End the War on Freedom

Weather.com - Nor'easter threatens Eastern Seaboard: Lots of snow for the next three days. It's not snowing here yet (near Albany, NY), but the sky is gray. The map shows two lows, one over the great lakes, and one in the south. Looks like they'll come together over New England. [mind]

Two feet may fall in the corridor between New York City and Philadelphia.

Yesterday, I downloaded and read quite a bit of The Emperor Wears no Clothes. Incredible book! Reinforces for me the criminal nature of cannabis prohibition. I don't believe that hemp can save the planet, since the planet's problems have very little to do with raw materials and almost all to do with criminal politics, but hemp would certainly be a good thing to have around, for clothing, paper, food, fuel, building materials, medicine, and the list goes on. I learned a new term from the producer's preface for version 1.2. From now on I will describe the prohibitionist's job as "Lie Enforcement". Cannabis prohibition is a lie. An evil, criminal, lie. Some of its enforcers actually believe the lie. Others know it is a lie, but keep telling it anyway. The former must be educated. When they learn the truth, they'll come around. The latter must be given a clear message that they must stop lying or be prepared to trade places with the honest people they've imprisoned all these years.

Some excerpts:

In addition, various marijuana and hashish extracts were the first, second, or third most prescribed medicines in the United States from 1842 until the 1890s. Its medicinal use continued legally through the 1930s for humans and figured even more prominently in veterinary medicines during this time.

Cannabis extract medicines were produced by Eli Lilly, Parke-Davis, Tildens, Brothers Smith (Smith Brothers), Squibb, and many other American and European companies and apothecaries. During all this time there was not one reported death from cannabis extract medicines, and virtually no abuse or mental disorders reported, except for first-time or novice-users occasionally becoming disoriented or overly introverted.

...

The byproduct of pressing the oil from the seed is the highest quality protein seed cake. It can be sprouted (malted) or ground and baked into cake, breads, and casseroles. Marijuana seed protein is one of humankind’s finest, most complete, and available-to-the-body vegetable proteins. Hempseed is the most complete single food source for human nutrition.

...

Because one acre of hemp produces as much cellulose fiber pulp as 4.1 acres of trees, hemp is the perfect material to replace trees for pressed board, particle board, and for concrete construction molds.

Isochanvre, a rediscovered French building material made from hemp hurds mixed with lime, actually petrifies into a mineral state and lasts for many centuries. Archeologists have found a bridge in the south of France, from the Merovingian period (500-751 C.E.), built with this process.

...

Concern about the effects of hemp smoke had already led to two major governmental studies. The British governor of India released the Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission 1893-1894 on heavy bhang smokers in the subcontinent.

And in 1930, the U.S. government sponsored the Siler Commission study on the effects of off-duty smoking of marijuana by American servicemen in Panama. Both reports concluded that marijuana was not a problem and recommended that no criminal penalties apply to its use.

In early 1937, Assistant U.S. Surgeon General Walter Treadway told the Cannabis Advisory Subcommittee of the League of Nations that, "It may be taken for a relatively long time without social or emotional breakdown. Marihuana is habit-forming...in the same sense as...sugar or coffee."

...

If the hideous monster Frankenstein came face to face with the monster marihuana he would drop dead of fright. -- Harry Anslinger (the gummint goon who colluded with Hearst and DuPont to create the marihuana scare that started its prohibition as a tax act. He worked at maintaining the lie for 31 years: 1931-1962)

Jim Peron at Laissez Faire City Times - Blood Guilt and Slavery: a good exploration of the absurdity of asking white Americans whose ancestors may or may not have owned slaves to make "reparations" to black Americans whose ancestors may or may not have been slaves.

The Reparations Group has to promote some clearly racists views to win their case in court. Since the people who will be paying for the sins of slavery never actually enslaved anyone, the Group must argue that legal guilt is inheritable. And they have to hold some sort of racial theory of guilt since they will receive compensation, if they are successful, from whites who have never been related to slavers. To receive compensation from these whites they must argue that whites are guilty simply because they are white. Adolph Hitler would love this sort of theorizing.

Not only that, those American blacks who actually are the descendents of slaves are actually better off, much better off, than they would have been had their ancestors been allowed to remain in Africa. They are "better educated, healthier, wealthier, and freer than [their] Afican counterparts in any black African country." In the words of Keith Richburg in his book Out of America:

I'm tired of lying. And I'm tired of all the ignorance and hypocrisy and the double standards I hear and read about Africa, much of it from people who've never been there, let alone spent three years walking around the the corpses.

Talk to me about Africa and my black roots and my kinship with my African brothers and I'll throw it back in your face, and then I'll rub your nose in the image of the rotting flesh.

...

Had my ancestor not made it out of here I might have ended up that crowd... maybe I would have been one of those bodies, washing over the waterfall in Tanzania or maybe my son would have been set ablaze by soldiers. Or I would be limping now from the torture I received in some rancid police cell... Thank God my ancestor got out, because, now, I am not one of them. In short, thank God I am an American.

Russell Madden - Taking the Fifth: good commentary on Palozzolo v. Rhode Island, arguing that "eminent domain" has no place in the constitution at all.

