Things to Come

SUBHEAD: Budweiser-gulping, oxycontin addled masses in the boring wastelands of our ruined drive-in Utopia.

By James Kunslter on 12 June 2017 for Kunstler.com -
(http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/7771/)


Image above: Poster for the movie "Things to Come" based on H. G. Wells 1933 book presenting the century after the Great Depression. A description of the opening of the film "The year is 1940. News boys hold broadsheets declaring “WAR STORM BREWING” and “WORLD ON THE BRINK OF WAR.” John Cabal reads the rumors of war, and is disheartened. He is sure that if war comes, it will mean the end of civilization as it is known." From (https://themotionpictures.net/2016/05/19/things-to-come-1936/).

As our politicos creep deeper into a legalistic wilderness hunting for phantoms of Russian collusion, nobody pays attention to the most dangerous force in American life: the unraveling financialization of the economy.

Financialization is what happens when the people-in-charge “create” colossal sums of “money” out of nothing — by issuing loans, a.k.a. debt — and then cream off stupendous profits from the asset bubbles, interest rate arbitrages, and other opportunities for swindling that the artificial wealth presents.

It was a kind of magic trick that produced monuments of concentrated personal wealth for a few and left the rest of the population drowning in obligations from a stolen future. The future is now upon us.

Financialization expressed itself in other interesting ways, for instance the amazing renovation of New York City (Brooklyn especially). It didn’t happen just because Generation X was repulsed by the boring suburbs it grew up in and longed for a life of artisanal cocktails.

It happened because financialization concentrated immense wealth geographically in the very few places where its activities took place — not just New York but San Francisco, Washington, and Boston — and could support luxuries like craft food and brews.

Quite a bit of that wealth was extracted from asset-stripping the rest of America where financialization was absent, kind of a national distress sale of the fly-over places and the people in them.

That dynamic, of course, produced the phenomenon of President Donald Trump, the distilled essence of all the economic distress “out there” and the rage it entailed.

The people of Ohio, Indiana, and Wisconsin were left holding a big bag of nothing and they certainly noticed what had been done to them, though they had no idea what to do about it, except maybe try to escape the moment-by-moment pain of their ruined lives with powerful drugs.

And then, a champion presented himself, and promised to bring back the dimly remembered wonder years of post-war well-being — even though the world had changed utterly — and the poor suckers fell for it.

Not to mention the fact that his opponent — the avaricious Hillary, with her hundreds of millions in ill-gotten wealth — was a very avatar of the financialization that had turned their lives to shit. And then the woman called them “a basket of deplorables” for noticing what had happened to them.

And now the rather pathetic false promises of President Trump, the whole "Make America Great Again" thing, is unraveling at exactly the same time that the financialized economy is entering its moment of final catastrophic phase-change.

The monuments to wealth — especially the stock and bond portfolios and the presumed value of real estate investments — will surrender to a process you might call price-discovery-from-Hell, revealing their worth to be somewhere between little and nothing.

The accumulated monstrous debts of persons, corporations, and sovereign societies, will be suddenly, shockingly, absolutely, and self-evidently unpayable, and the securities represented by them will be sucked into the kind of vortices of time/space depicted in movies about mummies and astronauts.

And all of a sudden the avatars of that wealth will see their lives turn to shit just like moiling, Budweiser-gulping, oxycontin-addled deplorables in the flat, boring, parking lot wastelands of our ruined drive-in Utopia saw their lives rendered into a brown-and-yellow slurry draining clockwise down the toilet of history.

Nobody in power in this country is paying attention to how close we are to that epic moment — at least, they’re not talking about it. If the possibility of all that even occupies some remote corner of their brains, they surely don’t know how to prepare the citizenry for it, or what to do about it.

The truth is that societies respond emergently to major crises like the imminent unraveling of our financialized economy, often in disorderly and surprising ways.

I suppose we’ll just have to watch the nauseating spectacle play out, and in the meantime enjoy the Russian collusion melodrama for whatever it’s worth — probably more than a ticket to Wonder Woman or the new Tom Cruise Mummy movie.


Image above: Buffalo super Sabres fan Ken Johnson holds the ultimate tailgate party on the hood of his 1989 Ford Pinto. As you can see the car often catches fire. He drove in from Rochester for the game. He is cooking chicken wings on a shovel, does bacon on a saw and grills cheese sandwiches on a rake. From (http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/buffalo-ny-super-sabres-fan-ken-johnson-holds-the-ultimate-news-photo/164999650#buffalo-nysuper-sabres-fan-ken-johnson-holds-the-ultimate-tailgate-picture-id164999650).

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Marijuana improves exercise

SUBHEAD: Six reasons you should consider lighting up a joint before you work out.

By anthony Franciosi on 2 September 2015 for Alternet -
(http://www.alternet.org/6-reasons-you-should-light-joint-you-work-out)


Image above: Ex-California governor and ex-Mr. Universe, Arnold Schwarzenegger takes a break smoking mariuana while a professional athlete. From (http://azmarijuana.com/arizona-medical-marijuana-news/marijuana-exercising-chemically-linked/).

The words “marijuana” and “exercise” may not go together upon first glance, but they actually go hand in hand. The marriage of the two is something you may have not considered, but if you’re looking to get ripped--you really should. Listen up.

Did you know that weed is actually the best thing you can do for your workout routine?

ADVERTISING

Sure, we know pot has the power to relieve pain and stress, but did you know it can also improve focus, increase metabolism, and make you BETTER at your favorite sports?

Let’s look at the facts. Some of the most incredible athletes are actually pot smokers. Don’t believe me? Hmmmm.

I mean, this may sound crazy, but think about it. Remember Michael Phelps? He has 22 Olympic medals and, as we all know, he’s a big fan of the reefer.

Okay, so he got in trouble and whatever, but seriously: If Phelps can smoke weed and be that great at swimming, wouldn’t you think it might play some part in his athletic achievement?

If that’s not reason enough to introduce pot into your fitness regime, I’m really not sure what is. But, in case you do need a little more convincing, here are 6 concrete reasons why exercise is better on weed:

1. Weed raises your metabolism
Let’s start with the basics so we can get the ball rolling on an explanation as to why you should be ROLLING a fatty before hitting the gym.

Marijuana can help speed up your metabolism so you can actually get a fat-burning boost before hitting the elliptical.

According to a study recorded in Men’s Journal: “The compounds THCV and cannabidiol found in marijuana may help raise metabolism, speed fat loss, and lower cholesterol.”

So, if you’re looking for a little something extra pre-workout, smoke a little weed. This might seem counterintuitive but, nope, it really does help.

Pot smokers are just thinner. As Wellspring notes:

“American Journal of Medicine researchers have discovered that pot smokers actually have 16% higher levels of fasting insulin in their bodies than those who abstain from marijuana. In addition, the study indicated that cannabis users have 17% lower insulin resistance levels as well as significantly smaller average waist circumferences than their non-smoking counterparts.”

Controlled insulin levels are key to energy and weight-loss. Pot is good for insulin levels which means pot is good for your body.

2. Weed reduces anxiety and gets you revved up to workout
Strangely enough, weed is actually the key ingredient in pumping you up for a workout. After smoking, we feel more heightened and ready to take on the gym by storm.

As Stanford Medical School professor Keith Humphreys told Outside Magazine, “We have cannabinoid receptors throughout our brains, and when the THC hits those receptors, it triggers a system that reduces anxiety. That you would feel more aggressive is a natural reaction to the drug.”
So, while you might think that weed would chill you out and force you to complacently melt into the couch, forging the gym completely, it actually can help you get ready for your routine.

It reduces anxiety and pumps you up! Who knew?!

3. Weed can make you better at sports.
Marijuana can literally make you better at the games you love to play. While participating in activities DRUNK might impair your judgment and compromise your performance, smoking weed will actually IMPROVE your skills.

In an interview with Men’s Journal, well-known triathlete Clifford Drusinsky, a Colorado gym owner who actually holds sessions where everyone gets high, said:

"Marijuana relaxes me and allows me to go into a controlled, meditational place. When I get high, I train smarter and focus on form."

