Juan Garcia Abrego, shown being escorted from the federal courthouse in 1996, was sentenced to 11 life terms, largely on the strength of testimony from a Mexican police commander who had been paid $1 million.    

I pity the poor suckers who unleashed their “Albums of the Decade” lists before midnight on January 1st, 2010, because they ALL MISSED THIS ONE! This album (the one that I linked with pink ink before the exclamation point and after the word “they”) did MORE than just convert me to Epistemological Luddism–it also reminded me of WHY I LISTEN TO MUSIC IN THE FIRST PLACE… I can’t remember why off the top of my head, though.

Now that we’ve all settled on naming the prior decade THE NOUGHTIES, I’m going to use that word as many times as possible so that when people Google search THE NOUGHTIES in hopes of finding timely information about settling on naming the prior decade THE NOUGHTIES, they will run into this post, which features 40 albums that I find to be brilliant from THE NOUGHTIES.

NOUGHTIES R US

If you happen to desire some armchair insight from TK on his thoughts and feelings about the musical trends from this decade, then please check out previous postings. However, if you’re looking for the streamlined, no-BS, hands-free, organic, low APR financing, straight-up, old-school list THEN YOU’VE COME TO THE RIGHT PLACE! Also, if you’re into capital letters, then you’ve come to the right place. Also, if you’re looking for someone to ridicule for placing a corporate handjob of an album near the top of his or her (in this case, his) list, then you’ve come to the right place. Also, if you love the word ALSO, then you’ve come the right place. Also, if you’ve come to the right place, then you’ve come to the right place.

Thanks for reading!

TK’s Top 40 Albums of THE NOUGHTIES

40. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
39. Johann Johannsson – Fordlandia
38. TV on the Radio – Dear Science
37. Murder by Death – Like the Exorcist but More Breakdancing
36. The Antlers – Hospice
35. LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver
34. The Bad Plus – Prog
33. Silversun Pickups – Swoon
32. DJ Tiesto – Parade of the Athletes
31. Radiohead – Hail to the Thief
30. Liars – Drum’s Not Dead
29. Sigur Ros – Takk
28. Fuck Buttons – Tarot Sport
27. Doves – Some Cities
26. Broken Social Scene – You Forget it in People
25. Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
24. Radiohead – In Rainbows
23. Broken Social Scene – s/t
22. The National – Boxer
21. Bill Callahan – Sometimes I Wish I Were an Eagle
20. Devendra Banhart – Rejoicing in the Hands
19. The Decemberists – The Crane Wife
18. Jose Gonzalez – Veneer
17. Battles – Mirrored
16. Fleet Foxes – s/t
15. The Strokes – Is This It?
14. M83 – Saturdays=Youth
13. Sufjan Stevens – Come on Feel the Illinoise!
12. The Knife – Silent Shout
11. Tallest Man on Earth – Shallow Grave

10. Iron & Wine – Our Endless Numbered Days
9. The War on Drugs – Wagonwheel Blues
8. Panda Bear – Person Pitch
7. Old Crow Medicine Show – O.C.M.S.
6. LCD Soundsystem – 45:33
5. Brian Wilson – Smile
4. Joanna Newsom – Ys
3. Arcade Fire – Funeral
2. Sigur Ros – ( )
1. Radiohead – Kid A

What’s your list? Drop some comments!

Meanwhile, feel free to mock me for putting an Olympics-inspired trance album right next to Radiohead.

Professor Peter Dale Scott / Global Research – January 1, 2010

The presidential electoral campaign of Barack Obama in 2008, it was thought, “changed the political debate in a party and a country that desperately needed to take a new direction.”[1] Like most preceding presidential winners dating back at least to John F. Kennedy, what moved voters of all descriptions to back Obama was the hope he offered of significant change. Yet within a year Obama has taken decisive steps, not just to continue America’s engagement in Bush’s Afghan War, but significantly to enlarge it into Pakistan. If this was change of a sort, it was a change that few voters desired.

Those of us convinced that a war machine prevails in Washington were not surprised. The situation was similar to the disappointment experienced with Jimmy Carter: Carter was elected in 1976 with a promise to cut the defense budget. Instead, he initiated both an expansion of the defense budget and also an expansion of U.S. influence into the Indian Ocean.[2]

As I wrote in The Road to 9/11, after Carter’s election:

It appeared on the surface that with the blessing of David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission, the traditional U.S. search for unilateral domination would be abandoned. But… the 1970s were a period in which a major “intellectual counterrevolution” was mustered, to mobilize conservative opinion with the aid of vast amounts of money… By the time SALT II was signed in 1979, Carter had consented to significant new weapons programs and arms budget increases (reversing his campaign pledge).[3]

I noted further that the complex strategy for reversing Carter’s promises was revived for a new mobilization in the 1990s during the Clinton presidency, in which a commission headed by Donald Rumsfeld was prominent.[4]

The Vietnam War as a Template for Afghanistan

It is as if Washington had emerged with only one objective from America’s failure in Vietnam: the urge to do it again and get it right. But the principal obstacle to victory in Afghanistan is the same as in Vietnam: the lack of a viable government to defend. The importance of this similarity has been stressed by Thomas H. Johnson, coordinator of anthropological research studies at the Naval Postgraduate School, and his co-author Chris Mason. In their memorable phrase, “the Vietnam War is less a metaphor for the conflict in Afghanistan than it is a template:”

It is an oft-cited maxim that in all the conflicts of the past century, the United States has refought its last war. A number of analysts and journalists have mentioned the war in Vietnam recently in connection with Afghanistan. Perhaps fearful of taking this analogy too far, most have backed away from it. They should not—the Vietnam War is less a metaphor for the conflict in Afghanistan than it is a template. For eight years, the United States has engaged in an almost exact political and military reenactment of the Vietnam War, and the lack of self-awareness of the repetition of events 50 years ago is deeply disturbing.[5]

Many of the common features of an unpopular corrupted government have been well summarized by Johnson and Mason. In their words, quoting Jeffrey Record, “the fundamental political obstacle to an enduring American success in Vietnam [was] a politically illegitimate, militarily feckless, and thoroughly corrupted South Vietnamese client regime.” Substitute the word “Afghanistan” for the words “South Vietnam” in these quotations and the descriptions apply precisely to today’s government in Kabul. Like Afghanistan, South Vietnam at the national level was a massively corrupt collection of self-interested warlords, many of them deeply implicated in the profitable opium trade, with almost nonexistent legitimacy outside the capital city. The purely military gains achieved at such terrible cost in our nation’s blood and treasure in Vietnam never came close to exhausting the enemy’s manpower pool or his will to fight, and simply could not be sustained politically by a venal and incompetent set of dysfunctional state institutions where self-interest was the order of the day.[6]

If Johnson had written a little later, he might have added that a major CIA asset in Afghanistan was Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of President Hamid Karzai; and that Ahmed Wali Karzai was a major drug trafficker who used his private force to help arrange a flagrantly falsified election result.[7] This is a fairly exact description of Ngo dinh Nhu in Vietnam, President Ngo dinh Diem’s brother, an organizer of the Vietnamese drug traffic whose dreaded Can Lao secret police helped, among other things, to organize a falsified election result there.[8]

This pattern of a corrupt near relative, often involved in drugs, is a recurring feature of regimes installed or supported by U.S. influence. There were similar allegations about Chiang Kai-shek’s brother-in-law T.V. Soong, Mexican President Echevarría’s brother-in-law Rubén Zuno Arce, and the Shah of Iran’s sister. In the case of Ngo dinh Nhu, it was the absence of a popular base for his externally installed presidential brother that led to drug involvement, “to provide the necessary funding” for political repression.[9] This analogy to the Karzais is pertinent.

