Updates from the road.
Tues 10.16.2012
After ten days of climbing, hiking and truck bed camping in North Devils Canyon, with anchors replaced and trails pruned and projects for the future dancing like windblown ropes in our heads, we headed down to the Salt River Basin, just beyond Mesa, AZ, to take our spot as site hosts at the Coon Bluff Recreation area.
The site overlooks the Salt River from a high sandy bluff lined with palo verde and mesquite, acacia and sage. Prarie dogs and skunks, black widow spiders and scorpions, squirrels and ferrets, wild ponies, free-range cows, osprey and bald eagles all call the area their home, along with a healthy population of cactus wrens and doves, and a handful of water snakes and rattlers.
The local crew is a younger group trying to hold together an aging system with smaller and smaller pools of resources. We meet Rocco and Ben and Chad, the field guys, who are swapping picnic tables in anticipation of the influx of campers we will receive after the other, more popular campgrounds of the Tonto National Forest are closed for the season. I help carry a pinic table or two and we exchange some basic background and info about the locale.
Soon after, Kelly, our TNF contact shows, and we fill out paperwork, chat about the changes in the Tonto and AZ in general and where we will camp. I'm suprprised and a little disappointed to learn that, although we had sent in paperwork three weeks before, our background checks still haven't been run. This means another three days of delay before we can start our duties prepping for campers, campers who have already begu to arrive.
It also means I could have stayed in the Canyon another two days and climbed. I think of the sweet, steep pocketed face we had top roped and contemplated bolting, on the Shaman Wall, and the long, shaded lines of the Stormwatch, where Cindy has never climbed and a half-dozen routes are just waiting for bolts.
But funds are now too tight to take the hundred-plus mile drive for two more days of climbing, and I know, too, that the momentum of a week and a half of recall and climbing is long gone. The drive would be no more than an exercise in frustration and futility.
Acceptance of the things we can't change is the path to calm. I take deep breathes and enjoy the views of Red Mountain and the steep walls and cliffs around Saguaro Lake, the wrens catching bugs in acrobatic flight in the purple dusk, the distant chorus of coyotes, as the first star shines through the darkness, and night comes to the desert.
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Impatient Zen
Watching, as the summer turns to russet and gold, thickening coats on creatures beyond my picture's window, a sudden transformation of the morning dew to diamonds of frost, ferns sculpted in ice across windows and patio table. A waxing moon, setting, promises light for the road, tomorrow, should our journeys commence and end as planned.
As wind shakes the house and Cindy silently turns another page, my mind takes wing, stilling my fingers as my inner eye races south along the Front Range, crosses the Platte and Sangre de Cristos, arrowing through Raton Pass and the lingering burn scars like a raven on the wind, Sante Fe a bright pinata below and far to the southeast as I head west, across Angelfire and then down the Sandias to Albuquerque's jewelled, squalid face, then westward again to the broad plateau beyond Gallup's dusty rodeo circles and midnight trains.
Brown hills and washes, sudden arroyos and rolling dunes, brutal outcrops of volcanic stone, covered in mesquite and ocotillo, palo verde and cholla, saguaro and sage, dotted here and there with kiva and other fading relics, wound with game trails from herds long vanished, crisscrossed with ribbons of pavement and gravel, linking far-flung clusters of homesteads and commerce, huddled against the vast, uncaring blue of an endless sky, in which the sun burns like the fury of a god.
And then south, fleeing the wastelands to reach the folded promise of mountains, shimmering in the heat with the promise of cool water and deep shadows. The Superstitions rear out of the lower desert, beyond the forests and crumbling drop of the Mogollon and Kaibab, rising like a final epitaph of Cochise and his warriors, who once used these sere, forbidding canyons and escarpments to elude the United States government's finest soldiers and trackers. Here, amid mountains born of a violent age millennia past, and canyons carved by the ensuing ageless cycles of rain and snow, freeze and thaw, my winged mind finally came to rest, steeped in shadows of memories so deep and thick as to lose their individuality in an overall sensation of belonging.
Soon.
I wait with impatient Zen, scouting for jobs in the area, looking for part-time work to fill the financial void a volunteer position entails, hiking and cooking with Cindy. We sit like churchmice in this amazing dwelling, still stunned on some level to be made so at home in a strange city.
No matter how much I may run on, words cannot express how grateful I am to my friend Brian for his generosity and hospitality. It is odd but somehow poetically symmetrical that a climber I met casually at the crag, within the last decade, and with whom I had spoken mainly by phone and email and with whom I shared less than four days of conversation, trail work and climbing, would, out of the dozens of people I knew scattered across the continent, become one of our best friends and aid us so selflessly. In the midst of a life that is busy both with work that is important to more than some billionaire's balance, and play at the far end of the performance scale, this tall, quiet engineer has been both host and guide, local reference and consummate toastmaster. Through him we have met a handful of other souls, all searching for the best and preparing for the worst, all facing Life with open eyes and willing hearts; good folks doing hard things, who in turn opened their homes and lives to us.
The desert will be a lot more empty in their absence.
But there are enough good memories to light a candle against the coming winter, til summer sun shines on us all again.
I know this feeling, this stirring of potentials and convergences of fates and destiny. We sort gear as the morning wanders along, the truck in the hands of good local mechanics, in preparation for the trip. Laundry hums and cycles, cold weather clothing is stuffed further into the depths of trunks in anticipation of the Sonoran Desert heat. I file Brian's roughly-used Colorado guide book into the shelf with the rest of his guides and smile at the memories of 11 Mile and Boulder Canyon, of Nederland's hippie democracy, and even at the folly of the Indian Peaks Wilderness fiasco that ended my brief stint as a booth host.
We've worked hard and played hard, and spent time doing absolutely nothing, which is sometimes essential and sometimes indulgence. I'd like to think ours has been a healthy mix of both. A stack of books attests to the catching up we've done between hikes and breaks, climbs and bouldering sessions, dinners and Netflix and early mornings of French-pressed coffee spent in cerebral conversation, a tradition with my wife no matter what the setting. Ropes have been washed, climbing and camping gear sorted, the neighborhood and Colorado Springs in general explored, and our lives are richer for having seen this part of Colorado.
We have drunk deep of Suburbia and I feel no shame in admitting I've enjoyed hot showers, flush toilets, electric lights, internet, and cell phone reception. Those things are technology, neither inherently good nor evil. It is our national, cultural addiction to them, our craving for convenience that brings us low, and isolates us in the midst of our crowded lives and cities. Cindy and I have been here long enough to miss the birdsong in morning's first blush, and the sound of the wind over your head as you fall asleep beneath a sky full of stars.
In the end, an old lesson; the things we want and the things we need are, more often than we'd care to admit, not found in the same list. At least not in the same order.
What do I hope to accomplish in the sharing, in wasting cyberspace with these inanities, these wistful inner wanderings? Nothing more than another stranger, telling his tale here in the light of the electric campfire, offering a glimpse into another humanity, bridging the gaps between the isles of light that are our individual existences.
I look for hope in a season of division and malicious malcontent, when words mean so little, and truth in a world where Truth is a word used by those who know nothing of its essence.
Scratches on slate, a handful of runes in a lost cave, echoes of the sea far from the shore. As the waxing moon, the seasons continue their timeless roll, the tides rise and fall. Outside, unperturbed by the world-shaking events and rumors of war, magpies peer from the bush with bright eyes, and the wind combs restless fingers through the treasures of fall colors still clinging to the trees.
Another bit of the strand is woven, another tale told.
As wind shakes the house and Cindy silently turns another page, my mind takes wing, stilling my fingers as my inner eye races south along the Front Range, crosses the Platte and Sangre de Cristos, arrowing through Raton Pass and the lingering burn scars like a raven on the wind, Sante Fe a bright pinata below and far to the southeast as I head west, across Angelfire and then down the Sandias to Albuquerque's jewelled, squalid face, then westward again to the broad plateau beyond Gallup's dusty rodeo circles and midnight trains.
Brown hills and washes, sudden arroyos and rolling dunes, brutal outcrops of volcanic stone, covered in mesquite and ocotillo, palo verde and cholla, saguaro and sage, dotted here and there with kiva and other fading relics, wound with game trails from herds long vanished, crisscrossed with ribbons of pavement and gravel, linking far-flung clusters of homesteads and commerce, huddled against the vast, uncaring blue of an endless sky, in which the sun burns like the fury of a god.
And then south, fleeing the wastelands to reach the folded promise of mountains, shimmering in the heat with the promise of cool water and deep shadows. The Superstitions rear out of the lower desert, beyond the forests and crumbling drop of the Mogollon and Kaibab, rising like a final epitaph of Cochise and his warriors, who once used these sere, forbidding canyons and escarpments to elude the United States government's finest soldiers and trackers. Here, amid mountains born of a violent age millennia past, and canyons carved by the ensuing ageless cycles of rain and snow, freeze and thaw, my winged mind finally came to rest, steeped in shadows of memories so deep and thick as to lose their individuality in an overall sensation of belonging.
Soon.
I wait with impatient Zen, scouting for jobs in the area, looking for part-time work to fill the financial void a volunteer position entails, hiking and cooking with Cindy. We sit like churchmice in this amazing dwelling, still stunned on some level to be made so at home in a strange city.
No matter how much I may run on, words cannot express how grateful I am to my friend Brian for his generosity and hospitality. It is odd but somehow poetically symmetrical that a climber I met casually at the crag, within the last decade, and with whom I had spoken mainly by phone and email and with whom I shared less than four days of conversation, trail work and climbing, would, out of the dozens of people I knew scattered across the continent, become one of our best friends and aid us so selflessly. In the midst of a life that is busy both with work that is important to more than some billionaire's balance, and play at the far end of the performance scale, this tall, quiet engineer has been both host and guide, local reference and consummate toastmaster. Through him we have met a handful of other souls, all searching for the best and preparing for the worst, all facing Life with open eyes and willing hearts; good folks doing hard things, who in turn opened their homes and lives to us.
The desert will be a lot more empty in their absence.
But there are enough good memories to light a candle against the coming winter, til summer sun shines on us all again.
I know this feeling, this stirring of potentials and convergences of fates and destiny. We sort gear as the morning wanders along, the truck in the hands of good local mechanics, in preparation for the trip. Laundry hums and cycles, cold weather clothing is stuffed further into the depths of trunks in anticipation of the Sonoran Desert heat. I file Brian's roughly-used Colorado guide book into the shelf with the rest of his guides and smile at the memories of 11 Mile and Boulder Canyon, of Nederland's hippie democracy, and even at the folly of the Indian Peaks Wilderness fiasco that ended my brief stint as a booth host.