Since you’re relaxed after smoking, you’re automatically more aware of the tasks at hand, which of course is crucial to sports aptitude.

According to Business Insider, Outside Magazine correspondent Gordy Megroz said weed actually made him better at skiing. He said that once he got high, he felt really pumped up and was ready to take on all of the slopes.

So, there you have it, smoking weed improves sports and science says so. Take that, mom and dad!

4. Weed helps your muscles recover
You know what seriously blows about a super hardcore workout? Being super sore the next couple of days after. Luckily, the answer is even simpler than eating a ton of protein and having a trusty spotter: get high AF.

According to Megroz, smoking weed actually helped his muscles recover more quickly than going at it alone. He reported that when he did squats while high, he wouldn’t get as sore.

Smoking weed means the end of the muscle pain after workouts. Wouldn’t that make you just want to workout more? Hell yeah.

5. Weed does the same thing as exercise
STONERS, REJOICE! Here’s another zinger. Weed actually has a similar effect on your body that the gym has. LOL forever, amiright?!

According to Wellspring, marijuana can activate the same areas of the body that exercise can:

“As a group of lipids, fats, and cell receptors that THC bind to when smoking weed, the endocannabinoid system plays a prominent role in the neurological system for maintaining homeostasis for overall human health. In short, the endocannabinoid system is responsible for easing our pain, controlling our appetite, relieving our stress, influencing our mood, and even regulating our memory.”

So, think about combining the exercise AND pot! It’s like a recipe for happiness, wellness, and delight.

6. Weed keeps you in the zone
On top all the aforementioned, magical things weed can do to help improve your fitness strategy, it can also help you stay ultra-focused during your routine.

As Wellspring points out:

“Many long-distance runners admit to using vaporizers or edibles before participating in a marathon, because the cannabis enables them to remove the monotony and stay in a steady rhythmic zone for keeping at a competitive running speed.”

So if you’re looking to stay in the zone and improve your longevity like so many top performers (cough, Michael Phelps, cough) just light up!

• Anthony Franciosi is the Founder of HonestMarijuana.com, an organic marijuana growery based on Colorado.

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Deadhead Security Alert

SUBHEAD: What they're telling security personnel at the Grateful Dead Farewell Show this weekend.

By Philip Smith on 2 July 2015 for Alternet -
(http://www.alternet.org/drugs/security-alert-deadheads-taking-strange-drug-farewell-shows)


Image above: The Grateful Dead face a sea of Deadheads at one of the Fare Thee Well Concerts. Click to embiggen. Photo by Jay Blakesberg - Invision for the Greatful Dead.

"DO NOT MAKE CONTACT WITH THESE GUESTS" warns a flyer published by the organization Rock Medicine that has traveled with Dead shows for over 40 years.

The Grateful Dead (minus Jerry Garcia, of course) are playing their farewell shows in Chicago this weekend. Tens of thousands of Deadheads are expected to fill Soldier Field over the three-night run.

The iconic jam band's shows have long been legendary not only for the music, but also for the rampant use of psychedelics by attendees, some of whom never actually make into the show itself. These shows will likely be no exception.

Not to worry this time around, though. Security has this covered. According to the music website Live For Live Music, security personnel working the shows have been given a flyer alerting them that they may well run across people taking LSD, or "acid" in hipster lingo.

"LSD is a mind-altering chemical, also known as an hallucinogen," the flyer helpfully explains. "LSD produces a change in the user's sense of reality, thought patterns, and perceptions. You cannot predict the type of experience a guest under the influence of LSD will have."

Users "may 'see' images, 'hear' sounds, and 'feel' sensations that do not actually exist," the flyer elaborates. "These effects can be pleasurable, frightening, disorienting, and/or disturbing."

People "high" on acid may harmlessly trance out, dance, spin, and wave their hands around, but they may also have a "bad trip" and be "combative," have "poor judgement," or even "act on their enhanced sexuality" by getting naked or something.

"DO NOT MAKE CONTACT WITH THESE GUESTS!" the flyer warns security personnel about people having an "upsetting experience." Leave it instead to medical personnel, the flyer says. And don't touch them! (Gloves are available in the uniform room.)

"LSD CAN BE ABSORBED THROUGH SKIN TO SKIN CONTACT. DO NOT TOUCH ANY GUESTS SUSPECTED OF BEING UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF LSD.

And, oddly enough, the flyer instructs security not to refer to people as "tripping," but as having "IPR (Intense Psychedelic Response).

It's easy to poke a little fun at the flyer with its hokey wording and 1967 Readers' Digest feel, but it's actually a well-intentioned effort at harm reduction. And it is aimed at security guards, who may not be the most aware of drugs popular with the Deadhead set.

 The flyer is produced by Rock Medicine, which has been staffing medical tents at concerts for more than 40 years and says it is "setting the standard in non-judgmental event medicine." Those are the folks security guards are supposed to call when confronted by IPRing fans unhinged by the music.

"Take care of the individual right now. Return him or her to their friends or family and do away with the necessity of either hospitalizing the individual or getting involved with the law,Rock Medicine founder and former director Dr. George R. "Skip" Gay says prominently on the website.

Appropriately enough, Rock Medicine got its start when legendary San Francisco rock promoter Bill Graham asked the Haight-Asbury Free Clinic to staff its outdoor Grateful Dead and Led Zeppelin concerts in 1972. Dr. Gay formalized it as Rock Medicine the following year.

And now they're there at the last Dead shows ever. What a long, strange trip it's been.


Image above: Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart and Bob Weir rock on at the Grateful Dead’s Fare Thee Well show. Click to embiggen. Photo by Jay Blakesberg - Invision for the Greatful Dead.


Image above: Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead on the Fare Thee Well tour. Click to embiggen. Photo by Jay Blakesberg - Invision for the Greatful Dead.


Image above: Mickey Hart, Grateful Dead drummer, on stage after sunset. Click to embiggen. Photo by Jay Blakesberg - Invision for the Greatful Dead.

• Phillip Smith is editor of the AlterNet Drug Reporter and author of the Drug War Chronicle.


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Petrolify - Are you on it?

SOURCE: Katherine Muzik (kmuzik@gmail.com)
SUBHEAD: Warning: This miracle drug comes with some deadly side effects, and an expiration date.

By Asher Miller on 3 September 2014 for the Post Carbon Institiute -
(http://www.postcarbon.org/blog-post/2350950-introducing-petrolify-r-the-power-of-petroleum)


Image above: Stillf frame from advertisement below. From (http://www.petrolify.com/).

Imagine there was a pill you could take every day that would provide you with wealth, freedom, and luxuries beyond the imagination of even the wealthiest kings of yesteryear. Taking this pill would give you the equivalent of hundreds of slaves, working for you 24/7, to grow your food, cool and heat your home, entertain you, carry you however far you wanted to travel, fill your bath with hot water, you name it… That’d be amazing!

Well, guess what? You’re already taking it. And it’s called Petrolify®.

You’re ingesting Petrolify® with nearly every breath and every footstep you take. Most of us don’t realize that Petrolify® is being pumped into our water and injected into our food. But we reap its magical benefits regardless. Did you sleep indoors last night? You can thank Petrolify®. Did you eat breakfast today? Again, that was thanks to Petrolify®. Are you reading this message on your mobile phone or computer? The miracle of Petrolify® never ends!

Except that miracle comes with some deadly side effects, and an expiration date.


Video above: A satirical advertisement for the medication "Petrolify®. From (http://youtu.be/RhgBeT_gkJU).

That is why we created the above parody commercial, to remind as many people as possible that the dream we’re living—a dream fueled by a one-time, finite fossil fuel bonanza—is far darker than they might suspect.

When we open our eyes to the hidden costs of Petrolify®, it’s easy to blame the ‘corporate bad guys’—the manufacturers, the drug reps, the doctors—who are pushing their product on an unwilling populace. But we’re not quite so unwilling, are we? No, we want what they’re selling. And, there is no “they”. They are us.