An additional similarity, not noted by Johnson, is that America initially engaged in Vietnam in support of an embattled and unpopular minority, the Roman Catholics who had thrived under the French. America has twice made the same mistake in Afghanistan. Initially, after the Russian invasion of 1980, the bulk of American aid went to Gulbeddin Hekmatyar, a leader both insignificant in and unpopular with the mujahedin resistance; the CIA is said to have supported Hekmatyar, who became a drug trafficker to compensate for his lack of a popular base, because he was the preferred client of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which distributed American and Saudi aid.

When America re-engaged in 2001, it was to support the Northern Alliance, a drug-trafficking Tajik-Uzbek minority coalition hateful to the Pashtun majority south of the Hindu Kush. Just as America’s initial commitment to the Catholic Diem family fatally alienated the Vietnamese countryside, so the American presence in Afghanistan is weakened by its initial dependence on the Tajiks of the minority Northern Alliance. (The Roman Catholic minority in Vietnam at least shared a language with the Buddhists in the countryside. The Tajiks speak Dari, a version of Persian unintelligible to the Pashtun majority.)

According to an important article by Gareth Porter…

The Tonka Report Editor’s Note: Incredible historical account! Keep reading, folks… – SJH

Link to entire article below…

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16713

CARTAGENA DE INDIES, Colombia — In May 2003 a leak from the Bush Treasury Department indicated that the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) was about to add to its extensive narcotics traffickers list. This time it would add someone in Colombia.

OFAC would be using one of the enlightened Republican Congress’s new drug war laws, the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act. I was pretty sure who the new addition would be. The word “kingpin” was a dead giveaway.

It had to be the guy who had attained high office; whose brother had organized 20 or more death squads and maintained a couple of them out at the family hacienda; whose cousin in the Colombian Congress was the mouthpiece for those death squads as well as a close friend and promoter of various well known narcotraficantes, including the legendary Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria; someone whose own father was wanted by the Colombian police and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for cocaine trafficking when he was killed in an abortive kidnap plot; and who himself was removed from his position as mayor of Medellín for having well-known ties to drug runners.

Who else could it be, but master criminal and El Presidente himself, Álvaro Uribe Vélez?

Imagine my surprise when it was announced the next day, that it was not Uribe after all, but the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC-EP: Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo) and 15 of their known or suspected leaders, even though I already knew they had to be a bad bunch of hombres. Five years before, in 1997, they were named a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. Department of State.

It couldn’t have been easy to make it to the top of two government lists at the same time (the terrorist list and the narcotraficantes list) and be the defining designees of a whole new hyphenated word, “Narco-terrorist”! That should keep them from gaining credibility with anyone with media access in the U.S.! I started wondering who these FARC guys were. Somebody needed to check them out, find out where they came from, and why.

See also:

New Year Greetings from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC)

The roots of FARC-EP

The current civil war in Colombia has been characterized by gross human rights violations, increasing dramatically over the past two decades. International human rights organizations have repeatedly singled out right-wing paramilitary groups (paracos) as being the principal perpetrators of human rights abuses.

The paracos are intertwined with the Colombian Armed Forces as they wage war against, not only the guerrillas, but anyone suspected of being a guerrilla sympathizer: union members, peasant organizers, human rights workers, and religious activists. Some paracos leaders have extended the parameters of the war against the guerrillas and their suspected fellow travelers to include drug addicts, alcoholics, prostitutes, petty criminals, and the homeless, in an attempt to “cleanse” Colombian society. Social cleansing is different from ethnic cleansing only in the presumed reasoning, it has the same results.

Over the years, several Colombian presidents have attempted to address the social, political, and economic injustices that are the principal causes of the conflict. However, these efforts have been repeatedly thwarted by the U.S. and its war on drugs, and by the Colombian political, economic, military elite, who are desperately trying to preserve a “democracy” that has disenfranchised much of the population.

News accounts often label the conflict a “35-year-old civil war,” counting its origin from the official formation of several guerrilla groups in mid-1960. However, the roots of Colombia’s largest guerrilla group, the FARC, date back to peasant armed self-defense movements formed between 1948 and 1958.

The National Front

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, Colombia’s Liberal and Conservative parties, whose influence reached from Bogotá to virtually every village in settled regions of the country, dominated politics. Ideological differences between these elites reverberated throughout society, often resulting in outbreaks of violence that repeatedly pitted loyal Liberal and Conservative factions, both peasant and elite, against each other.

In the late 1940s, dissident Liberal Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala emerged from the Liberal and communist-led agrarian and labor reform movements as the leading presidential candidate. On April 9, 1948, Gaitán was assassinated on a Bogotá street. The killing triggered a popular uprising by the Liberal lower classes that resulted in massive destruction and looting in the capital. This uprising, known as the Bogotazo, was the opening act of a 10 year period in Colombian history recalled as La Violencia.

Liberal peasant uprisings occurred throughout the country, pitting rural Liberals and Conservatives against each other. Fearing a peasant-led social rebellion, the elite Liberal leadership supported repression used by the Conservative government to quell the uprisings and preserve the elite oligarchy. But after two high-ranking Liberals were assassinated in 1949, the Liberals boycotted the 1950 presidential election, won uncontested by Conservative Laureano Eleuterio Gómez Castro.

Although rebellion had been effectively quelled in Bogotá, sporadic armed peasant uprisings continued in several rural departments. Gomez, who considered Liberal peasants kin to Communists, responded to these with violent repression. Many Liberal members of the national police force were dismissed and replaced with peasants from the Conservative Boyacá district of Chulavista. The chulavistas became infamous for their brutal tactics in repressing rebellious Liberals and communists.

In the early 1950s, the Gomez regime, supported by the Catholic Church, which had been left out of the various negotiations during the uprisings, and by the U.S., which viewed Communist support for peasants in a Cold War prospective, elevated expression to new heights. Chaotic violence pitted rural Liberals and Conservatives against each other, and resulted in battles between the oligarchy and land-starved peasants. Many large landowners abandoned their properties, fleeing to the relative safety of the cities.

In 1953, Gomez was overthrown by a military coup that brought General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla to power. Rojas Pinilla immediately dispatched the military to reclaim the property of the large landowners still in the cities. In response, armed peasant groups called for agrarian reform.

In June, 1953, in an attempt to end the violence, Rojas Pinilla issued an amnesty to all the armed peasants and responded to their call for agrarian reform by creating the Office of Rehabilitation and Relief. In reality, this office did little to address the agrarian problem, yet the Liberal and Conservative elite felt that Rojas Pinilla was using it to build popular support for himself. To quell their suspicions, in June 1954 Rojas Pinilla extended the amnesty to right wing thugs imprisoned for acts of terror on behalf of the ruling Conservative elite and the Gomez regime.

Many of the Gomezistas released from jail immediately began killing peasants, forcing those that had accepted amnesty to again take up arms. Rojas Pinilla responded in 1955 by launching a major military offensive against the rearmed peasants that became known as La Guerra Villarica. It was in the department of Tolima during this offensive that the armed self-defense movements that would later evolve into the FARC came into existence. The Conservative and Liberal elite blamed the renewal of La Violencia on Rojas Pinilla, and in 1957 organized a general strike and street protests in the capital that forced him to resign.