We've worked hard and played hard, and spent time doing absolutely nothing, which is sometimes essential and sometimes indulgence. I'd like to think ours has been a healthy mix of both. A stack of books attests to the catching up we've done between hikes and breaks, climbs and bouldering sessions, dinners and Netflix and early mornings of French-pressed coffee spent in cerebral conversation, a tradition with my wife no matter what the setting. Ropes have been washed, climbing and camping gear sorted, the neighborhood and Colorado Springs in general explored, and our lives are richer for having seen this part of Colorado.
We have drunk deep of Suburbia and I feel no shame in admitting I've enjoyed hot showers, flush toilets, electric lights, internet, and cell phone reception. Those things are technology, neither inherently good nor evil. It is our national, cultural addiction to them, our craving for convenience that brings us low, and isolates us in the midst of our crowded lives and cities. Cindy and I have been here long enough to miss the birdsong in morning's first blush, and the sound of the wind over your head as you fall asleep beneath a sky full of stars.
In the end, an old lesson; the things we want and the things we need are, more often than we'd care to admit, not found in the same list. At least not in the same order.
What do I hope to accomplish in the sharing, in wasting cyberspace with these inanities, these wistful inner wanderings? Nothing more than another stranger, telling his tale here in the light of the electric campfire, offering a glimpse into another humanity, bridging the gaps between the isles of light that are our individual existences.
I look for hope in a season of division and malicious malcontent, when words mean so little, and truth in a world where Truth is a word used by those who know nothing of its essence.
Scratches on slate, a handful of runes in a lost cave, echoes of the sea far from the shore. As the waxing moon, the seasons continue their timeless roll, the tides rise and fall. Outside, unperturbed by the world-shaking events and rumors of war, magpies peer from the bush with bright eyes, and the wind combs restless fingers through the treasures of fall colors still clinging to the trees.
Another bit of the strand is woven, another tale told.
Monday, October 1, 2012
Colorado Rockin'
We've spent our time well...
While the job and housing market seems filled with false promises and scams, the mountains of Colorado are all that you want, and so much more.
Eight days in Colorado's 11 Mile Canyon, with frosty mornings over steaming mugs of coffee and huevos rancheros, "strolls" that turned into three hour adventures through third, fourth and fifth class terrain, from one canyon rim to the other, crags we couldn't find in the guide book that turned out to be better. Campers and fishermen and tourists came and went around us; some good, some not so good, some ciphers without interpretation.
They were not our focus.
Noisy jaybirds woke us with loud insistent cries every morning at dawn, usually followed by the long burring bark of the squirrels, and the scampering of our personal trio of adolescent chipmunks.
We crawled from warm sleeping bags into the frigid air and struggled outside for rapid walks to the jakes, then coffee and a smoke, wandering through camp, peering at the tracks in the sand, a tale of the night visitors. Coyote, certainly, and fox, and then here, on a high shelf, a single bobcat print. Further up the wash, broad impressions in the grass and fine sand mark the bear's crossing, and a night that he did not wander through our camp.
Out of the eight days and nights we spent in the canyon, we climbed five, usually from mid-morning into hot afternoons broken by the occasional rain or thunderstorm, mostly arriving at camp dry in time to hear the first drops on the tarp.
An unknown 5.9+ "sport" route on Springer Gulch Wall, nicely shaded from the afternoon sun. The line takes the column right to a slightly runout bolt above the roof, with a heady traverse up left to amazing holds right when you need them and anchors.
 |
This is the line left, which felt like 10-. It goes directly up the face on quality rock from an overhanging start on friable holds, then puts you right under a free-floating 4-foot death block, which you can climb directly over without touching (exciting and engaging) or avoid to the left (a bit technical and slick but incredible hands, followed by a cruise all the way to the anchors).
On two of those days, we ignored lowering clouds and even a steady spritzing of rain to climb a wonderful little (100') wall about twenty minutes' hike from camp.
|
On the way back to camp...
 |
...we found a lovely little boulder garden.
|
Of course, after all that, we had to go back.
Never did find out what any of this was called... nothing on any websites or in any guides I've found so far. But it was fun, secluded, beautiful, as challenging or as moderate as you wanted to make it, and a short, easy ramble from camp.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Terms of Force
I have recently been accused of being a fascist and a war-monger.
Let me be clear: I DO NOT advocate violence, or the dissolution of the United States.
Quite the opposite.
What I advocate is a change of dialogue.
We live in a time when the rich get far richer than hard work and honest trade can account for, while the poor get a smaller and smaller share of the pie, bear more and more of the burden, have less than ever to show for years of saving and investment, and pay for ever growing government intrusion into their bedrooms, their business, their bodies, and their minds.
Those who claim to represent us have little or nothing in common with the people who vote, either before or after their tenure in office, and with lifetime pay no matter how dismal their record, no incentive to change the way business is done. Systems of government which once were the hope of the sick and old have been drained of resources, their regulations increased to incomprehensibility and inefficiency by bureaucrats bent on lifetimes of paperwork without actual work, their revenues bled away to the undocumented and the sly by feelgood administrations and loophole lawyers, special interest groups and media manipulation.
We operate on the terms of the interlocking power structures created at the beginning of the Industrial Age, sustained now for over a century and a half and spanning the globe. We are, in truth, in a conflict of the very best of ourselves and the very worst. As usual, there is a dissonance within both sides, a quest to truly define the mission, and the qualities upon which the future should be built. There is an increasingly strident desperation to the voices that seek to shown us differences in the banners under which we are seduced to march.
And the way forward is thronged with obstacles. There are foreign powers whose reaction to our instability is a question mark, whose investment in our future and our very real estate is judged in numbers that mean nothing to a rational human being. Extremists within our own country await any excuse to slam shut the last loopholes of freedom, or to raze the entire concept to the ground and live in anarchy. Philosophers whose answer is a non-violent mysticism set a fine example for daily individual human life, but that philosophy has never altered the course of empire, nor restored a people to the control of their government, not in 7,000 years of recorded human history. It fails to handle the pragmatic concerns of a world in which human numbers burgeon as resources are wasted like party favors, while major religions are moved like chessmen by individuals and groups whose goals encompass nothing of the best for mankind, only higher and higher vistas from a meaningless mountain of gold.
We are fighting an ideological battle on uneven ground.
I have deeply sorrowed over the changes in my country.
I love this land, its forests and hills, its canyons and valleys. I have lived in the very palm of the earth for decades now, moving into a city or a house only when work, necessity, and providence directed me, otherwise, I have traveled, and met the amazing, frustrating, cynical, rapturous, cranky, innocent, cantankerous, generous citizens of this land in the best and worst of times and places.
I have seen strangers reach out their hands in greeting comfort and support, been invited to weddings and barbecues, rock climbing and hot air ballooning and family picnics. I rejoiced with the crowds as fireworks exploded over Washington, mourned as our innocence died on September 11th, wept for our fallen soldiers in senseless wars and stood motionless, struck dumb, alone, before the silent grandeur of El Capitan in Yosemite, in Monument Valley's long shadows, or watching the silent glistening of a thousand lights across the Valley of the Sun, with the dark crown of the Superstitions rising in the distance like a frozen wave of time.
I celebrate the amazing mix of our culture in places where people see no need to accentuate their differences and live as close to the true Dream as possible; a place, a chance to earn their way, and a future in which they can make a difference.
I watched our astronauts soar into space with the heart of a small child, and the wonder of that age did not die when that Age, and the promise of a future beyond this planet, passed. I see our satellites in the sky at night, scan the face of the Earth with their views and the technology they represent. And I know that this access and technology is a fragile web spun across the world, subject to disruption at the first sign of unrest. Although I live a simple life, I enjoy the benefits of commerce and a stable government and the world which technology opens to us all.
I see the many people in this land who benefit from government aid, but I believe that the programs that support that system, and the means by which funds are generated and distributed are all in need of a major overhaul. More opportunities, achieved by LESS law and regulation, would free the elderly and the disabled to explore entirely new markets and venues of earning that could free them from the welfare-poverty cycle.
I love and support our police and firemen, our rescue squad workers and most deeply of all, our soldiers, because I know and have been through some of the best and worst times of my life with just about every group. I think these are some of the most dedicated, giving, HUMAN people on our planet, having stood shoulder to shoulder with them all. Ladies, gentlemen, I thank you all, and wish you nothing but the best.... despite my misgivings of the decisions you face.
No, I am no anarchist, no fascist. I would not tear down the edifice to rid myself and my country of the rats in the halls and the mold in the corners. The basic structure is of stone; sound, ageless, enduring.
But if we cannot speak in honest exchange, if there is no forum in which to weigh and discard ideas that do not benefit us all, how then can we go forward?
The forces which oppose us are founded on strength and thrive on power. The power comes from a common mis-perception of omniscience and omnipotence. It allows the structure supporting that power to define the terms and means of exchange, as well as the basic concepts of winner and loser.
The redefinition of corporations as people created much of the current paradox, in which companies are too big to fail,. but the people who actually comprise the work force are expendable. These new people-corporations can be seen as fanatics equal to any suicide bomber, citizens whose only focus is profit and whose only system is competition and the elimination of all rivals. Corporations arise out of commerce and acquisition, and in commerce expansion of markets ceased at the edge of space and turned inward toward the consumer... and there are new consumers born every second of every day.
Consumers who are allowed, less and less often, to make simple, critical decisions about their own existences, and the differences between want and need.
Again, there is nothing wrong with capitalism, as long as it is balanced by a healthy agrarian economy and a REAL voice for the people, instead of living in a system where the public is viewed in terms of feedback potential and GNP as defined by people who have never looked for a job, gone hungry or done a day's worth of physical labor in their lives.
But the market must be redefined by the consumer. The control of our currency must be in public, not private hands, and the system by which wealth is judged and taxed must be fair and balanced. In the current compromised, big-government state of our nation, this cannot happen. It is only possible if, as a nation, we shake off party affiliations, religious manipulations, media distortions and the definitions other people have imposed on our lives and duties to stand; mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, seniors and school children, fire fighters, police personnel, soldiers and teachers, waitresses and cab drivers.
If we are to stand, then, and if we are to hold to hope and begin the work of change, does it not seem prudent, indeed, necessary to do so in full knowledge of our own strength?
