14 down, 36 to go in the push towards legalization of marijuana

But what does this all mean? What does it mean when we're rapidly heading towards a surveillance state, let alone a police state? Will we be able to smoke pot in a police state? Consider that. What does this mean? I have no idea, it just boggles the mind, but you have to realize that many states of existence and social trends can live alongside one another simultaneously. Some things can be true and false all at once.

Is this all Huxley' warning, the phantom of "soma," and a populace that could find itself under some serious illusions of personal freedom while simultaneously narcotizing themselves, and not merely by television and the Internet (the unimaginative misuse of the latter)? I don't know, but it sure looks like it. There are many illusions and conceits in the counterculture and the outlying one these days, too many myths, too little reality.

California nearly passed Proposition 19 this election cycle, which would have all but decriminalized marijuana with a mere fine for up to the personal possession of one ounce of marijuana, similar to Ontario's experiment with decriminalization beginning about (or "aboot") a decade ago thanks to the ruling of an Ontario Superior Court of Justice (like our own higher Federal District circuits). But the fun didn't last long in Ontario and later rulings have pushed back the right to personal possession of marijuana. Tell 'em that in Toronto's Kensington Market, or even parts of Los Angeles and Oakland and the neighborhoods around the University of Toronto.

Local custom often trumps the law, which in the case of marijuana, is fine since it's not someone being lynched. That's what the drug laws are for.

As a criminology professor in college told me, "We never learn in America, because we don't want to." The truth has been plain for ages: Prohibition just empowers cartels and gangs, it doesn't make society a better place to live, and in fact is one of the sources of social disintegration. But it serves narrow interests, some who are in-collusion with drug lords. Without prohibition, there would be almost no potential for bribery and similar forms of corruption, especially with a decentralized model granting private citizens the right to grow set amounts for personal use, never mind medical marijuana dispensaries.

Meanwhile, the executive branch is enjoying the ability to conduct unrestrained surveillance of everyone under the rubic of the war on terror and the war on drugs. The states are moving one way, while the federal government is moving another. There could be no greater example of counter-trends of the democratic versus anti-democratic other than the newfound freedom and ease of communication created by the Internet, but the legalization movement is surely another one when juxtaposed with the ever-widening surveillance state. This isn't simply a states' rights battle, though there is certainly a fear of opening that door. It underscores that there are natural tendencies towards the democratic and anti-democratic in all nation states.

What if we do witness the virtual legalization of marijuana for personal use in the United States? Will it be a blow against anti-democratic trends? That would be a major affirmative. American drug laws were first formulated as race laws and the statistics of who gets sentenced to the most time are implicitly clear: Minorities suffer the most for the same amounts as their Caucasian counterparts, and class is also an issue, the ability to pay adequately for one's own defense at trial. So, yes indeed, this will be a step forward for civil rights across the board for Americans if we can end prohibition of marijuana since it will lead to and end in the case of the other substances to interdiction and the punishment model.

"But who's going to sell it?" is the usual question. In the case of marijuana, it should be nobody. Again, it's a hardy and easily grown plant. Yes, there will still be a market for the "best," there always will be, but any good law decriminalizing the plant will have to include the right of private citizens to grow their own. The other substances? The government should be dispensing them for tracking and statistical purposes, just like Canada does with "The Beer Store," albeit I have no answers as to manufacture, though my preference would be by the government. The money made from these sales could just as easily go to addiction treatment programs.

Would we want corporations to manufacture heroin as a commodity? I don't think so, and believe that that would be the true road to Huxley's Brave New World. Corporations are only capable of being held-accountable through the power of government because nothing else is powerful enough to. Before we knew it, we could all truly be addicts were they to have complete control over the process. But a part of me wonders: Where is this all headed? Will legalizing marijuana make a big difference? I believe that it can, and likely will, offer a "third-path" model, but Americans are going to have a big fight on their hands with--no surprise here--corporations, and the people who service, defend, and have an abiding interest in them.

Will we be smoking pot in a police state? Stay tuned...

The time has come for a national strike and groundswell, the time is now...

For those of us on the progressive left (meaning the majority), the time has come to make ourselves heard. The majority of Americans want socialized medicine, a special commission to look into 9/11, a special prosecutor to investigate serious crimes committed by the Bush II administration, relief aid for the growing-ranks of the unemployed, deep and meaningful reforms in the financial sector and how it does business, and general restoration of New Deal controls and protections that have served the public well for over 75 years, like the Glass-Stegall Act. Who got rid of Glass-Stegall, a barrier that kept banks from running amuck? A Republican controlled Congress, blue dog Democrats, and the Clinton administration, that's who. It gave us much of the economic crisis we're inhabiting right now. The time has come to rollback these policies, the time is now to mobilize.