Following the ouster of Rojas Pinilla, the Conservative and Liberal elite agreed on a power-sharing agreement, the National Front. Beginning in 1958, the parties alternated four-year terms in the presidency (no need to rig elections), and distributed all public positions evenly between the two parties. The formation of the National Front brought an end to the 19th century aspect of La Violencia: conflict between factions of the ruling class. However, the new government still had to contend with armed peasants, whose demand for land reform was being denied.

A FARC is born

According to a 2000 book by Alfredo Molano, Violence and Land Colonization, Violence in Colombia: The Contemporary Crisis in Historical Perspective, many peasants, mostly Liberals and Communists, survived the military offensives of the 1950s by undertaking long marches, under the protection of armed self-defense groups, to the mostly uninhabited eastern departments of Meta and Caquetá.

They cleared and worked new lands in areas they declared “independent republics,” in an attempt to regain subsistence land and free themselves from a national government they distrusted due to “personal experience with social and economic partisanship and… the double value system upheld by the ruling classes.”

However, the colonists soon discovered they had not found the autonomy they so desperately sought. Large landowners, intent on increasing their own holdings, soon began laying claim to the newly cleared lands. Furthermore, the government had no intention of leaving the colonists alone.

“In defining these republics as gangs of communist bandits, the government had an excuse to launch military attacks against them, condemn them politically, and blockade them economically… The only possible outcome was war. One by one the republics fell to the army, and once they were under government control the land became concentrated in the hands of the large landowners,” Molano wrote.

The peasants, forced deeper into the jungle, realized their only chance of achieving social justice lay in their ability to wage war against the government on a national level. As a result, the armed self-defense movements dispersed units to various regions of the country to fight the army on several fronts simultaneously under a central command structure. On July 20, 1964, the various fronts of the armed self-defense movements issued their agrarian reform program. Two years later, they officially became known as the FARC.

Guerrilla groups begat guerrilla groups

In 1960, an independent political party, National Popular Alliance (ANAPO – Alianza Nacional Popular), formed by supporters of Rojas Pinilla was contending in congressional elections. ANAPO’s popularity increased steadily throughout the 1960’s as it appealed to many who had been left out of the National Front alliance. Rojas Pinilla ran as ANAPO’s candidate in the 1970 presidential election and, after holding an early lead, was narrowly defeated by National Front candidate Misael Pastrana Borrero. Many ANAPO supporters accused the government of manipulating the vote count, and in response to perceived electoral fraud; socialist members of ANAPO formed the M-19 (19th of April Movement) guerrilla movement in 1972.

M-19 gained notoriety through a series of daring urban raids that included the occupation of the Dominican Embassy in Bogotá in 1980 and an ill-fated takeover of the Palace of Justice in 1985. The latter resulted in the deaths of more than 100 people, including 11 Supreme Court judges, in a two-day battle in which the army leveled the massive courthouse. In 1989, M-19 guerrillas decided to lay down their weapons in return for a full government pardon. The ex-guerrillas formed a political party, the Democratic Alliance M-19, to participate in the upcoming elections; however, right-wing death squads soon assassinated many of the party’s leaders, including presidential candidate and former M-19 commander Carlos Pizarro.

M-19 had been formed as a response to the National Front, which successfully reserved positions of power for members of the Conservative and Liberal elite. This “limited democracy” spawned other guerrilla movements in the 1960’s. Other factors also came into play.

The Cuban Revolution influenced many radicals in Latin America, as it did in the U.S., convincing them that Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s foco theory of armed insurrection was the revolutionary road to follow. The Colombian Communist Party’s support of resolutions passed by the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, calling for a peaceful road to revolution, led many young Colombians to split from the Party in order to follow the Cuban model.

The Popular Liberation Army (EPL – Ejército Popular de Liberacion) was thus formed in the department of Antioquia in the mid-1960’s. Following the Soviet-Chinese split, the EPL espoused the Maoist theory of a “prolonged popular war.” But after 1980 it began to distance itself from the goal of prolonged war and in August 1990 many members laid down their arms in order to participate in the political process, while a small dissident faction continued to fight in northern Colombia.

In 1964, university students who had recently returned from Cuba formed Colombia’s second-largest guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN – Ejército de Liberación Nacional), in the department of Santander. The ELN adhered strictly to Che’s principles of rural guerrilla warfare and, in contrast to the M-19 and EPL, has so far refused to lay down its arms and participate in the political process. Sociologist Eduardo Pizarro says that, “In recent years the ELN has focused its activities almost exclusively on efforts to disrupt and destroy the oil industry, attacking with great success the pipelines of the north.”

In fact, between 1986 and 1997 the ELN was responsible for 636 pipeline bombings that resulted in $1.5 billion in lost revenue for the state-owned oil company, the oddly named Ecopetrol. For many years, the FARC and EPL denounced the ELN for pursuing a strategy of economic sabotage that has failed to increase its popular support. However, by the end of the 1990s, the FARC was also targeting pipelines used by multinational corporations to transport oil from remote drilling fields to coastal ports.

The FARC is the only Colombian guerrilla group with peasant roots that pre-date both the National Front and the Cuban Revolution. In contrast, the ELN, EPL and M-19 were all movements led by urban intellectuals, typical of many Latin American guerrilla groups that evolved in the 1960s, Cuban-inspired armed reactions to domestic political, social and economic situation.

FARCing cocaine…

The 1974 presidential election brought an end to the National Front alliance as Liberal and Conservative candidates again ran against each other. Sixteen years of National Front rule had reduced the number of killings — in contrast with the 200,000 Colombians who died during La Violencia — but had failed to address the agrarian issue and a dramatic increase in poverty.

During the National Front years, the percentage of the nation’s work force living in absolute poverty more than doubled, from 25% to 50.7%. Figures were even worse for the rural labor force, where the rate of absolute poverty soared from 25.4% to 67.5%. It is no surprise that when the coca boom began in the late 1970s, the lure of drug profits brought a massive migration of urban jobless and landless peasants to the predominantly FARC-controlled colonized regions.

Initially, the FARC was concerned that the new mass migration would undermine the political and social status quo in areas it controlled. At the same time, its income, from war taxes imposed on the local population in return for maintaining social order, increased dramatically.

New revenue enabled the rebel group to vastly improve its military capabilities, modernizing its weapons and improving the guerrilla fighter’s standard of living. In addition, the FARC was able to offer social and economic services “in the areas of credit, education, health, justice, registry, public works, and ecological and cultural programs.”

During the early years of the coca boom, the guerrillas and the drug lords worked together. Guerrillas controlled many of the coca growing regions while the cartels managed much of the cocaine production and trafficking.

However, this informal alliance collapsed when the leaders of drug cartels in Medellín and Cali began investing their new found wealth in property, primarily large cattle ranches, placing themselves firmly in the ranks of the guerrillas’ traditional enemy. The new narco-landowners soon began organizing their own paramilitary armies in order to fight the guerrillas and those they saw as guerrilla sympathizers.

Until today…

For 50 years the FARC and its predecessors have claimed to be fighting for agrarian reform and social justice for Colombia’s peasant population. The FARC has evolved into a powerful military force of 15,000 to 20,000 fighters who now control approximately 40% of the country. A U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report issued in November 1997 found that “the Colombian Armed Forces could be defeated within five years unless the country’s government regains political legitimacy and its armed forces are drastically restructured.”

U.S. President William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton’s bizarre Drug Czar, Gen. Barry Richard McCaffrey, echoed these findings when he claimed that Colombian democracy is seriously threatened by the growing military strength of the guerrillas.

