-Caveat Lector-
from:
http://www.lipmagazine.org
Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.lipmagazine.org/";>LiP Magazine Home Page</A>
-----
Hello LiP Readers:
Welcome to the "Deliriously Discursive" Drugs issue.
Let's not mince words or don the mantle of false objectivity: The Drug War
must go. From any rational standpoint, it has been an utter failure.
Not only has it failed to reduce drug use or crime, but it has, through
racist sentencing policy and selective enforcement, been the leading
mechanism of institutional racism in the United States for at least the past
few decades. The damage that has been done to communities of color (and to
the poor) in the U.S. in the name of this war is so great that it's doubtful
we could undo the damage in our lifetimes.
For those looking for a more "balanced" analysis of current U.S. drug policy,
I'd like to submit that there simply are no compassionate, fair-minded,
democratic arguments to support the notion that the imprisonment of drug
users "works." Most other modern industrial countries, it's worth noting,
have long since come to this basic conclusion. From an economic standpoint,
it's a disaster that's already siphoned enormous amounts of money from
much-needed social welfare programs. From a crime reduction standpoint, it's
abundantly clear that prison, without a serious commitment to rehabilitation
and education, only helps feed crime. And finally, given the overall,
well-documented, racist structure of the War on Drugs, it's also abundantly
clear that if the U.S. is going to move forward in anything resembling a
democratic fashion, it has to stop finding reasons to lock up its citizens of
color and its poor.
The struggle to end this war will certainly be a long one, but there are
solid reasons to believe the movement against it is getting more organized
and resonating with an ever-broader segment of the general public.
To that end, we submit this issue of LiP, Wherein resides a full bag of
thoughtful goodies not limited to:
* Tim Wise and Silja Talvi's look at the different "drug wars" being
experienced by Americans based on color and class;
* Interviews with dissident judge James Gray, Israeli pot legalization
activist Boaz Wachtel, and dancehall reggae star Everton Blender;
* Nevada's police-backed marijuana legalization movement;
* How the acronymous RAVE Act puts youth culture in general at risk;
* America's Pudding Problem;
* Excerpts from Sasha Abramsky's book, "Hard Time Blues";
* Typically superb illustration from Nicole Schulman, Tim Kreider and
Shannon Wheeler; and, of course, new book, film and music reviews.
For the LiP editorial collective,
Brian Brasel-Awehali
[ interview ]
Perspective
>From the Bench
Jessica Clark interviews Drug War dissident, Judge James Gray, about the need
for drug law policy reform.
.
[ excerpt ]
Hard Time Blues
How Politics Built a Prison Nation
"Sometimes it seemed as if Billy Ochoa's whole life had been nothing but a
prelude to a finale behind bars..."
by Sasha Abramsky
.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
RAVE Review
Why the "Reducing Americans' Vulnerability to Ecstasy" (RAVE) Act is a Bad
Acronym and Worse Policy
by William D. McColl
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Profiles in Injustice
Why Racial Profiling Cannot Work
Lost Ground
Welfare Reform, Poverty and Beyond
LiP Playlist
What's on heavy rotation in our offices
• Misty in Roots : Roots Controller
• Little Axe: Hard Grind
• Madredeus: Electronico
• Susan and the SurfTones: The Originals
• Various Artists: Rock On, Greatest Hits from the Observer Label
• Echo: Self-titled
Magnolia
"The kind of maladies strewn across the low-lit heavily-shadowed interiors
and the rain-darkened exteriors of Magnolia add up to significantly more than
a random handful of individual morality plays. Inevitably, Magnolia's
cultural critique targets the dynamics of convenience consumerism."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
We are proud to be affiliated with
"The War on Drugs was too busy busting the black and brown in the lower ninth
ward of New Orleans, I guess, to make a stop Uptown, where the Tulane
freshmen on the 8th floor of Monroe Hall were busy filling up two foot bong
chambers with pot smoke, and then inhaling until our eyes rolled back in our
heads..."