Thankfully, our wellbeing doesn’t have to depend on Petrolify®. We can choose for our energy needs to be met with renewable, and more ecological and socially just, sources. More important, we can learn to live well with less. Conservation doesn’t have to be the “c” word.

The first step is recognizing our pill-popping addiction for what it is. Please help spread the word that Petrolify® may not be right for us at (http://www.petrolify.com/).


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'Bout time brother

SUBHEAD: Baby steps. Five years into his presidency Obama says marijuana not more dangerous than alcohol.

By Reuters on 19 January 2014 in The Guardian -
(http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/19/obama-marijuana-bad-habit-minorities)


Image above: Barack Obama smoking in 1980. From (http://centerforiiit.wordpress.com/2010/11/16/barack-obama-1980-dont-miss/).

President Barack Obama believes smoking marijuana is a "bad habit" but thinks legal penalties now fall disproportionately on minorities and that states legalising pot should go ahead with their plans, he said in a profile released on Sunday.

"As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life," he is quoted as saying in a New Yorker magazine article. "I don't think it is more dangerous than alcohol."

The president said he has told his two daughters that smoking marijuana is "a bad idea, a waste of time, not very healthy".

However, he said he is concerned that marijuana-related arrests fall far more heavily on minorities than on others. Legalisation of pot should go forward in the states of Colorado and Washington because "it's important for society not to have a situation in which a large portion of people have at one time or another broken the law and only a select few get punished," he said.

Marijuana remains illegal in the United States under federal law, but 21 US states allow or are about to allow medical marijuana use, and Colorado and Washington have decriminalised use of pot entirely. Alaska and the District of Columbia are considering following suit.

The Obama administration said last year that federal law enforcement will not target users in Colorado and Washington, as long as they comply with their respective states' laws. The Department of Justice says it will not interfere with states' efforts to regulate and tax marijuana provided they are able to meet a set of requirements, including keeping it from children and restricting its flow into other states.


Image above: Barack Obama smoking in 1980. From (http://centerforiiit.wordpress.com/2010/11/16/barack-obama-1980-dont-miss/).

The president also said he believes that those who argue that legalising marijuana will solve a number of social problems "are probably overstating the case". Legalisation in Colorado and Washington will probably be a challenge, he said.

In the lengthy profile, the president also muses over race, the Middle East and criticism of his efforts to woo Congress, among other topics. Discussing race, he said that he believes some people will never accept having a black president.

The president said that the three sets of negotiations involving Iran, Israel and the Palestinians, and Syria each have less than a 50-50 chance of succeeding, but are necessary steps toward achieving stability in a volatile region.

“If we were able to get Iran to operate in a responsible fashion … you could see an equilibrium developing between Sunni, or predominantly Sunni, Gulf states and Iran in which there's competition, perhaps suspicion, but not an active or proxy warfare," he said.

On the question of whether Obama will write a memoir, former adviser David Axelrod called it a "slam dunk" that the president will. A literary agent estimated publishers will pay between $17m and $20m.

Obama said narrowing the gap between rich and poor would be a key part of his legacy. "I will measure myself at the end of my presidency in large part by whether I began the process of rebuilding the middle class and the ladders into the middle class and reversing the trend toward economic bifurcation in this society," he said.
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Reefer madness New York years

SUBHEAD: Time with Timothy Leary, Mexico, Magic Mushrooms, and Reefer Madness.

By Ethan Persoff and Scott Marshall on 21 November 2013 for Boing Boing -
(http://boingboing.net/2013/11/21/john-wilcock-participating-in.html)

[IB Publisher's note: This is a three part comic graphic illustrated story published by Boing Boing that looks back on the early 1960s and a New York writer's first introduction to psychedelic drugs.

THE STORY: Part 1

While on an assignment John Wilcock meets an enthusiastic Timothy Leary, wearing red socks, in Cuernavaca, Mexico.


Image above: Detail from Reefer madness Part 1.  Click for full page. From (http://boingboing.net/2013/11/07/john-wilcock-timothy-leary-m.html).

THE STORY: Part 2

Witnessing a dinner with  a spacey Timothy Leary and his fascination with avocados (green butter) and bananas (joyous miracle).


Image above: Detail from Reefer madness Part 2.  Click for full page. From (http://boingboing.net/2013/11/14/john-wilcock-witnessing-tim-l.html).

THE STORY: Part 3

John Wilcock concludes with an invitation to participate in the  Harvard Psilocybin Project - the road to ruin that ultimately leads John to pot.


Image above: Detail from Reefer madness Part 3.  Click for full page. From (http://boingboing.net/2013/11/21/john-wilcock-participating-in.html).

---

Adventure with a Pink Pill
By John Wilcock on 6 September 1962 for The Village Voice -
(http://boingboing.net/2013/11/21/john-wilcock-participating-in.html)

[Boing Boing Editior's note: As an added treat to this final comic tale, here's John's original column on participating in the Harvard Psilocybin Project, from 1962.]

A questionnaire arrived last month from Tim Leary, a professor at Harvard who has been doing research on the effects of Mexico's "magic mushrooms" (teonanacati) on human consciousness. The mushrooms, foundation of some Indian religions, have been synthesized commercially into psilocybin, a small pink pill, and Tim Leary's Harvard group has been testing them on people and noting the effects.

I tried psilocybin about a year ago and reported on the enjoyable and highly euphoric effects. What Dr. Leary wanted to know now was whether there had been any permanent effects or changes in my life as a result. I was able to tell him (as, apparently, 62 percent of his subjects have told him) that my life had changed for the better.

It's always difficult to evaluate what effect a single action has had upon the course of one's life, and to what extent the normal maturing process is responsible, but it's true to say that in the past year I have become happier, more tolerant, less compulsive, and much more of a PARTICIPANT in virtually every phase of activity. I enjoy everything more these days, often with the sort of hearty abandon that wouldn't have been possible at one time in my life.

The simplest things -- reading the newspapers, listening to jazz on the radio, stopping for a hamburger, taking a bubble bath, kissing a girl -- fill me with tremendous anticipation and pleasure. I have become in love with the whole world, while at the same time retaining a healthy contempt for cruelty, greed, inhumanity, and the terrible things that people and countries do to each other.

It would be very unscientific, and potentially dangerous, to believe that these effects came solely from psilocybin, of course, but I do have a suspicion that that one afternoon's experience, coming at a particular time of my life, helped along what would possibly have been a natural course of events.

And I take my cue from a statement by Leary's group (the Center for Research in Personality):

"We have come to believe that psilocybin has the potential to facilitate for an individual the experience of major insights and problem solutions of an intellectual-emotional nature... It is also our conviction that these insights, enlightenment, or solutions provide a firm educational foundation for change in the social or intellectual behavior of the individual."

...In a meeting with representatives of the Food and Drug Administration, which has been kept informed of his research, Dr. Leary's group reported:

"We are convinced that these substances can contribute to human welfare in many ways -- in psychiatry and other forms of social rehabilitation, in creative industry, in education, in defense enterprises, in artistic and cultural pursuits."

And a compilation of reports from 98 of the 157 people who tried psilocybin reveals that 70 percent found the experience pleasant; 87 percent learned something new about themselves and the world; 62 percent report it changed their lives for the better; and 90 percent want to try it again. Leary's initial experiments are now concluded, and he has none of the drug available.

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FOOTNOTE BY DR. LEARY:
The most important single factor that determines whether a person undergoes a heavenly or hellish experience is his expectancy. If, for example, he takes one of these drugs in a hospital setting, where his contract is to behave as a subject in a scientific experiment and where his every move is carefully watched and noted by attending doctors and psychiatrists, he will almost certainly manifest psychiatric symptoms.

On the other hand, if the drug is taken together with a group of close, loving friends in a warm, familiar environment and the expectancy is to have a joyful, intellectual experience, then the chances for this to happen are very good.

However, if the scene is rebellious or secretive -- fear of being caught by the police, guilt of pleasure, sense of doing something shady and illicit -- the chances are that all these things will become magnified out of all proportion.