If those on the right really love their country as much as they say they do and wish to join us in a common cause, they need to drop their bizarre obsessions about race, immigration, and other ideological fetishes that are going nowhere fast and will never fix the problems we're facing right now. But don't think that disruption's going to be tolerated. Don't think that you're going to hijack anything, because we're wise to you and your games and your agenda. We can spot you in a moment. You won't be accepted and will be driven out, and quick. The time has come for all of us to realize that the common enemy is concentrated wealth and the abuse of it. The time has come for Americans to quit shopping at Wal-Mart (fine, get the cheap drugs there if you have to). The time has come for the return of the boycott, the general strike, and the shutting down of everything for a few days to send a political message to unaccountable power. We are that accounting, we are the government, and we are the answer to our nation's problems. Politicians cannot and will not do this, at least not without the application of incredible pressure to do so. The time has come, the time is now, and there are no more valid excuses.

Call in sick. Afraid of losing your job? When did that become a new thing? Don't buy anything for a week except the barest-of-necessities. For the love of God, quit using credit cards all the time, use cash. Don't even use checks. Make the banks scream for mercy. Keep writing, phoning, faxing, and haranguing your representatives. Educate yourself on their pasts. Give them hell, give them an earful like they've never had it before. But don't break the law and keep it as civil as possible and adhere to non-violent civil disobedience when the time comes, it's key.

The best part? For many of us, we won't have to do anything--that's actually the point: to stop engaging in negative behaviors that keep empowering the rich through what we eat, what and how we often we drive, work, and what our daily routine is comprised of. Grow a garden. Drive less, a lot less. Quit watching TV so much. Get your news from the Internet and read multiple-sources, including the foreign press. We have everything to gain by asserting ourselves in a civil manner and showing power that we're not kidding around at all.

On the "boy in the balloon" non-story

WWW--Boy, I sure miss a lot when I don't bother to watch television or the 24 hour news networks, don't I?

Again...who gives-a-shit? People without a life? These very bald examples of media white-outs (namely, regarding Afghanistan, we can presume) are beginning to irk me. This isn't news, it's entertainment-at-best. At worst, they're put out there to crowd out real stories that the public needs to know.

Does this story warrant any attention? Did the bigfoot one emanating from Georgia a few years ago? The press sent over 100 representatives "just in case" it turned out to be "true." What the fuck does that mean? There's no such thing as bigfoot any more than there was a Virgin birth or a Paul Bunyan ferchrissakes, gimme a goddamned break. I'm not going to miss the mainstream media when it finally croaks...

Why do they hate the Jews, why do they hate immigrants and minorities?

WWW--This, of course, is my own humble opinion regarding why Jews, Blacks, other minorities, and immigrants are so hated by rednecks and nouveau nativists whose own ancestors were subjected to the same generations ago or even recently: because many in these groups have retained some semblance of their original culture, while those who "hate" or are "suspicious" of them in-the-main, do not, they've been Americanized.

The United States is the most business-dominated nation state in human history. We are constantly bombarded with propaganda that's routinely called "advertising" which has not only decimated traditional cultures here at home, but has essentially resulted in near cultural genocide in other nations that came under the sway of American commercialization in the immediate aftermath of WWII. America was the "last man standing" at the end of the Second World War. Traditional empires like the French, British, Belgian, & the Dutch (among others), were on-the-ropes after the war, it being their crazed attempt to dominate the Continent, meaning each other. Germany was a latecomer to the game of empire, hence Hitler's drive to create a Germanic one, one that we all know failed. Who taught him to do that?

In America and it's captive postwar markets, television and other media played a tragic role in the dumbing down of foreign populations in countries like Italy, France, Germany, and so on. Had the Marshall Plan never happened or had it failed, it's likely that Continental Europe would have gone to the far left, something that certainly wouldn't have been the end of the world. Aid came at a price: American dominance of the domestic markets of "captive" nations, a reverse-side to the rhetoric of the Cold War, but one thatwas just as true as its obverse. When that didn't always work, proxy armies were created under the umbrella of NATO in an overarching program called GLADIO, and they were essentially comprised of criminals, Nazi-collaborators, racists, anti-Communist extremists, and other cuddly people. In other words, counterinsurgency, repression. So much for the invisible hand of the marketplace...

But what really did the job of killing the heart of most cultures under the sway of American-style capitalism? That's right, it was television. Regional dialects vanished; people's diets degraded; wage-slavery, already a problem before the war, became virtually ubiquitous; cultural attitudes and viewpoints became more narrow; the partisan resistance and its memory were quelled; and people throughout the world basically became greedy consumerist slobs like many Americans were during the Cold War, and are today. The medium is the message alright, and that message is submit or die, or perhaps "conform, buy, or die." Not only is this a pathetic message, but a peculiarly millennial and American one transmitted by clerks with too much power, American businessmen and investors. America was never the savior of the world and never will be.

The same destruction of culture has occurred domestically, but it hasn't been total. What's one of the number one problems of our youth at any given moment? The lack of an identity, and the search for a new one, or moves to create one where one no longer exists. In the "eternal" (not looking so eternal anymore, thank God) consumer model, we inhabit a timeless present with no beginning and no end, just the now. That's also called "death," and it can only be a road to cultural death, and ultimately, the death of the species.