The forces that oppose us have shown themselves more than willing and ever so able to enforce their doctrine with the mailed fist. The federal government, no matter which party is in nominal "control", will suspend the founding documents of our nation, and subvert the very definitions of patriotism and security to achieve those ends and remain in control. It already has, and not a single candidate for the Oval Office has announced plans to reverse those executive erasures of our rights.
If we are to ask our brothers and sisters in uniform to stand by their oath instead of the powers who have purchased that birthright with a handful of shining metal, then we must show that we will stand with them, if need be, that we will do more than witness, that we will bleed and die with them, if necessary, to fulfill an oath every one of us took whenever we have saluted a flag, stood for the national anthem, or pledged allegiance to the flag; to protect the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic.
And to preserve a republic that is one Nation of equally free and responsible citizens, under whichever God or absence thereof you choose to worship peacefully, without regard for or interference in your neighbor's choices or the support of or for any particular political party, with liberty of our own bodies and minds and justice blind to wealth and influence for all.
If we are to free ourselves of a banking system, or a food system, or any other system, we must demonstrate not only our knowledge but our incorporation of that knowledge in our day-to-day lives and continued existence. We must address the pros as well as the cons of all our solutions, and come to terms with the necessary evils of transitions. But we must do so in a unified fashion.
There are many who say we must go forward without violence, and I agree, to a certain point. Our ancestors and other reasonable human beings across the globe have managed to speak to each other on subjects where they deeply differed in opinion for centuries.
But that communication, that congress, was founded on a balance of power born of respect. Our veterans and our retired police are speaking out in their hundreds every day, against the policies and history of the last decade and more.
Sadly, they do not seem to be heard by either the Commander-in-Chief or his potential rivals in the coming elections. And for every voice of reason, there seems some hidden agenda, some background weakness which precludes true belief for any espoused opinion.
We cannot look to our Government for leadership, because the path to those seats is a sewer, and there is truly no way to arrive unstained.
And if we are to move forward in conversation, we must do so in unity. Damned if we do, damned if we don't. Whether we win or lose, those who stand aside from the conflict and preach non-violence will judge and condemn us for any action, even if we only defend against a further erosion of the sanctity of our homes and the constancy of our rights. The weakness of the pacifistic view is that it is just as useful to those who would enslave you and keep you compliant as is any act of resistance, and it costs your oppressors nothing but time.
When your enemies are not mortal, but corporations, corrupt governments and dynasties who operate on a scale of decades, you cannot fight a battle on their terms. If non-violence were a viable solution to all problems, Tibet and Nepal would be free, Martin Luther King would still be alive, and Mao would have been supplanted by monks, while Wicca and Buddhism would rule the Earth.
Perhaps defining those who seek to curtail our Rights while taking away our repsonsibilities as "enemies" is an antagonistic view of the world. But it is instinctive for me to reject this philosphy, this mantra of surrendering control and self-worth for convenience and freedom from responsibility, to a system that does not reward innovation and creativity but compliance and allegiance to a creed long ago subverted for profit.
There are many first steps, and there are many ways of communication left before we think of the Way of the Gun. Because I am no blind chauvinistic dreamer. I know it is not all pipes and drums and glorious slow-motion scenes of valor and sacrifice. In all truth, I deeply and personally understand that that way lies destruction and loss, and the death of much that is dear.
And so I pray, every day, to see our nation stand up, to see a unification of all those amazing, determined, silent people, to take back what was good. I watch, and read, and listen, for any sign that there is even a chance for this government to shake off the chains of power and gold that have weighed it down.
I pray, and listen for an answer, despite so many things that I have known since I was a child.
Because the alternative to change by will is only complete domination, or change by force.
I would not go down that Road.
But mine is not the hand that steers this ship.
Let me be clear: I DO NOT advocate violence, or the dissolution of the United States.
Quite the opposite.
What I advocate is a change of dialogue.
We live in a time when the rich get far richer than hard work and honest trade can account for, while the poor get a smaller and smaller share of the pie, bear more and more of the burden, have less than ever to show for years of saving and investment, and pay for ever growing government intrusion into their bedrooms, their business, their bodies, and their minds.
Those who claim to represent us have little or nothing in common with the people who vote, either before or after their tenure in office, and with lifetime pay no matter how dismal their record, no incentive to change the way business is done. Systems of government which once were the hope of the sick and old have been drained of resources, their regulations increased to incomprehensibility and inefficiency by bureaucrats bent on lifetimes of paperwork without actual work, their revenues bled away to the undocumented and the sly by feelgood administrations and loophole lawyers, special interest groups and media manipulation.
We operate on the terms of the interlocking power structures created at the beginning of the Industrial Age, sustained now for over a century and a half and spanning the globe. We are, in truth, in a conflict of the very best of ourselves and the very worst. As usual, there is a dissonance within both sides, a quest to truly define the mission, and the qualities upon which the future should be built. There is an increasingly strident desperation to the voices that seek to shown us differences in the banners under which we are seduced to march.
And the way forward is thronged with obstacles. There are foreign powers whose reaction to our instability is a question mark, whose investment in our future and our very real estate is judged in numbers that mean nothing to a rational human being. Extremists within our own country await any excuse to slam shut the last loopholes of freedom, or to raze the entire concept to the ground and live in anarchy. Philosophers whose answer is a non-violent mysticism set a fine example for daily individual human life, but that philosophy has never altered the course of empire, nor restored a people to the control of their government, not in 7,000 years of recorded human history. It fails to handle the pragmatic concerns of a world in which human numbers burgeon as resources are wasted like party favors, while major religions are moved like chessmen by individuals and groups whose goals encompass nothing of the best for mankind, only higher and higher vistas from a meaningless mountain of gold.
We are fighting an ideological battle on uneven ground.
I have deeply sorrowed over the changes in my country.
I love this land, its forests and hills, its canyons and valleys. I have lived in the very palm of the earth for decades now, moving into a city or a house only when work, necessity, and providence directed me, otherwise, I have traveled, and met the amazing, frustrating, cynical, rapturous, cranky, innocent, cantankerous, generous citizens of this land in the best and worst of times and places.
I have seen strangers reach out their hands in greeting comfort and support, been invited to weddings and barbecues, rock climbing and hot air ballooning and family picnics. I rejoiced with the crowds as fireworks exploded over Washington, mourned as our innocence died on September 11th, wept for our fallen soldiers in senseless wars and stood motionless, struck dumb, alone, before the silent grandeur of El Capitan in Yosemite, in Monument Valley's long shadows, or watching the silent glistening of a thousand lights across the Valley of the Sun, with the dark crown of the Superstitions rising in the distance like a frozen wave of time.
I celebrate the amazing mix of our culture in places where people see no need to accentuate their differences and live as close to the true Dream as possible; a place, a chance to earn their way, and a future in which they can make a difference.
I watched our astronauts soar into space with the heart of a small child, and the wonder of that age did not die when that Age, and the promise of a future beyond this planet, passed. I see our satellites in the sky at night, scan the face of the Earth with their views and the technology they represent. And I know that this access and technology is a fragile web spun across the world, subject to disruption at the first sign of unrest. Although I live a simple life, I enjoy the benefits of commerce and a stable government and the world which technology opens to us all.
I see the many people in this land who benefit from government aid, but I believe that the programs that support that system, and the means by which funds are generated and distributed are all in need of a major overhaul. More opportunities, achieved by LESS law and regulation, would free the elderly and the disabled to explore entirely new markets and venues of earning that could free them from the welfare-poverty cycle.
I love and support our police and firemen, our rescue squad workers and most deeply of all, our soldiers, because I know and have been through some of the best and worst times of my life with just about every group. I think these are some of the most dedicated, giving, HUMAN people on our planet, having stood shoulder to shoulder with them all. Ladies, gentlemen, I thank you all, and wish you nothing but the best.... despite my misgivings of the decisions you face.
No, I am no anarchist, no fascist. I would not tear down the edifice to rid myself and my country of the rats in the halls and the mold in the corners. The basic structure is of stone; sound, ageless, enduring.
But if we cannot speak in honest exchange, if there is no forum in which to weigh and discard ideas that do not benefit us all, how then can we go forward?
The forces which oppose us are founded on strength and thrive on power. The power comes from a common mis-perception of omniscience and omnipotence. It allows the structure supporting that power to define the terms and means of exchange, as well as the basic concepts of winner and loser.
The redefinition of corporations as people created much of the current paradox, in which companies are too big to fail,. but the people who actually comprise the work force are expendable. These new people-corporations can be seen as fanatics equal to any suicide bomber, citizens whose only focus is profit and whose only system is competition and the elimination of all rivals. Corporations arise out of commerce and acquisition, and in commerce expansion of markets ceased at the edge of space and turned inward toward the consumer... and there are new consumers born every second of every day.
Consumers who are allowed, less and less often, to make simple, critical decisions about their own existences, and the differences between want and need.
Again, there is nothing wrong with capitalism, as long as it is balanced by a healthy agrarian economy and a REAL voice for the people, instead of living in a system where the public is viewed in terms of feedback potential and GNP as defined by people who have never looked for a job, gone hungry or done a day's worth of physical labor in their lives.
But the market must be redefined by the consumer. The control of our currency must be in public, not private hands, and the system by which wealth is judged and taxed must be fair and balanced. In the current compromised, big-government state of our nation, this cannot happen. It is only possible if, as a nation, we shake off party affiliations, religious manipulations, media distortions and the definitions other people have imposed on our lives and duties to stand; mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, seniors and school children, fire fighters, police personnel, soldiers and teachers, waitresses and cab drivers.
If we are to stand, then, and if we are to hold to hope and begin the work of change, does it not seem prudent, indeed, necessary to do so in full knowledge of our own strength?
The forces that oppose us have shown themselves more than willing and ever so able to enforce their doctrine with the mailed fist. The federal government, no matter which party is in nominal "control", will suspend the founding documents of our nation, and subvert the very definitions of patriotism and security to achieve those ends and remain in control. It already has, and not a single candidate for the Oval Office has announced plans to reverse those executive erasures of our rights.
If we are to ask our brothers and sisters in uniform to stand by their oath instead of the powers who have purchased that birthright with a handful of shining metal, then we must show that we will stand with them, if need be, that we will do more than witness, that we will bleed and die with them, if necessary, to fulfill an oath every one of us took whenever we have saluted a flag, stood for the national anthem, or pledged allegiance to the flag; to protect the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic.