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COMIC CREDITS:
John Wilcock: Author and experimental psychedelic guinea pig will continue with additional chapters of this story in a few months. John still writes a terrific column of news and opinion, posted every week at www.johnwilcock.net.

Ethan Persoff (Twitter) is an archivist, sound artist and cartoonist. His other new comics project is RADIO WIRE.

Scott Marshall (Facebook) is an illustrator, sound artist, and art director, based in New York City. Previous projects include audio work for Woody Allen (Small Time Crooks), and the score for a full-length dance piece by choreographer Lar Lubovitch (Men's Stories).

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See also:
Island Breath: Tales from The Tube 11/29/08
(Psychedelic surf comic by Rick Griffin in 1971 Surfer Magazine)


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Marijuana law turns to reason

SUBHEAD: Police groups furiously protest Eric Holder's marijuana policy announcement not to pursue state sanctioned recreational use of marijuana.

By Staff on 5 August 2013 in The Last Marijuana Trial - 
(http://the-last-marijuana-trial.com/judge-cannabis-ministers-religion-protected-under-rfra/)

Image above: Roger Christie in happier days before being incarcerated without trial for three years at the request of ObamaJustice Department. From (http://www.420magazine.com/forums/international-cannabis-news/196576-religion-marijuana-infused-faith-pushes-commonly-held-limits.html)

On Wednesday, July 31, 2013, U.S. District Court Judge Leslie E. Kobayashi ruled that imprisoned Cannabis Minister, Rev. Roger Christie, can present a religious defense at trial.

The court ruled as a matter of law that Christie’s religion is legitimate, his belief is sincere, and that the government’s action was a substantial burden on the legitimate exercise of his religion.

The ruling establishes that the prosecution must now prove at a hearing that Christie’s arrest and incarceration was the least restrictive means of upholding the law — and that the federal government had a compelling interest in prosecuting him.

The Court has yet to rule on Christie’s recent RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act) motion. If she grants the motion, the case against Christie will be dismissed. If she does not grant the motion, Christie will still be able to present a religious defense at trial as to the element of the intent to distribute.

Christie has been held in detention without bail at the Honolulu Federal Detention Center since his arrest by federal authorities on July 8, 2010. He is charged with distributing marijuana to his parishioners.

Comment by Vicki:
 The case of Roger Christie will go down in history as one of the most egregious abrogations of a citizen’s Constitutional rights – ever. Murderers, rapists, psychopaths, even cannibals roam free on bail while the Reverend of a Church sits in a dungeon for the crime of seeking God with the help of the herb that He placed here to take care of most of our needs.

Cannabis nourishes our bodies and our souls, clothes us, inspires ideas and provides the paper to write them on, inspires music and the joy to dance to it, can be used as fuel, and is the most potent medicine available that can cure cancer and a myriad other ills, with no toxic side effects. No one has ever died from taking it.

Yet, these agents of our Federal Government whom we pay with our hard-earned tax dollars to keep us safe, have seen fit to deny him his Constitutional rights – the very rights that define us as a nation. The rights that once set this nation apart from those such as North Korea or China.

I ask you, who presents the greatest threat to our safety? Roger, or these misguided agents?

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Justice Dept won't challenge States

By Phil Mattingly on 30 August 2013 for Bloomberg News
(http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-29/u-s-won-t-sue-to-block-state-marijuana-legalization.html)

The U.S. won’t challenge laws in Colorado and Washington that legalized the recreational use of marijuana and will focus federal prosecutions on ties to criminal organizations, distribution to minors and transportation across state lines, the Justice Department said.

Attorney General Eric Holder told the governors of the two states that U.S. attorneys will focus on certain priority areas and work with them to set rules for the marijuana industry.

The decision marks the first time the U.S. government has condoned recreational marijuana use and opens the door for other states to consider it. Voters in Washington and Colorado became the first to legalize it in November. Nineteen states allow medical marijuana use, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In a memo to federal prosecutors around the country, Deputy Attorney General James Cole said that, beyond the priority areas, “the federal government has traditionally relied on states and local law enforcement agencies to address marijuana activity” under their own laws.

The new guidelines are “a major and historic step toward ending marijuana prohibition,” said Dan Riffle, federal policy director for the Marijuana Policy Project.

“The next step is for Congress to act,” said Riffle, whose Washington-based group is the largest advocating legalization. “We need to fix our nation’s broken marijuana laws and not just continue to work around them.”

Growing, selling or possessing marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

Criminal Activity

The federal priorities include monitoring marijuana activities for ties to criminal organizations, distribution to minors and transportation across state lines. Prosecutors have also been instructed to focus on preventing state-authorized endeavors from being used as a cover for trafficking other illegal drugs, violence in pot cultivation and driving under the influence of marijuana.

The government will also pursue cases where marijuana is grown on public lands or when it is carried on federal property, according to the Justice Department’s memo.

Officials in Washington and Colorado, as well as businesses associated with marijuana, have been pressing the Justice Department to make a decision on what the federal government would do where recreational use has been legalized.

“This very carefully considered approach by the federal government will allow our state to move forward and show the country a way a well-regulated system can be effectuated in a state while still respecting the federal Controlled Substances Act,” Washington Governor Jay Inslee, a 62-year-old Democrat, said today at a news briefing in Olympia.

Trusting States

“What I’m hearing from the federal government is that they believe there’s a reason to trust the states of Colorado and Washington,” Inslee told reporters. “So we’re not going to allow distribution of this product in a way that has massive leakage outside the state of Washington. We’re not going to allow distribution of this product to minors.”

Colorado Democratic Governor John Hickenlooper, 61, said the state shares the Justice Department’s enforcement priorities. The state is “determined to keep marijuana businesses from being fronts for criminal enterprises or other illegal activity,” he said in a statement.

‘A Mistake’

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, 50, a Republican who is seeking re-election in November and may run for president in 2016, called Holder’s decision not to challenge recreational marijuana laws “a mistake.”

It amounts to a “de facto” legalization, said Christie, a former U.S. attorney. New Jersey won’t move toward legalizing the recreational use of marijuana, the governor told reporters in Point Pleasant today.

Washington and Colorado have been designing regulations for the cultivation and sale of recreational marijuana while the Obama administration formulated its position on the state laws.

The Justice Department said it reserves the right to preempt the states should they run afoul of the new guidelines.

---

 Cops want continuing drug money 

By Ryan Grim on 30 August 2013 for Huffington Post -
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/30/police-eric-holder-marijuana-_n_3846518.html)


Image above: DEA agents remove "evidence" in pot dispensary raid in san Diaego 4/23/13. Look like regular cops to me - except for the face hoods. From (http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/Apr/23/marijuana-dispensary-cole-ntf-raid/)

A broad coalition of law enforcement officers who have spent the past three decades waging an increasingly militarized drug war that has failed to reduce drug use doesn't want to give up the fight.

Organizations that include sheriffs, narcotics officers and big-city police chiefs slammed Attorney General Eric Holder in a joint letter Friday, expressing "extreme disappointment" at his announcement that the Department of Justice would allow Colorado and Washington to implement state laws that legalized recreational marijuana for adults.

If there had been doubt about how meaningful Holder's move was, the fury reflected in the police response eliminates it. The role of law enforcement is traditionally understood to be limited to enforcing laws, but police organizations have become increasingly powerful political actors, and lashed out at Holder for not consulting sufficiently before adopting the new policy.

"It is unacceptable that the Department of Justice did not consult our organizations -- whose members will be directly impacted -- for meaningful input ahead of this important decision," the letter reads. "Our organizations were given notice just thirty minutes before the official announcement was made public and were not given the adequate forum ahead of time to express our concerns with the Department’s conclusion on this matter.

Simply 'checking the box' by alerting law enforcement officials right before a decision is announced is not enough and certainly does not show an understanding of the value the Federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement partnerships bring to the Department of Justice and the public safety discussion."

The missive was signed by the Major County Sheriffs’ Association, the National Sheriffs’ Association, the Association of State Criminal Investigative Agencies, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Narcotic Officers Associations’ Coalition, the Major Cities Chiefs Police Association and the Police Executive Research Forum.