Such statements lead one to believe that McCaffrey’s concept of “democracy” involves social order being “maintained” under a military state of siege, impunity for paramilitary forces who regularly massacre the civilian population, political candidates in opposition to the Conservative and Liberal elite being routinely assassinated, a judicial system paralyzed by fear, rigged and stolen elections, and thousands of peasants whose only economic means of survival is illicit coca production.

Indeed, if the ruling political, economic and military elite, aided by the paracos, continue to stifle truly democratic reform, the demise of Colombian “democracy” may well be inevitable.

For its part, the U.S. appears intent on “Salvadorizing” the conflict. Colombia, as was the case with El Salvador in the 1980’s, is today the hemisphere’s leading recipient of U.S. military aid. And it appears that Washington, in its attempt to prevent a guerrilla victory, is once again intent on supporting a repressive military closely allied to right-wing death squads. Such a policy will inevitably result in the continued suffering of the Colombian people, who are routinely subject to massacres, torture, disappearance, kidnapping, and forced displacement.

Any possibility of achieving a peaceful resolution to the conflict depends on the government’s ability to dismantle the paramilitary organizations and create a climate conducive to negotiations between the government and the guerrillas. Then, and only then, will it be possible to address the political, social, and economic causes of the conflict. So far the government has made little headway in eliminating the paracos.

The FARC is absolutely necessary to the survival of the large agrarian class of Colombia. Only land reform, justice, and true democracy will make it unnecessary; this is the only route to the elimination of FARC. Pointless and brutal alternatives, which will not result in the elimination of FARC-EP, is the way chosen by Hillary Clinton, Gates and Obama, sending more arms and U.S. troops, paid for with your money, to maintain civil war within Colombia and perhaps spread it to neighboring countries.

Note: Much research for this article came from various reports produced by the North American Conference on Latin America (NACLA); my thanks to them for keeping track of all this stuff over these many years. — md

• For Marion Delgado’s previous reports from Colombia on The Rag Blog, go here.

A ridiculous piece of reporting from the Florida Panhandle surfaced in my news feed this morning, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to demonstrate how police dishonesty is always apparent – even in news reporting not intended to expose it.

This is the entire text of the article:

FORT WALTON BEACH – A 22-year-old man was arrested Dec. 20 on charges of marijuana possession and narcotic equipment possession.

The Fort Walton Beach man was pulled over for a traffic stop when the deputy saw marijuana on the floor board of the man’s driver side car, said an Okaloosa County Sheriff’s report.

The man gave the deputy consent to search his car. More marijuana was found on the side of the front passenger seat as well as some hidden in an M&M’s bag and a brown sunglass container, the report said.

Cops don’t need consent to search a car if there is contraband in plain sight. If the officer asked for permission to search the car (thereby giving the victim a chance to consent), he didn’t have the evidence he needed, which means he saw nothing on the floor of the car and lied about it.

It’s not surprising that the cop lied. They do it all day, every day. They are trained to lie (citizens can’t, in return, lie to cops, though). Whatever conscience a police cadet has is thoroughly squelched out during training. They are taught to regard everyone as a suspect, less than human, and to treat them with total lack of empathy. The Constitution and laws that limit police power are seen as obstacles. Their primary goal is to make arrests. They are not paid to care whether you, the citizen, is dangerous or not. They are only paid to use whatever legal authority or loophole they can to handcuff, humiliate, and help convict you. In addition to professional incentives, many cops receive pleasure from this activity. That’s why departments have maximum IQ limits. Smart people will question all that.

The frustrating part is that a journalist would print a piece that so blatantly buys into police deception. The deputy may have told the driver that he saw marijuana on the floor in order to intimidate him into providing consent, but if he had really seen it, he wouldn’t have needed consent. Victimized by a police state whose culture really makes no effort to educate people on their legal rights during police encounters, this poor guy will have the door slammed in his face by employers, student lenders, and many other purveyors of opportunity for what could be the rest of his life. He will be ostracized and shunned by those in his life who believe that cannabis is intrinsically evil and can’t perceive a reality beyond the human-driven stigmatization of a harmless plant provided by nature. And that doesn’t even include the sentence itself. The NORML blog just posted a letter from a soldier detailing his similar experience.

I was a young kid and a teenager during the height of the drug war hysteria in the United States. I never used drugs, and I was raised to assume that anyone who did was “bad.” From the time I could talk, I was inadvertently (my parents didn’t know they were doing this) conditioned to be part of the ostracization machine. Had those attitudes continued into my adult life, I might have slammed the door in the faces of job applications with drug convictions. I might have humiliated employees with invasive urine testing and fired people who chose to use cannabis instead of alcohol (it’s pretty well-established that alcohol is far more physically dangerous and socially destructive than cannabis). I might have denied my friendship and respect to anyone who used illegal substances. I might have even called the cops a time or two and ruined the lives of good people without the slightest twinge of guilt. I was raised (not just by my parents, but by school, TV, and other adult influences) to believe that arrest, incarceration, and ostracization were the compassionate ways of dealing with people who used certain substances.  [Drug users = bad]  was just one of life’s fundamental equations. It had always been that way, and it always would be.

And that’s the goal of the drug warrior – to drive a wedge between drug users and the rest of society. Many, many people unwittingly play a role in this hysterical witch hunt, including journalists that report unconscionable police activities as though they are normal and even positive. While reformers fight to expose the truth, drug warriors continue to rely on ignorance, hatred, and fear.

Photo by Noah Shactman

The Homeland Security Department’s remit is not just broad horizontally, but vertically. And now it’s getting high to stop you getting high: Latin American states are seeing the sleek sight of some brand-spanking-new, $13.5 million dollar drones over their airspace as part of the war on chemically induced euphoria.

The department, through its Customs and Border Protection division, already operates five drones (Predator Bs), along the Southwest border from a base in Arizona and the Canadian border from an installation in North Dakota.

But now they’ve been popping in to visit Hugo “Do I smell sulfur?” Chavez and he isn’t too pleased: in fact he’s called on the Venezuelan military to shoot down any of the unmanned aerial vehicles spotted in the country’s airspace…

That’s hardly  likely to go down well with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Last month she issued a warning to countries in Latin America that have recently forged relations with Iran, such as Bolivia, Brazil, Nicaragua and Venezuela, snarling that:

I think that if people want to flirt with Iran, they should take a look at what the consequences might well be for them, and we hope that they will think twice…

The Empire is clearly dead; long live the Empire. I wonder if they’ve made these drones less easy to hack anyway…

Evidence Mounts for US Complicity in Terrorism: Mutallab’s father is no ordinary ‘banker’

Dad, back in Nigeria, ran the national arms industry (DICON) in partnership with Israel, in particular, the Mossad. He was in daily contact with them. They run everything in Nigeria, from arms production to counter-terrorism. Though Islamic, Muttalab was a close associate of Israel. He has been misrepresented. His “banking” is a cover. Next, what do we know about the two Al Qaeda leaders Bush had released, the ones who planned this?

 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/200114-Evidence-Mounts-for-US-Complicity-in-Terrorism-Mutallab-s-father-is-no-ordinary-banker-

According to ABC news, the Al Qaeda leaders running the insurgency in Yemen were released from Guantanamo, although two of the highest ranking known terrorists there, without trial.

Guantanamo prisoner #333, Muhamad Attik al-Harbi, and prisoner #372, Said Ali Shari, were sent to Saudi Arabia on Nov. 9, 2007, according to the Defense Department log of detainees who were released from American custody. Both of the former Guantanamo detainees are described as military commanders and appear on a January, 2009 video along with the man described as the top leader of al Qaeda in Yemen, Abu Basir Naser al-Wahishi, formerly Osama bin Laden’s personal secretary.

