Monday, August 29, 2005

And The Hits Keep Comin,' Yeah, Baby!!!

U.S. oil surges $4 to record above $70 on hurricane

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - U.S. crude oil futures surged more than $4 in opening trade on Monday, hitting a new record high above $70 a barrel after Hurricane Katrina forced Gulf of Mexico producers to shut in more than a third of their output.

Katrina, which strengthened into a rare, maximum power Category 5 hurricane as it spun through key oil and gas fields toward New Orleans, shut in a total 633,000 barrels per day (bpd), according to company figures on Sunday.

It also forced the closure of seven refineries and a major U.S. crude import terminal.

Crude oil futures (CLc1) on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) surged as high as $70.80 a barrel, up $4.67 a barrel, as traders feared lasting damage could further strain an industry that has struggled to keep up with demand for two years.

© Copyright Reuters Ltd.

Thursday, August 25, 2005

A Pen Warmed In Hell

The Roberts Supreme Court Nomination

More to say later about this career womyn hating proto-fascist, for now I'd just like to express my gratitude that at least Bush didn't nominate a horse to the United States Supreme Court, which I wouldn't put past him doing down the road......

Monday, August 22, 2005

Gmail - RAVING IS NOT A CRIME

Date: Aug 22, 2005 2:30 PM
Subject: Fwd: RAVING IS NOT A CRIME

hey guys, I hope you like this, it was prompted by the incident in Utah this weekend where law enforcement went overboard in shutting down a legal and peacefully fully licensed edm party.

it needs some werk for sure since I started it after the end of a long weekend well after i should have been in bed so it's not as tight in some spots as it can be, but I wanted to get it and see if i can get any feedback on it to make it better.

I feel like I can turn this into a major piece if it's done right.

For example, I didn't even start to go into the arena of how this will ultimately will have turn into a Constitutional First Amendment case, since the very crux of what is happening here with our culture is the impingement of our rights as citizens to freely assemble, in a really big and hostile way.

thanks and plur!

nwa

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ima J. Walker <
Date: Aug 22, 2005 4:40 AM
Subject: Re: RG: UTAH RAVERS TREATED LIKE TERRORISTS! EVOL INTENT'S ACCOUNT OF THE INCIDENT!
To:
Cc: Apollo
(note: this response started life as a one-liner on a music listserv that I'm on that turned into an un-planned and unexpected brain-dump, so I'm just going to have to ask those of you that interested to bear with me for a moment.

thanks. and oh, hey btw, happy Monday, you have you all a great week!)


RAVING IS NOT A CRIME

while I'm borrowing this turn of phrase from skatepunks, and i've posted it here without explanation a couple of times, there's a lot more to it than it sounds like at first blush, since it's so simple a turn of phrase, let me please repeat it, and slightly elaborate on what I mean by that when I say it.

thanks, that'd be great.

here it is again:

RAVING IS NOT A CRIME

it also applies here:

INTOXICATION IS NOT A CRIME

same goes for sex and sexuality, but I'm tired of typing in all caps and i think you've gotten the point.

(how ironic, MSNBC, the cable channel owned by the richest man in the world where an alarming amount of its off-peak content is about America's prisons and cops, really creepy stuff, is running one of those FOX Channel worthy hysteria inducing pieces on the evils of prostitution and the 'cleaning' up the streets doing a ride-along with some Vice Squad cops of the Sunset Strip in LA as I type this.)

As much as I loathe the source of this following quote it absolutely applies to this situation and it would be disingenuous to not make use of it, since it does describe the problem we are facing, to a 'T' and in a nutshell.....
- Hide quoted text -


"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one MAKES them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. ... Create a nation of law-breakers, and then you cash in on the guilt."

-- Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged

William Burrough's priest character in Drugstore Cowboy has a line where he predicts something to the effect that the time will soon come where the right wing in this country will use the war on drugs and drug culture as a pretext that they're looking out for the common good, when their actual goal is to get the people used to an erosion of their civil liberties, thus making it easy to put a police state in place.

Looks like that's arrived and it aint'a 'bout to go away at least for another generation, and when it's finally over, I don't think the make-up of the United States is going to much resemble what it is today.

I've kinda stepped back from American politics at the moment because given the way things ae going, there's a good chance that neither the Democratic and Republican parties will even exist anymore as they do, 15 to 20 years from now, so i've been focusing my thinking on what that might look like, and what my place in that sort of world might be, but this is a little away from what I'm talking about here with the persecution of the raver community, and why it's happening and what's the impetus behind it.

The weasely little trap they set for us that we didn't see coming that we fell into that we who rave, and we who get high, like to get laid, in or outside of marriage, and otherwise enjoy our lives, in a way that's not sanctioned by the mainstream in this society, is that they led us to believe that our pleasure seeking has a 'sinful' aspect to it, and needs to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, this is the prevailing mindset in this country, still, and that somehow a 'sober' approach to life is 'virtuous'

It's fucking nonsense and bullshit and we fell for it.

If you start to believe that raving or getting intoxicated has some sort of criminal aspect to it, then they've got some ammo to use against you.

It's what the john Galt character meant in the above quote when he talked about cashing in on the guilt which is exactly what is happening here.

It's really pernicious, and hard to see how big a deal this seemingly minor distinction is, at first, but once you dial into how much human damage this has done over the years, you'll start to see it as a horrific, ugly thing.

When is the last time you ever saw a positive portrayal of a typical pot-smoker or stone cold junkie on film?

I'll wager not in, oh, like never.

Would you say never?

I would and do there are no positive depictions of drug use ever permitted in our media, there's always a negative subtext attached to it and the user, isn't there?

They're all objects of jeers, derision, mockery and foolery, aren't they?

Mary's Funeral Eulogy where 'they went out doing the thing they loved' that she posted here a long time ago is pretty much the only time I've seen a depiction of a drug user that wasn't derogatory, and shit even he had to die before anyone would say anything nice about him.

:P

yet meanwhile, back in the real world, a non-functioning drug addict like Rush Limbaugh can sign a $100 million dollar contract while high as a kite and face no repercussions?

Explain that to one to me, please.

Either drug users are worthless scum-sucking pieces of effluvious pieces of shit.

Or they're not.

Sorry, you so can't have this one both ways.

Not after you spend $50 billion dollars a year of my hard-earned tax dollars drilling home the object lesson of how 'bad' drugs and the people that use them are.

fuck you very much, no way.

it's either/or.

thanks.

take it back and werk on it and get back to me when you've got something of sense to say, Sonnyboy.

God, I really hate these people that set up and are running this vile system that does nothing but suck the soul and health out of it's citizenry, weakening it from within.

It's just so wrong, on so many levels, that I don't even begin to know where to start.

Those friends of yours that wonder where the 'jack-booted thugs are?'

Surely they must be joking.

Have they somehow missed the 750,000+ pot-smokers alone that get arrested and locked up each and every year in this country?