And to preserve a republic that is one Nation of equally free and responsible citizens, under whichever God or absence thereof you choose to worship peacefully, without regard for or interference in your neighbor's choices or the support of or for any particular political party, with liberty of our own bodies and minds and justice blind to wealth and influence for all.
If we are to free ourselves of a banking system, or a food system, or any other system, we must demonstrate not only our knowledge but our incorporation of that knowledge in our day-to-day lives and continued existence. We must address the pros as well as the cons of all our solutions, and come to terms with the necessary evils of transitions. But we must do so in a unified fashion.
There are many who say we must go forward without violence, and I agree, to a certain point. Our ancestors and other reasonable human beings across the globe have managed to speak to each other on subjects where they deeply differed in opinion for centuries.
But that communication, that congress, was founded on a balance of power born of respect. Our veterans and our retired police are speaking out in their hundreds every day, against the policies and history of the last decade and more.
Sadly, they do not seem to be heard by either the Commander-in-Chief or his potential rivals in the coming elections. And for every voice of reason, there seems some hidden agenda, some background weakness which precludes true belief for any espoused opinion.
We cannot look to our Government for leadership, because the path to those seats is a sewer, and there is truly no way to arrive unstained.
And if we are to move forward in conversation, we must do so in unity. Damned if we do, damned if we don't. Whether we win or lose, those who stand aside from the conflict and preach non-violence will judge and condemn us for any action, even if we only defend against a further erosion of the sanctity of our homes and the constancy of our rights. The weakness of the pacifistic view is that it is just as useful to those who would enslave you and keep you compliant as is any act of resistance, and it costs your oppressors nothing but time.
When your enemies are not mortal, but corporations, corrupt governments and dynasties who operate on a scale of decades, you cannot fight a battle on their terms. If non-violence were a viable solution to all problems, Tibet and Nepal would be free, Martin Luther King would still be alive, and Mao would have been supplanted by monks, while Wicca and Buddhism would rule the Earth.
Perhaps defining those who seek to curtail our Rights while taking away our repsonsibilities as "enemies" is an antagonistic view of the world. But it is instinctive for me to reject this philosphy, this mantra of surrendering control and self-worth for convenience and freedom from responsibility, to a system that does not reward innovation and creativity but compliance and allegiance to a creed long ago subverted for profit.
There are many first steps, and there are many ways of communication left before we think of the Way of the Gun. Because I am no blind chauvinistic dreamer. I know it is not all pipes and drums and glorious slow-motion scenes of valor and sacrifice. In all truth, I deeply and personally understand that that way lies destruction and loss, and the death of much that is dear.
And so I pray, every day, to see our nation stand up, to see a unification of all those amazing, determined, silent people, to take back what was good. I watch, and read, and listen, for any sign that there is even a chance for this government to shake off the chains of power and gold that have weighed it down.
I pray, and listen for an answer, despite so many things that I have known since I was a child.
Because the alternative to change by will is only complete domination, or change by force.
I would not go down that Road.
But mine is not the hand that steers this ship.
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Ending, for the Moment...
Birds are singing as a chipmunk scurries to cover, a single black bean from last night's supper snatched from beneath my feet in a blur. The smell of hot pine is already rising in the cool shadows of the forest as I hear the water begin to sing in the kettle; time to fill the French press. Cindy is lounging in the shade, cleaning her pipe and sipping from the previous batch of Joe. Behind her, sleeping bags and liners and blankets sway on their lines, airing before their inevitable compression into the back of little Icy Blue. A dog barks, somewhere, and squirrels scold jays as they scurry through the middle terrace above. A single raven wings heavily across the treetops and the sound of traffic drifts in from the nearby highway.
We spent the last month getting to know this tiny Front Range hamlet and its environs; Nederland, Ward, Rollinsville. This is an amazing place of history and new thought, of challenging weather and conditions, and uplifting people and ideas, of conflict and harmony, community and political polarization. This is one of the only towns in America where there are quite literally NO drug possession laws on the books... Zip, zero, nada. Don't get caught driving all baked up on brownies or dank, though.... that's still DUI and they have no problem citing you for that. And has the presence of cannabis in the park, on the houses and homes, smoked in little bars and outdoor cafes and public parks; has the Killer Weed destroyed this little town, twisting it into a caricature, a Cheech and Chong continuum?
Not really.
Ned is just like a lot of small towns in mountainous settings. There are trailers, ranch houses, tiny huts and sprawling mansions; working class people and white collar types, yuppies in BMWs and hippies in VW vans, crusties with untagged dogs and tie-dyed skirts, scruffy beards and dusty dreadlocks hanging out in the shade of the park, and loud sports fans with bad new tattoos, dressed in school colors, hanging over the rail of the upstairs bar, berating citizens on the sidewalk and proclaiming their idiocy for all the world to see and hear. Tourists wander and point in big hats and sunglasses, snapping pictures and debating on which overpriced eatery or gift shoppe in which to spend their discretionary income. Carpenters and plumbers and roofers drive the streets in beat-up pickup trucks and brand-new company vans. At noon they fill the restaurants and grocery stores with tired, dusty men and women, enjoying a moment's respite from heat or cold and the inevitable wind. They mingle with mountain bikers and triathletes, retirees and soccer moms, military men and prowling cougars. Entrepreneurs looking for new locations eye properties and debate merits at a table beside a traveler with patched jeans and beaten pack, his loyal dog lolling a red tongue in the shade beneath his feet as he slowly chews a sandwich and sips at his water, splashing some into his palm to offer his companion. Children clap and sing along in the library as a bearded man with a guitar smiles and leads them, and three young men practice some form of grappling martial art in the side yard of a tiny painted house as a beautiful girl in a long skirt and sun hat rides by, smiling and humming.
Our time here is ending, for the moment, but, like the Shenandoah Valley and the mountains of WV, I have the feeling that our time here has just begun.
We spent the last month getting to know this tiny Front Range hamlet and its environs; Nederland, Ward, Rollinsville. This is an amazing place of history and new thought, of challenging weather and conditions, and uplifting people and ideas, of conflict and harmony, community and political polarization. This is one of the only towns in America where there are quite literally NO drug possession laws on the books... Zip, zero, nada. Don't get caught driving all baked up on brownies or dank, though.... that's still DUI and they have no problem citing you for that. And has the presence of cannabis in the park, on the houses and homes, smoked in little bars and outdoor cafes and public parks; has the Killer Weed destroyed this little town, twisting it into a caricature, a Cheech and Chong continuum?
Not really.
Ned is just like a lot of small towns in mountainous settings. There are trailers, ranch houses, tiny huts and sprawling mansions; working class people and white collar types, yuppies in BMWs and hippies in VW vans, crusties with untagged dogs and tie-dyed skirts, scruffy beards and dusty dreadlocks hanging out in the shade of the park, and loud sports fans with bad new tattoos, dressed in school colors, hanging over the rail of the upstairs bar, berating citizens on the sidewalk and proclaiming their idiocy for all the world to see and hear. Tourists wander and point in big hats and sunglasses, snapping pictures and debating on which overpriced eatery or gift shoppe in which to spend their discretionary income. Carpenters and plumbers and roofers drive the streets in beat-up pickup trucks and brand-new company vans. At noon they fill the restaurants and grocery stores with tired, dusty men and women, enjoying a moment's respite from heat or cold and the inevitable wind. They mingle with mountain bikers and triathletes, retirees and soccer moms, military men and prowling cougars. Entrepreneurs looking for new locations eye properties and debate merits at a table beside a traveler with patched jeans and beaten pack, his loyal dog lolling a red tongue in the shade beneath his feet as he slowly chews a sandwich and sips at his water, splashing some into his palm to offer his companion. Children clap and sing along in the library as a bearded man with a guitar smiles and leads them, and three young men practice some form of grappling martial art in the side yard of a tiny painted house as a beautiful girl in a long skirt and sun hat rides by, smiling and humming.
Our time here is ending, for the moment, but, like the Shenandoah Valley and the mountains of WV, I have the feeling that our time here has just begun.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Foundations
So, here are the hard, cold facts.
95% of your world was created by people using cannabis.
Right now, if you are sitting at a computer, or holding an iPhone
or a Kindle or in some other way interfacing with the Internet and the World
Wide Web of data sharing, you are enjoying the fruits of the intellectual and
physical labors of a group of cannabis-using scientists.
If you are enjoying some music with your surfing, starting
your morning, during your commute or throughout your day, anything from
classical to light jazz to country to, yes, even a few gospel tunes, you are
listening to the work of folks who routinely used hemp, cannabis, and hemp
flower extracts to deal with stress and pain.
(Quite of few of them also used laudanum, opium, morphine,
absinth and cocaine, which were then accepted as natural remedies, just as
citizens of voting age were considered mature enough to determine those
remedies’ use in their lives. There was,
oddly enough, no drug problem, no multi-billion dollar prison and drug
enforcement system. My, how the times
have changed…)
If you enjoy the paintings, sculptures, poetry, literature, or
craftworks of 95% of the last three centuries, you are, in fact, enjoying the
effects of cannabis and other mind-altering substances on the real world.
Have any number of these artists died of addiction or the
diseases that come with it? Yes, many if
not most of the greats that we know did indeed succumb to their appetites and
the dark inner flame that lit their world in the first place.
Not one of them died from cannabis.
In fact, in seven thousand years of recorded history,
including the incredibly detailed records of the dynasties of Asia, not one
person has ever died from the effects of cannabis; smoked, brewed into tea,
eaten, or rubbed into the skin. It is
humanly impossible to consume the amount of cannabis it would take to deliver
enough THC to disrupt bodily function.
Imagine trying to smoke a bail of marijuana in an hour. That’s how much it would take.
But I digress.
If you live or have lived in a house, or a condo, or an
apartment that you did not construct from ground to doorbell with your own two
hands, there is a good chance that someone using marijuana created the
materials, was involved in their shipping and/or delivery, and installed or
assembled them into the structure that kept the rain and snow from your head.
The streets you drive on, the shops you patronize, the
restaurants you eat in, all built and staffed and possibly owned by cannabis
users or their relatives or friends. The
town you live in, the state in which it is located, and the country in which
that state exists, all discovered and founded by cannabis and hemp growers and
users.
For hundreds of years, cannabis users have been laying the
foundation stones of your world.