With all the hoopla about trials in New York, not a word is said when top level terrorists are released to Saudi friends of the Bush family who let them go.We are now fighting these two Bush friends in Yemen. They are running a major insurgency there. We have been using Cruise missiles and our jets to attack their bases in the last weeks

BBC Middle East

The government of Yemen, as reported in the BBC , says that the Al Qaeda terrorists, led by those released by Bush, are really Israeli agents though they have organized attacks against US targets: Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has said the security forces have arrested a group of alleged Islamist militants linked to Israeli intelligence.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=9944

IMHO

This is just another US/Israeli government sponcered false flag “ACT” of terrorism .

A young “mentally ill” Nigerian gets on a plane without a passport and can fly to America!?!?!?

His father coincidently runs the Nigerian arms industry and has close links with Mossad!?!?!!?

The “organisors” where previously released by BUSH without trial at the request of Saudi family friends!?!?!?!?!?

I think we have been given a Nigerian Patsy and a Jewish/American false flag for Christmas!

How should we say thank you?

I think this is probably to stop us talking about  OPERATION CAST LEAD and the Israeli Holocaust in Gaza which took place this time last year. I see no mention of this WAR CRIME and the CONTINUING CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY being carried 0ut  by Israel!!

Instead the MainStream Media Presstitutes are filled with news of a nasty Muslim terrorists trained in Yemen.

Can I ask , with the New Year and the HUGE CROWDS that gather for this event, why didn’t the terrorists just go to Times Square or London or Princess Street in Edinburgh?  A lot less security and a hell of a lot more BANG for your BUCK! These terrorists seem really stupid… just makes me think they MUST be working for the government.

I DO NOT CONDONE VIOLENCE OF ANY TYPE (Except self defence) I AM JUST THINKING OUT LOUD!!!!

CNN, 1/1/09

Mexico ended 2009 with a record number of drug-related deaths, greatly surpassing the then-record tally reached in 2008, unofficial counts indicate.

The government has not released official figures, but national media say 7,600 Mexicans lost their lives in the war on drugs in 2009. Mexican President Felipe Calderon said earlier this year that 6,500 Mexicans died in drug violence in 2008.

Officials say more than 15,000 Mexicans have died since Calderon declared war on the drug cartels shortly after taking office in December 2006. Some observers, such as former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, have likened the situation to a civil war.

The vast majority of the deaths have been among criminals, not civilians, Calderon and other Mexican officials have said repeatedly

Read more…

CNN: 2009 has been the deadliest yet in Mexico’s war on drugs, with an estimated7,600 Mexican casualties. President Calderon stated repeatedly that the vast majority of the casualties were criminals, not civilians.

We’re supposed to be thankful at Thanksgiving and though I was, I didn’t post Thanksgiving wishes. So before we ring out the old year let me start by saying thanks to Nowdy for sticking around for our second year online into our third. She is truly an angel to the people of the Gulf Coast. I’d also like to thank our commenters especially all our regulars and Sup who I’m certain at times just wants to pull his hair out trying to “reason” with us but who remains incredibly kind to us in spite of that. Next up are the lawyers that make sure we keep our I’s dotted and T’s crossed.  The dedication of the trial bar to seeing justice done for ordinary people is truly inspiring. I’d also like to express our gratitude to Congressman Gene Taylor and his staff, especially Brian, Ana Maria and Stephen who are our tireless advocates for the coast, both here and in DC. Without Gene holding the insurance industry’s feet to the fire, what happened here after Katrina would certainly have been swept under the carpet.

I’d also like to think the journalists that read us along with the folks at WLOX.  I don’t cut poor ol’ Dave Vincent much slack but whenever I’ve been in the mood to kick a member of the media in the kiester Dave has always been most accommodating offering up his hiney with a big target on it. (Sponsored by the Mississippi Coast State Farm agents no less!)

I thank our many readers that literally hail from across the world for coming back again and again reading our posts, even Amy and Robert Bullstroke.

I’d also like to thank Editilla over at the Ladder who always gives us too much credit. Brother, folks like you are the reason we do this. Finally I’d like to thank former Louisiana Insurance Commission Jim Brown for his support and encouragement in this endeavor called Slabbed.  Jim gives us his column to publish weekly and does many things behind the scenes such making sure we had an evalutaion copy of the now sold out Edwin Edwards Biography.  Jim is strictly first class.  Now for some news stories I’ve accumulated over the past few days for your enjoyment.

First up is a pair of stories from the Wall Street Journal (subscription generally required) the first of which involves the drug trade and the Mexican drug cartels. Is it time we just said yes and declared the war on drugs a defeat? I’ll let David Luthnow explain in an article that I found fascinating:

In the 40 years since U.S. President Richard Nixon declared a “war on drugs,” the supply and use of drugs has not changed in any fundamental way. The only difference: a taxpayer bill of more than $1 trillion.

A senior Mexican official who has spent more than two decades helping fight the government’s war on drugs summed up recently what he’s learned from his long career: “This war is not winnable.”

Just last week, Mexican Navy Special Forces swarmed a luxury apartment tower in a central city and gunned down Arturo Beltrán Leyva, a drug trafficker whose organization helped smuggle several billion dollars worth of cocaine and marijuana into the U.S. during the past decade, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Within days of Mr. Beltrán Leyva’s death, Mexican officials were already trying to guess which of his lieutenants would take his place. Almost no one expected the death of Mr. Beltrán Leyva to slow down the business of drug trafficking or the horrific drug-related violence in Mexico that has claimed around 15,000 lives in the past three years………

Growing numbers of Mexican and U.S. officials say—at least privately—that the biggest step in hurting the business operations of Mexican cartels would be simply to legalize their main product: marijuana. Long the world’s most popular illegal drug, marijuana accounts for more than half the revenues of Mexican cartels.

“Economically, there is no argument or solution other than legalization, at least of marijuana,” said the top Mexican official matter-of-factly. The official said such a move would likely shift marijuana production entirely to places like California, where the drug can be grown more efficiently and closer to consumers. “Mexico’s objective should be to make the U.S. self-sufficient in marijuana,” he added with a grin.

He is not alone in his views. Earlier this year, three former Latin American presidents known for their free-market and conservative credentials—Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico, Cesar Gaviria of Colombia and Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil—said governments should seriously consider legalizing marijuana as an effective tool against murderous drug gangs.

If the war on drugs has failed, analysts say it is partly because it has been waged almost entirely as a la w-and-order issue, without understanding of how cartels work as a business.

Next up is a financial retrospective that appeared in the Monday WSJ titled “After the Bailouts, Washington’s the boss“. Now while we would contend the people calling the shots in DC are those that own corrupt pols like Connecticut Senator Chri$ Dodd the piece had some good nuggets buried inside:

Today the U.S. government, directly or indirectly, underwrites nine of every 10 new residential mortgages, nearly twice the percentage before the crisis. Just last week, the Treasury said it would cover an unlimited amount of losses at mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac through 2012.

Those who defend this robust interventionism and those who decry its effects are vying to shape the nation’s take on the events of the past 16 months……..

John Taylor, a former Bush Treasury official who is now a Stanford University economist, says the government’s role will be far greater than Mr. Summers suggests. “While we may be past the emergency, we’re still in a mode that will create similar interventions for quite a while, even for minor emergencies,” he says. “We have a bailout mentality in this country.”