Law enforcement, the police groups said, "becomes infinitely harder for our front-line men and women given the Department’s position."

The Justice Department declined to respond.

Local law enforcement agencies rely heavily on the drug war for funding. Police departments are often able to keep a large portion of the assets they seize during drug raids, even if charges are never brought. And federal grants for drug war operations make up a sizable portion of local law enforcement funding.

The letter warns that marijuana can cause suicidal thoughts, impairs driving and is a "gateway drug." The missive does not, however, address the failure of law enforcement generally to reduce drug use, even while tripling the number of people behind bars. Instead, the police warn that liberalizing pot laws will lead to an increase in crime.

"The decision will undoubtedly have grave unintended consequences, including a reversal of the declining crime rates that we as law enforcement practitioners have spent more than a decade maintaining," the officers write.

Worse, they warn, more states are likely to follow Washington and Colorado.

"The failure of the Department of Justice to challenge state policies that clearly contradict Federal law is both unacceptable and unprecedented. The failure of the Federal government to act in this matter is an open invitation to other states to legalize marijuana in defiance of federal law," they write.E


.

Novartis loses drug case

SUBHEAD: Indian court rejects Novartis' attempt to repatent new version of cancer drug.

By Nirmala George on 1 April 2013 for Huffington Post -
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/01/novartis-drug-case-india_n_2990434.html)


Image above: Head of the Beast. Syngenta formed by AstraZeneca and Novartis in 2000. Click on image to see history of Syngenta's parent companies to 18th century. From (http://islandbreath.org/2006Year/16-farming/0616-20WaimeaPoison.html).

India's Supreme Court on Monday rejected drug maker Novartis AG's attempt to patent an updated version of a cancer drug in a landmark decision that health activists say ensures poor patients around the world will get continued access to cheap versions of lifesaving medicines.

Novartis had argued that it needed a patent to protect its investment in the cancer drug Glivec, while activists said the drug did not merit intellectual property protection in India because it was not a new medicine. In response to the ruling, Novartis said it would not invest in drug research in India.

The court's decision has global significance since India's $26 billion generic drug industry, which supplies much of the cheap medicine used in the developing world, could be stunted if Indian law allowed global drug companies to extend the lifespan of patents by making minor changes to medicines.

Once a drug's patent expires, generic manufacturers can legally produce it. They are able to make drugs at a fraction of the original manufacturer's cost because they don't carry out the expensive research and development.

Pratibha Singh, a lawyer for the Indian generic drug manufacturer Cipla, which makes a version of Glivec for less than a tenth of the original drug's selling price, said the court ruled that a patent could only be given to a new drug, and not to those which are only slightly different from the original.

"Patents will be given only for genuine inventions, and repetitive patents will not be given for minor tweaks to an existing drug," Singh told reporters outside the court.

Novartis called the ruling a "setback for patients," and said patent protection is crucial to fostering investment in research to develop new and better drugs.


Ranjit Shahani, the vice chairman and managing director of Novartis India, said the ruling "will hinder medical progress for diseases without effective treatment options."

He said the court's decision made India an even less attractive country for major investments by international pharmaceutical companies.

"Novartis will not invest in drug research in India. Not only Novartis, I don't think any global company is planning to research in India," he said.

The Swiss pharmaceutical giant has fought a legal battle in India since 2006 to patent a new version of Glivec, which is mainly used to treat leukemia and is known as Gleevec outside India and Europe. The earlier version of Glivec did not have an Indian patent because its development far predated the country's 2005 patent law. Novartis said Glivec is patented in nearly 40 other countries.

India's patent office rejected the company's patent application, arguing the drug was not a new medicine but an amended version of its earlier product. The patent authority cited a provision in the 2005 patent law aimed at preventing companies from getting fresh patents for making only minor changes to existing medicines — a practice known as "evergreening."

Novartis appealed, arguing the drug was a more easily absorbed version of Glivec and that it qualified for a patent because it was "a revolutionary treatment," not an incremental improvement.

Anand Grover, a lawyer for the Cancer Patients Aid Association, which led the legal fight against Novartis, said the ruling Monday prevented the watering down of India's patent laws.

"This is a very good day for cancer patients. It's the news we have been waiting for for seven long years," he said.

Aid groups, including Medicins Sans Frontieres, have opposed Novartis' case, fearing that a victory for the Swiss drugmaker would limit access to important medicines for millions of poor people around the world.

Glivec, used in treating chronic myeloid leukemia and some other cancers, costs about $2,600 a month. Its generic version was available in India for around $175 per month.

"The difference in price was huge. The generic version makes it affordable to so many more poor people, not just in India, but across the world," said Y.K. Sapru, of the Mumbai-based cancer patients association.

"For cancer sufferers, this ruling will mean the difference between life and death. Because the price at which it was available, and considering it's the only lifesaving drug for chronic myeloid cancer patients, this decision will make a huge difference," Sapru said.

Leena Menghaney of Medicins Sans Frontieres said India would continue to grant patents on new medicines.

"This doesn't mean that no patents will be granted. Patents will continue to be granted by India, but definitely the abusive practice of getting many patents on one drug will be stopped," Menghaney said.

The judgment would ensure that the prices of lifesaving drugs would come down as many more companies would produce generic versions.

"We've seen this happening with HIV medicines, where the cost of HIV treatment has come down from $10,000 to $150 per year. Cancer treatment costs have come down by 97 percent in the case of many cancer drugs," she said.

"This decision is incredibly important. The Supreme Court decision will save a lot of lives in the coming decades," Menghaney said.
.

Origins of 420

SUBHEAD: Enigma revealed. The real history behind how Weed Day got its name.  

By Ryan Grimm on 20 April 2009 for Huffington Post -  
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/20/420-weed-day-marijuana-april-holiday_n_1437964.html)

 
Image above: Three Waldos -- (from left) Mark Gravitch, Dave Reddix and Steve Capper -- along with friend Patty Young hold the original 420 flag. From original article.
 
[HuffPo editor's note: This article was originally published on April 20, 2009, and has been reposted each year since. This year, it is updated to include the full identities of the men behind the coining of the term "420," as well as additional details. Carly Schwartz contributed to this story.]
Warren Haynes, the Allman Brothers Band guitarist, routinely plays with the surviving members of the Grateful Dead, touring as The Dead. It's the spring of 2009, he's just finished a Dead show in Washington, D.C., and he gets a pop quiz from The Huffington Post.

Where does "420" come from?

He pauses and thinks, hands on his sides. "I don't know the real origin. I know myths and rumors," he says. "I'm really confused about the first time I heard it. It was like a police code for smoking in progress or something. What's the real story?"

Wavy Gravy is a hippie icon with his own ice cream flavor who has been hanging out with the Dead for decades. HuffPost spots him outside the same concert. Asked about the term 420, he suggests it began "somewhere in the foggy mists of time. What time is it now? I say to you, 'Eternity now.'"

Depending on whom you ask or their state of inebriation, there are as many varieties of answers as strains of medical bud in California. It's the number of active chemicals in marijuana. It's teatime in Holland. It has something to do with Hitler's birthday. It's those numbers in that Bob Dylan song multiplied.

The origin of the term 420, celebrated around the world by pot smokers every April 20, has long been obscured by the clouded memories of the folks who made it a phenomenon.


The Huffington Post chased the term back to its roots and was able to find them in a lost patch of cannabis in a Point Reyes, Calif., forest. Just as interesting as its origin, it turns out, is how it spread.

It starts with the Dead.

It was Christmas week 1990 in Oakland. Steven Bloom was wandering through The Lot, that timeless gathering of hippies that springs up in the parking lot before every Grateful Dead concert, when a Deadhead handed him a yellow flyer.

"We are going to meet at 4:20 on 4/20 for 420-ing in Marin County at the Bolinas Ridge sunset spot on Mt. Tamalpais," read the message, which Bloom dug up and forwarded to HuffPost. Bloom, then a reporter for High Times magazine and now the publisher of CelebStoner.com and co-author of "Pot Culture," had never heard of "420-ing" before.