That's no small number, and it's only gonna grow, and this is just a warm-up.

I understand that there are some mega-prisons being built in remote areas out west that can house a lot more people, and that's a trend that will not reverse itself anytime soon.

This really is a war and we're getting our asses kicked all over the block, up and down the street, and hard too, and it's not going to stop, and we on the side that's getting the shit beat out of it is a) completely disorganized, largely in part to that we buy into their shit about getting high as being a 'bad' 'shameful' thing worthy of punishment b) approaching the same spot as the Jews/Gypsy's were in the late 1920's early 1930's in terms of level of persecution that we are experiencing. c) not doing a damned thing to fight this to get ourselves out of this position, because d) we've got a real blind-spot towards seeing that this is truly a fight to the death war partly because it crept up on us kinda slowly.

Scoff at that if you must, but consider this.

A 'dirty' piss test isn't quite a Star of David, yet, but considering the negative impact it can have on one, where say, keeping, or getting a job, and providing for not only yourself but your family too, is at stake, and all of a sudden the hit or two you have at night to unwind has some real negative and possibly grave real-world implications.

Shit a friend of mine in Menlo Park lost his marriage and nearly had his kids taken away and his house because a nieghbor saw his two pot plants that he was growing indoors through his window and turned him into the cops.

Shit like that happens every day in this country now doesn't it?

About 6-7 years ago I was hanging out with a friend of a friend, while we were on an aborted trip to burning man, and he laid the whole 'drug users are America's equivalent of the Jews in Germany' trip on me for the first time and since he was a bit of a undereducated, drug addled flake, kinda like me, I guess, I was pretty dismissive at first, but given my family background, I found myself thinking about this statement more and more over the years and i've seen more compelling evidence towards the truth of this than I have towards seeing it as a dumb joke told by somebody that didn't know what they were talking about.

One of the corrallaries to this line of thinking that came up was why the absolute vociferousness of these attacks on our culture?

I mean, c'mon, helicopters, dogs, SWAT teams in full riot gear, all that to break up a peaceful, lawful, party?

That's a bit much, don't you think?

Why all that heat?

Then it hit me.

They're shit scared of us and what we represent because, ultimately, we're a threat to them and their game.

See, you just don't go after people like that if you think that they're harmless to you and themselves, why would you?

What these people that have the power in this country want to do is keep their little death machine rolling, and well, if you're constantly going out to all night dance parties, every second that you do that, you've unplugged from their toxic 'make you fat and stupid but not happy' media-food-hospital-criminal-justice-re-hab infrastructure and it makes you that much harder to lock up prematurely in one of their hospitals or prisons where they will literally and slowly milk your carcass to death.

They hate that and they will go out of their way to destroy anything that gets in the way of that.

I'm starting to see this as being really heinous process being that's been happening to millions of my fellow Americans, for decades now, for no other reason than to satiate these greedy pricks sadistic need and lust for power.

Morgan Spurlock's 'Super-Size Me' approach, where he swallows their crap whole hook, line and sinker, really helped me see a lot of this.

I sat down and asked myself one day, well if they don't want me playing video games, consorting with whores and otherwise partying like a rock-star, what is it that they DO want me to be doing with my life and time?

Then I turned on the TV and there was my answer.

The next question I asked myself was OK, if I do everything that they're telling me to do through that video-box, if I were to do that, what would I look like after an extended period of time?

For that, all I had to do is step outside my house and go out in public.

Ugh, nasty, everywhere I go in this country, my fellow americans have really let themselves go, as of late, and in a really big way too.

If Coke and Pepsi and McDonald's and the rest of the crap they spend millions and millions of dollars advertising each and every day, don't have anything to do with that then I really am a retard.

Then, if I go to a rave, it's not so much that there's this huge drop in morbidly obese people that make up the crowd, even though there is, won't see a lot of fat people there, but it just seems that everyone's overall health is better than were you to draw that many people out of the non-raver general population.

Might have less to do with doing drugs like a juvenile and more to do with the fact that you've been spending upwards of 12 hours in one night getting yourself exercised by dancing all night long.

So then this really begs obvious question, which is, given the demonstrable health benefits a dancing lifestyle has and the negative effects a tv watching, stupid ugly vehicle driving, fast-food eating life has wouldn't the 'powers-that-be' bend over backwards to nurture the positive?

This is where things take a dark turn, if you think about it long enough......

They want it this way.

Dumbed down, so it's a lot, lot, easier to follow Fox News, eating and drinking their swill, which gets you nice and slow and lumbering, and if you start to feel antsy and have a vague floating sense of anxiety you can take their witches brew addictive pills that are legal, xanax, anyone, which hopefully will generate side effects so you can take even more of their legal soul and pain-killing pills, and you'll just get more and more used to generally deteriorating life conditions, they want all this and more because that will make us weak, and therefore more malleable as a people so that if Janet Jackson shows a little skin on TV they can get us all worked up in nice hot lather, or get us to sign up for a war, any war, doesn't matter, once you figure out how to do this like this, you can do it all the time, anywhere.

This is so slimey and utterly pervasive that words escape me in describing how awful this is.

And they're going to keep it this way and they're going to come at us with every tool in their utility belts if they ever see us emerge, and i hate to say this but they are going to win these battles, because, well, they're the ones with the guns and helicopters and blanket, coast to coast 24/7 control of the media and dogs and and satelittes pepper spray and jails and handcuffs and the courts, while we may outnumber them, we're completely fucking unarmed, we have absolutely none of that sort of ordnance or firepower at our disposal and most of us are blithefully unaware that this really is a war on us, and believe it or not, these mother-fuckers play for keeps.

it's so bad and so entrenched that i don't even think a revolution of any sort will eliminate this evil, getting militant to match these assholes isn't a way i want to go, so i'm kinda at my wits end as what to do, what sort of approach to take to help solve this. the only way I see it coming to an end is through some long drawn out organic process that's going to hurt millions more people over a long period of time.

be nice if someone could figure a way out of all this, i'd be so down for that.

plus it's a larger puzzle than i'm seeing all the pieces of

what I have been doing to take my mind off of all this is to spend more time working in the garden, odd how that's turned into a place of solace for me as things have gotten so much grimmer around me, but that's a whole 'nother, lots lots happier thread somewheres soon down the road.

n

On 8/21/05, Mary > wrote:

Apollo, will you please post this on Tribe,
under the heading "Attention: Burners, Ravers,
and All Party People"?

Make sure it's posted on "Burning Man" Tribe, and on "thislandisourland"
tribe, also maybe "Politics" (I forget whatever stupid jackoff
typographical convention they use in that tribe's name to make it
hard to find and hard to remember)

Thanks!

I keep running into Burners who think, "We've got money.
We've got permits. It can't happen here."

And I keep running into soi disant "conservatives"
who get all snotty with me when I compare Bush to Hitler,
screaming, "IF BUSH IS LIKE HITLER, WHERE ARE THE
JACKBOOTED THUGS, MISS SMARTYPANTS?!"