One concern: Even if the government withdraws, business will expect bailouts in the next crisis, and that will inspire another round of cavalier risk-taking. “If we don’t re-regulate the banking system properly, we’ll either get very slow growth from overregulation, or another financial crisis in just 10 to 15 years,” says Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard University economist and co-author of a new book on financial crises since the Middle Ages…………….

Most big banks appear back on their feet. Of the $245 billion invested in bank shares by the Troubled Asset Relief Program, more than $175 billion has been repaid. Since the Treasury tested the financial strength of 19 large financial firms in May, they have raised $136 billion in equity capital and borrowed $64 billion without U.S. guarantees.

But the strengthening of the big banks may be distorting the market. Although smaller banks have long had a higher cost of funds than big ones, the gap has widened. The gap averaged 0.03 percentage point for the first seven years of the decade, but it jumped to a 0.66-point disadvantage for smaller banks in the four quarters ended Sept. 30, estimates Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal think tank. That suggests investors think the government would bail out big banks, but not small ones, if crisis erupted anew, he says.

Not all of the rescues look successful. The U.S. had to redo its initial bailouts of giant insurer American International Group Inc. and of GMAC Financial Services, which was once a car-finance and mortgage firm and is now a bank holding company. Both remain unable to raise private capital.

The intervention comes with long-lasting costs, among them huge budget deficits that could eventually push up inflation and interest rates.

The International Monetary Fund estimates U.S. government debt will swell to the equivalent of 108% of annual economic output in 2014, from 62% in 2007, absent politically difficult steps such as raising taxes or cutting benefit programs. As federal debt climbs, an ever-greater fraction of the budget goes just to pay interest, much of it to overseas creditors. The bill will worsen if interest rates rise from their current low levels.

Interest on the debt cost $182 billion in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30. Robert Pozen, chairman of MBS Investment Management, worries that within a decade, the interest bill could rival the defense budget, which was $637 billion last year.

Next up is that poem I promised courtesy of Martin Dickson at the Financial Times that is highly entertaining:

But now we live in debased times,
Sans punishment to fit our crimes
Our moral compass has got lost,
Or on the rubbish heap been tossed.
As in this cautionary tale of bankers,
Who came to look like social cankers.

You will all know the basic story,
In all its venal details, gory.
Of how a bunch of peerless clowns
Despite degrees – from Yale to Brown –
Behaved like schoolboys in the lab,
When teacher’s gone to smoke a fag.

Exuberant beyond all reason
(For this or any other season)
Fired up by dreams of starter castles,
Sardinian yachts and vineyard parcels,
They built themselves a strange device –
A ticking bomb, to be precise.

The trouble was they did not know,
It was a bomb ’twas ticking so.
They thought it merely marked the beat
That called them to stay on their feet
And dance away – to really bop –
To music that would never stop.

At last the bomb it ticked no more.
Instead it gave a mighty roar
Like some avenging finance demon,
And destroyed RBS and Lehman.
That made the bankers wail and yelp,
And rush to teacher for some help.

Faced with the imminent demise
Of all world banks of any size,
And thus of global finance too,
The state bailed out this sorry crew.
But were they grateful? Not a jot,
This arrogant and greedy lot.

“It wasn’t us,” was their refrain.
The regulators are to blame.
They failed to prick our growing bubble.
They are the cause of all this trouble!
And China too, and central bankers,
Who failed to give us decent anchors.

“And while we’re at it, let’s include
Those nasty hedge funds, brash and crude,
We may have lent them stock to play,
But not to short poor banks at bay.
We’re sad events turned out this way
But not to blame; nothing to pay.”

Their minds so tainted by success,
They could not see their gross excess
Had played a very major role
In this colossal world own-goal.
Amnesia can be a sickness,
But this denoted arrant thickness.

Their attitudes were so repulsive
The public backlash grew convulsive,
And dimly seeing that their wages
Just might be threatened by these rages,
Self-interest prompted some to say
“We’re sorry” – in a muted way.

(I know I probably lifted too much but damn that poem is good so I’ll take my chances with Martin)

And finally a musical post repeat that sums up the action on the last day of the year here at Slabbed:

To the Slabbed nation be it consumer, insurer or crook in a Gucci suit Happy New Year with wishes for a prosperous 2010.

sop

I remember the Good Old Days of Free Republic. It was the 1970’s. You should have been on Free Republic back in the 1970’s. It was all different back then. “Clinton’s a liar” was named “Kennedy’s a perv”. Michael Rivero was posting a series debunking the moon landing hoax, and showing how Apollo 13 was likely crippled by a Soviet missile, not some ‘center fuel tank’ explosion. Fred25 and _Jim were urging the intiation of a brand-new great idea, the War on Drugs. “Senator Pardek” was only “Senator Pardeks Assistant”. Dane and robertpaulsen were still banned, Travis McGee was becoming a Navy Seal, writer33 was busy satirizing Watergate, and Quix was posting enigmatic and mysterious messages.

People were criticizing President Jack (“Billy Blythe”) Kennedy for shagging interns on the Presidential Seal and lying about it to his wife.

The new party called the Libertarians had been formed. The Libertarian Party ‘brigadiers’ were popping up all over the forum, and they were convinced their spoiler candidates would someday rule. Of course, they were wrong.

We were all amazed that anyone would worry about the politically correct sensibilities of Muslims, when one of them had just blown his crotch up on an airplane by lighting it on fire in an attempted act of terrorism.

Jim Robinson had just put together the first conservative Mainframe computer. People would log in and post messages with punch cards and paper tape. For a while people were talking about whether a Fidel Castro should be removed from Cuba to be reunited with his father. Many people were lining up on either side of the issue. The big controversy on FR back then was whether marijuana should be outlawed. If pot was outlawed, by golly, only outlaws would have reefer!

At that time, we were all debating the Berlin Airdrop and the Marshall Plan. Everybody was upset about the recently deceased Franklin (Billy Blythe) Roosevelt, and thought the Marshall Plan was ‘just another welfare handout to those useless furriners’. There was a third party, the Alf Landon Sunflower Chain Club party, or “Brigadiers” as we liked to call them, that mocked the mainstream candidates.

A+Bert, who at the time was only B-Bert, was very upset about the founding of Israel, and called anyone who supported it an Israeli Scum, son of a dog. At the time, we were helping out a nice young fellow named Fidel Castro get reunited with his father in Cuba. The newspapers made quite a fuss over it. We all grew bored.

We were all amazed that anyone would worry about the politically correct sensibilities of Nazis, when one of them had just blown his crotch up on a lighter-than-air balloon by lighting it on fire in an attempted act of terrorism.

The year before, a U.S. Army bomber B-25 crashed into Empire State Building. 13 died. Michael Rivero never bought the conclusion that the reason the aircraft crashed into the building was that the center fuel tank was empty. We all laughed at him and called him a conspiracy kook. But he was hot on the tail of another conspiracy; he said it was the Japanese that bombed Pearl Harbor! The Federal government was telling us at the time that Pearl Harbor’s center fuel tank had spontaneously exploded. Meanwhile, Fred25 was advocating that we turn our mighty war machine from fighting Nazism to fighting marijuana smokers. Dane and robertpaulsen were still banned, Travis McGee was becoming a Army Ranger, writer33 was busy satirizing the Russian Occupation of Berlin, and Quix was posting enigmatic and mysterious messages..

Michael Rivero was asserting that the Hindenburg was brought down by terrorists, not by some ‘center fuel tank’ explosion. We all laughed and called him a conspiracy kook. Fred25 was arguing that we should go back to Prohibition, because we were right on the verge of winning. Dane and robertpaulsen were still banned, Travis McGee was becoming a member of the new elite Paratroopers, writer33 was busy satirizing the Great Depression, and Quix was posting enigmatic and mysterious messages.