The flyer came complete with a 420 backstory: "420 started somewhere in San Rafael, California in the late '70s. It started as the police code for Marijuana Smoking in Progress. After local heads heard of the police call, they started using the expression 420 when referring to herb -- Let's Go 420, dude!"

Bloom reported his find in the May 1991 issue of High Times, which the magazine found in its archives and provided to HuffPost. The story, though, was only partially right.

The origin of 420 had nothing to do with a police code, though the San Rafael part was dead-on. A group of five San Rafael High School friends known as the Waldos -- by virtue of their chosen hangout spot, a wall outside the school -- coined the term in 1971.

The Waldos never envisioned that pot smokers the world over would celebrate each April 20 as a result of their foray into the Point Reyes forest. The day has managed to become something of a national holiday in the face of official condemnation. Officials at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of California, Santa Cruz, which boast two of the biggest "smokeouts," pushed back in 2009 in typical fashion. "As another April 20 approaches, we are faced with concerns from students, parents, alumni, Regents, and community members about a repeat of last year's 4/20 'event,'" wrote Boulder's chancellor in a letter to students. "On April 20, 2009, we hope that you will choose not to participate in unlawful activity that debases the reputation of your University and degree, and will encourage your fellow Buffs to act with pride and remember who they really are."

But the Cheshire cat is out of the bag. Students and locals will show up around four, light up at 4:20 and be gone shortly thereafter. No bands, no speakers, no chants. Just a bunch of people getting together and getting stoned.

THE FIVE WALDOS


Today the code often creeps into popular culture and mainstream settings. Some of the clocks in "Pulp Fiction," for instance, are set to 4:20. A "Price Is Right" contestant won YouTube celebrity by bidding either $420 or $1,420 for everything. In 2003, when the California Legislature codified the medical marijuana law that voters had approved, the bill was named SB 420.

"We think it was a staffer working for [lead Assembly sponsor Mark] Leno, but no one has ever fessed up," says Steph Sherer, head of Americans for Safe Access, which lobbied on behalf of the bill.

California legislative staffers spoken to for this story say that the 420 designation remains a mystery, but that both Leno and the lead Senate sponsor, John Vasconcellos, are hip enough that they must have known what it meant. Vasconcellos says he has no idea how it got the number 420 and wouldn't have known what it meant at the time. (If you were involved with SB 420 and know the story, email me.)

The code also pops up in Craigslist postings when fellow smokers search for "420 friendly" roommates. "It's just a vaguer way of saying it, and it kind of makes it kind of cool," says Bloom, the pot journalist. "Like, you know you're in the know, but that does show you how it's in the mainstream."

The Waldos have proof, however, that they used the term in the early '70s. When HuffPost spoke with the men in 2009, they requested anonymity, preferring to go by the names they call each other -- Waldo Steve, Waldo Dave, Waldo Mark, etc. Pot was still, after all, illegal.

Since then, however, California has decriminalized possession of marijuana so that getting snagged costs little more than a parking ticket. Medical marijuana shops dot the landscape, and the plant has become dramatically more culturally acceptable.

In the spring of 2012, they agreed to go on the record with HuffPost.

"The baby boomers have been taking over. People are dying off. The generations behind them are fine," explains Steve Capper.

"I think I read recently a poll where somewhere like 47 percent of the American public are okay with marijuana," says Dave Reddix. (In March 2012, a Rasmussen poll found 47 percent of Americans support legalization of marijuana.)

Mark Gravitch also agreed to be identified. The other two aren't yet ready.

The Waldos' story goes like this: One day in the fall of 1971 -- harvest time -- the Waldos got word of a Coast Guard service member who could no longer tend his plot of marijuana plants near the Point Reyes Peninsula Coast Guard station. A treasure map in hand, the Waldos decided to pluck some of the free bud.

The Waldos, who were all athletes, agreed to meet at the statue of Louis Pasteur outside the school at 4:20 p.m., after practice, to begin the hunt.

"We would remind each other in the hallways we were supposed to meet up at 4:20. It originally started out 4:20-Louis, and we eventually dropped the Louis," Capper, 57, says.

The first forays were unsuccessful, but the group kept looking for the hidden crop. "We'd meet at 4:20 and get in my old '66 Chevy Impala, and, of course, we'd smoke instantly and smoke all the way out to Point Reyes and smoke the entire time we were out there. We did it week after week," says Capper. "We never actually found the patch."

But they did find a useful codeword. "I could say to one of my friends, I'd go, '420,' and it was telepathic. He would know if I was saying, 'Hey, do you wanna go smoke some?' Or, 'Do you have any?' Or, 'Are you stoned right now?' It was kind of telepathic just from the way you said it," Capper says. "Our teachers didn't know what we were talking about. Our parents didn't know what we were talking about."

WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM THE DEAD


It's one thing to identify the origin of the term. But Wikipedia and Urban Dictionary already included references to the Waldos by 2009, when HuffPost first wrote this account. The bigger question: How did 420 spread from a circle of California stoners across the globe?

As fortune would have it, the collapse of San Francisco's hippie utopia in the late '60s set the stage. As speed freaks, thugs and con artists took over The Haight, the Grateful Dead packed up and moved to the Marin County hills, just blocks from San Rafael High School.

"Marin County was kind of ground zero for the counterculture," says Capper.

The Waldos had more than a geographic connection to the Dead. Mark Gravitch's father took care of real estate for the Dead. And Dave Reddix's older brother, Patrick, managed a Dead sideband and was good friends with bassist Phil Lesh. Patrick Reddix tells HuffPost that he smoked with Lesh on numerous occasions. He couldn't recall if he used the term 420 around Lesh, but guessed that he must have.

The Dead, recalls Dave Reddix, 57, "had this rehearsal hall on Front Street, San Rafael, California, and they used to practice there. So we used to go hang out and listen to them play music and get high while they're practicing for gigs. But I think it's possible my brother Patrick might have spread it through Phil Lesh. And me, too, because I was hanging out with Lesh and his band [as a roadie] when they were doing a summer tour my brother was managing."

The bands that Patrick managed for Lesh were called Too Loose to Truck and Sea Stones; they featured not only Lesh but rock legend David Crosby and acclaimed guitarist Terry Haggerty.

The Waldos also had open access to Dead parties and rehearsals. "We'd go with [Mark's] dad, who was a hip dad from the '60s," says Capper. "There was a place called Winterland, and we'd always be backstage running around or on stage and, of course, we're using those phrases. When somebody passes a joint or something, 'Hey, 420.' So it started spreading through that community."

Lesh, walking off stage after a Dead concert in 2009, confirms that Patrick Reddix is a friend and says he "wouldn't be surprised" if the Waldos had coined 420. He isn't sure, he says, the first time he heard it. "I do not remember. I'm very sorry. I wish I could help," he says.

As the Grateful Dead toured through the '70s and '80s, playing hundreds of shows a year, the term spread though the Dead underground. Once High Times got hip to it, the magazine helped take it global.

"I started incorporating it into everything we were doing," Steve Hager, then editor of High Times, tells HuffPost in 2009. "I started doing all these big events -- the World Hemp Expo Extravaganza and the Cannabis Cup -- and we built everything around 420. The publicity that High Times gave it is what made it an international thing. Until then, it was relatively confined to the Grateful Dead subculture. But we blew it out into an international phenomenon."

Sometime in the early '90s, High Times wisely purchased the web domain 420.com.

The Waldos say that it took just a few years for the term to spread throughout San Rafael and start cropping up elsewhere in the state. By the early '90s, it had penetrated far enough that Dave Reddix and Steve Capper began hearing people use it in unexpected places -- Ohio, Florida, Canada -- and spotted it painted on signs and scratched into park benches.

In 1998, the Waldos decided to set the record straight and got in touch with High Times.

"They said, 'The fact is, there is no 420 [police] code in California. You guys ever look it up?'" Bloom recalls. He had to admit that, no, he had never looked it up. Hager flew out to San Rafael, met the Waldos, examined their evidence, spoke with others in town, and concluded they were telling the truth.