Well, Christ, you guys ... they're not starting
with the B'nai Brith meeting this time. But I
can fucking well tell you where they *are* starting!

Any raver can. Any illegal immigrant can.
Most urban kids wearing anything the local plod
considers "gang attire" can.

And to the Zionists who've sold out to the Neocons,
I like to point out, "Wouldn't it be nice if 'never
again' meant 'never again, to anyone!' not just,
'never again, to the Jews'?", you selfish pricks.

Thanks in advance.

Apollo wrote:
> UTAH RAVERS TREATED LIKE TERRORISTS! EVOL INTENT'S ACCOUNT OF THE INCIDENT!
>
>
>
> Originally Posted by knick evl ntnt
>
> Last night, I was booked to play an event about an hour outside of Salt
> Lake City, Utah. The hype behind this show was huge, they presold 700
> tickets and they expected up to 3,000 people total. The promoters did an
> amazing job with the show.. they even made slipmats with the flyers on
> them to promote in local shops.
>
> So, we got to the show around 11:15 or so and it was really cool. It was
> all outdoors, in a valley surrounded by huge mountains. They had an
> amazing light show flashing on to a mountain behind the site, the sound
> was booming, the crowd was about 1500 people thick and everything just
> seemed too good to be true really. Well...
>
> At about 11:30 or so, I was standing behind the stage talking with
> someone when I noticed a helicopter pulling over one of the mountain
> tops. I jokingly said "Oh look, here comes big brother" to the person I
> was with. I wasn't far off.
>
> The helicopter dipped lower and lower and started shining its lights on
> the crowd. I was kind of in awe and just sat and watched this thing
> circle us for a minute. As I looked back towards the crowd I saw a guy
> dressed in camoflauge walking by, toting an assault rifle. At this
> point, everyone was fully aware of what was going on . A few "troops"
> rushed the stage and cut the sound off and started yelling that everyone
> "get the fuck out of here or go to jail". This is where it got really
> sticky.
>
> No one resisted. That's for sure. They had police dogs raiding the crowd
> of people and I saw a dog signal out a guy who obviously had some drugs
> on him. The soldiers attacked the guy (4 of them on 1), and kicked him a
> few times in the ribs and had their knees in his back and sides. As they
> were cuffing him, there was about 1000 kids trying to leave in the
> backdrop, peacefully. Next thing I know, A can of fucking TEAR GAS is
> launched into the crowd. People are running and screaming at this point.
> Girls are crying, guys are cussing... bad scene.
>
> Now, this is all I saw with my own eyes, but I heard plenty of other
> accounts of the night. Now this isnt gossip I heard from some candy
> raver, these are instances cited straight out of the promoters mouth..
>
> - One of the promoters friends (a very small female) was attacked by one
> of the police dogs. As she struggled to get away from it, the police
> tackled her. 3 grown men proceeded to KICK HER IN THE STOMACH.
>
> - The police confiscated 3 video tapes in total. People were trying to
> document what was happening out there. The police saw one guy filming
> and ran after him, tackled him and his camera fell, and luckily.. his
> friend grabbed it and ran and got away. priceless footage. That's not
> all though. Out of 1,500 people, there's sure to be more footage.
>
> - The police were rounding up the staff of the party and the main
> promoter went up to them with the permit for the show and said "here, I
> have the permit." The police then said, "no you don't" and ripped the
> permit out of his hand. Then, they put an assault rifle to his forehead
> and said "get the fuck out of here right now."
>
>
>
> Now.. let's get the facts straight here.
>
> This event was 100% legal. They had every permit the city told them they
> needed. They had a 2 MILLION DOLLAR insurance policy for the event. They
> had liscenced security guards at the gates confiscating any alcohol or
> drugs found upon entry (yes, they searched every car on the way in). Oh,
> I suppose I should mention that they arrested all the security guards
> for possession.
>
> Oh another interesting fact.. the police did not have a warrant. The
> owner of the land already has a lawsuit against the city for something
> similar. A few months ago, she rented her land for a party and the
> police raided that as well. And catch this, the police forced her to
> LEAVE HER OWN PERSONAL PROPERTY. That's right. They didnt arrest her,
> but made her leave her own property!!!
>
> Don't get it twisted, this is all going down in probably THE most
> conservative state in the USA. And this is scary.. a gross violation of
> our civil liberties. The police wanted this party shut down, so they
> made it happen. Even though everything about this event was legal. The
> promoters spent over $ 20,000 on this show and did everything they had
> to to make it legit, only to have it taken away from them by a group of
> radical neo-con's with an agenda.
>
> This was one of the scariest things I have ever witnessed in person. I
> can't even begin to describe how surreal it was. Helicopters, assault
> rifles, tear gas, camoflauge-wearing soldiers.... why? Was that really
> necessary?
>
> This needs to be big news across the USofA. At least in our music scene
> (edm as a whole)... this could happen to any of us at any time. When
> we're losing the right to gather peacefully, we're also letting the
> police set a standard of what we can get away with. And I think that's
> BULLSHIT!
>
> The system fucked up last night... They broke up a party that was 100%
> legal and they physically hurt a lot of people there at the same time.
> The promoters already have 6 lawsuits ready to file with their lawyers
> and the ACLU is already involved.
>
> I'm sure some pictures (and hopefully some video) will surface soon.
> I'll make sure to post them up here on 404, so you can see the Police
> State of America at work.
>
> p.s. - there are more stories of police brutality that i'll post up
> later. gotta hit the airport soon. can't wait to get the fuck out of
> this shit hole state.
>
> www.buzzlife.com/forums/showthread.php
> < http://www.buzzlife.com/forums/showthread.php?t=62975 >
>
> SHERIFF'S STATEMENT: www.utahcountyonline.org/News/...NewsDetails.asp
> < http://www.utahcountyonline.org/News/DeptNewsDetails.asp?ID=17759&WN_System=SHERIFF>
>
> VIDEO: homepage.mac.com/apexgrin/...Sharing2.html
>
>
>
>
> _"No sage or savior has even endorsed greed and gluttony as a path
> toward social justice or personal fulfillment. These sane and
> enlightened people come to us from all cultures and all eras, sometimes
> knowing of each other but more often not. Socrates and Jesus, Lao Tzu
> and Tolstoi, Gandhi and Martin Buber -- no one can find in their lives
> and words a jot of support for a political and economic regime that
> encourages the acquisition of wealth far beyond what is needed for the
> necessaries -- or even the restorative pleasures -- of life while
> consigning the masses to live and work in squalor."
> -Stephen J. Fortunato, Associate Justice, Rhode Island Supreme Court.
>
> "Music is prophecy, its style and economic organization are ahead of the
> rest of society. It makes audible the new world that will gradually
> become visible."
> -Jacques Attali in his seminal text "Noise"

Saturday, August 20, 2005

Gmail - [gr gruppe]: Hoist One for HST @ approx 9:30ish pm, eastern time

from an international listserv that I'm on.