Cannabis and hemp; twined branches of the same tree. Useful for paper, cloth, a wide assortment of
building applications, fuel, protein, and a thousand potential applications to
replace and preserve our depleting fossil fuels, forests, drinking water and
arable land. Jobs for literally
millions; farming, harvesting, processing, breeding strains for food, fuel, medical
and textile applications, packaging, manufacturing, warehousing, transport,
security, logistics, marketing, education, outreach, clinics, research… the
list grows as rapidly as the reasons to rethink our long-held, misguided views
on this beneficial plant.
Why, out of so many useful plants, is this one
demonized? I’m not talking about opium
poppies or cocoa leaves or psychedelic mushrooms, although medical science has
found uses for all three- morphine and cocaine have been accepted as legitimate
painkillers for hundreds of years, and new research into the use of psilocybin
for post-traumatic stress and hospice care as well as a host of other mental
disorders, is yielding amazing results.
No, I’m talking about a plant that our government has not
once but twice encouraged all citizens who could do so to produce in bulk
quantity. During colonial times, it was
a mandate that “every household plant at least one teaspoon of good Indian hemp
seed”, and hemp formed one of the principle exports of the colonies. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both grew hemp. Ben Franklin owned a mill
that made hemp paper. Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence on hemp
paper , and most of our early money was printed on fine hemp paper.
Somehow, a century and a half later, this foundation stone
of American life and agriculture suddenly became the demon weed. There are any number of reasons why one can
see this happening; a racist reaction to white teens mixing with other races to
listen to jazz, a response to the continuing influx of laborers from countries
with long cannabis associations, and of course the well-documented government
manipulation by corporate interests to ensure proper development of their
investments.
Yet our government and the corporations that increasingly
control it are adept, if nothing else, at reversing themselves without batting
an eye. During the Second World War,
when our supply of hemp from the Philippines was cut off, American farmers were
exhorted by the US government to grow “Hemp for Victory!”
But when soldiers in Korea seemed disinclined to rush out
and kill the enemy after discovering cannabis, and with the burgeoning music
scene in London and Germany on the rise, American authorities once again
labeled cannabis the “gateway drug” and filled schools and theaters with
propaganda, little if any of it based in fact.
Such as the fact that NOT ONE Presidential research
committee into cannabis/marijuana has ever uncovered ANY permanent, negative side effects from its
use.
Right now it is costing American taxpayers 5 billion dollars
every year just to fund the DEA. Well
over 80% of that money is for cannabis interdiction. 95% of the victims of that interdiction are
NOT criminals. They are parents and
young people, seniors and veterans, patients and mechanics, carpenters and
plumbers and roofers and electricians, teachers and writers, painters and
musicians and mentors, foster parents and cab drivers, shopkeepers and
janitors. They are the thousands of
people who hold this society upright and together.
We have so many battles ahead. Worthy battles; to restart our economy, to
clothe and feed and house and employ our people, to bring hope to the
downtrodden and redemption to the broken and lost right here in our own
homeland.
Together, we have come so far, and accomplished so much.
Isn’t it time to end the war on our own people?
Saturday, June 2, 2012
No value
A recent Kentucky Drug Task Force raid netted 250 cannabis plants. High-potency marijuana, according to the Sheriff's Department. Estimate of value was 1.9 million dollars.
Almost 2 million dollars for 250 plants. Plants that will grow in the ditch, and do in more than a few places in America. Plants the Federal government has denied have any medicinal value or practical application. What makes this plant so valuable... so valuable that the government that has classified this herb as a dangerous drug and of no use to medical science, that same government holds patents on the medical applications of cannabis extracts.
What could make this plant so valuable?
Is it that addictive?
The government doesn't think so. Not one government study of the effects of cannabis has ever proven that it is addictive or has any negative long term health effects. The results that have been reported by the government were skewed to fit administration policy, every time.
So why this war on drugs? Let's go back to that raid, the one that seized 250 cannabis plants worth 1.9 million.
First, that's a ridiculous sum, pricing each plant at almost $8,000 dollars. Cannabis, on the black market, sells for $400-560 per ounce. Pounds generally go for $2,400-3200, so the estimate was based on the premium ounce price and the expectation that each plant would produce about 2.5 pounds.
Most plants produce between one and three pounds, usually closer to one.
Black market cannabis may have been soaked in perfumes to hide the scent, shipped cross-country inside spare tires, dusted with powdered rubber and industrial solvents and lubricants, or recovered from a law-enforcement burn, rinsed but still laced with kerosene and petrochemicals. On the black market, inferior cannabis can be treated with the same substances that make "spice" so potent and potentially dangerous.
Under Prohibition, there is no competition. Under Prohibition, there is no incentive to produce a superior product, just one that will get you more stoned.
Under Prohibition, sick people and people in pain must risk their lives in order to use the best quality of herb they can find, depending on their location. Often, many of the medicinal properties of the cannabis have so degraded from heat, oxygen and sunlight that it is worth next to nothing for actual medical use.
Prohibition has failed for the last 40 years. Its only claim for success is to have made otherwise law-abiding citizens into felons for a victimless crime, and to have put billins of dollars into the pockets of private prison contractors, police unions, rehabilitation programs, and an army of DEA agents, INS agents, as well as providing meaninless high-profile headlines for state, county and local law enforcement. Yet murder, rape, theft, child pornography, narcotics, and a host of new "designer drugs" are still sweeping the nation.
But I digress...
One thousand pounds at $3,200/lb is $3,200,000 on the black market. Because of prohibition, that money creates zero taxes, no by-products, zero economic growth. Because of Prohibition, that money can go toward buying guns to funnel into South America to the cartels, and leads to turf wars between rival dealers, rarely upstanding pillars of the community, who sell cocaine, crack, oxycodone, ecstacy, weapons and prostitutes to "round out" their portfolio, so to speak. Because of Prohibition, bud from the west coast makes it to Florida where it is often traded for cocaine that then spreads out across America.
Now, let's look at the medical marijuana market.
Here, an ounce of carefully trimmed and scientifically-bred cannabis costs $280-480. Very high quality, no fertilizers, clearly labelled for specific complaints like stress, pain, nerve spasm, etc.
Dispensaries are legitimate businesses, licensed by the state and subject to a number of conditions. Dispensary owners pay business taxes, and if they own the building, property taxes. The owners make every effort to operate within the law, and do not dispense any other substance than cannabis.
Dispensaries create jobs for growers, trimmers, counterpeople, clothing, poster and paraphenalia manufacturers, delivery drivers, glass blowers, and cooks to bake the brownies and make the butter. Each one of those jobs creates tax revenue. Dispensaries charge taxes on clothing, paraphenalia, posters, edibles, and premium bud cannabis.
So in a legalized market, 1,000 pounds of cannabis is worth an average of $3,200,000 if sold in ounces. That is another difference in markets. on the black market, you can buy as much cannabis as you can afford, setting the stage for distribution. In a regulated system, patients can only possess 2 ounces of cannabis at any time. So that's 8,000 patients who could have benefitted from that amount of cannabis, which was instead destroyed.
In a regulated system, that 1,000 pounds will generate $4800 or more, just in sales taxes.
It will generate zero in law enforcement costs.
It can provide employment and supplemental income for seniors, veterans and the disabled; growing, trimming, rolling into cigarettes.
It can be woven into cloth much more durable than cotton.
It can be mixed into concrete as as a superstrong fibrous mesh, and used in the place of old-growth forests that take a hundred years or more to mature (as opposed to 9 MONTHS for hemp) to make the finest paper.
It can be used to make fuel for America and the world's growing energy needs, without the hazard of poisoning the entire Gulf of Mexico or turning Japan into a radioactive wasteland.
It absorbs greenhouse gases and gives off oxygen.
More importantly, and much more relevant to this inquiry, 1,000 pounds of cannabis can replace $36,000 worth of prescription meds each year for each one of 1,000 patients with chronic pain or diseases like MS and cancer.
$36,000 x 1000 = $36,000,000 in potential reduced costs for every thousand people on Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security Disability. There are over 61,000 people living on a fixed income from Social Security Disability Insurance, most of them also on Medicaid and Medicare.
$36,000,000 x 61 = $2,196,000,000 in savings for the American taxpayer and the Federal Government.
In the current economy, why wouldn't the Federal Government want to save almost 2.2 trillion dollars annually? The current Drug Enforcement Agency budget is $2,130,100 which is spent on 8,399 positions; 4,146 of which are actually agents.
Approximately 75-80% of that budget is for the interdiction of cannabis. That's over $1,600,000,000 spent on destroying a harmless herb with numerous medical applications proven in peer-reviewed studies around the globe and not a single fatality from use in the recorded history of mankind.
Why wouldn't our government want almost $3,600,000,000 in additional budget revenues every year?
Perhaps the answer is one of perspective, and a focus on profits, rather than the good of all mankind.
Because viewed another way, that 1,000 pounds of cannabis represents a potential $2 Million loss for the pharmaceutical companies, every year.
Pharmaceutical companies that routinely churn out drugs with side effects such as addiction, psychosis, hallucinations, thoughts of murder or suicide, blisters on your eyeballs, mouth, tongue, or throat, red or peeling skin, deadly viral infections, arrhythmic heartbeat, unstoppable bleeding, tumors, stomach cancer, and the list goes on and on.
And yet these substances are considered to be medicines and are accepted as such by a public that will flock to accept all those side effects even while decrying the "gateway drug", cannabis. How have these poisons become medicine while cannabis is classified as a drug?
Because companies like Pfizer and Lilly-Squibb pour millions of dollars into sustaining the War on Cannabis, all while selling their panaceas with images of bright, happy families, running playful dogs and hard-working Americans who NEED these blessed powders and potions to truly enjoy the American Dream. Cannabis is demonized, as it ever has been, as the province of seedy characters and loose women in smoky dives and crack houses. It is portrayed as the domain of criminals and societal failures, a gateway drug with no redeeming medical applications, no value.
Pharmaceutical companies pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions. For which, they get a return of hundreds of thousands of dollars on each and every dollar of those contributions by keeping cannabis illegal and forcing seniors, soldiers, and sick people to continue consuming narcotics that destroy their organs, drain their happiness, and fail to address the underlying causes of the symptoms they are made to treat.
Isn't it odd, then, that those same companies that deny the rest of the world the free, regulated use of cannabis have a medicine derived from cannabis? Odder yet, the DEA website acts as a salesite to pitch the product. Below is a quote from the DEA website concerning Marinol, the "synthetic" THC derivative.
