screamingpalm: ’... But he then acts elitist and counter-productive to any sort of progressive movement by his sweeping dismissions and chasing “Snowball off of the farm”, so to speak.’

The Left wouldn’t be very leftist if it were all unified and organized.

I don’t quite get it, Knowsy, are you saying you revere Campbell because he was a fascist or in spite of him being a fascist.  This right wing stuff tends to be an occupational hazard of the mythic set, infecting Jung as well as others.  He taught at Swathmore, as I remember, and flunked a girl I liked because of her peace activities.

In any case Campbell wrote before the feminists got into the business, exploding the scholarly bigotry of the male scholars.  Notable in the archiology field was the Lithuanian archiologist Marija Gimbutas, who wrote her big book in the early 1990’s.  A really brilliant book was the artist Merlin Stone’s WHEN GOD WAS A WOMAN, the brilliance not dissociated from the fact that she was not a specialized academic.

Campbell stated that he would have incorporated their stuff if they had written sooner.  A pretty good summary of the thinking was Reane Eisler’s THE CHALICE AND THE BLADE.

The thesis of all this work was that the last four our five millenniums were a Big Mistake.  And they have a point, although not a masculine one.

I apologise for ribbing you, Knowsy.  I have indeed grown up, indeed am quite old, but I happen to be highly immmature for my age.

Re: CJ, February 16 at 7:02 pm #

Aka, egoism on steroids. Fake outrage is ego before emotion.

****************************************************

Especially ironic if you’ve had a chance to take a look over at “Open Left” lately. Quite clear why the left is so divided, and if that’s not bad enough, progressives even further splintered.

Mr. Sirota’s articles are frustrating to me, because on substance I totally agree. But he then acts elitist and counter-productive to any sort of progressive movement by his sweeping dismissions and chasing “Snowball off of the farm”, so to speak.

Folktruther, February 15 at 11:22 am

C) Can you hear me now?

Folktruther, February 15 at 11:22 am #

A) Grow up.

B) You buffoon.

Joseph Campbell began lecturing at the State Department’s Foreign Services Institute in 1957. He brags of it in a lecture (which I’m still trying to pin down) saying, “The State Department is an association of very learn-ed gentlemen. They Know What To Do.”

Campbell later supported the Vietnam war. He had nothing but disdain for the anti-war movement. He uses many examples of the heroism of our servicemen (one of whom, on the USS Kitty Hawk, was my father; thankfully he came home alive, but not the same). I’ve never heard or read him saying the same of his opponents. He even made disdainful remarks about Rev. King, saying that his self-identification as a particular type of man, instead of a universal one, showed his immaturity.

(Lest anyone think this is a hit piece on him, I hasten to point out that, as a poet, I revere Campbell’s works. I met his widow, Jean Erdman Campbell, 4 years ago, at the centennial celebration of his birth, held at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA, during the 3rd week in March, my natal week. at which time it had been his tradition to lecture there for almost 40 years. I consider myself a Campbellian when it comes to comparative mythology.)

Why don’t more journalists call this method what it so obviously is? My hunch is, as Americans, we conflate Christianity with all religions, Strangely, American journalists avoid religion like the plague when discussing domestic politics, yet they rarely fail to point out the sectarian affiliations of others.

But religion is only a subordinate function of mythology. A religion, as I’m sure you know, functions like a country club. Some are run as dominions of white male supremacy; others, far more charitably.

This leaves us wide open to getting jacked by one myth after another.  [Comment posted by yours truly November 7, 2008 to Ray McGovern’s article, President-elect’s Queries for Briefers, at Consortiumnews.com https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=35530558&postID=2787919275832299095&pli=1 .]

care for some real faux outrage ?
http://tinyurl.com/arlvxj

Aka, egoism on steroids. Fake outrage is ego before emotion. That kinda thing is hallmark of mass narcissism—image (only of self, as reflected in mirror) before reality (self in collective context). Substitution of authenticity (no, NOT Heideggerian!) with spectacle. (We got to tying yellow ribbons around trees as demonstration of our concern. We continue to construct shrines at shootings and accident sites. We FEEL the goodness that is of selves. We are instructed to love ourselves first. For narcissists there is no self other than the narcissist substitute for self. It’s not that narcissist self is patently false. Would matters were that simple.)

Excellent piece by Sirota here. One of the best I’ve read at Truthdig. He gets at some truth about humanity (not only Americans) absent meaning, about what we’ve become. I noted here at TD an article on new book that tears down Reagan phenom. Pardon this commentator, but I think I told many so. After Reagan was declared victor, despite polls not yet closed on the West Coast, I went over to vote for Carter, in a final, futile, empty, desperate act of protest. Deeply flawed Jimmy Carter who was NOT Ronald Reagan.)

It does “appear,” not to many in retrospect, that Reagan encouraged self-indulgence that is at the heart of what Sirota writes here. I doubt Reagan generated—all by himself—what has become mass psychosis that is narcissism. Or just plain old sociopathy whereby emotional self is more celebrated than felt. But certainly Reagan’s appeal, not simply to greed, but to selfishness made of a sickness a plague.

But maybe we kids back in the ‘60s and ‘70s did our own part to cause Reagan phenom. That was our hippie flaw. Peace and joy in the name of our flowery selves, while the New Left replaced the Old Left with politics of identification—with race, or gender or sexual orientation. Forgetting old adage: “Divide and conquer.”

The right never forgot the adage. The pastoral, Feudalistic, capitalist-fascist-leaning, upper-class right succeeded, while Americans really were hoping for something authentic. Reagan had us believing in a return to mythical past that never was. But which American voters ardently believed, or wanted to believe, really did happen. (Thanks to history books used as school texts.)

Nationalism is also Romantic. Nationalism goes far beyond addiction to something much, much deeper that is wrong. Yes, “escapism,” which is more serious than addiction. (A heroin addict knows reality better than any nationalist.)