Subject: RG: Hoist One for HST

Tonight at sunset/moonrise, (around 7:30 MDT),
the ashes of Hunter S. Thompson will be fired from a cannon,
just the way he wanted.

I suggest that tonight, at around that same time (6:30-ish PDT,
all you in other TZs, figure it out), all of us who loved and
admired him should partake of something he would have enjoyed,
in his honor.

We'll miss you, Hunter.
We need your ilk now more than ever.


xxxxxxxxxxxxx

huh, mebbe i can rustle me up some sparklers or bottle rockets out here on our spread, don't think the nieghbors will mind that, much, not after i cleared away all that bush brush.

:D

"..... and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life....."

etc, etc, etc, and shit, bitch.


biff!
bang!
kerpow!


Neil Young's "Ohio" remixed for 2005

nope, nobody's done it yet, and I'd really like to, tho' given my limited musical skillz, i'd need help in pulling this off so if anyone here can do this sort of thing, or knows someone that can it'd be great if they can send them my way.

i'm torn between doing it jungel\dNb or techno stylee, but like i said i don't have the musical skillz, past thinking this part of it up.

lyrically, it's not that hard to make current, only need to change 'Nixon' to 'Bush's' and instead of '4' dead in ohio, that can be either 14 or 21,or you can use both those numbers to reflect the loss of Marine life that occured this month in Baghdad.

here's what the edits look like in the original song.


Tin soldiers and Bush's coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Fourteen dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Tin soldiers and Bush's coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Twenty-one dead in Ohio.


--
Current Mood: somber
Current Music: Neil Young's Ohio" duh

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Now This Is What I Call Good Start For A K Street Krook












Ahh, to have been a fly on the wall in Central Booking, can't you just imagine the mental imagery of how that went down:

"Mr. Abramoff, I need you assume the position sir.

Grab a hold of your ankles, lift up your nut-sack now, and cough 2 times for me, Mr. Abramoff, sir."

Sunday, August 14, 2005

Bethesda, MD August 14th, 2005












Ah ha you dumb

S.tupid
U.gly
V.ehicle

driving phlucks!

How you like me now, huh?

Didn't you know that

S.tupid
U.gly
V.ehicles

are a tax on morons?

Next time you want to pitch a bitch about high gas prices at the pump pump pump, make sure you have
a good look at the Chump in the mirror who bought that S.tupid U.gly V.ehicle in the first fucking place.

Thank you, please drive through, twice, you bitches.

Saturday, August 13, 2005

off hiatus

Well well, here we are less than one month away from the 4th Anniversary of September 11th, gasoline nationwide is fast approaching the $3 a gallon mark at the pumps, and Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closed yesterday at 10,600 and change.

On the morning of September 11th, 2001 the DJIA, as noted in a previous post here, was at 9,604.

In other words, in the 4 years since 9/11, the Stock Market has risen less than a thousand points.

2.5% a year for four years running when we should something closer to 10% isn't the summer doldrums, it's a long term trend that's nobody's friend. Next time someone tells you how well the economy is doing run these numbers by them and ask them what they make of that.

Add to that the rumblings from the housing market that's threatening to blow and the absolute drubbing the dollar is taking from the euro and what we may see in the short term is a confluence of events that bring along a Perfect Financial Shit Storm to these parts.

I was watching Neil Cavuto on FAUX New yesterday afternoon and they ran a clip of a lady motorist complaining that she was going to walk more now that gas is at $3 a gallon.

They kinda laughed at her, and then later in the show, during a movie review, they openly mocked her on live national TV by saying that the movie that they were reviewing was so good that you had to 'hurry up and walk to go see it.'

These FUX guys are such first class shit-hells, aren't they? Personally, I hope they continue to make snide little comments like that so that their core audience gets to get a really good look at what these whores really think of them.

Friday, January 21, 2005

Mosh Inaug Day

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America
And to the Republic for which it stands
One nation under God
Indivisible with liberty and justice for all...
It feels so good to be back..

I scrutinize every word, memorize every line
I spit it once, refuel, re-energize and rewind
I give sight to the blind, my insight through the mind
I exercise my right to express when I feel it's time
It's just all in your mind, what you interpret it as
I say to fight, you take it as I'mma whip someone's ass
If you don't understand, don't even bother to ask
A father who has grown up with a fatherless past
Who has blown up now to rap phenomenon that has
Or at least shows no difficulty multi-task
And in juggling both perhaps mastered his craft
Slash entrepreneur who has helped launch a few more rap acts
Who's had a few obstacles thrown his way through the last half
Of his career typical manure moving past that
Mr. kisses ass crack, he's a class act
Rubber band man, yea he just snaps back

[Chorus:]
Come along follow me as I lead through the darkness
As I provide just enough spark that we need to proceed
Carry on, give me hope, give me strength
Come with me and I won't steer you wrong
Put your faith and your trust as I guide us through the fog
To the light at the end of the tunnel
We gonna fight, we gonna charge, we gonna stomp, we gonna march
Through the swamp, we gonna mosh through the marsh
Take us right through the doors (c'mon)

All the people up top on the side and the middle
Come together lets all bomb and swamp just a little
Just let it gradually build from the front to the back
All you can see is a sea of people some white and some black
Don't matter what color, all that matters we gathered together
To celebrate for the same cause don't matter the weather
If it rains let it rain, yea the wetter the better
They ain't gonna stop us they can't, we stronger now more than ever
They tell us no we say yea, they tell us stop we say go
Rebel with a rebel yell, raise hell we gonna let em know
Stomp, push, shove, mush, Fuck Bush, until they bring our troops home (c'mon)

[Chorus]

Imagine it pouring, it's raining down on us
Mosh pits outside the oval office
Someone's tryina tell us something,
Maybe this is God just sayin' we're responsible
For this monster, this coward,
That we have empowered
This is Bin Laden, look at his head noddin'
How could we allow something like this without pumping our fists
Now this is our final hour
Let me be the voice in your strength and your choice
Let me simplify the rhyme just to amplify the noise
Try to amplify the times it, and multiply by six...
Teen million people, Are equal at this high pitch
Maybe we can reach alqueda through my speech
Let the president answer a higher anarchy
Strap him with an Ak-47, let him go, fight his own war
Let him impress daddy that way
No more blood for oil, we got our own battles to fight on our own soil
No more psychological warfare, to trick us to thinking that we ain't loyal
If we don't serve our own country, we're patronizing a hero
Look in his eyes its all lies
The stars and stripes, they've been swiped, washed out and wiped
And replaced with his own face, Mosh now or die
If I get sniped tonight you know why,
Cause I told you to fight.

