is the information to which they have access. It is the information on TV. This ties in completely with the GOP-controlled media. The GOP has spent 20 years denigrating the media as "liberal" when they have sought and gained more and more contro over it. If the media was "really" "liberal" don't you think we would see more information about cannabis? Cannabis reforms win when they are allowed to be voted on We would have seen much better coverage of anti-war marches, if the media was really liberal. But the media ranges between rightwing - CBS, CNN - to rabid rightwing - FOX News. Anything in-bewteen is still rightwing. Still "conservative", whatever that may mean anymore. It certainly doesn't mean "fiscally-repsonsible" like it used to. It is difficult to not blast Americans for being the mostly unthinking consumer society drones they appear to be at first glance. Their Hummers, their SUV's, their McMansions, their vehicles festooned with mindless quasi-fascists rantings. But it needs to be remembered every moment of the day, Americans are slaves to the TV first and foremost: They believe what they are told. They cannot conceive that their precious TV would actually lie to them, provide them with false information for the purpose of getting them to support something bad or immoral...Nooooo.... the TV would never be used for such a thing. They might bristle at the mention of this because the truth is often uncomfortable. The TV is so important to much of America, particularly those still in support of Republican values. The fact remains that way too many Americans believe what is told to them on the TV and one need look no further than the TV to figure out exactly what approximately half of this bitterly divided country actually believes.|W|P|112283805054247259|W|P|Are Americans really stupid?|W|P|xxdr_zombiexx@yahoo.com11/04/2005 06:10:00 AM|W|P|Blogger Roberto Iza Valdés|W|P|This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.7/01/2005 04:59:00 AM|W|P|Doc|W|P|The Right does have intentions to harm liberals. It's inarguable. It is only a matter of time. If I and others are wrong about this then GOOD! But I think not. Forces are in motion. The sort of people who WOULD put something like this on their vehicle are the talk radio/freeper sorts and they are being driven into a hate-filled frenzy by talk radio, the Sean Hannity's, the O'Reillys, the Savages and other rightwing talk radio propagandists. Thier job is to magnify and perpetuate the bitter divisions in America. Part of it is clearly hate-mongering, the other part is what I will call the "massaging on self-righteousness", a huge part of what makes Bush supporters so impervious to reality. They are constantly being told that God favors them and the US, that "we" - meaning "muricans" are doing God's work (as if somehow puny little humans could actually do such work). They are d-e-l-us-i-o-n-a-l. Although ostensibly a "parody" the sticker is both referring to an official "license" as well as being designed to "look official", like a hunting or fishing license. The stab at authenticity magnifies the delusional quality. That said, it is a bit too much of a leap to suggest that wingnuts who put this sticker on their vehicles (usually american-made fullsize trucks and SUV's) think it actually allows them to kill people. But it is one more "brick in the wall, one more bit of delusion-reinforcing paraphernalia that says "gays, unions, democrats, hangun controllers, news media, and hollywod types are bad, are against "murica" and show, beyong any doubt they buy the "Powell memo and GOP/Corporate propaganda" (for it is all the same exact thing) hook, line, and sinker. The "May be used under the influence of alcohol" adds to the "targeting of a particular demographic" for the sales of such quaint little items. Check out these "Terrorist Hunting Licences". I remember seeing a version of these deep in red-state Georgia...on a big ol' Ford pickup truck, dirty and beat-up, with a gun rack in it. I think this is called "an accurate stereotype". It is a stereotype but it has it's basis in reality. Not all people with such pickup trucks and gunracks are dangerous, mean-spirited folk - that's a nutty assertion, but there are a lot who are. I have met them, had bad interactions with them. The scariest and most irresponsible part of this is the unrelenting intention and effort to equate "liberals" with "terrorists" and to, as the NAZI's did with the Jews" make this equation so unquestionable that people accept that killing them really is OK. The purpose of this - and most rightwing propaganda - is to "turn of" thinking and reasoning, to make it comfortable for people to simply accept such thinking, and for it to make them feel good about themselves. Bush's speech at Fort Bragg was, in part, about this effect. It is reassuring that it fell so flat, (in technical vernacular, it produced no "bounce") but we know there are still an unpleasant number of people fist-pumping and saying "hell yeah!" because they no longer question what they hear on the TV or from their precious talk radio. For all the GOP blather about "the liberal media" it is they who have by far the lion's share of media access and control and this has been the case since at least Reagan's day. The basic game is to complain about "liberal bias" and use this as a way to elbow into more repetition of the same conservative message inherently found in said liberal media. Just try telling that to people who still support Team Bush. They believe tv and bumperstickers over verifiable reality. And that is what is so scary.|W|P|112021019606159604|W|P|More about that "hunting license"|W|P|xxdr_zombiexx@yahoo.com