Electric Monkeypedia: The Roach

I love Wikipedia! Join us for our first episode of Electric Monkeypedia in which I quote a small passage of Wikipedia and, thereby, it becometh funny. All you have to do is read the following with a British accent:

The most distinct product of the joint is the roach, or unburnt unconsumed butt end. Roaches are typically either consumed with the aid of a roach clip which offers a narrow grip without the risk of burning one's fingers, or are saved to be combined with other roaches and rerolled into a composite or second generation roach joint. Roaches are also sometimes finished by being smoked in a pipe, or (in rare cases) consumed by eating. This is sometimes referred to as "eating the peanut", "popping the roach" or "Wu Tang-ing it".

Ah, so funny. This is a real Wikipedia article, folks. I just found this today -- don't ask what I was doing --- and had a laugh. It was clearly written by stoners, or by a nonsmoker who went deep undercover.

Another reason I love Wikipedia? Pictures like this:

I like how it's simply labeled: Joint.

Man, all the tools are right there for you. Kids these days have it easy. (Get off my lawn!)

This is where you're supposed to put the obligatory anti-drug message, where I get down on one knee and look the kids straight in the eye and tell'em all they really need to know about drugs: Kids, if you grow up and become a drug dealer, watch out for the CIA -- the dirty spooks will want a cut of your profits or they'll send in the DEA to ice you like a two bit hood. It's even worse if you play along and sell your soul to the devil and Dick Cheney. The only smart thing to do is to become a real drug dealer by peddling expensive drugs like Prozac and Ritalin to fretful, always-absent mothers and fathers who just want their child to be "normal." You can manipulate the political and economic systems of every last country to extract maximum profits with no hard feelings... 'Cause it's all legal.

There ya go kids. Remember what Uncle Vemrion told you.

I hope you enjoyed this edition of Electric Monkeypedia!

Why is pot still illegal in 2007? Could it have something to do with the CIA's sordid history?

David Monson is a North Dakota state legislator who's been trying to get permission to grow hemp for about 10 years. He may finally be getting close, but first he must go through an onerous set of flaming hoops set up by the DEA.

Last month, the state Agriculture Department finished its work on rules farmers may use to grow industrial hemp, a cousin of marijuana that does not have the drug's hallucinogenic properties. The sturdy, fibrous plant is used to make an assortment of products, ranging from paper, rope and lotions to car panels, carpet backing and animal bedding.

Applicants must provide latitude and longitude coordinates for their proposed hemp fields, furnish fingerprints and pay at least $202 in fees, including $37 to cover the cost of criminal record checks.

Johnson said the federal Drug Enforcement Administration still must give its permission before Monson, or anyone else, may grow industrial hemp.

"That is going to be a major hurdle," Johnson said.

Yeah, the DEA are basically a bunch of assholes when it comes to common sense and hemp. They won't give permission unless they feel cornered. Keep the pressure on; some more media coverage would be nice.

But all this obscures the larger and more potent question: Why is "marihuana" still illegal? Certainly industrial hemp should be legal since it has none of recreational ganja's psychoactive properties. But why is cannabis in general illegal? Most people would agree that Prohibition was a titanic failure. But we're still stuck with many of the after-effects of the prohibition mentality, including the idiotic, wasteful, racist and anti-freedom War on Drugs. The War on Drugs is a total failure and a fraud and even many former cops and DEA agents will testify to that fact.

An excellent article called Why Is Marijuana Illegal? tackles that very issue, with some surprising revelations... Or not-so-surprising. I guess it depends on how jaded you are when it comes to politics and business.

America's first marijuana law was enacted at Jamestown Colony, Virginia in 1619. It was a law "ordering" all farmers to grow Indian hempseed. There were several other "must grow" laws over the next 200 years (you could be jailed for not growing hemp during times of shortage in Virginia between 1763 and 1767), and during most of that time, hemp was legal tender (you could even pay your taxes with hemp -- try that today!) Hemp was such a critical crop for a number of purposes (including essential war requirements - rope, etc.) that the government went out of its way to encourage growth.

The United States Census of 1850 counted 8,327 hemp "plantations" (minimum 2,000-acre farm) growing cannabis hemp for cloth, canvas and even the cordage used for baling cotton.

But racism may have been the weapon that was used most effectively against hemp and cannabis. Harry J. Anslinger (who looks like a gangster/mafioso to me) led the charge against "marihuana" (the word itself is a propaganda invention designed to draw up racial fears).

Anslinger immediately drew upon the themes of racism and violence to draw national attention to the problem he wanted to create. Some of his quotes regarding marijuana...

"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others."

"...the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races."

"Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death."

"Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men."

"Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing"

"You smoke a joint and you're likely to kill your brother."

"Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind."

There were a lot of lies said about pot back in the day. But it's 2007 and we know better, so why is it still illegal? I mean, people don't seriously believe that pot causes "insanity, criminality and death" -- everyone knows it only causes the munchies and drymouth. But we still allow the government to lie to us every year and keep spending millions of dollars to send inner city youth to jail for with harsh mandatory minimum sentences? Pete Guither's article does a great job of explaining how cannabis first became illegal, but it does not really tell us why it's still illegal 70 years after the Marijuana Stamp Act.

Part of the answer to that question lies with the CIA. The CIA has long turned a blind eye to drug smugglers in exchange for a small cut of the profit. These illicit funds can be used to fund illicit wars around the globe. (Wonderful cycle our dear CIA is engaged in, isn't it?) The Iran-Contra "affair" was actually a drug smuggling operation to fund an illegal war (is there an echo in here?):

On October 31, 1996, the Washington Post ran a follow up story to the San Jose Mercury News series titled "CIA, Contras and Drugs: Questions on Links Linger." The story drew on court testimony in 1990 of Fabio Ernesto Carrasco, a pilot for a major Columbian drug smuggler named George Morales. As a witness in a drug trial, Carrasco testified that in 1984 and 1985, he piloted planes loaded with weapons for contras operating in Costa Rica. The weapons were offloaded, and then drugs stored in military bags were put on the planes which flew to the United States. "I participated in two [flights] which involved weapons and cocaine at the same time," he told the court.

Funny how the news doesn't do investigative reports on stuff you might actually want to know. The press could have found a lot more dirt on this scandal, but they steered clear after a limited hang-out. That's because the whole system is set up to demonize drugs so that they will be so much more profitable. Legalization would utterly destroy the CIA's little "fundraising" operation and it would effectively end the careers of many DEA agents, who've become like a parasitic wasp, sucking at our nations' failed and painful drug policy.

It's time to end the lies, the racism and the idiocy of the War on Drugs and declare peace. It needs to end, and there needs to be an investigation. Those who profited from the war by playing both sides should be punished according to their own rules.



The video above is Dealing with the Demon, an excellent look into the CIA's activities in Afghanistan during the war against the Soviets. Perhaps we should not be surprised that Afghan poppy production has exploded since we "liberated" it from the Taliban. How... interesting.

Updated on 1-16-07 with new links, a video and various spelling-error fixes.

Digg this story, man.

U.S. Drug Czar John Walters Wants Random Drug Testing, Fascism in All Schools

[digg] America's drug tsar raised the stakes on drug testing in schools yesterday, suggesting that it could come to be seen as normal required and "responsible behaviour" in the same way that some US schools routinely test all pupils for tuberculosis.

read more | digg story [/digg]

Yes, but they don't arrest the students who test positive for tuberculosis. What an idiotic thing to say. There's more idiocy:

Mr Walters said cannabis use was not just a matter of personal choice and the expression of freedom in the same way as a preference for clothes and hairstyles. "We're still living as if substance abuse is a fashion statement," he said.

Taking a strong line against marijuana was "not being judgmental but showing that we care".

In other news: down is up, freedom is slavery and war is peace.

So by "care" he means "ruin the student's life", right?

Caring for him seems to involve random, unconstitutional, invasive searches of bodily fluids, a draconian, fear-based atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust, combined with a desire to put people in jail for as long as murderers because they may have used a plant that grows freely across the world. Am I getting this correctly?

Man, I would hate to be Walter's kid.

His string of sheer stupidity continues into the land of awful analogies:

The US policies were based on scientific evidence - some of it from the UK - that cannabis was linked to psychosis and schizophrenia. "We have a particular problem of our attitudes towards cannabis which hinders policy and hinders people going into treatment," he said.

"The attitude is that it's only marijuana. It doesn't help if your kids are playing Russian roulette that they are using a smaller calibre weapon."

This is some grade A bullshit, folks. As the Drug Czar he (probably) knows that cannabis is entirely non-fatal. It can't kill you. When you overdose on it, you fall asleep and wake up with a headache. Aspirin, meanwhile, can kill you. Alcohol kills you. Cigs kill you. Cannabis does not. In fact, the only way to die from cannabis is to get several hundred pounds of it, pack it up tight, suspend it from a height, and drop it on your head. In other words: blunt force.

Before I move on, notice where he talks about treatment in the quote above. Now, let's proceed to his next quote wherein he reveals even more hypocrisy:

Permitting such harm reduction measures gave the impression that "society allows a stance of it's OK to be an addict", he said.