[Chorus]

And as we proceed,
To Mosh through this desert storm,
In these closing statements, if they should argue
Let us beg to differ
As we set aside our differences
And assemble our own army
To disarm this Weapon of Mass Destruction
That we call our President, for the present
And Mosh for the future of our next generation
To speak and be heard
Mr. President, Mr. Senator
Do you guy's hear us...hear us...[laughing] (Hailie)

Monday, October 18, 2004

Friday, October 15, 2004

Re: Jude Law / Ashlee Simpson > October 23rd

Re: Jude Law / Ashlee Simpson > October 23rd

"I feel so bad my band started playing the wrong song and I didn't know what to do so I thought I'd do a hoe-down- I'm sorry."

synchbuster writing about the Saturday Night Live Ashlee Simpson Emperor Has No Clothes debacle that went down last night spoke for a lot of people out there in music land when they said:

"All I know is. I love that this happened. I hope people continue talking about it. And I hope the discussion widens to encompass the phoniness of this genre of music in general. "

And I can see that too, but I'm also thinking, why stop there?

I mean wow, isn't this just like the posturing of this BuschCo Administration?

Something bad happens, they just elide over it like it wasn't even there


Sunday, July 18, 2004

Site Overhauled

Site reformat here at APWIH has gone swimmingly well.
I *am* going to miss the graphic flames I had on the sidebars, in the previous, beta version, but they ran into the default 'blogspot' ad banner that runs across all these blogs by default, and gave the page a really dated, busy look.
Not to mention cheesy.
Looks like I have no excuse not to post here more frequently, especially since I added this BlogThis! button to my mozilla/netscape browser.
Be nice if Google came out with a Google Toolbar button for Linux browsers as well, since both the tinyurl and now blogthis! buttons werk with this browser.

How hard can that possibly be?


UPDATE: 11/14/06: Wow, it's been over two years that I've let slide by without doing much with this site. Considering that I've got just as much to say as anyone else and may have insights that others may not have on the Issues Of The Day, it's kind of retarded on my end to have done this. In light of that, A Pen Warmed In Hell has just gone through another revamp, with a cleaner, less cluttered look that will hopefully be more attractive and accessible to the world at large. I built it, now let's see if they'll come.

Monday, April 26, 2004

The war on the War on Drugs full transcript JACK COLE, RADIO ONE INTERVIEW:

Hamish: Now,12 years as an undercover narcotics dealer, you must have seen some interesting things:

Cole: "A few. Yes. I saw a lot of horrible things, and most of the horrible things were the things we were doing to young people by destroying their lives in this War on Drugs."

Hamish: What sort of things did you see that you thought the police, or the War on Drugs, were responsible for?

Cole: "Well, the war on drugs was really responsible for about 99% of all the things that we attribute to the, quote, 'drug problem.' Which truly should be attributed to drug prohibition because it is prohibition that causes the sale of drugs to become an underground market and the fact that it's illegal artificially inflates the values of these virtually products by up to 17,000 percent increase between where they grown, mainly, in third world countries, like as you know, Afghanistan, Colombia, and where they're sold in Los Angeles, or New York City, or maybe right here in Dunedin. 17,000 percent increase - that creates an obscene profit motive, making many people willing to kill each other in the streets in order to control their little end of the market."

Hamish: So I guess you'd be of the opinion that the problems caused by the government's stance on drugs far outweigh the problems caused by drugs on the individuals themselves?

Cole: "Absolutely. Beyond any doubt. And we don't suggest that drugs are a great thing. At LEAP we think drugs are a poor choice - we just don't think people should be arrested for making that choice. You're not arrested for making a choice of drinking alcohol, or smoking tobacco, and those are the two worst drugs known to human beings. In my country, in the United States, tobacco kills 430,000 people every year. Alcohol kills another 110,000 - I'm not talking about people who get drunk and run off the road and kill themselves; I'm talking about just ingesting that, because it is a poison and it will get you, All the illegal drugs combined in the United States kill less than 12,000 people. So 12,000 is a lot of people, but I would suggest that any drug warrior who says that we have to continue spending 69 billion dollars - which is what we spend every year to fight the war on drugs in the United States - 69 billion dollars in order to destroy the lives of the 1.6 million people we arrest for non-violent drug violations every year, in order to somehow save 12,000 lives, when we're killing 540,000 with these other two legal drugs, they're being just slightly disingenuous."

Hamish: That's true. While you were in the New Jersey police force, were you committed to the cause? Did you completely believe in what you were doing?

Cole: "Well not for the whole time, but I certainly did when I joined the narcotic unit. I spent 14, almost 14 years actually, in narcotics and 12 of it actually working narcotics - the last two, as you just mentioned, I was working terrorists - but when I started I was absolutely convinced that drugs were the scourge of the earth. I mean, I grew up in looking at things like the old movie that everybody laughs at today, thank goodness, Reefer Madness, and Man With the Golden Arm, and all these things, and I actually believed that these were terrible drugs. I thought I didn't have drug problems, I grew up in Kansas in the middle of America, and I thought we don't have any drug problems out there. The people with drug problems are the people who might smoke a joint on a Friday night. But looking back I had major drug problems: I used to get falling down drunk on alcohol about once a week when I was 14 with all my mates out there. And I smoke two packs of cigarettes every day for 15 years - so I had major drug problems. I just didn't realise that these things were drugs, you know."

Hamish: True. So what did see during that working as a narcotics officer, or what was it that changed your mind. What was it that changed your mind, changed your attitudes toward drugs, or at least the drug laws, the way they're enforced?

Cole: "You mean, was there an epiphany?"

Hamish: Yeah, was there an epiphany, were there any specific incidents?

Cole: "Well, there really was an epiphany. There were several things: the first thing that really threw me was about three years into working undercover, working with these folks, it suddenly occurred to me that I like a lot of the people I was working on, better than the people I was working for. They seemed to be a kinder, gentler group of folks that weren't nearly as likely to stab me in the back. And I came to understand that this is not a war on drugs - it's a war on people. In the United States over 87 million people above the age of 12 have used an illegal drug - that means that this is literally a war on people. It's a war on our children, a war on our parents, a war on ourselves."

Hamish: And it's not just a war on people as well, according to you, the problems in enforcing drugs means it can become a very racist issue.

Cole: "I think racism is what it turns on, really. Racism is what all the drug prohibition has been based on when it started, and I truly believe that's the reason it continues today. For instance, I understand you have a terrible problem with it in your country too, the Maoris are arrested about 5 times the rate the European-type folks here, well in my country, although a federal household survey that's done every year shows that 72% of all the people involved in drugs, whether it's a dealer, a user, or whatever, are white. Only 13.5% of them are black. But once you see the arrest statistics you suddenly see that 37% of all the people arrested for drug violations are black. 42% of all the people in federal prison for drug violations are black. 60% of all the people in state prisons for drug violations are black, causing the FBI to come out on their uniform crime reports last year with the statement that a young couple giving birth to a black male baby, today in the United States, has an expectation of one-in-three that that child will spend time in prison. One-in-three: just imagine that. If we only changed one word in that sentence - if we changed 'black male' to 'white male' - we would have ended the War on Drugs 30 years ago. Because we wouldn't have stood for it."