When regulators denied him a permit to fill in 18 acres of swamp, er, wetlands, he decided that here was a situation nicely covered by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. He figured that implementing the original plans for his land would have brought him over three million dollars. Since the State had, in essence, forbidden him the chance to earn that wealth, it should cough up the dough to replace what it took from him.

...

There is a term for a system in which a citizen retains legal title to his property -- including the obligation to pay taxes on it -- but has no say in how it is used: it's called "fascism."

...

A proper transfer of property occurs only when all parties reach a voluntary and mutually agreed upon price for the exchange. Nothing other than value-for-value relationships are permissible in a free society. It matters not a whit if the money given by the State to the property owner is comparable to other prices paid in the area. If that amount of money were sufficient to satisfy the owner, then he would gladly and happily have entered the transaction. The fact that he must be coerced into handing over what he has earned at the figurative or literal point of a gun is prima facie evidence that those dollars were insufficient to compensate him for his property.

...

"Public interest," "the common good," or "the greatest good for the greatest number," all have no literal meaning. Only individuals have interests. Only particular things or situations can be good for particular people. Those who believe otherwise merely espouse a crude brand of collectivism.

...

In a broader view, taxation itself is a taking. Money is property, and the Fifth Amendment makes no distinction among kinds of property. That is one can of worms, of course, not even most property rights advocates are willing to open.

T. E. Ruppenthal at Laissez Faire City Times - PUC You, PUC Everybody: more on Kalifonia's government-imposed electricity problems.

As the three levels of government swing into action, I wondered why I am reminded of Moe, Larry and Curly?

...

Gray [Davis] is our present sad excuse of a governor, in a long line of sad excuses. Gray -- such a perfect name for him, perfect yet tragically inaccurate.

When I look at Gray I feel as if I am gazing upon one of Rosemary's Babies, an evil spawn hiding behind a veil of vacuity. Gray, a name so fitting for his public persona, as he radiates an intense blandness. Compared to His Grayness, Orrin Hatch exudes charisma, daring and excitement. Gray -- as in dismal, dull, dreary and cheerless. Gray as in the merging of black and white; the merging of two vibrant colors, a Fliberal ideal, but which in our Governor turns into a non-color, like turning charcoal into ash, snow into slush.

...

His Grayness is a unique political blend of the bland and the sleazy. He is bleazy. Bleazy -- a new word, a new concept for a new century's politician. After Clinton's blend of slick and sleazy (which still works out as sleazy) and the onset of Bush II's blend of the bland and the slick (Sland? Blicky?), His Grayness intends to offer a serious measure of Bleaziness to all America in 2004. It seems an unlikely scenario, but after Clinton, it is not to dismissed easily.

Erich Pratt at KeepAndBearArms.Com - Easy Access to Another Unregulated Weapon is Killing our Children: A variation on a theme often used by the freedom movement to counter the arguments of the nanny-staters. Nicely done, too. Remember, if it just saves one life...

AP via SF Gate - Appeals court overturns drug conviction saying stop was based on race only: there was no probable cause to stop a car carrying four black men, so the appeals court overturned the conviction of Rodney Jones for possessing 23 grams of cocaine. A tiny step forward. What we need is a complete ban on searching any car for anything without a warrant. [unknown]

John Young at Cryptome - DVD Hoy Reply Demand Letter: more DeCSS nonsense. MPAA requested that Mr. Young remove a copy of a letter they earlier sent him, since part of it has now been sealed by the court. He complied. Bigger fish to fry. Most entertaining here is Chris Moseng's reply letter at Underwhelmed to MPAA's demand that he remove his DeCSS material. He classified their letter as SPAM, which is illegal in the state of Washington. Hehe. He hasn't heard from them since. [cryptome]

Kevin Poulsen at The Register - DeCSS makes the funny pages: Aaron McGruder's strip, "The Boondocks", ran three panels last week slamming the MPAA's censoring of DeCSS. The comics are here (3/1), here (3/2), and here (3/3). [wes]

The strip is almost entirely obscured by a black stripe with the notice "CENSORED" in bold, underlined letters. "This comic contains numerous references to the DeCSS code used to bypass the Content Scrambling System of DVDs, which, by order of Judge Lewis Kaplan, is illegal to reproduce in any way," reads the text beneath.

"We apologize for the inconvenience, but speech that damages the profits of our corporate friends is NOT protected by the First Amendment. Thank You."

Seeking Sin at freshmeat - Excessive code and excessive nudity. What gives? One man's experience of writing Perl scripts for porn sites. Short article. Lots of comments. [script]

And why? Does working on the adult part of the net mean I'm a scumbag? Does it mean I'm sleazy? Does it mean I'm untrustworthy? Does it mean my code is bad?

And by no means is this just about me. There are a lot of good programmers out there on that adult part of the net. Some brilliant people -- downright gifted -- and they are ignored. They are made fun of and they are treated like (pardon the language) shit.

...

Most adult companies know how to treat their programmers. They know that without us they wouldn't be able to do business. Hence, most of us enjoy a rather nice life with a nice paycheck coming in and nice fringe benefits. (I can ensure you that attending a convention and talking to Jenna Jameson for a while can be a very interesting experience.) Can you say that you've done that in the last year you had your job?

Add comment Edit post Add post