Oh, I get it. Being an addict is bad and you should be arrested!! But what about treatment? Oh, maybe Walter's idea of treatment is spending 10 years in jail. How compassionate. Most sane, non-hateful people are gravitating to the idea of addiction as disease/disorder. The D.C. Establishment is the only group of people I know of pushing the idea of addict as criminal.

Quite frankly, Walters doesn't really have to make sense. Nobody really listens to him and it's not his job to make logical, coherent arguments. He's just an ideological attack dog. His job is to viciously defend the position staked out by his masters, much like how a junkyard dog guards his turf. The dog doesn't ask why and neither does Walters.

Of course, if you've been reading this blog, you know why: The CIA. If drugs aren't illegal the CIA won't be able to make the obscene profits necessary to fund its black ops. Drugs smuggling is only worth your time if drugs are a valuable commodity. If drugs are legal, they monetary value will drop by 90%, easy.

So we can thank the CIA for making it necessary to have a Drug Czar, who has turned around and endorsed mandatory drug testing for every single student. This guy might've heard of the "presumption of innocence" but obviously he didn't like the idea much. I also suspect that he's not a big fan of the 4th amendment. It's so much easier to rule people when everyone's treated like a potential criminal.

Goddamn Fascist.

Power Wars - Republicans using fake "Legalize Marijuana" campaign to trick voters

Title says it all. Here's the story from the Central Valley IndyMedia:

As I’m filling out my name and address on the petition I notice that the young lady is filling out a very official looking form. Probably just the ballot initiative form, I think to myself. Then, she says "is it OK if I register you as a Republican?" "What?!?" I say "yes, I do mind! What are you doing?" She says that if I register Republican she will get an extra 10 cents. But, I complain, "I don’t want to re-register." She explains that this is just to update the records for the County Clerks office. I repeat that "I do not want or need to update my records." I am repeatedly told that it is OK and that they just want to update my voter registration records. She also tells me that she is working for the Republican party, being paid hourly, and that the ploy about the "10 cent bonus" was not accurate.

This Republican party employee goes on to tell me that she is there to attract people to the table that is set up in Fresno’s Courthouse Park, and that the legalize marijuana petition is just a prop. She confirmed that there is no ballot initiative to legalize marijuana. She said that the petition will be given to an elected official in Sacramento. I have my doubts about that.

Man, who can you trust when the Republican Party lets you down? [snort!] [snort!]

It looks like the Republicans are desperately using every trick in the book to make people register as Republicans so that their electoral ploys this November will look more plausible. I'll keep an eye for any of these fake campaigns in my neck of the woods.

At least the Republicans know how popular their drug policy is; which is to say, not at all! Both parties remain committed to the continuation of the failed War on Drugs, despite its unpopularity with voters. Gee, sounds a bit like Iraq, doesn't it?

These ideological wars aren't waged because they're popular -- though they may be at the start -- they are waged to serve as a distraction and a power amplification conduit. The distraction part is obvious, but the power conduit part is less recognized. These wars transfer massive amounts of political, financial and military power to certain people within the government; that is the point of these wars. Bush/Cheney's wartime expansion of executive power is the prototypical example for this type of power amplification, and it is repeated down the chain of command, at least where it's relevant. The Dept. of Education hasn't gained much power from the War in Iraq. But the Drug Czar, the FBI, DEA and the CIA have all benefitted hugely from the War on Drugs.

Of course, the fact that the War on Drugs and the War in Iraq don't make sense from a rational point of view also constitutes an unanncounced War on Logic. Many of the neocons' statements seem to portend an upcoming War on Reality. We can only guess at what comes after that. Perhaps a War on Everybody is in the works?

Before that war, we've got a series of additional wars that need waging. The War on Syria and the long-awaited War on Iran are coming down the pipeline shortly. What other wars will we need after that? Well, perhaps a War on Every Other Islamic Nation will be needed because I suspect they will assume they're next even if they aren't. And who can blame them? We've been invading Islamic nations for awhile now. If we go into Iran and Syria that will make 4 that we've taken out in the last half-decade.

War, war, war!! It's a dirty business, but it hasn't to be waged, doesn't it?

Well, what about the power amplification conduit I mentioned earlier? What about the incredible amount of power we've transferred to the Pentagon, the White House, NSA, CIA and all the corporations helping them wage the war? Doesn't it seem clear that they are addicted to power? They constantly need more of it. They feed, but they're still hungry. More power!

When does it end?

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. It ends with the War on Everybody.

Legalize Drugs to Quell the Violence? Won't somebody think of the CIA's feelings?!