"A pharmaceutical product, Marinol, is widely available through prescription. It comes in the form of a pill and is also being studied by researchers for suitability via other delivery methods, such as an inhaler or patch. The active ingredient of Marinol is synthetic THC, which has been found to relieve the nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy for cancer patients and to assist with loss of appetite with AIDS patients."
So THC has been found to help with nausea and vomiting and loss of appetite? But, only if it has been packaged and processed by a giant corporation. Forget about that THC you could grow in your closet for a few dollars a month, that stuff is bad for you, the report goes on to explain;
"Unlike smoked marijuana--which contains more than 400 different chemicals, including most of the hazardous chemicals found in tobacco smoke-Marinol has been studied and approved by the medical community and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the nation's watchdog over unsafe and harmful food and drug products. Since the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, any drug that is marketed in the United States must undergo rigorous scientific testing. The approval process mandated by this act ensures that claims of safety and therapeutic value are supported by clinical evidence and keeps unsafe, ineffective and dangerous drugs off the market."
Now, let's back up to the beginning of that quote. One, Marinol is unlike smoked cannabis in that it does not deliver 400 different chemicals to users.
Of course not. Most of those chemicals are also potential medicines for development. Why would they let you have them all at once, in the same way Nature did? Nature doesn't have a bottom line to consider. It's not about a cure... it's about developing a market and keeping a share.
Next the DEA rather breathlessly contends that cannabis, when smoked, is ALMOST as dangerous as tobacco.
No government finding has ever said so. No independent study has ever supported that claim. And every single study has shown nicotine to be the most powerful, addictive central nervous stimulant on the planet.
So why is it that you can buy this incredibly destructive drug at any convenience store, but possessing cannabis will get you 15 years in prison in some states... predominantly those in which tobacco is a major cash crop.
Because Tobacco also pours millions into the campaign coffers and Drug War rallies of those who stand to profit from the continued use of cotton, trees, petroleum, and pharmaceuticals.
But surely good Christians could not believe that the Almightly, in His Wisdom, made a mistake? Sadly pastors and preachers and politico-religious tyrants still blast this herb from the pulpit, weaned on 75 years of lies and terrified of the closeness to the spiritual that so many attain with a single puff, after years of searching in vain through the churches and synagogues for that link to the Eternal.
We have lost the will to Question Authority, to think critically about the information we are offered, to act on our convictions, to stand for what is Right even if it means inconvenience, loss of standing in the community or even jail.
We are a nation of people who want change... as long as someone else makes it happen, preferably before the next reality TV show comes on and we are forced to miss an episode of The Biggest Loser.
We cannot see that, in today's corporate government machine, it is We, the People, who are The Biggest Losers of all.
That is why cannabis is still illegal.
.
Almost 2 million dollars for 250 plants. Plants that will grow in the ditch, and do in more than a few places in America. Plants the Federal government has denied have any medicinal value or practical application. What makes this plant so valuable... so valuable that the government that has classified this herb as a dangerous drug and of no use to medical science, that same government holds patents on the medical applications of cannabis extracts.
What could make this plant so valuable?
Is it that addictive?
The government doesn't think so. Not one government study of the effects of cannabis has ever proven that it is addictive or has any negative long term health effects. The results that have been reported by the government were skewed to fit administration policy, every time.
So why this war on drugs? Let's go back to that raid, the one that seized 250 cannabis plants worth 1.9 million.
First, that's a ridiculous sum, pricing each plant at almost $8,000 dollars. Cannabis, on the black market, sells for $400-560 per ounce. Pounds generally go for $2,400-3200, so the estimate was based on the premium ounce price and the expectation that each plant would produce about 2.5 pounds.
Most plants produce between one and three pounds, usually closer to one.
Black market cannabis may have been soaked in perfumes to hide the scent, shipped cross-country inside spare tires, dusted with powdered rubber and industrial solvents and lubricants, or recovered from a law-enforcement burn, rinsed but still laced with kerosene and petrochemicals. On the black market, inferior cannabis can be treated with the same substances that make "spice" so potent and potentially dangerous.
Under Prohibition, there is no competition. Under Prohibition, there is no incentive to produce a superior product, just one that will get you more stoned.
Under Prohibition, sick people and people in pain must risk their lives in order to use the best quality of herb they can find, depending on their location. Often, many of the medicinal properties of the cannabis have so degraded from heat, oxygen and sunlight that it is worth next to nothing for actual medical use.
Prohibition has failed for the last 40 years. Its only claim for success is to have made otherwise law-abiding citizens into felons for a victimless crime, and to have put billins of dollars into the pockets of private prison contractors, police unions, rehabilitation programs, and an army of DEA agents, INS agents, as well as providing meaninless high-profile headlines for state, county and local law enforcement. Yet murder, rape, theft, child pornography, narcotics, and a host of new "designer drugs" are still sweeping the nation.
But I digress...
One thousand pounds at $3,200/lb is $3,200,000 on the black market. Because of prohibition, that money creates zero taxes, no by-products, zero economic growth. Because of Prohibition, that money can go toward buying guns to funnel into South America to the cartels, and leads to turf wars between rival dealers, rarely upstanding pillars of the community, who sell cocaine, crack, oxycodone, ecstacy, weapons and prostitutes to "round out" their portfolio, so to speak. Because of Prohibition, bud from the west coast makes it to Florida where it is often traded for cocaine that then spreads out across America.
Now, let's look at the medical marijuana market.
Here, an ounce of carefully trimmed and scientifically-bred cannabis costs $280-480. Very high quality, no fertilizers, clearly labelled for specific complaints like stress, pain, nerve spasm, etc.
Dispensaries are legitimate businesses, licensed by the state and subject to a number of conditions. Dispensary owners pay business taxes, and if they own the building, property taxes. The owners make every effort to operate within the law, and do not dispense any other substance than cannabis.
Dispensaries create jobs for growers, trimmers, counterpeople, clothing, poster and paraphenalia manufacturers, delivery drivers, glass blowers, and cooks to bake the brownies and make the butter. Each one of those jobs creates tax revenue. Dispensaries charge taxes on clothing, paraphenalia, posters, edibles, and premium bud cannabis.
So in a legalized market, 1,000 pounds of cannabis is worth an average of $3,200,000 if sold in ounces. That is another difference in markets. on the black market, you can buy as much cannabis as you can afford, setting the stage for distribution. In a regulated system, patients can only possess 2 ounces of cannabis at any time. So that's 8,000 patients who could have benefitted from that amount of cannabis, which was instead destroyed.
In a regulated system, that 1,000 pounds will generate $4800 or more, just in sales taxes.
It will generate zero in law enforcement costs.
It can provide employment and supplemental income for seniors, veterans and the disabled; growing, trimming, rolling into cigarettes.
It can be woven into cloth much more durable than cotton.
It can be mixed into concrete as as a superstrong fibrous mesh, and used in the place of old-growth forests that take a hundred years or more to mature (as opposed to 9 MONTHS for hemp) to make the finest paper.
It can be used to make fuel for America and the world's growing energy needs, without the hazard of poisoning the entire Gulf of Mexico or turning Japan into a radioactive wasteland.
It absorbs greenhouse gases and gives off oxygen.
More importantly, and much more relevant to this inquiry, 1,000 pounds of cannabis can replace $36,000 worth of prescription meds each year for each one of 1,000 patients with chronic pain or diseases like MS and cancer.
$36,000 x 1000 = $36,000,000 in potential reduced costs for every thousand people on Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security Disability. There are over 61,000 people living on a fixed income from Social Security Disability Insurance, most of them also on Medicaid and Medicare.
$36,000,000 x 61 = $2,196,000,000 in savings for the American taxpayer and the Federal Government.
In the current economy, why wouldn't the Federal Government want to save almost 2.2 trillion dollars annually? The current Drug Enforcement Agency budget is $2,130,100 which is spent on 8,399 positions; 4,146 of which are actually agents.
Approximately 75-80% of that budget is for the interdiction of cannabis. That's over $1,600,000,000 spent on destroying a harmless herb with numerous medical applications proven in peer-reviewed studies around the globe and not a single fatality from use in the recorded history of mankind.
Why wouldn't our government want almost $3,600,000,000 in additional budget revenues every year?
Perhaps the answer is one of perspective, and a focus on profits, rather than the good of all mankind.
Because viewed another way, that 1,000 pounds of cannabis represents a potential $2 Million loss for the pharmaceutical companies, every year.
Pharmaceutical companies that routinely churn out drugs with side effects such as addiction, psychosis, hallucinations, thoughts of murder or suicide, blisters on your eyeballs, mouth, tongue, or throat, red or peeling skin, deadly viral infections, arrhythmic heartbeat, unstoppable bleeding, tumors, stomach cancer, and the list goes on and on.
And yet these substances are considered to be medicines and are accepted as such by a public that will flock to accept all those side effects even while decrying the "gateway drug", cannabis. How have these poisons become medicine while cannabis is classified as a drug?
Because companies like Pfizer and Lilly-Squibb pour millions of dollars into sustaining the War on Cannabis, all while selling their panaceas with images of bright, happy families, running playful dogs and hard-working Americans who NEED these blessed powders and potions to truly enjoy the American Dream. Cannabis is demonized, as it ever has been, as the province of seedy characters and loose women in smoky dives and crack houses. It is portrayed as the domain of criminals and societal failures, a gateway drug with no redeeming medical applications, no value.
Pharmaceutical companies pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions. For which, they get a return of hundreds of thousands of dollars on each and every dollar of those contributions by keeping cannabis illegal and forcing seniors, soldiers, and sick people to continue consuming narcotics that destroy their organs, drain their happiness, and fail to address the underlying causes of the symptoms they are made to treat.
Isn't it odd, then, that those same companies that deny the rest of the world the free, regulated use of cannabis have a medicine derived from cannabis? Odder yet, the DEA website acts as a salesite to pitch the product. Below is a quote from the DEA website concerning Marinol, the "synthetic" THC derivative.
"A pharmaceutical product, Marinol, is widely available through prescription. It comes in the form of a pill and is also being studied by researchers for suitability via other delivery methods, such as an inhaler or patch. The active ingredient of Marinol is synthetic THC, which has been found to relieve the nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy for cancer patients and to assist with loss of appetite with AIDS patients."