Hamish: That's very interesting. That's very true. How pervasive, then, is this anti-drug hegemony in the police force in the States. How strong is this vein of 'Drugs are the Demon'?

Cole: "Well that's a very good question. And it's a very hard thing to answer. When I speak one-on-one, when anyone at LEAP speaks one-on-one, to other police officers, the almost all agree with us that the War on Drugs is a terrible shame and a failure. But they're not likely to speak out publicly about it because it's the way they make their living. And LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, was created just about 18 months ago we went public with it, and we grew in that time from 5 founding members, of whom I'm one, to over a thousand members, with over 60 speakers living in six different countries. In the last year we gave over 500 hundred talks, and this coming year we expect closer to 2,000 talks, so we are getting the word out. And the interesting thing is, when we talk to people, when they actually hear about the horrors that have been created by this War on Drugs, they were never aware of it before. And I'm sure that we're carrying 80% of our audiences, that say well, this argument you have is so compelling, so logical, first off: why didn't I ever hear about it before, and of course the reason is because the drug warriors have had the bully pulpit (??) for the last 34 years of the drug war, but now we're out there, and as soon as they hear it they say it only makes sense to end this: let's end prohibition, let's legalise drugs, legalise them so they can be controlled and regulated, and kept out of the hands of our children. At least until our children old enough to make a rational decision, whether they want to use these things or not."

Hamish: That's some very interesting points you make there. You can't be very popular with the Bush administration.

Cole: "Ha ha, that's true."

Hamish: Do you face any pressures from those quarters?

Cole: "Not so far, because I don't think we're enough of a thorn in their side yet, but certainly as we grow we will. There's no doubt we will."

Hamish: Do you think that's a strong current to swim against - the propaganda that the Bush administration is putting out there?

Cole: "Well sure, and they have some rather strong allies: all the Drug Lords also feel that these laws should exist, because if we legalise drugs today, tomorrow the drug lords and the terrorists in this world would be out of business - they wouldn't make another penny on drugs. And when I say terrorists, I really mean terrorists. You know, Osama bin Laden made almost every penny that he ever got from selling heroin out of Afghanistan - mostly in the United States, a lot in Europe, and now coming down this way - it's true he was given 300 million dollars by daddy as an inheritance, which sounds like a lot to you. But think about someone fomenting wars in countries: 300 million dollars as you know won't even last a day. But if took that 300 million dollars 25 years ago, as he did, and invest it solely in heroin, you'd be worth hundreds of billions of dollars today, and very well capable of fomenting wars around the world."

Hamish: So you're definitely pushing regulation rather than prohibition, and when do you want to see this happen?

Cole: "Yes, and we're not just talking regulation: we like to say legalisation. And of course when the drug warriors talk about it, they say, 'Oh yeah, they want to legalise drugs so we can all go out and party. That's not the definition. The definition of legalisation is a process whereby you can control and regulate something. Right now we leave the regulation and control of drugs in the hands of all the gangsters and murderers and terrorists out there. And that's the wrong people to control drugs. And you were asking about when? Well, I would say sooner rather than later. But if we legalise drugs tomorrow, it would be too late as far as I'm concerned, because today we're going to destroy a lot more young lives by arresting people." INTERVIEW CONDUCTED AT CRITIC

Cole: "Let me explain to you how this all started. When I started working under cover it was the beginning of the war on drugs. The war on drugs was actually coined and created by Richard Nixon in 1968. It had nothing to do with the war and very little to do with drugs. The reason he started it was he wanted to run for President of the United States, and he wanted something that would get him votes. He knew if he was a strong anti-crime guy that would get him some votes but, boy, if he could be in charge of a war, you know, wow, and as we all know, it worked, he was elected. His first year in office he managed to get the US Congress to pass Bills that would give massive funding to any police department willing to hire officers to fight his war on drugs. And to give you a slight idea how massive these programmes were: we had a seven-man narcotic unit at New Jersey State police, for as long as I was in there up until then, it had always been perfectly adequate for the job we needed to do. Then overnight in October 1970, we went from a seven-man unit to a 76 person bureau - all paid for by federal tax dollars, not a penny came out of the state or local government. This was a major windfall for police administrators, and this was replicated across the entire United States. It was a huge huge amount of money. And I became an undercover agent that time. I was one of 76 people brought in for that - they just designated one-third of us undercover, I happened to fall in that one-third, and that's where I spend the next fourteen years of my life. When we went out and hit the streets we were supposed to hit drug dealers, and that was not an easy job in 1970, for a couple of reasons. For the first reason, we didn't really have much of a drug problem at all in the United States, in 1970. And what little drug problem we did have was mainly soft drugs: drugs like marijuana, hashish, some LSD, psilocybin mushroom type things. Hard drugs like methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin were virtually unheard of back then. Certainly unheard of compared to what they are today. So when we went out there to arrest these folks, we didn't know exactly how to do it, we had never fought a war on drugs before, our bosses knew nothing about how to fight a war on drugs - but they did know one thing: they knew how to keep this federal cash cow being milked in a personal barnyard. And they had to keep that federal money coming in because they had just hired 76 troopers to replace us on the road when they brought us in. And they had to keep that money coming because they had to pay their salary every year from then on. So how do you do that when you really don't have much of a problem? And when I say it's not much of a problem, statistically the likelihood of anyone in the United States dying as a result of the drug culture in 1970 was less than the likelihood of them falling down the steps in their own house and killing themselves. It was less than the likelihood of them choking to death at their own dinner table, on their own food. And as far as I know we haven't started a war yet on stairways or food. But we did start a war on drugs. And because we couldn't find drug dealers, because they weren't on every street corner like they are now, and in every school like they are now, they sent undercover people like me to infiltrate small friendship groups of young people. Young people in college or high-school or in-between. Maybe ten or fifteen kids. And on a Friday night one of those kids might say, "Hey, do you wanna get high? School's out, we're off to work" - very similar to what the kids said in my friendship group when I was young, only it was alcohol we were getting high on. And if anybody said yes, then one of these young people would say, "Well I've got access to the family car, I can make the ride into the city," because back then you had to drive all the way to New York city [from NJ] to get your drugs, because they weren't easily obtained. And that person would go around and take orders from all these friends - maybe someone would want two drugs, someone would want a hit of acid, that's the level of drugs we're talking about. They'd drive in and they'd pick it up, then they'd come back and they'd hand it out to the folks that had done it. One night it would person A would do it, the next night person B, next person C would have access to a car - I'd stay until I got 'em all. Because I would be one of those friends and they'd be picking up a couple of hits of acid, or a joint or something for me. And that wasn't the only way you could get hit. You didn't even have to have money exchange hands at all. Even though they weren't making the money - they were just making the run into town; they probably didn't even get paid for their gas. But as you know, drug use is a very social thing, certainly soft drugs - sit around and pass the joint around, take two tokes and hand it to the next person - well, if I happened to be the next person, I would pretend to take a toke on a joint and knock the flame off the end of it and put the rest in my pocket, and that night I'd submit it as evidence, as evidence that the person that handed it to me had committed a felony, and had become a drug dealer. Because the way that all the laws are written, they say that it is illegal to distribute a controlled dangerous substance, then gives the list of the substances. Doesn't say anything in there about getting money for it - just the mere handing from one person to the other gets the job done. So these people weren't drug dealers; these were drug users: people who were just accommodating friends and stuff. But when we'd get maybe 85 or 90 of them together that we'd got some drugs off of, we'd swoop into their neighbourhoods or cities in 5 o'clock in the morning, where 350 cops kick their doors down, drag them out in chains, and when we released it to the media, these were big-time drug dealers. So by the end of the year we had all kinds of drug dealers, as far as the media was concerned. And then that wasn't enough. We also lied about the amounts of drugs we were seizing, because back then hard drugs were almost unheard of. A decent seizure for a local or state police officer hitting a house might be one ounce of cocaine. Or one-quarter of an ounce of heroin, or methamphetamine. But when we'd go in, if we'd seized an ounce we'd look around and see if there was any cutting agent - milk sugar, lactose - and if we found any, say four pounds of lactose and one ounce of cocaine, somewhere between where we'd seized the drugs and the state lab, that would all magically become cocaine, which is very easy: you just accidentally drop the small package in the big one and shake it once. As far as the state's concerned it's all cocaine."