B of A has out a new commercial. Product for sale is nationalism. Ad consists of footage of average American workers shown going through doors of various kinds, or seeming to jet out open windows beyond which appear an ad agency’s idea of a glorious American future. Even sweat on laborers’ brows looks clean and sweet. There’s voiceover of how we (Americans) can do, will do, will make it, etc., etc.,  Brought to you using your money, as B of A , or Wells Fargo, or Citi, or Chase, grants you one percent return on your money while collecting five to 20 percent on what you owe.

The ad is a sample of class-warfare at it’s finest, most deceptive. So was Reagan—who was himself no more than an advertisement on behalf of a class. But also embodiment of our “fakery,” of which we still don’t seem to know.

Most sad is that it is necessary for Sirota to point out that “America’s drug policy is idiotic.” But the policy is not about concern for addiction (which is, in fact, encouraged—in particular to nationalism, if not simply to ignorant bliss) per se. The policy is about control. A few billion is nothing to spend if spending is the price to maintain the illusion of morality, and of liberty. One DOES have to be careful, Mr. Phelps, lest one become meat for class-warfare grinder. State prisons are grinders clogged with ground meat that serves as both “moral lesson” AND as slave labor.

cyrena:

my first comment on this thread was a link to a PUMA blogger who was ripping sirota for getting in a flame war on openleft and brow beating people with the fact that obama called sirota to ask for input and sirota spent the day with obama.  it was pretty hilarious.

look, if you want evidence that sirota is carrying water i would submit his entire “make me do it” fantasy.  he compares BHO to FDR.  he believes that obama in his heart of heart wants to enact liberal policies, but he is restrained by politcs and he needs a strong left wing coalition to push him to the left.

i think sirota is dreaming.  i think that BHO goes with tax cuts because he believes in them.  i think BHO wants to expand the our military adventures in afghanistan because he believes in it. sirota claims that openleft and other bloggers pushed the admin. to shape the stimulus in the interests of the left.  i dont see that.  my comment makes more sense if youve been following the action of openleft closely.

It’s not like we’re brought up to believe God is doing all this crap. I mean, such a notion would limit our thinking to generalizations and prevent us from discovering the “Fear-Model” that has manipulated us for the past 2000 years

Knowsy, you’re back! Welcome back, knowbuddhau, our very own psychometric Zen mythical poet!  Carting no doubt a carload of fluff all the way over from Fluffpo.  You add an element of artistry to our otherwise prosaic musings, Knwsy, but whether it is useful or not is another matter.

Campbell, for example, was an extreme right winger, expressing support for Nazism and failing students during the 1960’s who opposed the Vietnam war. His and your view that art is mindless and contrary to the intellect a a distinctive view, but is it conducive to great art?  Or even good art?

But I leave you to judge.  You are after all a Zen poet, and know the sound of two hands clapping. 

Tell me, Knowsy, what is the sound of no hands clapping?

Sirota!  You may be on to something here.  One treatment for intractable pain is distraction.  Another commenter here (KISS, February 13 at 5:00 am) noted the “sleight-of-hand” effect.

I’m sure I’ve sent this to you before.  It’s an excerpt from Campbell’s Masks of God: Primitive Mythology.  His definition, of the science of comparative mythology, could easily be perverted into the very definition of the process which, when undertaken by gear-headed aparatchiks of cults of kinetic power, I’m almost certain is being used as our modern means of social-engineering: myth-making with malign intent, which I call myth-jacking, the parent of all “atrocity-generating situations.”

The reader hardly need be reminded that the images not only of poetry and love but also of religion and patriotism, when effective, are apprehended with actual physical responses: tears, sighs, interior aches, spontaneous groans, cries, bursts of laughter, wrath, and impulsive deeds. Human experience and human art, that is to say, have succeeded in creating for the human species an environment of sign stimuli that release physical responses and direct them to ends no less effectively than do the signs of nature the instincts of the beasts. The biology, psychology, sociology, and history of these sign stimuli may be said to constitute the field of our subject, the science of Comparative Mythology. And although no one has yet devised an effective method for distinguishing between the innate and the acquired, the natural and the culturally conditioned, the “elementary” and the “ethnic” aspects of such human-cultural catalysts and their evoked responses, the radical distinction here made by the poet Housman between images that act upon our nervous structure as energy releasers and those that serve, rather, for the transmission of thought, supplies an excellent criterion for the testing of our themes.

[...]

When Housman writes that “poetry is not the thing said but a way of saying it,” and when he states again “that the intellect is not the fount of poetry, that it may actually hinder its production, and that it cannot even be trusted to recognize poetry when it is produced,” he is no more than reaffirming and lucidly formulating the first axiom of all creative art—whether it be in poetry, music, dance, architecture, painting, or sculpture—which is, namely, that art is not, like science, a logic of references but a release from reference and rendition of immediate experience: a presentation of forms, images, or ideas in such a way that they will communicate, not primarily a thought or even a feeling, but an impact.

[Joseph Campbell. (1968). Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, pp.40-42. New York: Penguin.]

Pushkin’s Remembrance

When the noisy day of mortal men grows still
With illusory nocturnal shadows.
And sleep, the harvest of a day’s exertion,
Sinks down upon the silent city streets
This is my hour of the night, when silent hours
Drag by in painful attentiveness:
During the indolent night the wound of my heart’s serpent
Rises up in me more powerfully;
Imagination surges: my mind, numbed by yearning,
Entertains a parade of tortured thoughts;
Before my eyes, quiet remembrance
Unfurls its lengthy parchment;
Thus set back, I rehearse the course of my life,
I quake and I curse,
I shed bitter tears and complain painfully,
But alas the dismal lines cannot be purged.

–Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin, Remembrance (????????????) (1827)(S.H. transl.) [Published September 21, 2008 in No Comment  at Harpers.org ]http://www.harpers.org/subjects/NoComment#hbc-90003572]

Google “U.S. judges admit to jailing children for money”

http://uk.reuters.com/article/burningIssues/idUKTRE51B7B320090212

There’s money in them there corporate prisons.