To hate Jews, Blacks who have retained some of their original culture or reinvented themselves, creating a new one, or hating immigrants and other minorities, then, is a subconscious admission that you have no culture, that you're a hollow man. The reality is that those who are racist in the modern world aren't just expressing classic anthropology, they're expressing that they want what these so-called groups want: an identity. They're the wretched of the earth, and these are the vagaries and dysfunctional behaviors of the oppressed. If they keep it up, they'll kill us all.

The Horror: E!'s "Hot Girls in Scary Places" and the "Ohmigod" factor

tv--I don't know whether this show is the worst/best thing on television now, or if it's just total crap. Are they kidding? Surely, they are, but don't be so sure. That "reality tv" has that same revolting-yet-hypnotizing quality that infomercials once--once?!--had is one of its hallmark features.

I've had the misfortune to (un)watch several of these so-called paranormal investigator programs, and like most people over the age of 13, I think it's all faked, played-up, and basically a bunch of aspiring actors doing a very bad job at appearing to believe it's all real. That's called "acting," by-the-way.

The premise is exactly what you would think: a bunch of vacuous models are taken to some "haunted" building for the night where lots of people were alleged to have died violently, or whatever. Yeah, whatever is right. OK, so it's just a pilot, so let's hope it dies the death that "Survivor" should have nine years ago. Give them a head full of acid, I say, then those gals will believe the place is haunted. Viewers might try the same, but I don't advocate the use of psychedelics.

But I should really be fair here...and brutally crucify the creators of the show. A brief explication of "Hot Girls in Scary Places" is in order:

The show stars three University of Southern California cheer squad friends challenged to spend the night in a supposedly haunted abandoned hospital for a cash prize of $10,000 (which would pay for maybe half a semester at USC). To get the prize, the trio will have to complete a series of challenges.
“They’re totally scared, and totally believe experiences they’re going through,” says executive producer Gary Auerbach [Ed.--He has a Facebook account!]. “They’ll get scared and then be talking about a sorority party coming up. It’s a little bit 'Scooby Doo'-ish.” ("E! orders 'Hot Girls in Scary Places,' " The Live Feed, 02.12.2009)

So it's definitely "ish," at least. Today, I got to see some of the rerun from Friday night (the 13th! Eeek!), and I have to at least say that the sensations experienced were both unique and alien. That doesn't mean they were good.

OK--they're all in a hospital, they don't seem scared at all, and nobody got laid--at least on-camera. The majority of what I witnessed--and it was all blood-chilling, just not the way you might think--was a gaggle of very bored coeds giggling and jiggling, a faked series of EVP (electro-voice phenomena, allegedly recordings of "spirit voices"), and not a hell of lot more. In reality, it looked like dumb outtakes from Jackass. Yet, we Americans love having things lying around that we don't need, so I assume the show will get picked-up as a series, mainly for its obvious camp value.

Where's Fred and his gay-sash in all of this? Will they have the old guy at the end exclaiming, "And I would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for you doggone bimbos." Perhaps, perhaps not, we'll see. My bets are on the old codgers. Some news outlets are saying that this show is a conscious "send-up," but do we really believe this? Perhaps, but why not make a drinking game out of it anyway, for every time one of the girls says "duhhhhh," "like," and "Ohmigod!" Yes, the dreaded "Ohmigod!" factor.

Executive producer Gary Auerbach has produced at least a dozen of these kinds of moronic reality shows, but his shows that bear the most obvious relationship to "Girls" is "Paranormal State" and "Lost Tapes," both-of-which are equally boring and impossible to accept or believe as anything but staged boredom. Even the "participants" and "investigators" appeared bored and incredulous. Well, right, because there is no supernatural anything and nothing after this life and no Easter Bunny or Santa Claus. Sorry.

Auerbach also produced "Punk'd" and several other MTV shows that are boring, so "Girls" was no real surprise here. But really, it is a soul-sucking and Satanic thing, this show. Just the mere existence of a show with a title like "Hot Girls in Scary Places" is enough to cause the dead to rise from their graves and seek revenge...on the barely-living, the barely-conscious, and that's not even dragging the viewers into it (that would be the show's backers). Did I mention he directed the early-1990s "Jon Stewart Show"?

Hey, everyone has to start somewhere, and I don't blame the producer for the state of the entertainment business. No, somehow, I can't blame Auerbach entirely. That blames rests with the money people in the entertainment industry who want to jettison troublesome union actors, crew, and writers, so that they can make lots of money and...crap. If they really want to entertain us, why not airdrop a pile of these social darwinists in Darfur, Afghanistan, the tribal regions of Pakistan, or over the borders into Iran? Or why not just let set "Girls" in the bad-parts of Oakland or Watts?

Best yet: airdrop these entertainment backers into the aforementioned places along with the rest of the CEOs of America. That would hardly be a boring show, that.

"E! orders 'Hot Girls in Scary Places,' " The Live Feed, 02.12.2009: http://www.thrfeed.com/2009/02/e-orders-hot-girls-in-scary-places.html