Hamish: Does this sort of thing still happen?

Cole: "No, it doesn't still happen because we didn't have to lie about it after a while. The drug 'problem', in quotes, took legs of its own and began to run away from even the lives of the drug lords. But that wasn't even enough. Then we lied about the values of these now-inflated weights of drugs, and the way we did that is in 1970/71, when I'd buy coke on the streets in ounce packages, I'd pay $1,500 an ounce for it. When I could get it. But if we seized an ounce we'd never tell the media that. We would to the media, 'Today we an ounce of cocaine with,' and you've probably heard this term before, 'with an estimated street value of $20,000.' Just ratchet up the price a little bit - who's to question? And if they do question, who are they going to go to ask those questions? Us. And we could always justify it in some way. And it made our bosses happy and that federal money kept flowing, because it was like the War on Drugs was an absolute necessity."

Hamish: Did it ever rack on your conscience doing that sort of thing?

Cole: "Well, when I say 'we', I'm not speaking about me personally, I'm speaking about everybody out there doing this - I wouldn't do those things. And it bothered me a lot to see other people doing it. You're darn right it did. But that's what was going on overall. And, you know there's a lot of paradoxes to the War on the Drugs, and just as you say, do we still do that? No, I don't think we do, because first paradox I realised was that we didn't have to lie about this very long. Somewhere near the end of the first year, as I say, the drug problem got legs of its own, began out-running even the lives of the drug warriors, began expanding exponentially, nobody could even get a handle on it. And I personally, and everybody at LEAP thinks that law enforcement bears a great deal of responsibility for what happened. For accepting a war on drugs in the first place, when it was such a low priority item as far as police should have been concerned. But more importantly for inflating the number of dealers out there, the weights of the drugs that we were getting, the values of those drugs - I'm sure that there was a lot of poor people caught in the ghettos of our centre cities, huge cities, with no hope for the future, no way out of those ghettos, no jobs, no education, who looked around and said, 'Hey, everybody's making a fortune at this. Why not me? Everybody's doing it.' So by the end of the first year we had lots of volunteers. And the drug problem just took off."

Hamish: Did you find it scary being undercover at all? Perhaps not in those early years, when drug use wasn't so prevalent,

Cole: "In my earlier years was when I did find it scary; it's when everybody finds it scary. When you first go out there, and we had been trained that drug users were some kind of demons: I almost horns must be growing out of their heads, you know. They were the Other - we were the good guys, the were the Other somehow. And we'd always been told that's someone's who high on any of these hard drugs would just as soon kill you as look at you - you know, they'll do anything to get their fix, and all these myths. By the time I'd been in it for a few years, I learned that the people I was working on were just like me - they were just people. The only difference was they wanted to put something in their body that I didn't want to put in mine. But there were good ones and bad ones and in-between ones. That's why I say it's a war on people, not a war on drugs. And actually the last five years I worked undercover I even quit carrying a gun because I just thought it was more problems than it was worth, and I thought I could talk my way out of anything. I just didn't see that there was hardly any danger at all out there for a police officer working undercover. I learnt in the first place that somebody would have to be insane to be a drug dealer and find out that the person trying to buy from them is a cop and cause them any harm at all, because if you found that out before you made the sale, all you want to do is get away from there - you don't want to hurt the cop, because if you hurt the cop there's going to be thousands of cops after you. And if you just walk away, you're home free."

Hamish: Did you ever have a time when people suspected you're up to something as an undercover cop?

Cole: "Never. Never was I made from someone being suspicious of me. Never happened in fourteen years."

Hamish: What are some of the uglier things you've seen during your time, as an undercover agent?

Cole: "Well I think the really ugly things that bear on my mind are the things that the police did. Because we were trained to fight a war on drugs - because of that metaphor - we felt like we had to have an enemy, and the enemy when you're trying to fight a war becomes the citizens of your country. And when you're fighting a war that's a very very terrible metaphor for policing in a democratic society, because when you're fighting a war it's no holds barred. And the holds that we didn't have to barred anymore were the holds on our constitutional rights, which we would just stomp on. Our fourth amendment right in the United States against illegal search and seizure. We would illegally search people all the time, because we felt like 'we're fighting a war, we're the good guys, and no matter how we get these guys, it's worthwhile because we're taking them off the streets and that's our job.' So that's why so many get involved in not telling the truth on the stand when they're testifying about drug cases. And you almost never find that in other cases. All these violations come from drug cases. For instance, you can read a whole lot of newspapers, see a whole lot of newscasts and never hear anything about anybody violating someone's rights in say a murder investigation, or say a rape investigation, but when it's drugs it's different, because we're fighting a war on drugs. Because we were fighting a war the police officers thought that the courts weren't doing their jobs correctly - they used to talk about revolving door justice - you know, in and out so quick - and they'd complain in my country that the criminals that they'd just arrested for a drug violation were back on the street before they could finish typing up the report - which was probably true, in many cases. But in the United States we have the right to bail: if you make bail, you get out. So what's the matter with that? It doesn't mean you're released; it just means you're out until your court case comes up. But the police couldn't see it that way, they said they were getting out on the streets and right back to dealing. So they started applying what they called 'street justice'. And street justice meant doing any despicable thing you could to these people. The worse the better, because it was just one more reason that they wouldn't in the future dare to try using drugs again. So when we'd go in, for instance, to search a house, early on, when we started this war on drugs, we'd go in to execute a search warrant. We'd go in the house, we'd kick down all the doors, always. Whether they needed be or not, you know, you just kick them in, it's just part of the street justice - they had to repair their doors. Go inside to search the house, arrest everybody in the house, turn over drawers and the beds and just break things, just as part of the search, just automatically. And it's always thought of as street justice. And then if you arrested everyone in the house because you found some drugs there, when we brought them out in chains and put them in the police cars and drove off, we just left that shattered door wide open, so anybody could go and steal anything they wanted. We didn't care: that's all the more reason that they'll never do this again."