What we seem to be addicted to is an endless war on (some)drugs. The current substance prohibition was fueled by the same religious moralizers who were sure the prohibition of alcohol was just the thing we all needed.

But now, with so many jobs and businesses dependent on the steady stream of cash coming from this latest attempt at prohibition,the signs of a very nasty addiction are evident. If we do not kick addiction it will kick us.

•  “Americans are so accustom to mediocrity that when someone comes along and does his job well that person is vaulted to celebrity status. The water landing of a US Airways plane in the Hudson River after engine failure, without a fatality, raised the pilot to celebrity status.  Not that it wasn’t remarkable, but it shouldn’t be, that’s what they get paid to do——perform in an E-M-E-R-G-E-N-C-Y.  The crash of a Continental flight in Buffalo, NY resulted in all on aboard killed.  This is a tragedy of major proportions, but in this case the pilot didn’t perform properly——maybe it was lack of training or inexperience.”

~~~

You’re right about this Blacksphere. I remember thinking the same thing after the water landing in the Hudson. It was a cockpit crew doing the jobs they had been trained for, and consistently remain trained for. That IS what they are paid to do.
As a general rule, I become annoyed when such accidents like the Continental flight are immediately attributed to ‘pilot error’ because that is always the case when the pilots are dead and can’t tell us what happened. (My former employer generally claimed ‘pilot error’ before the NTSB could even investigate, just as a good ‘business’ decision, since it allowed them to pay off on their own terms, instead of dealing with multiple lawsuits of unpredictable proportions.)

However, the reality is that it generally is HUMAN error to some extent, based on the conditions that allow for such feats. (like imitating birds in the created ability to move people and machines through air/space.) Technically speaking, the pilots of Continental’s flight were probably NOT undertrained, or even inexperienced, since there are regulations that govern those requirements. On the other hand, that ‘combination’ of real experience and good judgment are hard to measure. The crew of the US Airways flight obviously recognized immediately that they had encountered bird strikes on take off, and knew it to be the cause of their engine failure. We don’t know that this same crew would have been able to accomplish the same thing if the cause had been icing, since it provides no warning.

We also don’t know, (at least yet) if icing was in fact the problem in the Continental flight. According to the reports so far, the Continental pilots overshot the ‘mark’, (which is a navigational aid) and that could have happened as a result of pilot error with no other conditions (like icing) even present, and can even occur with well trained and experienced pilots. It isn’t supposed to, but it does. The ‘decision’ times with IFR approaches all have very small windows.

Let me see if I can distill MLB and Folktruther’s ridiculous blathering to:

Michael Phelps toked some weed in a bhang and this must therefore be a sinister, global Jewish/Zionist drug cartel plot.

That’s really the be-all and end-all of their posts.

Folktruther, I say this with all affection: Not only are you a ridiculous ignoramus, you’re also cognitively dissonant paranoid.

MRB: I have no idea where you get your ideas, and I don’t really care.

I don’t give a rat’s ass if Phelps toked MJ. I don’t really care that A-Rod shot up HGH 6 years ago.  It’s already old news and never merited more than a blip.  If Geraldo Rivera was still on the air he’d devote a MINIMUM of 2 weeks to each story….

Hey, maybe we can call this dragging on and on and on of these irrelevant stories “Geraldoing”!

Americans are also addicted to idol worship.  Americans are so accustom to mediocrity that when someone comes along and does his job well that person is vaulted to celebrity status.  Recent events exemplify this.  The water landing of a US Airways plane in the Hudson River after engine failure, without a fatality, raised the pilot to celebrity status.  Not that it wasn’t remarkable, but it shouldn’t be, that’s what they get paid to do——perform in an E-M-E-R-G-E-N-C-Y.  The crash of a Continental flight in Buffalo, NY resulted in all on aboard killed.  This is a tragedy of major proportions, but in this case the pilot didn’t perform properly——maybe it was lack of training or inexperience.  When ice builds up on a plane’s wing it changes the aerodynamics and lift is lost.  An experienced pilot would not have lowered the flaps knowing there was a chance of total lift loss and the plane was too low to recover.  Better to land at a higher speed and hit the reverse thruster and brakes with all he had——worse case scenario the plane would travel beyond the runway, but probably all on board would be alive today.  As long as I’m on a rant another blatant example of idol worship is Rudolph Giuliani who during 9-11 was declared “America’s Mayor”, but all he did was his job as mayor which was to lead and control the situation——nothing less should have been expected.  But mediocrity rules and putting on a dust mask and running around lower Manhattan made him a celebrity.

By coloradokarl, February 13 at 5:09 pm #
Cyrena, Marinol has been out for years I think it’s rather a gross experience myself as the euphoric canibinoids have been removed and it’s primary purpose is the Appetite.”

~~~

Thanks for this info coloradokarl. I didn’t know this, (that the cannibinoids had been removed from this formulation) and I’m sure that the incredibly ignorant junkie who told me about this pill didn’t know it either. What good is the stuff without it’s canniboid properties? Who needs an ‘appetite’ when we can’t afford to buy food?

Now you might just be right that the pot cash crop industry could be what’s keeping California out of TOTAL economic bankruptcy, but the multibillion dollar industry has actually been the primary cash product for the NATIONAL economy as well. We just grow more of it here.

Our medical marijuana program has been mostly successful though, aside from the same occasional problems that you mentioned there..specifically the overzealous police. Several years back, there was a huge problem with the feds raiding farms in the Northern part of the state, (NOT local police, but the feds) but that was at the beginning of the former thug regime, (2001-2002) and eventually they got too bogged down in wars and other things to hassle medical pot growers. The locals aren’t so inclined anymore, seeing as how it DOES put money out there, and more and more there are simply too many real crimes and real criminals to prosecute.
Meantime, did you hear about the 2,700 year old stash that was found in a grave in the Gobi Desert recently? Check it out.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28034925/

Anarissie- What you say is perfectly true, that every sub-colture of the power structure tends to be at least somewhat isolated from every other, and meets only at parties, gatherings, clubs, etc. 