by Tim Wise
"The drug war is a proxy for racism...Most modern politicians wouldn't
dream of explicitly advocating that society persecute or enslave poor people
or members of minority communities. But that is exactly what is happening as
a result of the 'get-tough-on-crime' drug war policies of the past few
decades."
by Silja Talvi
An historic initiative to end the war on marijuana users will be on the
statewide ballot in Nevada this November. Spearheaded by the Marijuana Policy
Project with its offspring organization, Nevadans for Responsible Law
Enforcement, the initiative seeks to eliminate the threat of arrest and all
other penalties for adults who use and possess up to three ounces of
marijuana.
by Valerie Vande Panne
People have turned to mind-altering substances since the beginning of time in
search of enlightenment. But while many other drugs, from ayahuasca to
nitrous oxide, produce euphoria, Ecstasy creates not just a rush but a
singular kind of emotional elevation—you are launched on a hot-air balloon
ride that floats over the pitfalls of typical humanity. The what ifs, the
self-doubts, are knocked flat, and instead a hunger for human connection and
a desire to empathize firmly take hold. No other drug produces this kind of
feeling.
by Matthew Klam
Richard Nixon was the villain all good hippies and radicals loved to hate
back in the day. And the tape transcripts recently released show him to be
just as vile as we imagined, a conniving, foul-hearted racist and
anti-Semite. If anyone doubts that pot prohibition is the product of culture
war, they should look at the Nixon tapes.
by Steven Wishnia
War of Attrition
Drug Policy and the Decline of the American Empire
Americans reading one hundred years from now about the decline of the
American empire and the modern "War on Drugs" - officially launched with the
creation of the New York Rockefeller drug laws in the early '70s - might
understandably think that the "war" was a terrible idea.
by Jordan Elgrably
Hash in the
Holy Land
an interview with
Israeli Pot Activist
Boaz Wachtel,
co-founder of Israel's Ale Yarok (Green Leaf) Party. The party's agenda
includes legal cannabis, gay and lesbian rights, ravers' rights, drug and
alcohol treatment on demand, free university education, and an immediate end
to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
by Steven Wishnia
The notion of marijuana as a drug on par with heroin, cocaine or speed is
preposterous, Blender insists: "You plant the herb from a seed and it
manifest. How can you call it drugs if you don't add anything to it, you
don't mix anything with it, it just start from a seed and becomes a big,
pretty collie bud?"
by
Carrie McLaren
Advertising Can Ruin Your Health
SCARE TACTICS ONCE COMMON in advertising have, for the most part,
disappeared. Ads now purport to make people feel good rather than anxious;
the incessant chirping of pharmaceutical commercials nearly manages to make
even "nausea," "headache," and "certain sexual side effects" sound upbeat.
Yet a classic conflict of interest remains: Advertising sells both ills and
their cures, giddily blurring the lines between medicine, nutrition, and
hygiene.
Death, Money & Americana at the Indy 500
THE INDY 500 IS THE LARGEST single-day sports event on earth, with about a
half-million people pouring in from every direction. A great deal of the
"fun" of Indy is the infield scene: tailgate cookouts, beer, touch football
in the mud, beer, throwing up, beer...a twin-cam fuel-injected
toxic-waste-incinerating dual-carb gay-bashing culture of macho automotive
supremacy. Basically, it's Woodstock designed by truckers
by
Bob Harris
by
Che Green
Not Milk
Why America's Dairy Habit is Anything But Wholesome
IN ONE YEAR, the average American consumes about 420 pounds of fluid milk and
cream, 70 pounds of various milk- based fats and oils, 30 pounds of cheese,
and 17 pounds of ice cream. But what if milk is a major contributor to breast
cancer, heart disease, asthma, diabetes, and more? What if the U.S.
government and the dairy industry are colluding to hide the ill effects of
dairy consumption?
A Mad, Mad Nation
Mental Illness & the Drugging of Rebellion
Awash in new syndromes and mood-altering prescriptions, America seems on the
precipice of a large-scale nervous breakdown. LiP talks with Dr. Bruce
Levine, the author of Commonsense Rebellion, about dissident psychiatry for a
dysfunctional society.
interview by
Silja Talvi
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