So THC has been found to help with nausea and vomiting and loss of appetite? But, only if it has been packaged and processed by a giant corporation. Forget about that THC you could grow in your closet for a few dollars a month, that stuff is bad for you, the report goes on to explain;
"Unlike smoked marijuana--which contains more than 400 different chemicals, including most of the hazardous chemicals found in tobacco smoke-Marinol has been studied and approved by the medical community and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the nation's watchdog over unsafe and harmful food and drug products. Since the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, any drug that is marketed in the United States must undergo rigorous scientific testing. The approval process mandated by this act ensures that claims of safety and therapeutic value are supported by clinical evidence and keeps unsafe, ineffective and dangerous drugs off the market."
Now, let's back up to the beginning of that quote. One, Marinol is unlike smoked cannabis in that it does not deliver 400 different chemicals to users.
Of course not. Most of those chemicals are also potential medicines for development. Why would they let you have them all at once, in the same way Nature did? Nature doesn't have a bottom line to consider. It's not about a cure... it's about developing a market and keeping a share.
Next the DEA rather breathlessly contends that cannabis, when smoked, is ALMOST as dangerous as tobacco.
No government finding has ever said so. No independent study has ever supported that claim. And every single study has shown nicotine to be the most powerful, addictive central nervous stimulant on the planet.
So why is it that you can buy this incredibly destructive drug at any convenience store, but possessing cannabis will get you 15 years in prison in some states... predominantly those in which tobacco is a major cash crop.
Because Tobacco also pours millions into the campaign coffers and Drug War rallies of those who stand to profit from the continued use of cotton, trees, petroleum, and pharmaceuticals.
But surely good Christians could not believe that the Almightly, in His Wisdom, made a mistake? Sadly pastors and preachers and politico-religious tyrants still blast this herb from the pulpit, weaned on 75 years of lies and terrified of the closeness to the spiritual that so many attain with a single puff, after years of searching in vain through the churches and synagogues for that link to the Eternal.
We have lost the will to Question Authority, to think critically about the information we are offered, to act on our convictions, to stand for what is Right even if it means inconvenience, loss of standing in the community or even jail.
We are a nation of people who want change... as long as someone else makes it happen, preferably before the next reality TV show comes on and we are forced to miss an episode of The Biggest Loser.
We cannot see that, in today's corporate government machine, it is We, the People, who are The Biggest Losers of all.
That is why cannabis is still illegal.
.
Thursday, May 31, 2012
The fight goes on...
And I am tired.
Tired of causes, of interests, of hobbies. Tired of the endless Internet chatter of affirmations and discoveries, secret plots and sunny family photos of nothing. I am tired of writing hundreds of diatribes to idiots and slackers and stoners who all want to legalize cannabis but have not one single clue of how to get off their asses and get something done in a unified fashion.
I am deathly tired of lazy liberals who want to post about the revolution and call for Change but still cling to the same fake badges that wanted to cut them up for bait. People who aren't ready to sacrifice and expect an easy path to revolution and victory.
The only thing guaranteed in a revolution is casualties.
Where does it start, and where does it end? Do we rise up, and revolt, join the idiots at Occupy and immediately launch a coup to seize that movement before it is giving away useless college loans to univesities without the government support to offer decent classes or teachers?
Do we re-invent the wheel and begin our own movement, or do we rely on the folks at NORML to finally end their comfortable rearguard action of polls and meetings and endless verbal jousting with the Federal government and actually call for a general strike?
Do we face armed Guardsmen and police with non-violence as we are teargassed and beaten and forced off of our own public parks and public lands?
I have loved and defended this land, right and wrong, for most of my life, inside its borders and beyond. I have accepted that the corrupt men in high places who sell poison to our children and old people have a right to make laws controlling my use of an herb. Instead of speaking out, or acting, I simply participated in the black market and reveled, to some degree, at my participation in the game that keeps such men in power. I danced on my strings, grazed with the herd, and wished someone else would do something about legalizing cannabis.
Then I fell in love with an MS patient, and saw firsthand what prescription drugs were doing to her, and saw as well the heroic spirit fighting inside the pain and disability for just a little space to breath. I saw the immediate relief when she tried cannabis, and I watched the fear she went through at the prospect of blood tests; tests that would reveal the damage the 'scripts had done to her organs; tests with the potential for positive THC results that would disqualify her for housing and grocery assistance, Medicaid, Medicare, and her SSDI monthly income. It didn't matter that for $400 each month she could replace $2,500-3000 in prescriptions and the inevitable cost of damaged liver, spleen and kidneys.
Or perhaps it did matter, to the very corporations that fund the Drug War while applying for (and getting) patents for cannabis-derived medicines. Perhaps it is for this reason, and not any "gateway drug" propaganda, that the same Federal government which arrests MS, cancer, and PTSD patients for possession and production of cannabis has reserved for itself a patent on cannabis-derived medical pain and nerve applications.
I find myself at the point where Malcolm X once stood; I would seriously advise the leaders of this nation to heed those who would only see change come non-violently. You have made non-violent change increasingly impossible, and you would seem to wish violent change to become inevitable, to justify the killings and beatings, the arrests and lives destroyed, the riot police, the teargas, the dogs and barricades, the FEAR and LIES used to destroy the textile industries and farmers of the south and the freedoms of a nation.
How can you expect men and women of honor to stand unresisting after such a long history of abuses and injustice from their fellow countrymen and the government which was formed to serve all citizens, without respect to economic or social standing? After a decades-long war of physical and spritiual assaults against our homes, families and selves, seizure of our properties and destruction of our state-licensed and approved businesses and thus our very means of earning a living; of public slander and distortion, of suppression of scientific facts and denial of succor to those in pain, how can you expect us to simply hold hands and sing as you wade into our midst, jackboots and nightsticks swinging in a fog of mace?
For too long have we remained silent. For too long have we danced to the tune of a malicious piper.
Do not place your faith in the Vote. All those vying for the Throne would wear the crown, not thrust it back into the hands of the People.
Men will talk of States' rights when States are all that they can control. But when a man stands in the highest office in the land and rules the destiny of ALL states, that appreciation for autonomy fades rapidly before the headiest drug of all: POWER.
The Vote is simply the Carrot, with which the forces of corruption and Tyranny will lead you on toward the unattainable goal of Change From Within the System. It is a tragic comedy in which the masks change but the true players remain the same. There can be no change in the system when there is no opportunity for outsiders to enter the system. Those who have been bred and groomed to survive in the Political and Corporate jungle have closed the gates against outside interference or change. The police, public opinion, your church, your place in the community, arrest, discomfort, imprisonment, public infamy and slander, these are all the Stick, used without compassion against those who would point out the fallacies, the Illusion of the Will of the People, and stand up rather than meekly bow before the show of force.
We stand at a crux, at a time of important decisions and great actions. In flight navigation, in climbing mountains, in piloting uncertain seas, and at certain points in history, there comes a time of final choices, a Point of No Return.
The question is simple.
Is peace so dear and life so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?
ALMIGHTY GOD FORBID IT!!!
I know not what others may do, but as for me, GIVE ME LIBERTY, OR GIVE ME DEATH!
Tired of causes, of interests, of hobbies. Tired of the endless Internet chatter of affirmations and discoveries, secret plots and sunny family photos of nothing. I am tired of writing hundreds of diatribes to idiots and slackers and stoners who all want to legalize cannabis but have not one single clue of how to get off their asses and get something done in a unified fashion.
I am deathly tired of lazy liberals who want to post about the revolution and call for Change but still cling to the same fake badges that wanted to cut them up for bait. People who aren't ready to sacrifice and expect an easy path to revolution and victory.
The only thing guaranteed in a revolution is casualties.
Where does it start, and where does it end? Do we rise up, and revolt, join the idiots at Occupy and immediately launch a coup to seize that movement before it is giving away useless college loans to univesities without the government support to offer decent classes or teachers?
Do we re-invent the wheel and begin our own movement, or do we rely on the folks at NORML to finally end their comfortable rearguard action of polls and meetings and endless verbal jousting with the Federal government and actually call for a general strike?
Do we face armed Guardsmen and police with non-violence as we are teargassed and beaten and forced off of our own public parks and public lands?
I have loved and defended this land, right and wrong, for most of my life, inside its borders and beyond. I have accepted that the corrupt men in high places who sell poison to our children and old people have a right to make laws controlling my use of an herb. Instead of speaking out, or acting, I simply participated in the black market and reveled, to some degree, at my participation in the game that keeps such men in power. I danced on my strings, grazed with the herd, and wished someone else would do something about legalizing cannabis.
Then I fell in love with an MS patient, and saw firsthand what prescription drugs were doing to her, and saw as well the heroic spirit fighting inside the pain and disability for just a little space to breath. I saw the immediate relief when she tried cannabis, and I watched the fear she went through at the prospect of blood tests; tests that would reveal the damage the 'scripts had done to her organs; tests with the potential for positive THC results that would disqualify her for housing and grocery assistance, Medicaid, Medicare, and her SSDI monthly income. It didn't matter that for $400 each month she could replace $2,500-3000 in prescriptions and the inevitable cost of damaged liver, spleen and kidneys.
Or perhaps it did matter, to the very corporations that fund the Drug War while applying for (and getting) patents for cannabis-derived medicines. Perhaps it is for this reason, and not any "gateway drug" propaganda, that the same Federal government which arrests MS, cancer, and PTSD patients for possession and production of cannabis has reserved for itself a patent on cannabis-derived medical pain and nerve applications.
I find myself at the point where Malcolm X once stood; I would seriously advise the leaders of this nation to heed those who would only see change come non-violently. You have made non-violent change increasingly impossible, and you would seem to wish violent change to become inevitable, to justify the killings and beatings, the arrests and lives destroyed, the riot police, the teargas, the dogs and barricades, the FEAR and LIES used to destroy the textile industries and farmers of the south and the freedoms of a nation.
How can you expect men and women of honor to stand unresisting after such a long history of abuses and injustice from their fellow countrymen and the government which was formed to serve all citizens, without respect to economic or social standing? After a decades-long war of physical and spritiual assaults against our homes, families and selves, seizure of our properties and destruction of our state-licensed and approved businesses and thus our very means of earning a living; of public slander and distortion, of suppression of scientific facts and denial of succor to those in pain, how can you expect us to simply hold hands and sing as you wade into our midst, jackboots and nightsticks swinging in a fog of mace?
For too long have we remained silent. For too long have we danced to the tune of a malicious piper.
Do not place your faith in the Vote. All those vying for the Throne would wear the crown, not thrust it back into the hands of the People.
Men will talk of States' rights when States are all that they can control. But when a man stands in the highest office in the land and rules the destiny of ALL states, that appreciation for autonomy fades rapidly before the headiest drug of all: POWER.