But the power structure at crucial points functions as a unit, united to protect its ruling class interests, EVEN IF IT IS NOT MUCH INTERESTED OR EVEN KNOWLEDGEABLE ABOUT HOW OTHER SECTIONS OPERATE.

Some of my relatives were also rich, and they would be enraged at the accusation that they encouraged dope dealers, and deny it indignantly.  they supported Israel, and the American and Israeli powerful who supported Israel.  That this was done with the use of drug money, or by intellignence agencies that supported drug use,  they don’t know and don’t care.  It wasn’t their business, their business being steel.

the Wasp power structure couldn’t care less emotionally about Israel.  But they have to support Zionist oppression because their Jewish colleagues do, and Jewish Zionists are a third of the ruling class.  They attack secular Jewish billionaires the way Peretz’s NEW REPUBLIC attacks Soros.  The majority of the ruling class may well consider it a political nuisience but, as you say, a small group of fanatics, with an enormous amount of money, medaia influence, and political orginazation power and exert their will simply by the looser coalition going along. 

That is what Petras argues, and I think he is right.  It accounts for the enormous irrationality in American life that occurs when American policies do not support the interests of the American population, which they never have, but under the Zionist War on Terrorism, do not even support the American power system.

But it’s O.K. for our youth to want to be “football heroes”....Like Mike Vick[foot/base/hoops]....or a gangsta rapper…...or A r*d using steroids…..

This is only POT-Other countries allow ADULTS to CHOOSE what they want to do…More people are killed by DRUNKS than people using pot…..Hell ‘ole bullshit” snorted COKE in college….and he got to “play” PRESIDENT…...

Cyrena - interesting (and what I know about legal drugs would fit on the head of a pin.)  And, I heard a while back that prison inmates, what states or all states who knows, had access to free-of-charge viagra? I won’t even go into that mind-boggler.

I blame the Media.
They have the world by the balls and insist on shrinking our world knowledge to a bunch of mediocre and irrelevant tokens that turn our heads away from the real issues of the day.
What else are we going to watch on TV?
It’s either false news or Reality Poop.

Folktruther—some of my relatives, and their associates, are arguably peripherally members of the ruling class.  I have little to do with them, but it is my distinct impression from years ago when I did see them occasionally that they have very little interest in Israel and I might go so far as to say they seem to be mildly anti-Semitic.  Nor did they have much interest in drugs, other than those they used, which were mostly legal.

In the realm of official MSM propaganda, one seldom sees a mixing or crossover of anti-drug propaganda and anti-Muslim propaganda.  The two are usually handled separately.

My guess, from these very partial pieces of information, is that Zionists of the neo-con sort and Drug Warriors are two distinct subformations within the ruling class with little overlap.
 
While they are clearly used as tools by the really powerful people, on the whole they may both function parasitically, that is, they withdraw resources and energy from ruling-class projects that might be better used elsewhere.  However, as has often been observed, a small group with strong motivation and organization that concentrates on a narrow range of issues can often defeat a much larger group with weak motivation, poor organization, and divided attention.  Until we have some hard facts from a good investigation, we won’t know how much interaction there is between different ruling-class groups.  It’s possible that there is a lot but I don’t know of any evidence that has come to the surface.

Dear Mr. Sirota,

Ralph Nader campaigned to decriminalize marijuana.

I told you so.

Anarcissie—Drugs are not only a source of enormous profit to Free Enterprise, they are a means of social control. A drugged population is a subjugated population.  It is an UNMENTIONED reason that the British fought two wars against China to distribute opium.  When the communists came to power 26% of the population were addicts.

The US has now created two narco-states, Columbia and Afghanistan.  The cocoa destroyed by US agents in Columbia is that in the revolutionary areas, increasing the price of the cocaine in the goverment and right wing terrorist areas.  The cocaine travels through ‘the Sinoloa corridor’ in Mexico to the US. The fighting over drugs killed nearly ten thousand people last year, including police chiefs and high govenrment officals.  the War on Drugs in Columbia has INCREASED the cocaine traffic.

When the US invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban had wiped out the opium trade, one of the reasons that the farmers rejected them.  Afghanistan now supplies 93% of the world’s opium. It used to be taken across the border by US planes to Turkey to be processed into heroin, but now Afghanistan has its own labs and they are increasing in Iraq as well.  A writer for an Eygptian English paper, Eric Lindberg, with whom I exhange news, writes about Mid Asian dope. 

Do you think it’s accidental that the US sponsors a WAr on Drugs and occupies two countries to grow it?  The War on Drugs keeps the price high and INCREASES addiction.  Just as Prohibition INCREASED the selling of alcahol and the rise of criminal gangs.  Do you think that the US power brokers don’t know it, that it is just a Big Mistake of some kind? 

It was initiated by Nixon nearly forty yeas ago after drugs were used in Vietnam to addict a huge fraction of the American draftees.

The US power system is contolled by pro-war neoliberals. Their drug policy is DELIBERATE.  And the right wing of the ruling class is unted by the Zionism of Israel Firsters.  They care more about what happens to Israel than to the US. Like Inherit, they consider Israel THE HOMELAND.  Their attitude toward hard drugs range from benign neglect to active participation, like the Madoff family.  Money is money.

The US imprisons a larger percentage of its population than ANY OTHER COUNTRY.  Do you think the powerful don’t notice this?  And that half the prison population is drug related?  the US power structure fosters addiction under the guise of the War on Drugs.  And the neoliberal faction is Zionist.  The percetage of their income from dividends, stocks, rent and capital gains, has increased during the past ten years from 37% to 70%, according to Michael Hudson.