"No one's ever been able to come up with any use of 420 that predates the 1971 usage, which they had established. So unless somebody can come up with something that predates them, then I don't think anybody's going to get credit for it other than them," Hager says.
THEIR 420 STASH
The Waldos have evidence to back up their story, now stashed away in a vault in a San Francisco bank. Reddix, Gravitch, Capper and another high school friend, Patty Young, gave HuffPost a tour of the vault, where they keep a flag with 420 stitched onto it, letters, newspaper clippings and other pieces of memorabilia.

The men remain positively giddy about their impact on an international subculture. "Attention, ladies and gentlemen, the Waldos are here!" exclaims Reddix outside downtown San Francisco's flagship Wells Fargo. He picks up a plastic "Caution, Wet Floor" sign to use as a megaphone. "You are witnessing history!"

And there it all is: A clipping from a 1970s issue of San Rafael High's school newspaper, in which a student claimed the one thing he'd want to say in front of his graduating class was simply "4-20." A letter postmarked 1975, from Waldo Dave to Waldo Steve, rife with 420 references. The official 420 flag, which Young tie-dyed in her art class.

The bank teller watches as the Waldos show off their archives. "Do you know what 420 means?" Capper asks him.

The teller pauses, then grins sheepishly. "Yes, sir," he says.

The Waldos are slightly conflicted about what to do next. Reddix is gung-ho about telling the story widely and publicly. Capper is more circumspect, worried that releasing too much would cost them future commercial possibilities.

The Waldos are considering a documentary, a dictionary of the rest of their slang and whatever else might be out there for five guys who coined the term 420 four decades ago.

"I still have a lot of friends who tell their friends that they know one of the guys that started the 420 thing. So it's kind of like a cult celebrity thing. Two years ago I went to the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam. High Times magazine flew me out," says Reddix.

But "we never made a dime on the thing," he says, half boasting, half lamenting.

Reddix is now a credit analyst, with a side interest in filmmaking that led to the documentary "Roots Music Americana." He works for Capper, who owns a specialty lending institution and lost money to the con artist Bernie Madoff. When we spoke in 2009, Capper was spending more time composing angry letters to the Securities and Exchange Commission than he did getting high.

The other three Waldos have also been successful, says Capper, who notes he keeps in close touch with them all. One is head of marketing for a Napa Valley winery. Another is in printing and graphics. Gravitch is an operations manager in the construction industry.

"I've got to run a business. I've got to stay sharp," says Capper, explaining why he rarely smokes pot anymore. "Seems like everybody I know who smokes daily or many times in a week, it seems like there's always something going wrong with their life, professionally or in their relationships or financially or something. It's a lot of fun, but it seems like if someone does it too much, there's some karmic cost to it."

"I never endorsed the use of marijuana. But hey, it worked for me," says Reddix;

"I'm sure on my headstone it'll say, 'One of the 420 guys.'"

.

Crime Becoming the Bank

SUBHEAD: The big banks are a keystone in supporting criminal activity all over the world and are financed by us.

By Ashvin Pandurangi on 24 March 2012 for the Automatic Earth - (http://theautomaticearth.org/Finance/becoming-the-bank.html)


 Image above: From(http://photographywithoutborders.org/news/london-g20-protests-riot-police-rbs).

Both the mainstream and alternative media spend a good amount of time reporting on the excesses of Wall Street, which range from extremely disproportionate levels of compensation to blatantly criminal practices. Whether we are talking about Goldman Sachs defrauding and front-running clients or former New Jersey governor and MF Global CEO Jon Corzine illegally transferring client funds to JP Morgan, there is a certain air of "so whatness" to the entire discussion. How extensive are these occurrences and why should we care?

There is no doubt that these are serious issues/crimes, but, at the end of the day, there is also a limit to how much one can care about extremely rich people stealing money from and screwing over moderately rich people in the markets. Sometimes, there is almost a distracting quality to these discussions, and it helps maintain the tarnished-yet-still-respectable reputation of the major banks. We begin to forget about the systemically cruel ways in which the global banking system affects the lives of billions of innocent people every day.

When high-level drug traffickers have been removed from all contact with operations on the street, including the handling of drugs or any associated violence, they are said to have "become the bank". They simply use their money to finance drug packages while reinvesting profits into real property and legitimate businesses. Once the traffickers reach this point, there is almost no possible way they can catch a charge and be convicted of any serious crime. The legal distance between them and the street-level dealing and violence has grown much too large, even though none of it would be possible without their money.

In that sense, the phrase “become the bank” is a very apt one. This post is not even meant to draw an analogy between high-level narco-traffickers and the TBTF banks, but rather to sketch a portrait of the literal connection that exists. The large banks are the untouchable source of funds behind almost every illegal (yet highly profitable) industry throughout the world, as well as activities that are technically legal, but still very destructive to society. They are sometimes even aided by Western governments and their intelligence apparatuses, which find valuable policy objectives in doing so.

These institutions help traffick billions worth of drugs and illegal weapons across international borders every year. Just last year, it was revealed that Wachovia (now a part of Wells Fargo) had laundered at least tens of billions of dollars for Mexican drug cartels since the escalation of drug-related violence at the US-Mexico border in 2004. This laundered money has gone towards the purchase of everything from the drugs themselves to the planes used the transport them and the weapons used to kill police and civilians alike. Ed Vulliamy produced an in-depth report on this last year for the Guardian.

Big US bank laundered billions from Mexico's murderous drug gangs
During a 22-month investigation by agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and others, it emerged that the cocaine smugglers had bought the plane with money they had laundered through one of the biggest banks in the United States: Wachovia, now part of the giant Wells Fargo.
The authorities uncovered billions of dollars in wire transfers, traveller's cheques and cash shipments through Mexican exchanges into Wachovia accounts. Wachovia was put under immediate investigation for failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering programme. Of special significance was that the period concerned began in 2004, which coincided with the first escalation of violence along the US-Mexico border that ignited the current drugs war.

Criminal proceedings were brought against Wachovia, though not against any individual, but the case never came to court. In March 2010, Wachovia settled the biggest action brought under the US bank secrecy act, through the US district court in Miami. Now that the year's "deferred prosecution" has expired, the bank is in effect in the clear. It paid federal authorities $110m in forfeiture, for allowing transactions later proved to be connected to drug smuggling, and incurred a $50m fine for failing to monitor cash used to ship 22 tons of cocaine.

More shocking, and more important, the bank was sanctioned for failing to apply the proper anti-laundering strictures to the transfer of $378.4bn – a sum equivalent to one-third of Mexico's gross national product – into dollar accounts from so-called casas de cambio (CDCs) in Mexico, currency exchange houses with which the bank did business.

"Wachovia's blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations," said Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor. Yet the total fine was less than 2% of the bank's $12.3bn profit for 2009. On 24 March 2010, Wells Fargo stock traded at $30.86 – up 1% on the week of the court settlement.

The conclusion to the case was only the tip of an iceberg, demonstrating the role of the "legal" banking sector in swilling hundreds of billions of dollars – the blood money from the murderous drug trade in Mexico and other places in the world – around their global operations, now bailed out by the taxpayer.

Common sense tells us that the first time a bank gets caught in the middle of such a blatantly obvious practice is not its first time around the block. Indeed, the evidence clearly shows that Wachovia executives were previously made aware of the illegal money laundered through their institutions by several different sources and, instead of acting to remedy the situation, sought to bury the whistleblowers six feet under a pile of disinformation and bureaucracy.

That is simply what they do, and they never catch a criminal charge, or anything beyond a symbolic slap on the wrist, for any of it – they are beyond reproach. A couple hundred million dollars in fines to their companies is a cruel joke on the millions of lives that have been destroyed by the drug trade. More importantly, it does nothing to stop these practices from occurring and destroy millions of additional lives in the future.