The Vote is simply the Carrot, with which the forces of corruption and Tyranny will lead you on toward the unattainable goal of Change From Within the System. It is a tragic comedy in which the masks change but the true players remain the same. There can be no change in the system when there is no opportunity for outsiders to enter the system. Those who have been bred and groomed to survive in the Political and Corporate jungle have closed the gates against outside interference or change. The police, public opinion, your church, your place in the community, arrest, discomfort, imprisonment, public infamy and slander, these are all the Stick, used without compassion against those who would point out the fallacies, the Illusion of the Will of the People, and stand up rather than meekly bow before the show of force.
We stand at a crux, at a time of important decisions and great actions. In flight navigation, in climbing mountains, in piloting uncertain seas, and at certain points in history, there comes a time of final choices, a Point of No Return.
The question is simple.
Is peace so dear and life so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?
ALMIGHTY GOD FORBID IT!!!
I know not what others may do, but as for me, GIVE ME LIBERTY, OR GIVE ME DEATH!
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
A New Declaration
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all human beings are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creation with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
http://www.aclu.org/national-security/president-obama-signs-indefinite-detention-bill-law
After three years of new business and job creation in one of the only dependable areas of recovery in the entire economy NOT driven by government dollars-
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-03/obamas-war-on-marijuana-rolls-on-with-raid-of-oaksterdam
http://www.mcsocal.com/blog/obama-administration-reverses-its-stance-on-medical-marijuana
...even though people are dying in botched drug raids:
http://www.cato.org/raidmap/
http://www.drugwarrant.com/articles/drug-war-victim/
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20013766-504083.html
Using the courts to streamline competition and remove choice for their constituents:
http://www.policymic.com/articles/14389/republican-use-dirty-tricks-crack-down-on-ron-paul-and-gary-johnson-in-state-courts
Claiming the goal of smaller government while interfering in your personal life to a degree undreamed of by good old tyrants like King George (and didn't we fight a revolution against him?)...
http://2012.republican-candidates.org/Same-Sex.php
...but saying little or nothing about the polygamy that their family helped make into a religion:
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/54799169-90/romney-born-george-craig.html.csp
Declaring an intent to continue an unjust, destructive, expensive war against their constituents, in order to sustain the viability of their business partners and campaign contributors' enterprise; to force patients, the elderly and soldiers into consumption of narcotic and experimental drugs proven to have greater potential side affects and harm than any herb falsely defined by this government as being a drug.
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/mitt-romney-vows-to-continue-the-same-failed-war-on-drugs-obama-is-fighting/
Such has been the patient sufferance of these Citizens; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present Government of the United States is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
It has refused... Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0CCAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtontimes.com%2Fnews%2F2012%2Fjul%2F6%2Ffast-and-furious-cover-up-at-holders-justice%2F&ei=PepNUKyaIYTW2AXo04GAAg&usg=AFQjCNHLK5Y6d2z7UA6Q_74X9-zszUKqtA&sig2=edowWpvKS1P6bQPP7KjGXw
It has forbidden the Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till Federal government Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, has utterly neglected to attend to them.
It has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000881
http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2012/05/poll_shows_74_of_americans_support_medical_marijua.php
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/15/republicans-state-medical-marijuana-laws_n_1519176.html
It has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
It has dissolved Representative Houses or Seats of Justice repeatedly, for opposing invasions on the rights of the people.
It has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
It has endeavoured to obstruct the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others regarding their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
It has obstructed the true Administration of Justice by refusing Federal Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
It has made Judges dependent on its Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
It has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
On March 13, 2009 United States Attorney General Eric Holder issued a statement that the United States had abandoned the Bush administration term "enemy combatant". The statement said, ""As we work toward developing a new policy to govern detainees, it is essential that we operate in a manner that strengthens our national security, is consistent with our values, and is governed by law."
Am I the only one who believes they got those three priorities in the wrong order? Now that the same rules and definitions apply equally to all United States citizens who chose to dissent or non-violently protest? And we are "developing a new policy", no doubt requiring legions of regulatory bureaucrats and a study group or three, to re-invent the wheel; shoving through the fading line called personal privacy and basic Rights to spend more and more of our taxes denying us our freedoms.
It has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
Google "Blackwater", or check out http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/12/9393006-former-blackwater-security-firm-changes-name-again?lite.
It has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
It has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
http://www.bna.com/split-supreme-court-n12884910401/
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting law abiding citizens of this and other nations beyond the judgement of their peers to be tried for pretended offences:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Emery#Recent_judicial_history
For abolishing the free System of Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
http://harmreduction.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/HowInternationalLawAffectsUSDrugPolicy.pdf
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
It has abdicated Government here, by declaring us outside federal Protection and waging War against us.
It has plundered our savings, ravaged our businesses, invaded our homes, and destroyed the lives of our people.
It is at this time allowing private corporations to create large Armies of Mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the government of a civilized nation.
It has constrained our fellow Citizens to bear Arms against their Countrymen, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by government Hands.
It has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our lands, the merciless Internal Revenue Department and the Drug Enforcement Agencies whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.
http://www.legalize.org/history-of-cannabis-prohibition/
http://davidkretzmann.com/2012/06/the-tragic-history-of-hemp-and-why-it-must-be-decriminalized/
A leader or government, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to foreign governments and multinational corporations. We have warned them from time to time of attempts to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us and to purchase the rights and resources of our land from beneath our feet. We have reminded religious leaders, soldiers, policemen and the Justice Department of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representative peoples of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united peoples are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent citizens of the world, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the federal Government, and that all political connection between them and the State, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent citizens, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all human beings are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creation with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
http://www.aclu.org/national-security/president-obama-signs-indefinite-detention-bill-law
After three years of new business and job creation in one of the only dependable areas of recovery in the entire economy NOT driven by government dollars-
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-03/obamas-war-on-marijuana-rolls-on-with-raid-of-oaksterdam
http://www.mcsocal.com/blog/obama-administration-reverses-its-stance-on-medical-marijuana
...even though people are dying in botched drug raids:
http://www.cato.org/raidmap/
http://www.drugwarrant.com/articles/drug-war-victim/
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20013766-504083.html
Using the courts to streamline competition and remove choice for their constituents:
http://www.policymic.com/articles/14389/republican-use-dirty-tricks-crack-down-on-ron-paul-and-gary-johnson-in-state-courts
Claiming the goal of smaller government while interfering in your personal life to a degree undreamed of by good old tyrants like King George (and didn't we fight a revolution against him?)...
http://2012.republican-candidates.org/Same-Sex.php
...but saying little or nothing about the polygamy that their family helped make into a religion:
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/54799169-90/romney-born-george-craig.html.csp
Declaring an intent to continue an unjust, destructive, expensive war against their constituents, in order to sustain the viability of their business partners and campaign contributors' enterprise; to force patients, the elderly and soldiers into consumption of narcotic and experimental drugs proven to have greater potential side affects and harm than any herb falsely defined by this government as being a drug.
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/mitt-romney-vows-to-continue-the-same-failed-war-on-drugs-obama-is-fighting/
Such has been the patient sufferance of these Citizens; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present Government of the United States is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
It has refused... Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0CCAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtontimes.com%2Fnews%2F2012%2Fjul%2F6%2Ffast-and-furious-cover-up-at-holders-justice%2F&ei=PepNUKyaIYTW2AXo04GAAg&usg=AFQjCNHLK5Y6d2z7UA6Q_74X9-zszUKqtA&sig2=edowWpvKS1P6bQPP7KjGXw
It has forbidden the Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till Federal government Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, has utterly neglected to attend to them.
It has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000881
http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2012/05/poll_shows_74_of_americans_support_medical_marijua.php
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/15/republicans-state-medical-marijuana-laws_n_1519176.html
It has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
It has dissolved Representative Houses or Seats of Justice repeatedly, for opposing invasions on the rights of the people.
It has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
It has endeavoured to obstruct the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others regarding their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
It has obstructed the true Administration of Justice by refusing Federal Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
It has made Judges dependent on its Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
It has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
On March 13, 2009 United States Attorney General Eric Holder issued a statement that the United States had abandoned the Bush administration term "enemy combatant". The statement said, ""As we work toward developing a new policy to govern detainees, it is essential that we operate in a manner that strengthens our national security, is consistent with our values, and is governed by law."
Am I the only one who believes they got those three priorities in the wrong order? Now that the same rules and definitions apply equally to all United States citizens who chose to dissent or non-violently protest? And we are "developing a new policy", no doubt requiring legions of regulatory bureaucrats and a study group or three, to re-invent the wheel; shoving through the fading line called personal privacy and basic Rights to spend more and more of our taxes denying us our freedoms.
It has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
Google "Blackwater", or check out http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/12/9393006-former-blackwater-security-firm-changes-name-again?lite.
It has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
It has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
http://www.bna.com/split-supreme-court-n12884910401/
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting law abiding citizens of this and other nations beyond the judgement of their peers to be tried for pretended offences:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Emery#Recent_judicial_history
For abolishing the free System of Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
http://harmreduction.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/HowInternationalLawAffectsUSDrugPolicy.pdf
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
It has abdicated Government here, by declaring us outside federal Protection and waging War against us.
It has plundered our savings, ravaged our businesses, invaded our homes, and destroyed the lives of our people.
It is at this time allowing private corporations to create large Armies of Mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the government of a civilized nation.
It has constrained our fellow Citizens to bear Arms against their Countrymen, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by government Hands.
It has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our lands, the merciless Internal Revenue Department and the Drug Enforcement Agencies whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.
http://www.legalize.org/history-of-cannabis-prohibition/
http://davidkretzmann.com/2012/06/the-tragic-history-of-hemp-and-why-it-must-be-decriminalized/
A leader or government, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to foreign governments and multinational corporations. We have warned them from time to time of attempts to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us and to purchase the rights and resources of our land from beneath our feet. We have reminded religious leaders, soldiers, policemen and the Justice Department of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representative peoples of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united peoples are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent citizens of the world, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the federal Government, and that all political connection between them and the State, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent citizens, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
The Union: the Business of Getting High in America.
http://youtu.be/6jO_ncXj7RE
Watch and learn. If this film doesn't leave you feeling pissed off and betrayed, you are either an idiot, or you died sometime during the film.
http://youtu.be/6jO_ncXj7RE
Watch and learn. If this film doesn't leave you feeling pissed off and betrayed, you are either an idiot, or you died sometime during the film.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)