How are they going to control the population during this enormous increase of class inequality?  One method of control is drugs.  And Zionists foster it.

We have a difficult time keeping it lit down here….
But how about those Closet Nazis in South Carolina?
They like any kind of lynching they can get.
I just added the state of South Carolina to my “Top Ten Places to Never Visit” list.

Cyrena, Marinol has been out for years I think it’s rather a gross experience myself as the euphoric canibinoids have been removed and it’s primary purpose is the Appetite. CNBC had a story I saw yesterday which included a story of a dispensary in CAL. who’s owner claimed $600,000 in federal taxes and several hundred thousand in sales tax last year. Marijuana, I think, is keeping California out of Bankrupcy. It’ a multi Billion dollar cash crop. Colorado has medical marijuana but the government tries to limit access and we have about 2500 patients. There are NO PROBLEMS with this program here. One death from a robbery on an indoor grow several years ago and the occasional over zealous police officer. These people are NOT criminals.

by M.B.S.S., February 13 at 11:04 am #

ive been busting sirotas chops for carrying water for BHO but when he is right on target i will surely say as much.

~~~

MBSS,

This is stupid. For one thing, Sirota has hardly been ‘carrying water’ for Barack Obama, and I would challenge you to point to any ‘evidence’ of that from his writing or other public comments.

HOWEVER, even if he HAD ever ‘carried any water’ what does that have to do with this article, which absolutely IS right on target, and we’ve been saying this about the criminalization of marijuana for as long as it’s been criminalized?

What’s the connection to the fake outrage (overwhelming hypocrisy) of which Sirota speaks, and some alleged carrying of water for Obama? Have you (like so many others) decided that any person/journalist/academic who voted for or otherwise supported Barack Obama must have their work cynically viewed from that perspective?

That’s what it sounds like.

Felicity,

Amazingly, (or probably not) the Pharmies HAVE packaged the primary component of ‘the weed’ into a pill. It’s the THC Pill, and it is dispensed, though I don’t know by what entity, and I don’t know how widely.

I was shocked and then not shocked when I discovered this, primarily because of HOW I discovered it. It was in a conversation with an EXCEEDINGLY IGNORANT African-American citizen from somewhere in the very, very, very, deep South, though he has ‘migrated’ via the freeway underpasses and a variety of flop houses to arrive here on our Southern California Coast several years ago, and has ‘elevated’ his homeless/con-artist existence/status to that of government leech. (about a year ago he told me that he was now living in a ‘gated community’.) He meant apartment complex of course, but I asked him what good his ‘gated community’ status did the rest of us, if he got to come and go at will.

Anyway, here’s this guy on Medicaid, (though he did have a job as a paid caregiver for a while…scary thought but it’s reality) and he was complaining about needing access to the THC Pill, because all of those years of smoking (a VARIETY of substances) was wrecking havoc on his physical health, (he’s probably early 60’s) and he just had to quit smoking the stuff.

OK…so…who knew? (That it came in a pill now). Well, people like this guy would know, because he actually expected the State to provide it for him on the taxpayers’ dime, along with all the rest of his drugs/pharmaceuticals, and there wasn’t the least bit of shame in his game. Kinda like the Repuglicans wanting us to continue financing Viagra and it’s contemporaries in the pharmacological family, even though the corporate health care system has still failed to incorporate something as basic as ovarian cancer screening into the standard protocol in women’s health care, primarily because of the cost to run what is a simple blood test. A blood test   NOT at all comparatively costly to a routine check for prostate cancer, which IS in the protocol.

Anyway, now that the corps are in on the action, one would think that might have some bearing on the potential decriminalization. I don’t ‘know’ that, but it’s a possibility. Several of the the quasi-legal dispensaries for medical marijuana operating in some of the Southern California Counties do in fact charge tax on their sales now, but I haven’t looked at any of their ‘books’ to see how they go about submitting this tax revenue to the state. It’s an interesting project, but behind several others.

Meantime, I have no idea whether the con-artist of the ‘gated community’ ever got the State to pick up the tab on his pot pill, but I guess he’s no more a thief than the rest of them.

Just don’t get caught.And if you get arrested say nothing. Get a good lawyer and deny deny deny.

I have my doubts about a Zionist connection to the Drug War, mostly because I haven’t come across one in my reading.  However, it’s really hard to know what’s going on because so much of the Drug War / drug business is covert.  That is why we need a better picture of its structure—and with it, identification of its less-visible personnel.

Before the “War on Terror” the Drug War was a very important tool for depriving people of their rights and getting them to submit to increased surveillance and control.  I thought maybe with the appearance of the “War on Terror” the Drug War might no longer prove useful and would be abandoned, but no such luck.  I suppose many careers are indissolubly linked to the business.  At this point their connection to the ruling class might be parasitic rather than supportive.

As to the Drug War’s public support, I realize that, living in New York City, I have some opinions edited out of my vicinity.  That is one of the reasons I live here.  We do have politicians and religious leaders who are big drug warriors, but they carefully avoid any sort of public debate on the issue.  Of course our one-time governor Nelson Rockefeller was famous for instigating a set of draconian drug laws, but I believe this was not a play for the locals but an attempt to cozy up to the fanatics in the hinterland, when he had ideas of running for president.