Hamish: Did that happen? Did people go into those places?

Cole: "Oh, absolutely it happened. Certainly. And who could they go to to complain? The police? Hardly. So those were some things I felt were horrible. Horrible. We'd hit houses - and of course, mainly you're hitting the house at 5 o'clock in the morning so you're guaranteed that the people are there asleep. You go in to get some guy that's sold some drugs to someone, and the police would hit the house, kick down the door, go in, and maybe the guy that sold it is the son of the parents who live in the house. But when we went in the house, you know, we'd grab him, we'd grab everyone; everyone's down on the floor and they're handcuffed at first, until you get a chance to search the house, and secure it so nobody can get to guns and everything. Some times these people's mother would be naked in there. It didn't matter. Down on the floor and handcuffed. Didn't give them a chance to dress, or do anything. Just because with this kind of embarrassment, maybe they'd really keep their son from using these drugs again. So it was all these terrible things."

Hamish: Was there every any physical abuse?

Cole: "Oh, sure. There was always physical abuse. Tremendous physical abuse. People get slapped around all the time. And worse. About any degrading thing you can think of I saw occur out there. And it was terrible. Terrible, terrible." So that is what comes first in my mind when I think of bad things I saw out there. I saw other things out there that some of the cops said, 'Oh, this is the worse thing ever!'. And this went toward fighting the war on drugs. Occasionally we'd got in to search a house - or to search a person, maybe they're out bringing - a man's wife or girlfriend might be coming to the prison to visit, and be trying to smuggle in drugs to the guy. And when we find the drugs - and the drugs might be in the diaper of the baby that she has with her, hoping that they won't look there, and when the police find this, it's not, 'Well, she tried to smuggle drugs in the diaper of a baby, it didn't work,' it's, somehow the fact that it was in this diaper of the baby was like, 'She's chancing poisoning the baby with the drug,' which is just baloney. You know, the drugs were in a plastic envelope, it's not going to hurt the baby - but it's always that those people were demonised for whatever they did. Demonised. And here, I can remember that was a big one, and after a couple of those that was always the thing that would be cited, 'These people will even use their babies to smuggle drugs,' and all this. Well, yeah, they did, but didn't hurt the baby."

Hamish: At the moment, in Dunedin - do you know about BZP? These party pills, they're basically caffeine pills,

Cole: "You know, you can overdose on coffee - if you sat down and drank 18 cups of coffee, you'd be up for a week, and you'd feel like hell. Especially if you were doing it with alcohol. Don't we learn something from that? You don't do it anymore."

Hamish: One of the things that was highly amusing for Critic was that immediately after these five kids had visited the hospital, the detective at the Dunedin central police station came out in public saying these drugs should be banned, and the Otago Daily Times, which is an ultra-conservative, it's dubious as to whether it's actually news reporting coverage, had headline banner saying "Police urge ban on party pills," and a little headline above it saying "Dangerous Drugs on Dunedin's Streets" about these caffeine pills. Is this a predictable response?

Cole: "Absolutely predictable. And what I would say is, we brought three speakers from LEAP here to talk all over your country. We didn't bring them in to try to tell you how to run your business. You've got your own country, your own laws, you should do whatever you want to do - but we did come here to warn you something: to warn you, 'Don't follow us down this path of prohibition and zero tolerance added to it, because this is what you get. And this is the path to destruction, it's the path to disaster - we've been doing it for 34 years. In that 34 years we've spent half a trillion dollars on the War on Drugs. Every year no we're spending 69 billion more to fight this war. Every year we arrest 1.6 million people - mostly young people - for non-violent drug offences. The courts are absolutely clogged with all these cases - so clogged that some civil cases languish in the courts for 15 years before they can even get heard. Our prison system has quadrupled in the last 20 years, making building prisons in the United States the fastest growing industry. There's 2.2 million prisoners in the United States today. And growing. More per capita than any country in the world. And to put that in context for you, the United States has 4.6% of the population of the whole world; we have 22.5% of the world's prisoners. Right there in that land that we call 'the Land of Freedom'. Now there's something wrong with that picture to me. And the horror of it is with all these lives we're destroying every year, and all this money so ill-spent, today drugs are cheaper, they're more potent, and they're far easier to get than they were 34 years ago when I started buying them on the streets. Now, to me that is the very essence of failed public policy. When something's failed that long and that miserably, it's time to look for some alternative. And that's why we at LEAP say the alternative is 'end the War on Drugs, end drug prohibition.' Just like we in the United States ended alcohol prohibition in 1933. I mean, we've done all this once, we should have learned something. We ended alcohol prohibition in 1933, why? Because during alcohol prohibition we had the highest murder rate in the history of the United States; the highest rate of corruption of public officials in the history of the United States; and we ended it, and the year we ended it both those things fell right down to almost nothing, and they stayed down there until 1968 when we declared war on drugs. And with the new prohibition we've gone way past most of those figures now, and it's just going to get worse."

Hamish: What's going to have to happen for this war on drugs to end? Would a change in the administration help things?

Cole: "Not much, no. It's not just the Bush administration. The Clinton administration made more stringent laws. Both sides, no matter who we put in there, just buys into the War on Drugs. No, what will make the change is an organisation like LEAP. We founded our organisation and modelled it on Vietnam Veterans Against the War. This was before your time, but we believed that those people had such unassailable credibility when it came to speaking out against that horrible war, because they've been there done that: 'It's wrong and we've got to get out.' And how do you argue with someone that's been there and done that? And we feel we have exactly the same credibility when we speak out against the War on Drugs. And that's why all the speakers in LEAP, and board members, have to be current or former drug warriors, either police, judges, prosecutors - we even have former DEA agents who are speakers for us. So there's a lot of folks out there that understand this, and it's growing everyday. And this is what will make the change because as we speak to people, publicly, there's so many people out there that are on our side: they don't even know that they're on our side, until they hear what is actually happening with the War on Drugs. They hear what kind of horrors we've really created, and they say, 'This is so logical, this is so compelling an argument, naturally we have to end the drug prohibition, we have to legalise drugs. And when we say 'legalise drugs' we don't mean party, which is what the drug warriors would have you believe: we mean legalise it so that you can control it and regulate it and keep it out of the hands of our children."

26/04/2004
Hamish McKenzie, Editor of Critic, Otago University's student magazine, in Dunedin, New Zealand

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