We were all amazed that anyone would worry about the politically correct sensibilities of the Spanish, when one of them had just blown his crotch up on a biplane by lighting it on fire in an attempted act of terrorism.

At that time, we were all debating whether or not we should send a young man named Batista back to Cuba. People were lining up on both sides of the argument.

Jim Robinson had just invented the Free Republic system, which was a telephone switching system where people could call one another and chat about news of the day. The big controversy on FR back then, I tell ya, was whether booze should be outlawed. If booze was outlawed, by golly, only outlaws would have booze! And FR back then had a lot of these danged ‘pro-prohibitionists’ infiltrating.

We were all amazed that anyone would worry about the politically correct sensibilities of Huns, when one of them had just blown his crotch up on an ocean-going vessel by lighting it on fire in an attempted act of terrorism.

We were all debating this new passing fad called Communism, which Russia had recently tried. We knew it would never last even 2 years. The Great War had ended, and we all knew that this war would make all future warfare obsolete. Michael Rivero told us that this would not be happening, and war would be in our future. We all laughed and called him a conspiracy kook. Dane and robertpaulsen were still banned, Travis McGee was becoming a Machine Gunner, writer33 was busy satirizing the Spanish Flu, and Quix was posting enigmatic and mysterious messages.

At that time, we were all debating the first continental congress and whether we should be a Monarchy or a Republic. The Second Amendment was a very hotly debated topic. We wanted future generations to know we were protecting the right of INDIVIDUAL CITIZENS to keep and bear the arms of their choosing, so in order that there be no confusion as to our intention, we appended the phrase “A well-regulated militia being necessary to a free society,”. We believed this phrase would completely strip any ambiguity out of the Second Amendment once and for all.

George “Dubya” Washington was destined to be our first president, but we were still all very upset about King (Billy Blythe) George III. It appears he was embroiled deep in corruption and sexual deviancy.

At the time, we were sending the very first Cuban citizen back to Cuba and the newspapers made quite a fuss over it. We all grew bored.

We were all amazed that anyone would worry about the politically correct sensibilities of British Redcoats, when one of them had just blown his crotch up on a three-mast Ship of the Line by lighting it on fire in an attempted act of terrorism.

When the New Amsterdam armory had the explosive accident, lots of conspiracy theories were were circulated. The most reasonable explanation was that the Center Gunpowder Keg simply spontaneously exploded. Although there were 180+ witnesses that saw a flaming arrow arc into the barrel, authorities quickly discounted this improbable theory. Dane and robertpaulsen were still banned, Travis McGee was becoming a Grenadier, writer33 was busy satirizing the British Monarchy, and Quix was posting enigmatic and mysterious messages.

Many FReepers back then were greaty upset with the rule of King Richard “Billy Blythe” the Third, and were hoping that Henry “Dubya” Tudor would become King.

There was a lot of discussion about sending this guy named “Columbus” over to Cuba, but not many people knew where Cuba was back then anyway. I guess the education system had dumbed everybody down.

There were, of course, the ever-present debates over the old Magna Carta. Libral trash would occasionally get a monk to scribe some drivel about the Magna Carta being a “living document.” The dispute over creation versus evolution was kind of boring, since there weren’t any evolutionists. And there were debates about the damn War of the Roses, also known as the War Between Lancaster and York. Or the War of Lancaster Aggression. Yep, them was the days….

Of course, we sure had our share of disruptors! Only a few tens of years later, in the 1500’s this dude with the screen name of Martin Luther was banned from FR after posting up to 95 “Theses” on the site all at once. JimRob pulled his posting privileges. But, he damn near crashed the system permanently. It got so bad that finally a couple of centuries later a FReeper named Swift had to invent the word “yahoo” so that eventually FR would have a backup site!

We were all amazed that anyone would worry about the politically correct sensibilities of French, when one of them had just blown his crotch up on an horse by lighting it on fire in an attempted act of terrorism.

Dane and robertpaulsen were still banned, Travis McGee was becoming a Kings Pikesman, writer33 was busy satirizing the War of the Roses, and Quix was posting enigmatic and mysterious messages. Oh, don’t forget the origin of the term ‘flame.’ Wasn’t that from the Aztec period when after an excruciating and melodramatic opus, the hearts of captured enemies would be cut from thier chests with obsidian knives and tossed into a brazier of coals? It would flame up instantly — hence the term “get FLAMED”) There would be two Guild Freeperiestesses at the top of the pyramid charged with the task. One of them would end up wearing the hide of the sacrificial victim with the severed hands dangling at the wrists. That was Howlinacaotl, I think. Which freeper would get to toss the corpse down the steps? I can’t recall! Was it Cheneychicoatli? It was rumored that some famous skulls from these rites were stored beneath the temple at Alamogirlcutchlican.

Whatever happened to freeper Quetzalcoatl, anyway? The one who gave the mother of all opi and claimed he would return?

Of course, there was a big problem with the Y-Zero-K problem. Jethrus_Tullus was the first to warn us of this problem. The Roman Numeral System was not Y-Zero-K compliant! All the Numerology experts were called out to come up with solutions to this problem. Nobody even knew why it was the year 0, but everyone panicked, stored up food and lamp oil, and the Roman Army was mobilized — just in case.

I remember the time with great nostalgia. We were trying to overthrow Marcus (Billy Blythe) Antony because he was caught fooling around with that portly pepperpot Cleopatra. While the vote made it all the way to the Senate, the fellow Orinus Hatchus said that if he got his Republicus friends to vote for throwing peaches at him (IMPEACHMENT), his butcher would not give him his weekly free capon. He would be out a chicken. That is where the term CHICKEN OUT came from.

Remember Alburtus Gorus? Remember his stone carving, Earth Balanced on Atlases Shoulders? Remember how he said in this carving, that the biggest threat to mankind was the Chariot? What an idiotus maximus. A+Bert, who at that time, was F-Bert, heard that Moses was leading Jews in the desert, and since they were close to what would become Israel, he became very agitated, yelling “No Jews in Israel!”. Also, Senator Pardek was first a Senator in this time, at the Roman Senate.

I also remember how Janetus Renus surrounded that Library Compound at Alexandria, where all those dangerous books were stored. I think she ended up burning 83+ people to death inside, just to get some tax money owed on the books. She was drunk most of the time and fell into the aquaduct tank. That is where the term TANKED came from. I guess they invented a weapon, later, with a similar name. Michaelus Riverus was the first to warn us all that it was not the central oil tank that exploded spontaneously, but that Renus might be culpable.

Then there was the big debate we had about Sword Control. Lots of left-wingers felt that only the Roman Army should have swords; we felt differently. The leftys were always complaining about Saturdus Nightus Speciali easily-concealable daggers, and also were all upset about the long-length Assault Swords, highpower weapins accurate to at least 4 feet!

Finally, the BIG DEBATE OF THE DAY! The conspiracy that killed Jesus! Janutus Renus worked closely with Pontius Pilate to sentence Jesus to death, and STILL no one called for anyone to throw peaches at her! Michael Rivero pursued this conspiracy doggedly, claiming the whole thing was really due to an explosion in a center fuel tank. It was a sad time, but one of great rejoicing among Christians every Easter.

We were all amazed that anyone would worry about the politically correct sensibilities of Egyptians, when one of them had just blown his crotch up on a chariot by lighting it on fire in an attempted act of terrorism.