“So, in the interest of a little [truthdig] candor, I’m just going to throw editorial caution to the wind and write what lots of us thought—but were afraid to say—when we heard” this frenzied diatribe on Phelps’ indiscretion. “Ready? Here goes:” Sirota’s rambles on “America’s drug policy is idiotic.” Our society is not addicted to fake outrage— it is “addicted” (in a manner of speaking) to celebrity worship - as has been noted elsewhere on this site - which in turn may have deeper psychological underpinnings. So if you’re “not sure [as with a lot of other things] if it’s because we’re strung out on ‘Lost’ episodes, or if it’s because we’re still suffering from a post-9/11 stress disorder that makes us crave ‘breaking news’ alerts, or if it’s because the economy has turned us into distraction junkies” - it’s probably because it’s none of those things. Obviously, “the media blew the story up”, as they always do, because it was a well-known public figure, i.e. celebrity, of sorts. Any tidbit of alleged misbehavior by a celebrity-type is grist for the media gossip mill, be it drugs or drunken driving or amorous affairs, etc. If one of the anonymous everyman clones of the supposedly “iconic” Joe Sixpack had done it, it wouldn’t be news. It’s not about dope, it’s about celebrity. Unquestionably, America’s drug policy is irrational and emotional and used for ulterior purposes, i.e. to supply the fodder for the prison-industrial complex. And it’s not just so-called ‘progressives’ that have questioned this either. Right libertarians, such as the late Wm. F. Buckley, have also opposed senseless victimless drug laws for many years, as well.  And no less a pillar of the establishment than George Schultz, when he was Sec. of State in the 80’s, publically advocated drug law liberalization. In an ‘89 Wall St. Journal op-ed, Schultz suggested, “...We need at least to consider and examine forms of controlled legalization of drugs”. One of the most consistent and cogent critiques of America’s drug policies came from another unlilely source, that doyen of conservative economists, Milton Friedman.  Starting in 1972 when he blasted the Republican president’s newly instigated ‘war on drugs’ in a Newsweek column, descibing it as immoral and counterproductive. In a NY Times editorial in ‘98, Friedman succinctly layed out the case against America’s drug policies stating: “The attempt to prohibit drugs is by far the major source of the horrendous growth in the prison population.”...“Drug prohibition is one of the most important factors that have combined to reduce our inner cities to their present state”...“A user must associate with criminals to get the drugs, and many are driven to become criminals themselves to finance the habit”...“Our drug policy has led to thousands of deaths and enormous loss of wealth in countries like Colombia, Peru, and Mexico and has undermined the stability of their governments, all because we cannot enforce our laws at home. If we did, there would be no market for imported drugs. There would be no Cali cartel. The foreign countries would not have to suffer the loss of sovereignty involved in letting our ‘advisers’ and troops operate on their soil” And Friedman summed up, “Can any policy, however high-minded, be moral if it leads to widespread corruption, imprisons so many, has so racist an effect, destroys our inner cities, wreaks havoc on misguided and vulnerable individuals, and brings death and destruction to foreign countries?”  Sorry David, someone has already thrown “editorial caution to the wind” and said this long before you did - and said it a lot better.

As I have told my son (now in college himself) many times, despite what we think about decriminalization, pot is still illegal in most places in the US. So if you get caught, take your medicine, pay the fine, and accept the limited stigma that comes with it. This whole sordid affair reminds me of some other advice that I overheard my Mom give my brother once. “I know you will probably do this stuff at some time or another, so just be careful, and be smart enough not to get caught!”

Apparently Phelps was either too stoned or too stupid to realize that this is indeed 2009, and nearly every college age kid in this nation has a camera phone, and pics from party’s end up on the internet often before the party ends. Especially pics of famous dudes like Phelps! Speaking strictly as a parent, this guy is a fucking moron!

With that said, yes this stuff should be legal, as should most of our currently criminalized drugs. But until it is, the stigma surrounding illegal drug use comes with the territory.

I can’t help but wonder, what would the level of outrage been if he had been holding a can of beer instead of a bong?

That’s interesting, ColoradoKarl. As Anarcissie says, the power struture is controlled by a relatively few people of money, media and managerial power who have a work ethic gaurded by pscyholigical constraints againsts distractions of any kind, or influences that would diminish their power.  In fighting their own sexual and other demons, they may be psychologically amenable to imposing them on the rest of the population.  And large parts of it could be unconscious; probably is

Anarcissie- I come in contact with Gop rightwinders all the time and there is no question, amazing as it is, that they actually BELIEVE the stuff that they say.  They don’t come in contact with leftwingers and liberals who in any case are too intimadated to challenge them effectively, so their power delusions is how they assume the world is.

When I tactfully (I am known for my tact) inform them that they are full of shit, they are so amazed that sometimes they even forget to get mad.  They live in a echo chamber of similar worldviews, and when they encounter opinions prevelent in the rest of the world, they simply think they are crazy.  Look at the Israeli voting population that think that the lost and horrible war in Gaza is the way to go.

The argument that the War on Drugs is part of the Zionist worldview is more tenuous and difficult, but I firmly believe there is a connection concealed by the media.  Myer Lansky was a chief controller of drugs in the US and went to Israel for a while.  The CIA and FBI worked with drug dealers, and were used for assasinations, such as Ruby’s assasination of Oswald.  But the Jewish connection with crime and dope has been covered up in the Zionist media.

Doctorow, himself Jewish, and probably the best novelist in America in the last half of the 20th century, wrote a remarkable novel about the Dutch Shultz gang called BILLY BATHGATE.  This was a JEWISH gang, which arose during Prohibition. 

These gangs later went into drugs with other ethnic groups, and were influential in the finacing of them.  In Russia, where six of the eight Oligarchs who the West gave control of the de-nationalized corporations were Jewish, they still appear to be financing Afghan opium.  Drug money apparently formed a significant fraction of the Madoff swindle.

The irrationality of US drug policy has a power basis, and this power basis is strongly influenced by a Zionist connection. There are huge profits in drugs, a trillion dollar industry. I know what I am suggesting is bizarre but consider: the power in the Roman Empire was stongly inflenced by the relatively few German mercenaries who composed the Emperor’s guard, sometimes so decisively that they chose the next emperor.  And noone challanged their power at the risk of their neck.  In a capitalist economy, it is at least possible that a similar kind of power coup occurred.  I, and an icreasing number of progressive truthers, think it did.

Purple Girl’s got it.  Just like we’ll never get health-care reform until big money decides it’s in its interest, big Pharma, until and unless it can be the sole dispenser of the weed, will keep dumping zillions into politician’s pockets to keep its use a criminal offense. 