When it comes to profiting from murderous and destructive activities, though, nothing ranks higher for the banks than the global arms trade. This type of financing can be carried out in the open for the most part, since governments around the world sanction and engage in the export and procurement of weapons manufactured by the leading companies. Of course, everyone knows that these “legal” arms deals are also fueling the rampant armed conflict in poorer parts of the world. A good portion of the “foreign aid” given to developing nations is recycled right back into the coffers of the large weapons manufacturers and their banks.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched,every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." -Dwight D. Eisenhower

The London-based charitable organization “War on Want” produced a report a few years back highlighting the ways in which major U.K. banks have financed the arms trade through the provision of banking services for the weapons industry, direct investments in arms companies and the provision of credit to these companies through loan syndicates. These include investments in cluster bombs and depleted uranium projectiles, which are universally recognized as inflicting an unacceptably high injury/death toll on civilian populations during and after war.

Banking on Bloodshed
In 2006 the UK government approved sales by UK arms companies to 19 of the 20 countries identified by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as ‘countries of concern’ for human rights abuses. These countries included Saudi Arabia, Israel, Colombia, China and Russia.21 Colombia, Russia and Israel are also countries in conflict. Deals have been approved in other conflict countries including Algeria, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia and Georgia. In 2007 the UK government, in defiance of an arms embargo, allowed UK companies to sell Zimbabwe £1 million in cryptography equipment and software.

Israel is a regular customer of the UK arms industry, despite its flagrant violations of international law, including the military occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In 2006 the government approved for sale to Israel a laundry list of military hardware: helicopters, military aircraft cockpit displays, unmanned vehicles, anti-armour missiles and other electronic warfare equipment. BAE Systems makes subsystems, or components, for the F-16 fighter jet, of which Israel has 236. F-16s have been deployed by Israel against civilian populations in both Lebanon and Gaza.
The Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts have been a boon to arms companies in the US and the UK. One UK company that has benefited particularly from the surge in demand from the Iraq war has been Chemring, which manufactures niche products such as missile countermeasures and flares. Profits have risen each year since the start of the occupation in 2003. In 2006 returns were almost 500% higher than in 2002, and share prices have followed.

BAE supplies many weapons to the US and UK that have been used in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, including V-22 guns and armoured fighting vehicles. BAE also recently won a contract from the UK Ministry of Defence to service its Tornado jets in Iraq for £10 million apiece.29 Lockheed Martin also supplies extensively to the US and UK governments to fulfil demand from the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. These supplies include military ground vehicles and sniper targeting pods for fighter aircraft, amongst other products.

There are some weapons that have come under particular criticism for their toll on civilian life even long after a war has ended. Cluster munitions are one such weapon. They are designed to scatter dozens to hundreds of smaller bomblets over a large area and can cause high levels of civilian casualties both during attacks because of their indiscriminate, wide-area effects, and long afterwards, since unexploded ordnance turns fields, roads and even schools into minefields. One in four cluster munitions victims are children.

The arms trade provides the destructive hardware used in conflicts across the world. This report has exposed, for the first time, the extent to which the five main British high street banks are funding this violent trade. High street banks are using our money to fund companies that sell arms used against civilians in wars across the world, including conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are financing an industry that sells arms to countries committing human rights abuses such as Israel, Colombia and Saudi Arabia. Money from our savings and current accounts is being used to fund companies that produce pernicious weapons like depleted uranium and cluster bombs.

Faith in the banking sector is already at an all-time low. The revelation that high street banks are investing in weaponry will add to this public mistrust. Barclays, Halifax Bank of Scotland, HSBC, Lloyds TSB and Royal Bank of Scotland are all complicit. Barclays stands out for the sheer scale of its investments. Royal Bank of Scotland is the most active in lending to the arms sector. HSBC shows its glaring hypocrisy by having claimed to divest from the arms trade while actually continuing its holdings.
Whilst the complicity of high street banks is the focus of this report, War on Want believes that the arms trade should ultimately be abolished. However, with governments such as the US and UK determined to pursue military adventures around the world, the arms trade remains big business. War on Want believes that now is the time to act to put an end to high street banks’ support for arms companies.

While Congressional panels hold symbolic hearings about which banks sold what toxic investment to which defrauded clients, or who knew what about which funds were transferred to what location, the systemic financing of death and destruction around the world continues on unimpeded. These activities are not only outside the scope of any serious investigation, they are officially sanctioned and effectively immune from regulation or prosecution.

These are the same institutions which have been granted virtually unlimited backstops by American and European taxpayers, in one form or another. More to the point, they are the institutions which many of us use to store our money, take out loans, invest in markets or make purchases. As long as we continue to do so, we are telling them that we are OK with how they conduct themselves around the world; that we are willing to accept their status as the untouchable elite.

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Gloom in the Pearl of Doha

SUBHEAD: Gloom grips Qatar's Arab Riviera after unexplained alcohol ban in the Pearl of Doha.  

By Benjamin Barthe on 21 February 2012 for the Guradian - 
  (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/21/qatar-arab-riviera-gloom-alcohol-ban)

 
 Image above: Shoreline of The Pearl in Doha. From (http://www.hedonister.com/2010/12/after-the-palm-and-the-world-comes-the-pearl-in-doha-qatar).
 

There are car dealers on both sides of the road – Rolls-Royce on the right, Ferrari on the left – leading to the bridge over to the Pearl in this new district of Doha. Located on a man-made island to the north of Qatar's capital, a mixture of big houses with private beaches, 50-floor luxury hotels and marinas for the ultra-rich, the Arab Riviera, as its promoters have dubbed it, is the emirate's most recent folly.
But the sale of alcoholic beverages was banned on the island at the end of last year and gloom has gripped many residents. The managers of top-notch restaurants and boutiques complain sales have dropped by about half.

"When we heard the news we thought it was the end of the world," says a waitress at the Mango Tree, a Thai restaurant where the bottles behind the bar have been replaced by water jugs. The foreigners who once turned up in droves on weekend evenings, filling the cafe terraces of this golden enclave, have taken refuge in the hotels at West Bay, the business quarter of Doha, where alcohol still flows freely.

"We'll die of boredom here," says the proprietor of a coffee stall.

The prohibition order was issued by the United Development Company, one of Qatar's leading shareholding companies. The Pearl is its flagship operation. But a member of the ruling al-Thani family is clearly behind this move. As to the reason, one source cites an over-indulgent binge, the sight of which supposedly upset some Qatari passers-by. Another notes the need to tidy up the emirate's image for the Pan-Arab Games last December. A third source suggests a communication campaign by the ruling family a year before the country's first general election.

With no official explanation, foreign investors are assuming this is just a temporary drought. They remain convinced that, once consumption of alcohol has been restricted to the inside of restaurants, the ban will be lifted all over the 400-hectare island.

But the episode has made a lasting impression, being symptomatic of the tension that has taken hold of Qatar, predominantly conservative in religious matters, since it started to come to terms with the extreme modernity championed by Doha. "Qataris are basically pretty traditional," says a French expatriate. "They are not as broad-minded as their rulers."

The Pearl affair also illustrates the divisions at work in a country (population 1.7 million) where four-fifths of the residents are foreigners – primarily Indians, Pakistanis, Nepalese and Filipinos – making up the workforce on which the Qatar miracle is based. It was for their benefit that a subsidiary of Qatar Airways, the Qatar Distribution Company, started selling pork in its supermarket during the buildup to Christmas. This new departure prompted an outcry on the internet "I never thought the day would come that I have to ask the waiter in a restaurant in Qatar what kind of meat is in their burgers," one tweeter complained last November.

This reaction, mainly voiced on social networks, is unlikely to sap the power of the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani. At the beginning of December the emirate won its bid to host the Fifa World Cup in 2022, with the undertaking that special areas would be set aside for consumption of alcohol.Two weeks later the regime opened a new mosque in Doha in honour of Abdul Wahhab, the Saudi founder of the fundamentalist branch of Islam which bears his name and theoretically still holds sway in Qatar. "It's a constant balancing act," says a foreign diplomat, "but for the time being the Emir has things under control."

The latest example of this schizophrenia is Doha's acquisition of The Card Players, a painting by Cézanne, with a bottle of wine in full view between the two players.

• This article originally appeared in Le Monde.

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