Dane and robertpaulsen were still banned, Travis McGee was becoming a Roman Centurian, writer33 was busy satirizing the Roman occupation of Judea, and Quix was posting enigmatic and mysterious messages.

Evidence Of First FReepers

The very first FReepers were the people who posted their “messages” as cave drawings. And, the big debate back then WAS creation versus evolution. The Cro-Magnons said that they were the ones who were created to be mankind. The Neanderthals disputed that, and said, “are we not men?” The debate raged on FR for thousands of years, mainly with links to old FR threads in long-abandoned caves. Incredibly, back then the system had NO TEXT, only graphics! From time to time that necessitated finding a new “hard wall” in another cave to store the messages for the discussion to proceed.

*sigh* And I remember it so well, like it was yesterday. THOSE were the good old days. The graphics were spectacular. I remember how we tried to overthrow Og (Billy Blythe) Rugtuk, when we found he had sex with a woman who wore a dress. No one really understood what a dress was, so we hurled rotten peaches at him. That is how the term IMPEACH came about. We hoped that the fellow named Ug (Dubya) Bugluh would take over in our tribe.

Remember the big debate we had about fire? Remember the big vote we had? If you wanted fire banned — except in the hands of the government — you would throw the left-side wing of a chicken into the pot. If you wanted fire to be available to the rest of us, you would throw the right-side wing of a chicken into that pot. That is were the terms RIGHT-WING and LEFT-WING came into being.

I remember the big conspiracy theories that would develop about the extinction of the dinosaur. Michael Rivero insisted it was a plot by people who were sick of repairing buildings destroyed by these dinosaurs. He called them Masons, and spoke endlessly of the Masonic Conspiracy. Dane and robertpaulsen were still banned, Travis McGee was becoming a Club Wielding Neanderthal, writer33 was busy satirizing the discovery of the wheel, and Quix was posting enigmatic and mysterious messages.

We were all amazed that anyone would worry about the politically correct sensibilities of Neanderthals, when one of them had just blown his crotch up on a rock by lighting it on fire in an attempted act of terrorism.

An Example Of The First Free Republic Messages

Also, lots of kooks were talking about Global Cooling all the time. They said we should really start burning more wood to release more carbon into the air. What nuts. Dane and robertpaulsen were still banned, and writer33 was busy satirizing the possible demise of the Wooly Mammoth.

Jim Robinson had just invented this new thing called Paint. He said, with it, we could write messages on these walls and have a great time debating matters of the day. 50,000 years later, I guess I agree!

—————————————————————————–

Lazamataz is a Pizza Hut Delivery driver by day and a CIA operative by night whom has never been “outed” by Lewis “The Scooter” Libby.

Every now and again I feel the need to advocate for the cause of marijuana de-criminalization (if not outright legalization) if for no other reason than because the arguments bolstering the demonstrably failed, multi-billion dollar “War on Drugs” are so maddeningly hypocritical, irrational, and completely unsupported by pesky facts or evidence of any kind.

Would it be too much to ask that, as Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance suggests, we too might once again have a serious discussion in this country about the issue? There was some hope of that not too long ago back in the dark days of Liberal budget surpluses and near full employment, but quite possibly not now if the posturing of the Harper government’s latest slick anti-drug campaign is any indication of things to come…

From a political perspective, if the Liberals are looking for ways to distinguish themselves from the present regime — presuming they are still actually trying to do that — coming down unequivocally on the side of “liberalization” of our drug policies might well provide them with an issue that would not only help put some significant daylight between the LPC and the hypocritical social “nannyism” of the so-called Conservatives, but may even attract the support of the all-important, but most usually disaffected independents.

Photo by warrantedarrest, Flickr

A couple 19-year-olds in Winston-Salem, North Carolina were rudely awakened to the true nature of American policing yesterday when they called police to their apartment after an intruder shot one of them (a female) in the arm through the front door. The suspect had fled when officers arrived.

Well, these cops weren’t about to waste a whole trip just to reassure the shaken victim and help a fellow citizen. After all, how would that help their stats?

Instead, they proceeded to search the apartment, discover marijuana, and arrest someone inside on charges of possession with intent to distribute. As that 19-year-old’s life was effectively ruined (permanently disqualified from public college aid and many jobs for starters – I wonder what he’ll do for a living after he gets out of prison?), these officers probably walked him through the precinct like a trophy, swelling with pride.

It really makes you think twice before calling the cops when you’re in trouble, doesn’t it? Unless you want to risk being charged as an armed drug dealer (regardless of whether or not you’re a dealer), you’re left pretty much defenseless – just one more way this indefensible drug war drives a wedge between cops and good people.

Of course, drug warriors will be quick to point out that everyone in the apartment was probably complicit in the marijuana dealing, and the shooting incident was probably a result of their involvement in the drug trade, but that’s a pretty weak argument considering the fact that the outrageous profitability and criminal element of the drug trade is completely, and nothing but, a manifestation of cruel and unscientific prohibitionist drug policies.

The tendency of police officers to treat every person as a criminal suspect without regard for any trauma or victimization that person may be experiencing should hardly be surprising. Just look at this police training video from the 1960s. Pay close attention to the opening monologue:

“In the day-to-day conduct of your police duties, no matter how or for what reason you’re called to investigate a situation in a residence, use your eyes to detect evidence of marijuana, hashish, or narcotic violations.”

And this is before the Controlled Substances Act beefed up drug enforcement, intensified punishments, and packed prisons across the nation.

In other words, if a citizen is in trouble and in need of your help, see if you can find a way to arrest them.

by Mario Rizzo

I am amazed (but shouldn’t be) at how far the American political system has evaded the acceptance of reality and how quickly the chickens are coming home to roost:

1. The War on Drugs. This is clearly a fool’s endeavor  now that Mexico is being destabilized and the US border towns will more and more feel the results. The war is especially counterproductive in fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Afghan poppy farmers look to the Taliban for protection against Nato’s destruction of their livelihood.  (And by the way, Taliban need not equal al Qaeda if the US were a bit clever.)

2. The War on Terror.  Even CNN is acknowledging that al-Qaeda is an ideology or state of mind and that its techniques are available on the internet and even in London — and, I bet, in Brooklyn too. What hope is there of preventing any nut anywhere from doing real damage? It is very similar to the issue of the importation of illegal drugs. Close one route; they find another.

American tolerance for “terrorism” at home is almost zero. The US government will bomb temporary hideouts and these will move.  The fear will more and more conquer us. I am reminded of the brilliant article by William Graham Sumner, “The Conquest of the United States by Spain” (1899). He argued that although the US won the Spanish-American War militarily, we lost it to Spain ideologically. We acquired colonies and thereby betrayed our birthright.

Al-Qaeda may not be a match militarily but it will more and more cause us to erode our liberty and sanity. In all the talking heads yaking on TV very little is said about the underlying causes of our problem: American military and diplomatic interventionism in the affairs of the Middle East. They do not hate us because of  ”our liberty.”

3. The Bankruptcy of the Welfare State. As deficits soar to unprecedented levels and  while the old entitlements are in trouble, a major new healthcare entitlement is about to be passed. “Liberals” are pushing to their fantasy of (low) quality healthcare for all.  Stubborn unemployment will give rise to more calls for stimulus. The stimulus crowd is already getting nervous about the wind-down of spending in many areas. The government refuses to pull back or privatize Fannie and Freddie but will throw more money at it because of “the American Dream.”

If it weren’t for the fact that many innocent and good people are (and will be) suffering, I would simply look with intellectual satisfaction at the playing out of the natural and foreseeable consequences of bad policies.