AlterNet's Norm Stamper calls for legalization to end the growing violence in Mexico and in America caused by drug prohibition:

In the mid-'90s, the Arellano brothers' drug cartel ruled Tijuana, perched atop the hierarchy of Mexico's multibillion dollar illegal drug trafficking industry. Using cars, planes and trucks -- and an intimate knowledge of NAFTA -- the Arellanos transported hundreds of tons of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine into American cities.

They enlisted U.S. drug gangs. In 1993, in my last days as San Diego's assistant police chief, the local gang Calle Treinte was implicated in the Arellano-inspired killing of Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo. The Arellanos bribed officials on both sides of the border, spending over $75 million annually on the Mexican side alone, to grease their illicit trafficking.

And they enforced their rule not just with murder but with torture. If Steven Soderbergh's gritty 2000 film "Traffic" caused you to squirm in your seat, the real-life story of Mexican drug dealing is even more disquieting. The brothers once kidnapped a rival's wife and children. With videotape running, they tossed two of the kids off a bridge, then sent their competitor a copy of the tape, along with the severed head of his wife. Another double-crosser had his skull crushed in a compression vice. And who can forget the carne asada BBQs, where the Arellanos would roast entire families over flaming tires?

Whenever you hear horrible stories like this one, remember who is at least partly to blame for this situation: Politicians who support drug prohibition because they think it makes them look "tough on crime" when the policies they support are actually just tough on liberty. Prohibition simply creates attractive (black) markets for criminals and sociopaths. If drugs were legal, they would be under the control of Walgreens, not the Arellano brothers.

Illegal drugs are expensive precisely because they are illegal. The products themselves are worthless weeds -- cannabis (marijuana), poppies (heroin), coca (cocaine) -- or dirt-cheap pharmaceuticals and "precursors" used, for example, in the manufacture of methamphetamine. Yet today, marijuana is worth as much as gold, heroin more than uranium, cocaine somewhere in between. It is the U.S.'s prohibition of these drugs that has spawned an ever-expanding international industry of torture, murder and corruption. In other words, we are the source of Mexico's "drug problem."

The remedy is as obvious as it is urgent: legalization.

Regulated legalization of all drugs -- with stiffened penalties for driving impaired or furnishing to kids -- would bring an immediate halt to the violence. How? By (1) dramatically reducing the cost of these drugs, (2) shifting massive enforcement resources to prevention and treatment and (3) driving drug dealers out of business: no product, no profit, no incentive. In an ideal world, Mexico and the United States would move to repeal prohibition simultaneously (along with Canada). But even if we moved unilaterally, sweeping and lasting improvements to public safety (and public health) would be felt on both sides of the border. (Tragically and predictably, just as Mexico's parliament was about to reform its U.S.-modeled drug laws, the Bush administration stepped in, pressuring President Vicente Fox to abandon the enlightened position he'd championed for two years.)

Stamper makes an excellent and well-thought-out call for legalization, but he's missing part of the puzzle. The missing piece helps to explain why legalization won't happen any time soon: The government is well aware of the problems caused by drug prohibition and that's exactly the way they want it. They don't want crime free cities (how could they strip us of our rights and frighten us if our cities are peaceful?), they don't want cheap recreational drugs (how else could they make so much money without informing Congress of where it came from?) and they certainly don't want to get rid of drug dealers (how else could they arrest any black person at any time?).

The elephant in the room has a kilo of coke jammed up his trunk and none of us are supposed to mention that fact. The Bush Crime Family has depended on the income delivered by drugs for years. This shouldn't come as a surprise if you know that George Bush Senior ("Poppy Bush" as he is called) used to be the Director the CIA, an organization that is notorious for smuggling drugs, protecting drug kingpins, selling drugs to fund black ops and generally behaving like a bunch of state-sponsored terrorists... cause that's what they are.

The CIA needs drugs to be illegal. They have to fund their illegal, terroristic black ops somehow: How are we supposed to assassinate foreign leaders, execute coup d'États, prop up right-wing dictators and generally spread fear around the globe if some goddamn hippies are goin' around talking about drug legalization?! What the fuck?! Don't you know how hard it is to spread fascism and evil without a slushfund?

Good point. America, the choice is soooo much harder than it seems: If we legalize drugs we might inadvertantly make the CIA less evil and impede its ability to launch terrorist attacks against its enemies, foreign and domestic! Oh noooo!!!!!

Happy 420 Everyone!

A great and wonderful 420, I wish upon all of you. The second-greatest holiday of Timitarianism, the symbol of solidarity and the excuse to party all make 4/20 a great day.

This history of 420 is indeed mysterious. It's said that most of the clocks in Pulp Fiction are set to 4:20.

I had a good time.