End the War on Freedom

"I don't mind being called an escapist. On a planet that more and more resembles a maximum security prison, the only sane choice is to plan a jailbreak." -- Robert Anton Wilson

# Michael Sharpe in The Maybe Quarterly - New Game Rules - Wow! Amazing. Read, integrate, and live. I didn't find anything else I was moved to link to in Issue 1 or Issue 2 of the Maybe Quarterly. YMMV. [jomama]

New rules. Scrap the old ones. By old I mean those of any previous age, and previous time; yesterday, 5 years ago, 20 years ago, 100 years ago, 2000 years ago. Scrap Ethics, scrap morals, scrap everything you have been told, everything you think you believe about anything. It is time to start again, to redefine recreate and remake the game we have been forced to play. This is the age of discord, the Pandamonaeon; this is the age of chaos. ""I tell you: one must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing star" We are the virus that will spread to mutate the world as we know it. We have never been seen before, so for, there are no rules; for us, we make the rules.

We are playing in a game, a game we did not choose to be a part of, but were none the less thrown into and forced to participate in. It is, of course, improper to think of the game as a game. That is Their number one rule. This is not a game, we are told; this is real. What we see on TV, on stages, on Movies, in newspapers, read in books, that is a game; but life, life is real, and life is dangerous and we must draw the distinction between the game we dare to play and the life we are forced to live. We must stick together, they say, we must obey not just for our own good, but for the good of our neighbor; love thy neighbor, even if it means your own demise; or at the very least your loss for his gain. These are the lies we have been spoon fed, lies that have been made necessary to the game (their game). Lies that make it so we cannot win; the deck is rigged in their favor, and unless we choose to admit it, and stack the deck in our favor again, we will never be happy.

I am not talking about "the good of human kind" here. I am talking about the happiness, the freedom of the intelligent; of the maladapted- those forced to mutate by a corrupt society and then shunned as trash and garbage. Those swept underground, the counter-culture. It is always the maladapted who move society, the outcasts who revolutionize the way we think. It is the unique and powerful who are the lights of the world, not the mediocre and weak.

Any good con man knows that the best way to play a "pigeon" is to keep them in the dark about what you are doing to them. Make them think it is for their own good; rig the game so all odds are against the players, yet the players still think they have a chance. Stack the deck in the house's favor.

It is no wonder nothing changes drastically. The system is not made to be changed. An old joke I once heard goes "How many activists does it take to change a light bulb?" None! Activism doesn't change anything!!!. It sedates, it hypnotizes, but it does not change. It allows for the small players on the field to feel like they are rebellious, like they have a voice, like they can make a difference. It is another opiate to stop the "rebel" from facing the void. It gives a meaning to his meager existence, it makes him feel important; but it does nothing to effect the state of the world. Of course, as soon as things get out of hand, the TV cameras go off, and the Dogma Regulators (commonly known as Police) come in to tell the protestors just what the system thinks of them, in a very physical way.

# Alan Young at NOW Toronto via Liberty Forum - And marijuana for all - why cannabis hemp should be legalized. Of course the real reason is that without a victim, there is no crime. Period. [libertyforum]

First, it is a plant. Criminal law should be reserved for serious predatory conduct, and only in the world of science-fiction can a plant become a predator.

Second, since the 1894 Indian Hemp Commission, virtually every royal commission and governmental committee, internationally and in Canada, has recommended that marijuana use be decriminalized. Some have even called for outright legalization. It is an affront to democracy to continuously spend taxpayers' money on comprehensive and informed reports that are ignored for no apparent reason.

Third, most of Europe and Australia have decriminalized marijuana use, and the liberalization of the law in these countries has not wreaked social havoc. In fact, consumption rates in decriminalized jurisdictions are significantly lower than in the penal colonies of Canada and the United States.

Fourth, the use of marijuana poses few societal dangers. It is not a criminogenic substance. For most people, marijuana provides a form of deep relaxation and sensory enhancement, and it does not have the unpredictable, disinhibiting capacity of alcohol. No one is getting mugged by Cheech and Chong, and contrary to the false alarms sounded by public officials, marijuana is not significantly responsible for vehicular carnage.

A drug can only possess criminogenic potential if it is a disinihibitor like alcohol or if it has addictive potential. There is little evidence that marijuana is addictive, though many chronic users experience a psychological dependency like that of the compulsive jogger who continues a daily exercise regimen despite failing knees.

Fifth, marijuana is relatively harmless for the user. Admittedly, smoking has some pulmonary risks, but we don't throw junk food makers and their consumer-victims into jail despite the enormous burden these junkies place on the health care system. Criminal law is not the remedy for gastrointestinal distress, nor is it a rational solution to curbing chronic bronchial inflammation. The solemnity and majesty of the criminal law is trivialized when it's used to prevent Canadians from becoming a nation of coughers and wheezers.

# George Potter at The Claire Files - An Open Letter To Ward Churchill - on the absurdity of collective guilt, collective responsibility, and collective rights. [clairefiles]

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