If we couldn’t grow it they’d package it (or pill it) and sell it in a New York minute as a perfectly legal drug.

And, Mr. Sirota’s right, we’ve become a nation that countenances mediocrity while we let failure ride.

ive been busting sirotas chops for carrying water for BHO but when he is right on target i will surely say as much.

this is one of those times.  not only drug laws but all of our civil liberties.  legalize prostitution and even relax gun laws.  we love to demonize THINGS as the problem.  the root of the problem is more fundamental than that.  i can envision a society where we have these options available but maintain the capacity to incorporate them into our lives responsibly.

I actually think this “scandal” is a good thing, because it has shown millions of Americans that pot smokers are not actually the hopeless good-for-nothing slackers, reprobates, and catatonic drug fiends our corporate media and corporatist government portray them to be. 

There are certainly plenty of people stupid enough to believe anything the media tell them to believe, but those with at least a few working neurons in their heads might stop and think that if a guy who has accomplished what Phelps has is a pot smoker, maybe pot isn’t quite the scourge it’s cracked up to be.  Are all the young girls really going to take down their Michael Phelps posters?  I’m inclined to guess that more will be motivated to try a little weed themselves, the media’s vituperations notwithstanding.

The outrage from the more or less sophisticated media guys is obviously fake (as it is all the time on all sorts of issues), but millions of Americans have swallowed the anti-pot propaganda hook line and sinker, and surely some of them are sincerely outraged.

The Zionists are among the most potent sources of evil on the planet, but pinning this one on them is more than a bit of a stretch, and to me smacks of anti-Jewism (which is after all what “anti-Semitism” really means in common usage.  But being against a culture or religion is not nearly as blameworthy as hating an entire race, hence the Zionists’ preference for the misnomer). 

My take is that in addition to crazed ideologues who really do believe the propaganda, the biggest sources of the push against cannabis are the alcohol and prescription drug industries, as they are the ones who have the most to lose from its legalization.

Sheriff “Barney Fife” of South Carolina wants his 15 minutes of fame, so sad. What a waste of money, when are we going to revise our silly, outdated drug laws. No more Americans should be arrested, put on trial or go to jail for marijuana.

anarcissie, You need to show the american people the reality of drug addiction and that the “Gateway” IS the underground economy of drugs. Every time I see a propaganda piece on the MSM. I replace the word “drug” with “drug law” as the problem and the solution are simple. (to me anyway). Give drug addicts all the drugs they need or want and make Delivery to a Juvenile a 10 year hard time sentence and give the youth a chance to mature enough to make a responsible decision and reduce the potential by what? 80%  90% . 6% of the population was strung out before the Harrison act in 1908 and today? that’s right 6%

I think most of us know the Drug War is a crime against humanity.  What we need now is information on how it is structured so we can do some damage to its perpetrators, or at least put pressure on them.

on CNBC yesterday I saw a poll 35,000 responses to should marijuana be decriminalized or available for medical patients or something like that. 97% to 3% for decriminalization. Thats HUGE. Obama’s new drug guy is a recovering alcoholic. The absolute worst person to judge drugs. I know I am a recovering alcoholic and drug addict who believes ALL drugs should be available to ADDICTS along with UNLIMITED treatment options. I have repeated this statement at AA meetings and NEVER had a positive response. Twelve step programs have a Zero tolerance policy for EVERYONE. it’s a what’s good for us is good for everyone policy.

It is passing strange that a kid is scarified for smoking one of “god’s” natural herbs, while murderers, traitors, and peculators of the Bush admin. walk free among us.

US Drug Policy = History of Hypocrisy

Recreational drug use is just fine and acceptable if it makes your dick hard (viagra), impairs your motor skills and ability to think (alcohol), causes second hand harm (cigarettes), or helps you zip around your days (caffeine).

But it’s downright evil and you’re a lesser human if you seek some temporary euphoria (marijuana), let thoughts come into your mind unfiltered (acid, mushrooms), zone yourself out (opiates), or zip around your days in non-approved ways (cocaine, other stimulants).

The war on drugs is a fraud. Prohibition will never work. Any drug can be used responsibly, any drug can be used irresponsibly. Criminalizing responsible/non-harmful to others use of any drug is about the stupidest policy I can think of.

Drug policy has never been about health or safety or anything worthwhile.  It’s purely political, Biden and the like have made careers out of it after all.  The criminalizing of so many drugs has had more to do with not THAT people were using them, but WHO were using them.  Marijuana criminalization as it pertains to Mexican immigrants and the negroes.  LSD and mushrooms and the movements they were associated with.  Crack (the poor people’s drug) versus cocaine (the rich people’s drug) sentencing disparities and mandatory minimums.  How many non-violent people have we locked up by now?  Prisoners are a commodity to be profited off of though, haven’t you heard?  Our current drug laws are at best institutionally prejudiced and at worst systematically planned repression.  Who knows which.

My gut tells me it’s not really about any of that anymore though, if it ever was.  I have a feeling current *heavily* US influenced global drug policy has more to do with US foreign policy goals and expansion and influence over and in foreign nations.  Plan Columbia, Plan Mexico, Bolivia, Venezuela.  All money for nothing.  The corruption runs deep…CIA, Iran Contra, Noriega, who knows what else.

The only sensible solution is to regulate ALL drugs, not just Gov’t approved ones.  Leaving potentially dangerous substances to be run by a criminal underground is obviously backwards policy.  Prohibition isn’t policy though, it’s RELIGION.  Regulation with oversight by non-vested interest HEALTH professionals, not Law Enforcement is what makes sense.  The vested interests in prohibition are too powerful to ever let this happen though.  Will we ever climb out of this hole?

Articles such as “Addicted to Fake Outrage” by David Sirota and a previous article by William Pfaff, titled “America’s Strong Commitment to Error” are examples of a positive courageous discourse on self-evaluation and self-criticism.

I consider writers such as Sirota and Pfaff true jealous patriots who, instead of indulging in the traditional blind self-glorification of the chauvinist Americans, see the wrong of the homeland and lamentably point the fingers to the cancer within the national body.

When in the past I wrote few articles or editorial letters, published in some national papers, criticizing certain aspects of American value system or political wrongs, I was viciously attacked by some bigots chauvinists who were mostly reacting to my name more than reflecting on the possible truth of what I was saying.

Now, thanks to NEMESIS, the Goddess of retribution, which seems to be visiting many lands, including the homeland, and punishing man’s transgression of the natural, right order of things and the arrogance, greed and evil that cause it, the atmosphere is more susceptible to such self-criticism discourse such as the ones by Sirota and Pfaff.

Folktruther:
‘The outrage is not fake. ...’

I don’t know about that.  The jackals of the media rend whoever falls to the ground.  Beyond that, you have some kind of state structure for perpetrating the Drug War composed of regular and secret police elements, politicians, bureaucrats, and political and religious hucksters, but I think it’s a small group whose power derives from its position and vigor rather than from its numbers.  At its base, support for the Drug War comes from public sadism, superstition and racism, but these may not be as widespread as some think.  Public “outrage” beyond the media may be quite thin.  I certainly don’t know anyone who is outraged.

If we want to end this crime against humanity that is the Drug War we need a better idea of the state structure.  Then it may be possible to attack it at its weakest points politically or legally.

I tend to doubt Zionists are particularly involved, although some of the components of the structure could be surprising.  A few decades ago there was something of a scandal about the CIA being involved in the cocaine and heroin trades, since these were a way of funding their friends in Asia and South America.

The outrage is not fake.  It is part of America’s death culture.  The Zionist neoliberals who largely control the learned and mass media and other truth organs have imposed an ideological consensus that suppurts economic and power inequality, violence, coercion and irrationality on the American people.  Grass, for which a million Americans are arrested every year is one facet of this death culture.  Grass is a love drug used by minorities, and the right opposes both.

And this death culture is tacitly supported by the fear of pseudo-progressives.  They do not fight combatively for a life culture, for class equality, for anti-war, against a police state.  They cave in to bi-partisanism, to compromise, to Tolorance of oppression.  There is no progressive, life supporting left in the US, as there is to a greater extent in Europe.

The right wing is combative, pulling the ideological center to the right, and the mainstream left capitulates.  Because the media is controled in the US by Zionists who do not support Israel’s Security, as they say, but support Israel’s expansion by ethmic cleansing under the guise of Security.  And this fake Security is supported by drug money as well as bank money, Madoff’s funds appearing to include drug money.  And heroin and cocaine dealers do not want the competition of grass, which can be grown locally.

But the left does not say so without pulling its punches to be conveyed in the mainstream media.  The banning of grass is part of the death culture which pseudo-progressives support, so it cannot attack the power relations that impose it inhumanely and irrationally.  Sirota’s power function is to NEUTRALIZE the opposition of the life culture to American inequality, violence and irrationality.  The right fights, the left capitualites and supports Obama, who is publically committed to maintaining the illegality of grass.  No member of the Obama team argues publically for legalizing grass, even for the dying.

Obama is for Responsibility, now for opposing grass, next for cutting social security and medicare.  And the pseudo-left supports both by their silence.  And they are both linked to the Zionist ruling class who are Israel Firsters, and impose a death culture in the US to make Americans support it.

total foolishness.  the sheriff in south carolina, i suppose, had to do “something.” 
maybe they should put cannabis into the air system in the capitol and the senate and house office buildings so that they can rationalize (while eating oreos and vanilla wafers and chips) spending money on Pelosi’s mouse collection in SanFran?

Rather have posters of Phelps and Hawk on my kids wall than Bonds and A Rod!
Pot has gone through the longest Longitudinal study known to man and has proven to be far less detrimental to society that alcohol.
In fact far less dangerous to it’s users and their fmailies than the PsychoTropics being pushed by the Pharms. ‘Could cause thoughts of suicide’- It’s that what these meds are supposed to relieve, Not induce?
As for Steriods, the BigTime Wrestler proved they can cause Homocide!
I’v eworked with Horses who’ve been given brief rounds of steriods as treatments for injuries, They lose their minds!typically sounded mares begin acting like stallions. And Stallions become nasty SOB’s.Talk about ‘Freaks on a leash’. And these treatments are only one injection for about 3 weeks! these are 1200 lb animals. Now consider an 180lb Male being injected repeatedly for years! Whio didn’t realize Bonds was juiced up when his head grew to the size of a basketball! Why is there an increase in Violent behavior by numerous sports ‘stars’ within the last few years- bar shottings, Dog fighting (with Torture included for the surviving loser), domestic violence…DUH!
Yet how many of these ‘Michelin’ Men are still featured on Cereal Boxes? Tauted as the ‘Greatest’ in their sport?
The Pharms LOVE Steriods addicts, but hate Pot users because there is NO profits in a substance that can be grown in your own back yard. So go after the ‘Stars’, but don’t forget to prosecute the Drug cartel which supplies them with those Schizophenic, sociopathic inducing drugs

Smoking Pot and getting busted is as American as Apple pie.

Fake everything is in vogue in America; what’s so special about that? We’ve been phoney for decades, duh????

http://whatintheworld-icarus.blogspot.com/

It is called the ” Sleight of Hand “. While watching the left hand the right steals your wallet….same for big news, as you whatch the lead of bleeds you miss that the torture king in in full control of the CIA and has approval of our fuhrer.
With being occupied by who is screwing who or who is smoking what, the black coats will be moving ahead with little notice.
You gotta love Amerika, where dummer is better.

http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2009/02/and-then-he-kissed-me.html

Excellent evaluation. If drugs, especially “grass” was legalized, and taxed, it would be one heckofa source of income for our distraught state and federal pockets. Don’t you think so?